What title they had to their lands originally,
or how they traced it back, or where they had come from, no one knew.
They had been there from time immemorial, as long or longer, if anything,
than the owners of the plantations about them; and insignificant as they were,
they were not the kind to attempt to question, even had anyone been inclined
to do so, which no one was.
They had the names of the old English gentry, and were a clean-limbed,
blond, blue-eyed people.
When they were growing to middle age, their life told on them
and made them weather-beaten, and not infrequently hard-visaged;
but when they were young there were often among them straight,
supple young fellows with clear-cut features, and lithe,
willowy-looking girls, with pink faces and blue, or brown, or hazel eyes,
and a mien which one might have expected to find in a hall
rather than in a cabin.
Darby Stanley and Cove Mills (short for Coverley) were the leaders
of the rival factions of the district. They lived as their fathers had lived
before them, on opposite sides of the little stream, the branches of which
crept through the alder and gum thickets between them, and contributed
to make the district almost as impenetrable to the uninitiated
as a mountain fastness. The long log-cabin of the Cove-Millses,
where room had been added to room in a straight line, until it looked
like the side of a log fort, peeped from its pines across at the clearing
where the hardly more pretentious home of Darby Stanley
was set back amid a little orchard of ragged peach-trees,
and half hidden under a great wistaria vine.
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