and provincial, he gave no sign--their
hearts were warm and their welcome hearty.

The colonel was not able to gather, from the conversation of his
friends, that Clarendon, or any one in the town--always excepting
Fetters, who did not live in the town, but merely overshadowed it--was
especially prosperous. There were no mills or mines in the
neighbourhood, except a few grist mills, and a sawmill. The bulk of
the business consisted in supplying the needs of an agricultural
population, and trading in their products. The cotton was baled and
shipped to the North, and re-imported for domestic use, in the shape
of sheeting and other stuffs. The corn was shipped to the North, and
came back in the shape of corn meal and salt pork, the staple articles
of diet. Beefsteak and butter were brought from the North, at
twenty-five and fifty cents a pound respectively. There were cotton
merchants, and corn and feed merchants; there were dry-goods and
grocery stores, drug stores and saloons--and more saloons--and the
usual proportion of professional men. Since Clarendon was the county
seat, there were of course a court house and a jail. There were
churches enough, if all filled at once, to hold the entire population
of the town, and preachers in proportion. The merchants, of whom a
number were Jewish, periodically went into bankruptcy; the majority of
their customers did likewise, and thus a fellow-feeling was promoted,
and the loss thrown back as far as possible. The lands of the large
farmers were mostly mortgaged, either to Fetters, or to the bank of
which he was the chief stockholder, for all that could be borrowed on
them; while the small farmers, many of whom were coloured, were
practically tied to the soil by ropes of debt and chains of contract.

Every one the colonel met during the afternoon had heard of Squire
Reddick's good joke of the morning. That he should have sold Peter to
the colonel for life was regarded as extremely clever. Some of them
knew old Peter, and none of them had ever known any harm of him, and
they were unanimous in their recognition and applause of the colonel's
goodheartedness. Moreover, it was an index of the colonel's views. He
was one of them, by descent and early associations, but he had been
away a long time, and they hadn't really known how much of a Yankee he
might have become. By his whimsical and kindly purchase of old Peter's
time--or of old Peter, as they smilingly put it, he had shown his
ap