take half of it to-morrow, and let you have the
rest, or Bill Noakes'll have the whole of it, and you'll get none."
Clump and Juno being intelligent, trustworthy people, my father, as I
have said, put them in charge of the farm on the cape, which they in a
short time learned to manage with great judgment. Two other negroes he
took into his service at Bristol. One of them became his butler, and it
would have been difficult to find his equal in that capacity.

Now a lesson may be learned from this history. My father did what he
considered right, and prospered; his partners, neglecting to enlighten
themselves as they might have done, persisted in holding their black
fellow-creatures in abject slavery, refusing one of the great rights of
man--a sound education. Emancipation was carried, and they received a
large compensation, and rejoiced, spending their money extravagantly;
but the half-savage negroes whom they had neglected to educate refused
to work. Their estates were left uncultivated for want of labourers,
and they were ruined. My father, managing his mercantile affairs
wisely, was a prosperous man.

His business on this visit was to see an adjoining property which had
once belonged to the family, and which, being in the market, he hoped to
repurchase.

The house had been built as long back as 1540-1550. It was of stone--
the rough stone, as it had been taken from the beaches and cliffs, of
different shades and kinds. Above the ground floor was only an attic
storey; and the main part of the ground floor consisted of four large
low rooms, panelled in wood, and with ceiling of dark, heavy beams.
Adjoining the rear of these, my grandfather had built a comparatively
modern kitchen; but every fireplace in the old house preserved the
generous cheerful style of ample spread and fire-dogs. From the great
door of the main floor a narrow stairway, like cabin steps, led up, with
quaintly carved banisters, to five real old-fashioned bedrooms, rising
above to the ridge of the steep-sloping roof and its uncovered but
whitewashed rafters. The windows were at least five feet above the
floor, and had the many small panes we sometimes yet see in very old
houses. No doubt it was a house of pretension in its day. When I was a
boy it remained a precious ark of family legends and associations. How
splendid it is to possess a house nearly three hundred years old.
To-day nothing could induce me to exchange the walls of that de