THROCKMORTON

CHAPTER I.


In a lowland Virginia neighborhood, strangely cut off from the rest of
the world geographically, and wrapped in a profound and charming
stillness, a little universe exists. It has its oracles of law,
medicine, and divinity; its wars and alliances. Free from that outward
contact which makes an intolerable sameness among people, its types
develop quaintly. There is peace, and elbow-room for everybody's
peculiarities.

Such was the Severn neighborhood--called so from Severn church. Every
bric...