the subject of many
a debate below stairs.

There were a few days in the year, however, when Uncle Ben permitted the
sanctity of his territory to be violated. One was the seventh of
December. On such a day it was his habit to retire to the broken chair
beside the sink (the chair to which he had clung for five-and-twenty
years). There he would sit, blinking, and carrying on the while an
undercurrent of protests and rumblings, while Miss Virginia and other
young ladies mixed and chopped and boiled and baked and gossiped. But woe
to the unfortunate Rosetta if she overstepped the bounds of respect! Woe
to Ned or Jackson or Tato, if they came an inch over the threshold from
the hall beyond! Even Aunt Easter stepped gingerly, though she was wont
to affirm, when assisting Miss Jinny in her toilet, an absolute contempt
for Ben's commands.

"So Ben ordered you out, Mammy?" Virginia would say mischievously.

"Order me out! Hugh! think I'se skeered o' him, honey? Reckon I'd frail
'em good ef he cotched hole of me with his black hands. Jes' let him try
to come upstairs once, honey, an' see what I say to 'm."

Nevertheless Ben had, on one never-to-be-forgotten occasion, ordered
Mammy Easter out, and she had gone. And now, as she was working the beat
biscuits to be baked that evening, Uncle Ben's eye rested on her with
suspicion.

What mere man may write with any confidence of the delicacies which were
prepared in Uncle's kitchen that morning? No need in those days of
cooking schools. What Southern lady, to the manner born, is not a cook
from the cradle? Even Ben noted with approval Miss Virginia's scorn for
pecks and pints, and grunted with satisfaction over the accurate pinches
of spices and flavors which she used. And he did Miss Eugenie the honor
to eat one of her praleens.

That night came Captain Lige Brent, the figure of an eager and determined
man swinging up the street, and pulling out his watch under every
lamp-post. And in his haste, in the darkness of a midblock, he ran into
another solid body clad in high boots and an old army overcoat, beside a
wood wagon.

"Howdy, Captain," said he of the high boots.

"Well, I just thought as much," was the energetic reply; "minute I seen
the rig I knew Captain Grant was behind it."

He held out a big hand, which Captain Grant clasped, just looking at his
own with a smile. The stranger was Captain Elijah Brent of the
'Louisiana'.

"Now," said Brent, "I'll just bet a full c