to their
poor house, and taste of her perry and Shrewsbury cakes? Audrey, standing
by, raised her eyes, and made of the request a royal invitation.

For a week or more Haward abode upon his plantation, alone save for his
servants and slaves. Each day he sent for the overseer, and listened
gravely while that worthy expounded to him all the details of the
condition and conduct of the estate; in the early morning and the late
afternoon he rode abroad through his fields and forests. Mill and ferry
and rolling house were visited, and the quarters made his acquaintance. At
the creek quarter and the distant ridge quarter were bestowed the newly
bought, the sullen and the refractory of his chattels. When, after sunset,
and the fields were silent, he rode past the cabins, coal-black figures,
new from the slave deck, still seamed at wrist and ankle, mowed and
jabbered at him from over their bowls of steaming food; others, who had
forgotten the jungle and the slaver, answered, when he spoke to them, in
strange English; others, born in Virginia, and remembering when he used to
ride that way with his father, laughed, called him "Marse Duke," and
agreed with him that the crop was looking mighty well. With the dark he
reached the great house, and negroes from the home quarter took--his
horse, while Juba lighted him through the echoing hall into the lonely
rooms.

From the white quarter he procured a facile lad who could read and write,
and who, through too much quickness of wit, had failed to prosper in
England. Him he installed as secretary, and forthwith began a
correspondence with friends in England, as well as a long poem which was
to serve the double purpose of giving Mr. Pope a rival and of occupying
the mind of Mr. Marmaduke Haward. The letters were witty and graceful, the
poem was the same; but on the third day the secretary, pausing for the
next word that should fall from his master's lips, waited so long that he
dropped asleep. When he awoke, Mr. Haward was slowly tearing into bits the
work that had been done on the poem. "It will have to wait upon my mood,"
he said. "Seal up the letter to Lord Hervey, boy, and then begone to the
fields. If I want you again, I will send for you."

The next day he proposed to himself to ride to Williamsburgh and see his
acquaintances there. But even as he crossed the room to strike the bell
for Juba a distaste for the town and its people came upon him. It occurred
to him that instead he mi