“That’s a go,” exclaimed Morey, springing up, “unless the fishing makes me too late. Pleasure before business, you know.”
As old Ca’line shambled down the wide hall she shook her head and mumbled:
“His pappy’s own chile! An’ dat’s what took de paint offen dis house.”
[CHAPTER III]
MOREY MEETS A FELLOW FISHERMAN.
Mrs. Marshall’s home fronted the west. Always, in the distance, like a magic curtain ready to rise and reveal a fairyland beyond, hung the vapory Blue Mountains. Round about, like long fingers, the rough mountain heights ran down among the century-old plantations. Ridges, pine-grown and rocky, and here and there tumbling rivulets gave variety to the long, level reaches of tobacco land.
A little creek, finally trickling into the north part of the Rappahannock river, skirted what had once been the east boundary of the old Marshall plantation. In days long gone, before the forests thinned and while the mountain sides were thick with laurel, ash, and oak, the creek plunged lustily in and out of its wide and deep pools and went bounding musically in many a rapid. But now, even as the Marshall acres had thinned and disappeared, the woodland stream had dwarfed and shrunk until it was little more than a reminder of its former vigor.
Yet, by all the Marshalls it was remembered as the place where Colonel Aspley had “whipped the stream for speckled beauties” like a gentleman; it was still Aspley Creek, and Amos was not the only one who believed trout might still be taken there. It was not surprising, therefore, that Lieutenant Fred Purcell, of the U. S. Army, should on this day drive twenty miles from Linden to try his luck there.
Why this keen-eyed young officer, and many other soldiers who were not officers, were seen so often in the little railroad town of Linden, few persons knew. But to this place he had come, when the snows in the mountains were disappearing in March, with a few brother officers and a squad of privates and much strange baggage. Mules and wagons followed a few days later and then the new arrivals disappeared. There were many theories. Generally it was agreed that it might mean an expedition against “moonshiners” or illicit distillers. More conservative gossips predicted that it was a party of military engineers. The local paper ventured that the war department was about to locate a weather observatory on the mountains. One thing only became, gradually, common knowledge—that the soldiers were in camp near Green Springs, in Squirrel Gap, ten miles back in the foot hills and that the officers came every few days to the Green Tree Inn, in Linden, to eat and smoke.