pply the term to so dainty a lady. It arose
perhaps from an ease, a directness, which disdained the artifices of her
sex, and set her on good terms with all the world. To this it may be
due that Miss Arabella had reached the age of five and twenty not merely
unmarried but unwooed. She used with all men a sisterly frankness which
in itself contains a quality of aloofness, rendering it difficult for
any man to become her lover.

Her negroes had halted at some distance in the rear, and they squatted
now upon the short grass until it should be her pleasure to proceed upon
her way.

The stranger came to a standstill upon being addressed.

"A lady should know her own property," said he.

"My property?"

"Your uncle's, leastways. Let me present myself. I am called Peter
Blood, and I am worth precisely ten pounds. I know it because that
is the sum your uncle paid for me. It is not every man has the same
opportunities of ascertaining his real value."

She recognized him then. She had not seen him since that day upon the
mole a month ago, and that she should not instantly have known him
again despite the interest he had then aroused in her is not surprising,
considering the change he had wrought in his appearance, which now was
hardly that of a slave.

"My God!" said she. "And you can laugh!"

"It's an achievement," he admitted. "But then, I have not fared as ill
as I might."

"I have heard of that," said she.

What she had heard was that this rebel-convict had been discovered to
be a physician. The thing had come to the ears of Governor Steed, who
suffered damnably from the gout, and Governor Steed had borrowed the
fellow from his purchaser. Whether by skill or good fortune, Peter Blood
had afforded the Governor that relief which his excellency had failed to
obtain from the ministrations of either of the two physicians practising
in Bridgetown. Then the Governor's lady had desired him to attend her
for the megrims. Mr. Blood had found her suffering from nothing worse
than peevishness--the result of a natural petulance aggravated by the
dulness of life in Barbados to a lady of her social aspirations. But he
had prescribed for her none the less, and she had conceived herself the
better for his prescription. After that the fame of him had gone through
Bridgetown, and Colonel Bishop had found that there was more profit to
be made out of this new slave by leaving him to pursue his profession
than by setting him to work o