During his absence he had
accumulated a wealth of evidence of undoubted authenticity, with
the result that his claim against the Fentress estate was
sustained by the courts, and when The Oaks with its stock and
slaves was offered for sale, he, as the principal creditor, was
able to buy it in.
One of his first acts after taking possession of the property was
to have Mahaffy reinterred in the grove of oaks below his bedroom
windows, and he marked the spot with a great square of granite.
The judge, visibly shaken by his emotions, saw the massive
boulder go into place.
"Harsh and rugged like the nature of him who lies beneath it--but
enduring, too, as he was," he murmured. He turned to Yancy and
Hannibal, and added
"You will lay me beside him when I die."
Then when the bitter struggle came and he was wrenched and
tortured by longings, his strength was in remembering his promise
to the dead man, and it was his custom to go out under the oaks
and pace to and fro beside Mahaffy's grave until he had gained
the mastery of himself. Only Yancy and Hannibal knew how fierce
the conflict was he waged, yet in the end he won that best earned
of all victories, the victory over himself.
"My salvation has been a costly thing; it was bought with the
blood of my friend," he told Yancy.
It was Hannibal's privilege to give Cavendish out of the vast
Quintard tract such a farm as the earl had never dreamed of
owning even in his most fervid moments of imagining; and he
abandoned all idea of going to England to claim his title.
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