"Such people ought to live in a morgue," agreed Macloud. "However we're safe enough--we can go to the Cemetery with impunity."
"There are some rather queer old headstones, out there," she said. "Remorse and the inevitable pay-up for earthly transgression seem to be the leading subjects. There is one in the Duval lot--the Duvals from whom Mr. Croyden got Clarendon, you know--and I never have been able to understand just what it means. It is erected to the memory of one Robert Parmenter, and has cut in the slab the legend: 'He feared nor man, nor god, nor devil,' and below it, a man on his knees making supplication to one standing over him. If he feared nor man, nor god, nor devil, why should he be imploring mercy from any one?"
"Do you know who Parmenter was?" said Macloud.
"No--but I presume a connection of the family, from having been buried with them."
"You read his letter only last evening--his letter to Marmaduke Duval."
"His letter to Marmaduke Duval!" she repeated. "I didn't read any----"
"Robert Parmenter is the pirate who buried the treasure on Greenberry Point," he interrupted.
"I see!--I didn't look at the name signed to the letter. And the cutting on the tombstone----?"
"Is a victim begging mercy from him," said Macloud. "I like that Marmaduke Duval--there's something fine in a man, in those times, bringing the old buccaneer over from Annapolis and burying him beside the place where he, himself, some day would rest.--That is friendship!"
"And that is like the Duvals!" said she. "It was a sad day in Hampton when the Colonel died."
"He left a good deputy," Macloud replied. "Croyden is well-born and well-bred (the former does not always comprehend the latter, these days), and of Southern blood on his mother's side."
"Which hasn't hurt him with us!" she smiled. "We are a bit clannish, still."
"Delighted to hear you confess it! I've got a little of it myself."
He nodded. "Mine doesn't go so far South, however, as Croyden's--only, to Virginia."
"I knew it! I knew there was some reason for my liking you!" she laughed.
"Than your Southern ancestors?--isn't that enough?"
"Not if there be a means to increase it."
"Southern blood is never satisfied with _some_ things--it always wants more!"