These things had vanished years ago; yet beneath the noisy commercial city the friendly village remained.

There were hours in the lavender-tinted twilights of spring, or on autumn afternoons, while the shadows quivered beneath the burnished leaves and the sunset glowed with the colour of apricots, when the watcher might catch a fleeting glimpse of the past.

It may have been the drop of dusk in the arched recess of a Colonial doorway; it may have been the faint sunshine on the ivy-grown corner of an old brick wall; it may have been the plaintive melody of a negro market-man in the street; or it may have been the first view of the Culpeper's gray and white mansion; but, in one or all of these things, there were moments when the ghost of the buried village stirred and looked out, and a fragrance that was like the memory of box and mint and blush roses stole into the senses.

It was then that one turned to the Doric columns of the Culpeper house, standing firmly established in its grassy lawn above the street and the age, and reflected that the defeated spirit of tradition had entrenched itself well at the last.

Time had been powerless against that fortress of prejudice; against that cheerful and inaccessible prison of the tribal instinct.