he clover meadows. Here the lilacs
still bloom by door-yard walls, and the people draw water from the round
stone wells of the generations gone.

Obed was a "bound boy," as an apprentice lad was called. He was "bound
out," to use another old New England term, to a certain Mr. Miller, who
was a farmer and a cobbler. This Mr. Miller was named Brister--Brister
Miller--a surname not uncommon in colonial times.

A bound boy was one who was "let out" by his parents or guardian or the
"selectmen" to the service of another for a term of years; really, a
slave for a limited time. Brister Miller had in his family a bound boy
and a bound girl.

The girl's name was Eliza. She had come to Boston from England. Her
parents had died, and she had been found a home on Brister Miller's
bowery farm. Bound children and boys and girls worked hard in the old
times, and had but few privileges. They were sometimes allowed to go to
the "General Training," and to share in the husking frolics, and they
were always permitted to listen for a time after "early candlelight" to
the stories that were told on old red settles in cool weather by the
open fires.

As Eliza had come from England she was called "English Eliza." She was a
good-hearted, resolute girl. She became a great friend to Obed, whom her
warm heart pitied, owing to her own hard and solitary lot.

It was the last day of October. There had been a warm rain, which had
kept Obed and English Eliza from the husk heap. The weather had suddenly
changed towards evening. A chill had come down from the north, and the
family and work-people had gathered after supper around the crackling
fire. Mr. Miller sat shelling corn with a cob, and Mrs. Miller began to
knit by the tallow candle.

The work-people told stories. These stories were of a strange and
exciting kind, and related to the times of the Indian war, or to people
with haunted consciences who thought that they had seen ghosts. Young
people listened to such tales in terror. English Eliza had never heard
these tales before or any narratives like them. She saw that the ghost
stories filled Obed with fear, and she pitied him.

On this particular night, after a story had been told that made Obed sit
close to an older farm-hand, Mrs. Miller paused in her work, and,
lifting her brows, said,

"There, English Eliza, what do you think of such doin's as that?"

Eliza looked at Obed, and his fixed eyes and white face nerved her to
make a very ho