ful of novelty, thought, and excitement--but I shall not write
its events in detail. What I have already mentioned will do as a
sample. Late in the afternoon--it was the afternoon of a September day,
the first fine one after a three days' storm--we reached the cape, just
as the short sombre twilight of an autumn day settled down on land and
sea. As the horse trudged laboriously along through the heavy piece of
sand connecting the cape and the mainland, I was almost terrified by the
great sound of waves, whose spray tossed up in vast spouts from every
rocky head before us. The rush of waters, the rumbling of great stones
receding with the current, the booming as of ships' broadsides--all
these united to awe a little boy making his first acquaintance with the
ocean.

When we drove up to the house, which was the only habitation on the
point, not a light was to be seen, and the dark stone walls were blacker
than the night that had settled down so quickly on the land. My father
said there was no use to knock, for that old Juno lived in the back part
of the house and was too deaf to hear us. So he led the horse round,
and we went to the back windows. Through them we saw our old black
castellan nodding, pipe in mouth, over the fireplace. She had not heard
the noise of our wheels, and it required a vigorous pounding on the
heavy back-door before old Juno, in much trembling, opened it to us.

"Oh my, Massa Tregellins, is dat you dis dark night! And Clump, de ole
nigger, gone to willage. Lor, massa, how you did frighten me--and, oh
my! thar's young Massa Bob!"

Juno had often come up to Bristol to see us, and felt an engrossing
interest in all of the family. She now led me into the house, and went
as briskly to work as her rheumatic old limbs would allow, to make a
good fire--piling on logs, blowing with the bellows, and talking all the
while with the volubility of a kind old soul of fully sixty years of
age. My father had gone to tie up the horse under the shed until Clump
should return and take care of him. Clump was Juno's husband, and her
senior by many years. The exact age of negroes is always of unreliable
tradition. The two had charge of the house, and were, indeed, rulers of
the entire cape. Clump cultivated vegetables sufficient for his wife
and himself, and was also a skilful fisherman. His duties were to look
after the copses and fences and gates, and to tend the numerous sheep
that found a living on