and beard, any more than the hair of his head and eyebrows,
he lets them grow. I've heard people say that my father is wild in his
notions, and some used to say, as if it was very awful, that," (she
lowered her voice here), "he is a Radical! You know what a Radical is,
I suppose?"

"Oh yes," said Foster, with the first laugh he had indulged in during
the interview, "a Radical is a man who wants to have everything his own
way; to have all the property in the world equally divided among
everybody; who wants all the power to be equally shared, and, in short,
who wants everything turned upside down!"

"Hush! don't laugh so loud!" said Hester, looking anxiously round, and
holding up one of her pretty little fingers, "some one may hear you and
find us! Strange," she added pensively, "surely you must be under some
mistake, for I heard my dear father try to explain it once to a friend,
who seemed to me unwilling to understand. I remember so well the quiet
motion of his large, firm but sweet mouth as he spoke, and the look of
his great, earnest eyes--`A Radical,' he said, `is one who wishes and
tries to go to the root of every matter, and put all wrong things right
without delay.'"

What George Foster might have said to this definition of a Radical,
coming, as it did, from such innocent lips, we cannot say, for the
abrupt closing of a door at the other end of the garden caused Hester to
jump up and run swiftly out of the bower. Foster followed her example,
and, returning to the scene of his labours, threw off his coat and began
to dig with an amount of zeal worthy of his friend the incorrigible
"hyperkrite" himself.

A few minutes later and Ben-Ahmed approached, in close conversation with
Peter the Great.

"Hallo!" exclaimed the latter, in stern tones, as they came up, "what
you bin about, sar? what you bin doin'? Not'ing done since I was here
more an hour past--eh, sar?"

The midshipman explained, with a somewhat guilty look and blush, that he
had been resting in the bower, and that he had stayed much longer than
he had intended.

"You just hab, you rascal! But I cure you ob dat," said the negro,
catching up a piece of cane that was lying on the ground, with which he
was about to administer condign chastisement to the idle slave, when his
master stopped him.

"Hurt him not," he said, raising his hand; "is not this his first
offence?"

"Yes, massa, de bery fust."

"Well, tell him that the rod shall be applie