Kenneth Gwynne was five years old when his father ran away with Rachel Carter, a widow. This was in the spring of 1812, and in the fall his mother died. His grandparents brought him up to hate Rachel Carter, an evil woman. She was his mother's friend and she had slain her with the viper's tooth. From the day that his questioning intelligence seized upon the truth that had been so carefully withheld from him by his brokenhearted mother and those who spoke behind the hand when he was near, from that day he hated Rachel Carter with all his hot and outraged heart. He came to think of her as the embodiment of all that was evil, for those were the days when there was not middle-ground for sin and women were either white or scarlet.