Chapter 1
_ CHAPTER I
"O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence. . .
. . . feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused
And in diffusion evermore intense.
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world."
GEORGE ELIOT
THE middle of a fragrant afternoon of May in the green wilderness of Kentucky: the year 1795.
High overhead ridges of many-peaked cloud--the gleaming, wandering Alps of the blue ether； outstretched far below, the warming bosom of the earth, throbbing with the hope of maternity. Two spirits abroad in the air, encountering each other and passing into one: the spirit of scentless spring left by melting snows and the spirit of scented summer born with the earliest buds. The road through the forest one of those wagon-tracks that were being opened from the clearings of the settlers, and that wound along beneat

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