ar old
house for the handsomest residence in Belgravia. A house can be built
in a few months; but to make a home--that is beyond the craft and
quickness of masons, carpenters, and architects.

Alone on that bold, sea-beaten cape, so sturdy, dark, and time-worn, it
looked out always with shrewd, steady little window-eyes on the great
troubled ocean, across which it had watched the Pilgrim Fathers sailing
away towards the new home they sought in the Western world, and many a
rich argosy in days of yore go forth, never to return. It might have
seen, too, the proud Spanish Armada gliding up channel for the purpose
of establishing Popery and the Inquisition in Protestant England, to
meet from the hands of a merciful Providence utter discomfiture and
destruction. With satisfaction and becoming dignity, too, it seemed on
fresh sunny mornings to gaze at the hundreds of sails dotting the sea,
and bound for all parts of the globe, recalling, perhaps with some
mournfulness, the days of its youth and the many other varied scenes of
interest which it had witnessed on those same tossing billows from its
lofty height.

All through our supper, which was laid in the largest of the first floor
rooms, did Juno stand by, repeating the refrain--

"Oh dat nigger, dat Clump,--why he no come? And here's Massa er waitten
and er waitten; but Clump, ole mon, he get berry slow--berry, berry
slow. Now Massa Bob, vy you laff at ole Juno so?--hi! hi!"

However, Clump came at last; and when he beheld us, great and comical
was his surprise. He dropped his basket to the floor, and, with
battered hat in hand and both hands on his knees, stood for a moment and
stared at us, and then his mouth stretched wide with joy and his sides
shook with delight, while the tears trickled down from the wrinkled eyes
to the laughing ivory.

"Tank de Lord! tank de Lord! Clump lib to see his ole Massa agin; and
dat young gemmen,--vy, lem'me see! vy, sure as I'm dat nigger Clump, ef
dat ain't--Massa Drake?--no,--Massa Walter?--no,--vy Juno, ole woman!
dat are Massa Bob!" He took my hands and shook and squeezed them,
saying over and over again, "Massa Bob am cum ter see de ole cradle.
Oh! hi hi!"

CHAPTER TWO.

THE DREAM CONFIRMED BY REALITY.

Three years elapsed before I saw the cape again. Indeed the remembrance
of that visit there, of a few days only, began to assume indistinctness
as a dream, and sometimes as I thought of it, recalling the events o