His word
was no longer to be taken. The daily bouts at cards had arranged
itself accordingly, and to him was assigned the ignoble part of the
onlooker. The sheriff, the county clerk, a sportive deputy, a gay
attorney, and a chalk-faced man hailing "from the valley," sat at
table, and the sheared one was thus tacitly advised to go and grow
more wool.
Soon wearying of his ostracism, Goree had departed for his office,
muttering to himself as he unsteadily traversed the unlucky pathway.
After a drink of corn whiskey from a demijohn under the table, he had
flung himself into the chair, staring, in a sort of maudlin apathy,
out at the mountains immersed in the summer haze. The little white
patch he saw away up on the side of Blackjack was Laurel, the village
near which he had been born and bred. There, also, was the birthplace
of the feud between the Gorees and the Coltranes. Now no direct heir
of the Gorees survived except this plucked and singed bird of
misfortune. To the Coltranes, also, but one male supporter was left
--Colonel Abner Coltrane, a man of substance and standing, a member
of the State Legislature, and a contemporary with Goree's father. The
feud had been a typical one of the region; it had left a red record of
hate, wrong and slaughter.
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