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Updated: June 12, 2025
It was a fundamental principle of Greenstream conduct that the direct question was inadmissible; at the same time, the inhabitants of that far, isolated valley were, on all occasions, coldly curious about such strangers, their motives and complexions of mind, as reached their self-sufficient territory. This combined restriction and necessity produced a wily type of local inquisitor.
He passed the unpainted, wooden front of the office of the Greenstream Bugle; the house of Senator Themeny in its lindens on a spreading lawn; on the opposite side the mellow brick face of the Courthouse under towering poplars, and Valentine Simmons' store. Gordon stopped at the latter on his way home.
But here Gordon's diplomacy had been in vain, his surmising at sea. The others were intimate and familiar figures: Father Merlier's advent into Greenstream had occurred a number of years before.
This indolent carriage and his seemingly slight build had, on more than one occasion, been disastrously misleading to importunate or beery strangers. He could, and did, fight whenever chance offered, with a cold passion, a destructive abandon, that had won him, throughout the turbulent confines of Greenstream, a flattering measure of peace.
He raised the paper from where it had fallen and read the article once more. It was a floridly and violently written account of how a projected branch of the Tennessee and Northern System through Greenstream valley, long striven for by solid and public-spirited citizens of the County, had been prevented by the hidden avarice of a well-known local figure, an ex-stage driver.
To Gordon Makimmon Greenstream suddenly appeared insufferably dull, empty; the thought of monotonous, identical days spun thinly out, the nine hundred dollars extended to its greatest length, in that banal setting, suddenly grew unbearable.... There was no life in Greenstream....
He became an habitual sight, riding a blooded mare through the valley, over lonely trails, and was finally accepted as a recognized local institution. His title and exotic garb, the grim quality of his manhood, his austere disregard for bodily welfare, his unmistakable courage more than any other human quality extolled throughout Greenstream became a cause of prideful boasting in the County.
Then things would be different. He made himself no extravagant promises of reform, no fevered reproaches; but things would be different. He would take Lettice driving; he had the prettiest young wife in Greenstream, and he would show people that he realized it. She had been Lettice Hollidew, the daughter of old Pompey, the richest man in the county.
After a turn, over the washed, rocky road, the Greenstream Valley lay outspread below. The sun was lowering, and the shadow of the western range swept down the great, somber, wooded wall towering against an illimitable vault of rosy light; the lengthening shadows of the groves of trees on the lower slope fell into the dark, cool, emerald cleft.
The afternoon was waning when he gazed again into the deep, sombrous rift of Greenstream: from where Gordon stood, on the heights, in the flooding sun, it appeared to be already evening below.
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