from home and more self-dependent) for beating a smaller
student whom he had cheated at a clandestine game of cards. His
home-coming on this occasion was followed by his being packed off to
Virginia to play at superintending his father's tobacco plantations.
Neglecting this business to go shooting on the frontier, he got a
Scotch Presbyterian mountaineer's daughter into trouble; and when he
turned up again at the door in Queen Street, he was still shaky with
recollections of the mob of riflemen that had chased him out of
Virginia. That piece of sport cost his father a pretty penny, and
resulted in a place being got for Ned with a merchant who was Mr.
Faringfield's correspondent in the Barbadoes. So to the tropics the
young gentleman was shipped, with sighs of relief at his embarkation,
and--I have no doubt--with unuttered prayers that he might not show
his face in Queen Street for a long time to come. Already he had got
the name, in the family, of "the bad shilling," for his always coming
back unlooked for.

How different was his younger brother!--no longer "little Tom" (though
of but middle height and slim build), but always gay-hearted,
affectionate, innocent, and a gentleman. He was a handsome lad,
without and within--yes, "lad" I must call him, for, though he came to
manly years, he always seemed a boy to me. He followed in our steps,
in his time, through Mr. Cornelius's school, and into King's College,
too, but the coming of the war cut short his studies there.

It must have been in the year 1772--I remember Margaret spoke of her
being seventeen years old, in which case I was nineteen--when I got
(and speedily forgot) my first glimpse of Margaret's inmost mind. We
were at the play--for New York had had a playhouse ever since Mr.
Hallam had brought thither his company, with whom the great Garrick
had first appeared in London. I cannot recall what the piece was that
night; but I know it must have been a decent one, or Margaret would
not have been allowed to see it; and that it purported to set forth
true scenes of fashionable life in London. At one side of Margaret her
mother sat, at the other was myself, and I think I was that time their
only escort.

"What a fright!" said Margaret in my ear, as one of the actresses came
upon the stage with an affected gait, and a look of thinking herself
mighty fine and irresistible. "'Tis a slander, this."

"Of whom?" I asked.

"Of the fine ladies these poor things pretend t