chances of driving some
metamorphosed unfortunate.

Circumstances that afterwards came to my knowledge created in my mind a
strong suspicion that Julius may have played a more than unconscious
part in this transaction. Among other significant facts was his
appearance, the Sunday following the purchase of the horse, in a new
suit of store clothes, which I had seen displayed in the window of Mr.
Solomon Cohen's store on my last visit to town, and had remarked on
account of their striking originality of cut and pattern. As I had not
recently paid Julius any money, and as he had no property to mortgage, I
was driven to conjecture to account for his possession of the means to
buy the clothes. Of course I would not charge him with duplicity unless
I could prove it, at least to a moral certainty, but for a long time
afterwards I took his advice only in small doses and with great
discrimination.

SIS' BECKY'S PICKANINNY

We had not lived in North Carolina very long before I was able to note a
marked improvement in my wife's health. The ozone-laden air of the
surrounding piney woods, the mild and equable climate, the peaceful
leisure of country life, had brought about in hopeful measure the cure
we had anticipated. Toward the end of our second year, however, her
ailment took an unexpected turn for the worse. She became the victim of
a settled melancholy, attended with vague forebodings of impending
misfortune.

"You must keep up her spirits," said our physician, the best in the
neighboring town. "This melancholy lowers her tone too much, tends to
lessen her strength, and, if it continue too long, may be fraught with
grave consequences."

I tried various expedients to cheer her up. I read novels to her. I had
the hands on the place come up in the evening and serenade her with
plantation songs. Friends came in sometimes and talked, and frequent
letters from the North kept her in touch with her former home. But
nothing seemed to rouse her from the depression into which she had
fallen.

One pleasant afternoon in spring, I placed an armchair in a shaded
portion of the front piazza, and filling it with pillows led my wife out
of the house and seated her where she would have the pleasantest view of
a somewhat monotonous scenery. She was scarcely placed when old Julius
came through the yard, and, taking off his tattered straw hat, inquired,
somewhat anxiously:--

"How is you feelin' dis atternoon, ma'm?"

"She is not