"He will belong to me. I have arranged that with your father," said Veronica quickly.

"Miss Veronica, it may be painful to you to discuss this business," said Tyrell, "but you had better hear the truth. In case you decline any offer of marriage from your cousin Max, there will be no opportunity to threaten Mr. Williams with a suit, for so far as Oatlands and its negroes are concerned he will become your uncle's heir, and will not only lay claims to Aunt Sapphira and her boys, but to her husband."

Veronica flushed angrily at the beginning of this speech, but her anger faded as she listened, and she said "My cousin knows and will respect my wishes. I have every reason to believe and hope that I shall never be placed under the necessity of doing any act which might bring such a calamity."

"If that is the case-if you have reason to be sure that the question of ownership lies between you and Max-I shall venture, in case of necessity, to take the course that I have named if it meets with the approval of both of you."

"It has my sanction; I shall agree to anything you do," she said. "But you are not of age, nor have you any legal guardian by whom you can act. How is it with Max? Uncle Christopher, though no longer very young, is a valuable servant. Will Max give up his claim if he becomes his property?"

"Max will never wish to profit," I exclaimed, "by an institution he abhors."

"Miss Molly," said Tyrell, with a forced smile, “men's principles differ upon this point, according to their personal relations to slavery."

"He shall tell you himself what his opinion is," said I; and I beckoned him to join our group, which stood apart from the rest of the party.

"Max, Veronica has a request to make to you," I said, and walked away to join my Clairmont cousins.

"I have nothing to say," said Veronica, with tears in her eyes, turning to follow me.

"What is it, Veronica?" said Max, taking her hand and detaining her.

"Nothing!" she said, vehemently, "and when I say 'nothing,' I desire you to believe me."

Max relinquished her hand, and Veronica was ashamed of her petulance.

"Forgive me, cousin Max," she said; "my temper is not what it ought to be. I don't know what to do, nor what to say. It seems to me you are making a great many sacrifices on my account; but if cousin Tyrell sends Aunt Sapphira to the North, I am quite ready to give up my claim to Uncle Christopher."

Max did not understand what she meant to convey to him, and Veronica, having advanced thus far in her subject, gathered courage and went on.

"I mean that we understand each other. A word from you to me might give Mr. Williams a legal claim to Oatlands, and to Uncle Christopher as well as to Aunt Saph. I

I

(and the tears she struggled to conceal rose in her beautiful blue eyes, as she spoke) I can trust your generosity. Will you give your sanction to a plan which would send Uncle Christopher to the North with his family? Without it, cousin Tyrell will not act. Will you do this, because he is the son of my old Mammy?"

"Come here, Uncle Christopher," said Max. "You told me just now you were the son of old Mammy. I do not forget the promises I made at the death-bed of that good old woman. You have my free consent, old gentleman, so far as I have any claim upon you as my servant, to take yourself over Mason and Dixon's line as fast as possible. I shall be very glad to see you out of slavery."

Uncle Christopher, bewildered, looked at Veronica, who said in a low voice,

"And so shall I."

Tyrell, more practical than they, came up and whispered to Uncle Christopher to come over to Stonehenge the next day, for he wanted to have a talk with him, and then we got into the carriage. Uncle Christopher put up the steps. Tyrell and Max mounted their horses, and we drove home, scarcely speaking all the way.

We reached Clairmont in time for a cold dinner at three o'clock. Tyrell, who had quitted us in Fighterstown, came in when it was half over, and after the cloth was cleared away, drew Max on to the front porch, and told him that Mr. Felix said the hundred dollar notes in Christopher's possession had been good notes of the Valley Bank of Virginia. He added that Will Williams had changed a hundred dollar note of the Valley Bank within a few days, to pay his score at the tavern at Fighterstown.

Then Phil was called on to the front porch to join the consultation, and Mr. Morrisson kept out of the way; and that evening, instead of the usual Sunday evening chants and hymns sung by the whole family, every one was grave and silent. Veronica, on the back porch, taught a Sunday class of little colored children, or went into aunt Edmonia's chamber and sat there, with a book shading her eyes.

Tyrell went off so late, having been in conversation with Phil and Max up to the last moment, that aunt Edmonia was unhappy at the idea of his long ride after night-fall, and could not sleep for thinking of him; and Phil and Max made an appointment to ride over to Stonehenge the next day to Mrs. Williams's funeral.

Max was in pretty good spirits all that evening. I think he had gathered encouragement rather than otherwise, from what Veronica had said to him, or rather from the tone and manner that accompanied her words.

CHAPTER XIII.

But wherefore do I murmur thus,

This world is very wide,

My heart shall be an omnibus

And carry twelve inside.

'Tis true that on the way, perchance,

Some to drop off begin,
But can we not as we advance
Take many others in?

PUNCH.

RESIDENTS in the Southern States pay a tax upon their privileges as the dominant race under the "peculiar institution." They are the lawful prey of their dependents, and the tax is levied somewhat disproportionately on "strangers and sojourners,” who not only are glad to meet all demands on them for service with unusual liberality, on account of the position of the servitors, but a petty pilfering, very difficult to defeat, is carried on against all the little travelling possessions of the stranger.

Max, either from some hint from Tyrell or from some experience in the first days of his stay at Clairmont, considered his room less safe than mine, and telling me in confidence that he had not a lock and key in his apartment, requested me to take charge of his money, which was all in English gold.

About dusk the next day he came gallopping back from Stonehenge, whither he had gone with Phil to Mrs. Willliams's funeral.