The Valiants of Virginia

by Hallie Erminie Rives

CHAPTER		PAGE
I	The Crash	[1]
II	Vanity Valiant	[12]
III	The Never-Never Land	[21]
IV	The Turn of the Page	[29]
V	The Letter	[36]
VI	A Valiant of Virginia	[44]
VII	On the Red Road	[49]
VIII	Mad Anthony	[59]
IX	Uncle Jefferson	[71]
X	What Happened Thirty Years Ago	[80]
XI	Damory Court	[90]
XII	The Case of Morocco Leather	[102]
XIII	The Hunt	[109]
XIV	Sanctuary	[119]
XV	Mrs. Poly Gifford Pays a Call	[124]
XVI	The Echo	[138]
XVII	The Trespasser	[142]
XVIII	John Valiant Makes a Discovery	[152]
XIX	Under the Hemlocks	[163]
XX	On the Edge of the World	[173]
XXI	After the Storm	[179]
XXII	The Anniversary	[188]
XXIII	Uncle Jefferson’s Story	[197]
XXIV	In Devil-John’s Day	[203]
XXV	John Valiant Asks a Question	[219]
XXVI	The Call of the Rose	[223]
XXVII	Beyond the Box-Hedge	[230]
XXVIII	Night	[238]
XXIX	At the Dome	[244]
XXX	The Gardeners	[255]
XXXI	Tournament Day	[267]
XXXII	A Virginian Runnymede	[275]
XXXIII	The Knight of the Crimson Rose	[289]
XXXIV	Katharine Decides	[300]
XXXV	“When Knighthood Was in Flower”	[309]
XXXVI	By the Sun-Dial	[317]
XXXVII	The Doctor Speaks	[328]
XXXVIII	The Ambush	[334]
XXXIX	What the Cape Jessamines Knew	[340]
XL	The Awakening	[346]
XLI	The Coming of Greef King	[359]
XLII	In the Rain	[369]
XLIII	The Evening of an Old Score	[378]
XLIV	The Major Breaks Silence	[386]
XLV	Renunciation	[398]
XLVI	The Voice From the Past	[408]
XLVII	When the Clock Struck	[415]
XLVIII	The Song of the Nightingale	[427]

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THE VALIANTS OF
VIRGINIA

CHAPTER I

THE CRASH

“

Failed!” ejaculated John Valiant blankly, and the hat he held dropped to the claret-colored rug like a huge white splotch of sudden fright. “The Corporation—failed!”

The young man was the glass of fashion, from the silken ribbon on the spotless Panama to his pearl-gray gaiters, and well favored—a lithe stalwart figure, with wide-set hazel eyes and strong brown hair waving back from a candid forehead. The soft straw, however, had been wrung to a wisp between clutching fingers and the face was glazed in a kind of horrified and assiduous surprise, as if the rosy peach of life, bitten, had suddenly revealed itself an unripe persimmon. The very words themselves came with a galvanic twitch and a stagger that conveyed a sense at once of shock and of protest. Even the white bulldog stretched on the floor, nose between paws and one restless eye on his master in a troubled wonder that any one should prefer to forsake the ecstatic sunshine of the street, with its thousand fascinating scents and cross-trails, for a stuffy business office, lifted his wrinkling pink nose and snuffled with acute and hopeful inquiry.

Never had John Valiant’s innocuous and butterfly existence known a surprise more startling. He had swung into the room with all the nonchalant habits, the ingrained certitude of the man born with achievement ready-made in his hands. And a single curt statement—like the ruthless blades of a pair of shears—had snipped across the one splendid scarlet thread in the woof that constituted life as he knew it. He had knotted his lavender scarf that morning a vice-president of the Valiant Corporation—one of the greatest and most successful of modern-day organizations; he sat now in the fading afternoon trying to realize that the huge fabric, without warning, had toppled to its fall.