as if with a feeling of relief at having thus delivered
himself.

Miss Deborah Boswell was shorter and more feminine than her brother,
seeing that icy gales, and salt-water, and hot suns had not played havoc
with her countenance, but she was fully as round and jolly.

Uncle Boz was, as may have been surmised, a lieutenant in the navy. He
got no promotion for losing his leg, and though he went to sea for some
time after that, a lieutenant he remained, and what was extraordinary, a
perfectly contented and happy one. Not a grumble at his ill fortune did
I ever hear. Not a word of abuse hurled at the big-wigs at the head of
affairs. And Tom Bambo,--Tom Bambo had followed Uncle Boz for many long
years over the salt ocean. Tom had been picked up (the only survivor of
some hundreds) from a sunken slave ship off the coast of Africa. Uncle
Boz had on that occasion hauled him with his own hands into the boat.
He was grateful then. Falling overboard afterwards during a heavy gale,
in the same locality, where sharks abounded, when all hope of being
saved had abandoned him, Uncle Boz from the topsail of the ship saw him
struggling.

"I cannot let that poor negro perish," he cried. "Pass me that
grating." Grating in hand, he plunged overboard, swam to Bambo with it,
and a boat being lowered, both were picked up. Bambo well understood
the risk the brave lieutenant had run for his sake.

"Ah, Massa Boz, me lub you as my own soul," he exclaimed, coming up to
him with tears in his eyes.

Uncle Boz had taught him that he had a soul.

Such were Uncle Boz, Aunt Deborah, Tom Bambo, and the house they lived
in. I again repeat, I have spent the happiest days of my life with
them. Holidays they really were. He seldom had less than five or six
boys at a time with him stowed away in the before-mentioned little
excrescences of the mansion. Summer or winter we liked both equally
well. There was always a hearty, chirruping welcome for us, and even
now I see before me those three honest, round, kind faces in the porch,
Uncle Boz and Aunt Deborah in front, and Bambo in the rear, for being
generally employed in the back premises, he was last on the scene, and
it was physically impossible for him to pass his master and mistress.

The Christmas holidays arrived. A jolly journey we had of it; our
pea-shooters were not inactive. There were Jack, and I, and big Ned
Hollis, and David Fowler, and Tom and Harry King; Ned was older than