John Mayrant was smiling and looking at the graves. "Yes, that's it; that's all it," he mused. "You do understand."

But I had to finish my flight. "Such quiet faces are gone now in the breathless, competing North: ground into oblivion between the clashing trades of the competing men and the clashing jewels and chandeliers of their competing wives--while yours have lingered on, spared by your very adversity. And that's why I shall miss your old people when they follow mine--because they're the last of their kind, the end of the chain, the bold original stock, the great race that made our glory grow and saw that it did grow through thick and thin: the good old native blood of independence."

I spoke as a man can always speak when he means it; and my listener's face showed that my words had gone where meant words always go--home to the heart. But he merely nodded at me. His nod, however, telling as it did of a quickly established accord between us, caused me to bring out to this new acquaintance still more of those thoughts which I condescend to expose to very few old ones.