Two things
had deprived it of its former glory. The mart-way had changed even
before the iron horse charged across the old routes, scorning their
pretty curves and dashing in an almost direct line from mountain
to sea. Increasing population had opened new routes, which diverted
the traffic and were preferred to the old way by travelers. Besides
this, there had been a feud between the owner of the Ordinary and
the rich proprietor whose outspread acres encircled on every side
the few thin roods which were attached to the hostel, and when the
owner thereof died and the property, in the course of administration,
was put upon the market, the rich neighbor bought it, despoiled
it of all its accessories, and left only the one building of two
rooms below and two above, a kitchen and a log stable, with crib
attached, upon the site of the Ordinary which had vexed him so
long. The others were all cleared away, and even the little opening
around the Ordinary was turned out to grow up in pines and black-jacks,
all but an acre or two of garden-plot behind the house. The sign
was removed, and the overseer of Colonel Walter Greer, the new
owner, was installed in the house, which thenceforth lost entirely
its character as an inn.
In the old days, before the use of artificial heat in the curing
of tobacco, the heavy, coarse fibre which grew upon rich, loamy
bottom lands or on dark clayey hillsides was chiefly prized by the
grower and purchaser of that staple.
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