r American subjects.

His deliverance was so quick and sudden that for a day or two he was
almost as dazed as the Africans after the hurricane. One day Hugh Knox
sent him out a copy of the St. Christopher newspaper which had published
his description of the storm. With some pride in his first-born, he read
it aloud to his aunt. Before he was halfway down the first column she
was on the sofa with her smelling-salts, vowing she was more terrified
than when she had expected to be killed every minute. When he had
finished she upbraided him for torturing people unnecessarily, but
remarked that he was even cleverer than she had thought him. The next
morning she asked him to read it again; then read it herself. On the
following day Hugh Knox rode out.

Alexander was at one of the mills. Knox told Mrs. Mitchell that he had
sent a copy of the newspaper to the Governor of St. Croix, who had
called upon him an hour later and insisted upon knowing the name of the
writer. Knox not only had told him, but had expanded upon Alexander's
abilities and ambitions to such an extent that the Governor at that
moment was with Peter Lytton, endeavouring to persuade him to open his
purse-strings and send the boy to college.

"He will not do all," added Knox, "and I rely upon you to do the rest.
Between you, Alexander can get, first the education he wants now more
than anything in life, then the chance to make a great reputation among
men. If you keep him here you're no better than criminals, and that's
all I have to say."

Mrs. Mitchell shuddered. "Do you think he really wants to go?" she
asked.

"Do I think he wants to go!" roared Hugh Knox. "Do I think--Good God!
why he's been mad to go for five years. He'd have thought of nothing
else if he hadn't a will like a bar of iron made for a hurricane door,
and he'd have grown morbid about it if he hadn't been blest with a
cheerful and a sanguine disposition. You adore him, and you couldn't
see that!"

"He never said much about it," said Mrs. Mitchell, meekly; "but I think
I can see now that you are right. It will make me ill to part with him,
but he ought to go, and if Peter Lytton will pay half his expenses, I'll
pay the other half, and keep him in pocket coin besides. Of course Tom
won't give a penny, but I have something of my own, and he is welcome to
it. Do have everything arranged before my husband's return. He is alive
and well. I had a letter from him by the sloop that came from St. K