ntial merchant and seaman in the West India
trade, connected with the firm of Obadiah Brown and his nephews. After
Brown's death in 1761, the new firm of Nicholas Brown & Company made him
master of the brig _Prudence_, Providence-built, of 120 tons, thus
enabling him to erect the new homestead he had desired ever since his
marriage.

The site he had chosen--a recently straightened part of the new and
fashionable Back Street, which ran along the side of the hill above
crowded Cheapside--was all that could be wished, and the building did
justice to the location. It was the best that moderate means could
afford, and Harris hastened to move in before the birth of a fifth child
which the family expected. That child, a boy, came in December; but was
still-born. Nor was any child to be born alive in that house for a
century and a half.

The next April, sickness occurred among the children, and Abigail and
Ruth died before the month was over. Doctor Job Ives diagnosed the
trouble as some infantile fever, though others declared it was more of a
mere wasting-away or decline. It seemed, in any event, to be contagious;
for Hannah Bowen, one of the two servants, died of it in the following
June. Eli Lideason, the other servant, constantly complained of
weakness; and would have returned to his father's farm in Rehoboth but
for a sudden attachment for Mehitabel Pierce, who was hired to succeed
Hannah. He died the next year--a sad year indeed, since it marked the
death of William Harris himself, enfeebled as he was by the climate of
Martinique, where his occupation had kept him for considerable periods
during the preceding decade.

The widowed Rhoby Harris never recovered from the shock of her husband's
death, and the passing of her first-born Elkanah two years later was the
final blow to her reason. In 1768 she fell victim to a mild form of
insanity, and was thereafter confined to the upper part of the house;
her elder maiden sister, Mercy Dexter, having moved in to take charge of
the family. Mercy was a plain, raw-boned woman of great strength; but
her health visibly declined from the time of her advent. She was greatly
devoted to her unfortunate sister, and had an especial affection for her
only surviving nephew William, who from a sturdy infant had become a
sickly, spindling lad. In this year the servant Mehitabel died, and the
other servant, Preserved Smith, left without coherent explanation--or at
least, with only some wild ta