My school flourishes like a green bay-tree, and the minister of this parish will speak for the probity and sobriety of my conduct.

Now I will go, sir." He made an awkward but deep and obsequious reverence, turned and went out of the door, passing Juba, who was entering with a salver laden with bread and meat and a couple of bottles.

"Put down the food, Juba," said Haward, "and see this gentleman out of the house." An hour later the master dismissed the slave, and sat down beside the table to finish the wine and compose himself for the night.

The overseer had come hurrying to the great house, to be sent home again by a message from the owner thereof that to-morrow would do for business; the negro women who had been called to make the bed were gone; the noises from the quarter had long ceased, and the house was very still.

In his rich, figured Indian nightgown and his silken nightcap, Haward sat and drank his wine, slowly, with long pauses between the emptying and the filling of the slender, tall-stemmed glass.