When Caleb Hunter's father had come north, back when his loyalty
to a flag and his pity for a gaunt and lonely figure in the White House
had been stronger than bonds of blood, he had left its counterpart down
on the Tennessee. Afterward, with one empty sleeve pinned across his
breast, he had directed with the other hand the placing of the columns.
And finally, when he had had to leave this home in turn, along with its
high, white painted walls and glossy green shutters, he had passed down
to his son his inborn love of the warmth, his innocent delight in
indolence--and an unsurpassed judgment of mint. The mint bed still lay
where he had located it, to the west of the house, moist and fragrant
in the shadow.
Caleb Hunter had been drowsing contentedly since early afternoon, his
chin on his chest and the bowl of his pipe drooping down over his
comfortably bulging, unbuttoned waistcoat. The lazy day was in his
blood and even the whine of the sawmills on the river-bank, a mile or
more to the south, tempered as it was by the distance to the drone of a
surly bumble-bee, still vaguely annoyed him. Tiny dots of men in
flannel shirts of brilliant hue, flashing from time to time out across
the log-choked space between the booms, caught his eye whenever he
lifted his head, during the passage of a green-sprayed glass from the
veranda rail to his lips, and almost reminded him of the unnatural
altitude of the mercury.
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