the apparent ownership
will end: for Darke has given his debtor notice to yield up houses,
lands, slaves, plantation-stock--in short, everything he possesses.

In vain has Armstrong striven against this adverse fate; in vain made
endeavours to avert it. When men are falling, false friends grow
falser; even true ones becoming cold. Sinister chance also against him;
a time of panic--a crisis in the money-market--as it always is on such
occasions, when interest runs high, and _second_ mortgages are sneered
at by those who grant loans.

As no one--neither friend nor financial speculator--comes to Armstrong's
rescue, he has no alternative but submit.

Too proud, to make appeal to his inexorable creditor--indeed deeming it
idle--he vouchsafes no answer to the notice of foreclosure, beyond
saying: "Let it be done."

At a later period he gives ear to a proposal, coming from the mortgagee:
to put a valuation upon the property, and save the expenses of a public
sale, by disposing of it privately to Darke himself.

To this he consents; less with a view to the convenience of the last,
than because his sensitive nature recoils from the vulgarism of the
first. Tell me a more trying test to the delicate sensibilities of a
gentleman, or his equanimity, than to see his gate piers pasted over
with the black and white show bills of the auctioneer; a strip of stair
carpet dangling down from one of his bedroom windows, and a crowd of
hungry harpies clustered around his door-stoop; some entering with eyes
that express keen concupiscence; others coming out with countenances
more beatified, bearing away his Penates--jeering and swearing over
them--insulting the Household Gods he has so long held in adoration.
Ugh! A hideous, horrid sight--a spectacle of Pandemonium!

With a vision of such domestic iconoclasm flitting before his mind--not
a dream, but a reality, that will surely arise by letting his estate go
to the hammer--Colonel Armstrong accepts Darke's offer to deliver
everything over in a lump, and for a lamp sum. The conditions have been
some time settled; and Armstrong now knows the worst. Some half-score
slaves he reserves; the better terms secured to his creditor by private
bargain enabling him to obtain this concession.

Several days have elapsed since the settlement came to a conclusion--the
interval spent in preparation for the change. A grand one, too; which
contemplates, not alone leaving the old home, but the Stat