r healing powers, and suffered
no outsider to doctor her husband or her slaves. "Hush, Silas, don't say a
word until I tell you. Cupid--you are the only one with any sense--measure
Paisley a dose of Jamaica ginger from the bottle on the desk in the office,
and send Abram a drink of the bitters in the brown jug--why, Car'line, what
do you mean by coming into the house with a slit in your apron?"

"Fo' de Lawd, Ole Miss, hit's des done cotch on de fence. All de ducks Aun'
Meeley been fattenin' up fur you done got loose en gone ter water."

"Well, you go, too, every one of you!" and she dismissed them with waves of
her withered, little hands. "Send them out, Cupid. No, Car'line, not a
word. Don't 'Ole Miss' me, I tell you!" and the servants streamed out again
as they had come.

When he had finished his breakfast the boy went back into the hall where
Big Abel was taking down the Major's guns from the rack, and, as he caught
sight of the strapping figure and kindly black face, he smiled for the
first time since his home-coming. With a lordly manner, he went over and
held out his hand.

"I like _you_, Big Abel," he said gravely, and he followed him out into the
yard.

For the next few weeks he did not let Big Abel out of his sight. He rode
with him to the pasture, he sat with him on his doorstep of a fine evening,
and he drove beside him on the box when the old coach went out. "Big Abel
says a gentleman doesn't go barefooted," he said to Champe when he found
him without his shoes in the meadow, "and I'm a gentleman."

"I'd like to know what Big Abel knows about it," promptly retorted Champe,
and Dan grew white with rage and proceeded to roll up his sleeves. "I'll
whip any man who says Big Abel doesn't know a gentleman!" he cried, making
a lunge at his cousin. In point of truth, it was Champe who did the
whipping in such free fights; but bruises and a bleeding nose had never
scared the savage out of Dan. He would spring up from his last tumble as
from his first, and let fly at his opponent until Big Abel rushed, in
tears, between them.

From the garrulous negro, the boy soon learned the history of his
family--learned, indeed, much about his grandfather of which the Major
himself was quite unconscious. He heard of that kindly, rollicking early
life, half wild and wholly good-humoured, in which the eldest male
Lightfoot had squandered his time and his fortune. Why, was not the old
coach itself but an existing proof of Big