'sposin' needcessity make me borry it fur six mont', how I gwi' come out?" For several minutes there was a dead silence in the kitchen. Every one's eyes were fixed on Ommirandy. "Jonas, you ain' got no sense,' said the old woman at length, when the silence had grown oppressive. "You gwi' pay dat man ten dollars cash dar an' den, an' ain' gwi' git no money. What you tell him?" Uncle Jonas crossed one knee over the other and said, "Delphy, is my dumplin' ready?" "I gittin' yo' vittles now, Unc' Jonas," responded Delphy. "Den I answer yo' queshtun, Sister M'randy," said the old man. "What is I tell him? I jes' went back ter de place, an' I tell dat man dat I refuse de loan, an' de Rev'un' kin wait." "Um-huh!" commented Simon. "Dat what you done, an' you ain' make no mistake. Dat transackshun show de diff'unce 'twix' a gent'mun an' a scalawag. Does you-all know what Mr. Sinjinn ax me dis mornin'-dis fus' mornin' o' de mont'?" Nobody could imagine. "Well, sir, he ax me ef I could change him a five dollar bill. 'Fo' Gord, I ain' seed five dollars at one time fur five years. But dat what he ax me. I say, Mars' Sinjinn, I can't, sir. But I thanks you pow❜ful fur de compli-ment.' "I tuk'n norate ter Mr. Sinjinn 'bout de man at de sto'," said Uncle Jonas. "He larf, an' say dat man is what dey calls in money-comp'ny a high financer. Den he say dat folks ain' ought ter borry money, 'scusin' dey sho'ly know how dey gwi' pay it back, an' he say I done right refusin' de loan." "Dat's so," said Delphy. "Unc' Jonas, yo' supper ready.' "I dun'no' what de Rev'un' gwi' think 'bout it," said Ommirandy, with a chuckle. The next day Mr. Sinjinn and young Mars' Jeems sat on the porch at Kingsmill and smoked. "Jeems," said Mr. Sinjinn, in his soft drawl that lent an unfailing charm to his speech, and with the gentle urbanity that was his second nature, "you have known me since boyhood?" "Since boyhood, Alston," responded young Mars' Jeems. "I need not protest to you, Jeems, that it has never been my habit to ask or to accept favors?" There was a quiet assertion under the interrogative form of the speaker's sentences that seemed to reduce them to the commonplace and casual. Yet young Mars' Jeems looked at Mr. Sinjinn with an expression on his careworn face which betokened surprise mingled with incredulity. "If you have ever either asked or accepted a favor from me, or from any human being on earth, Alston, I have never known of it. Such a thing would seem absolutely at variance with your lineage, your character, and your whole career. The master of Kingsmill spoke with a sincerity and emphasis which could leave no shadow of doubt on Mr. Sinjinn's mind, if such a shadow had been there. "Nevertheless, Jeems," said Mr. Sinjinn, knocking the ashes out of the bowl of his Powhatan clay pipe with the long fig-stem, and laying that article of personal comfort on the porch floor by the side of his rocking-chair, "I am about to state to you what any other person than yourself any other person in the world, I assure you, Jeems-would consider a request for a favor, the granting of which any other person than myself would esteem a favor conferred." There was always a certain stateliness about Mr. Sinjinn's conversation that delighted young Mars' Jeems. It seemed to him in some way so indicative of his guest's high breeding and lofty character. Young Mars' Jeems stroked his imperial caressingly, and looked at Mr. Sinjinn with an interest that was unassumed, and with an attempted composure of countenance which was by no means entirely successful. "What is it, Alston?" he asked, and there was a note of vague anxiety in his voice. "Has any one on the place been lacking in due consideration of your comfort? Have the servants failed in proper attention to your wants? There's Mirandy, now, who has a pretty free foot on the premises; but you know, Alston, she's getting a little old, and she's favored, and "Mirandy is kindness itself," interrupted Mr. Sinjinn. "She looks after my bedroom, she sees that the sheets are properly aired and the towels in due place, she is indomitable in supplying water for my bath; she keeps the lights in perfect order, and always sets the candle in the brass candlestick on the hall table for me every evening; she is assiduous in taking care that your wife each week gets my shirts to sew on the buttons and my socks to darn. No, I have no complaint to make of her Heaven forbid! Why, my dear Jeems, if that old woman had grown up in my father's own home she could not be more considerate of me or attentive to my wants.' "Pshaw, Alston!" said young Mars' Jeems. "Don't talk about it that way. I am sorry I spoke of Simon." It was as fresh and sweet in Mr. Sinjinn's memory as if it had been on yesterday that he had been awakened upon an inclement morning in early spring, when a cold rain was falling outside, by a noise at the fireplace in his bedchamber, and that, peering over the coverlet of his bed, he had seen the patrician owner of Kingsmill on his knees making the morning fire. “Simon has been called away, Alston," had come from the kneeling figure, as the fire-maker_perceived that his guest was awake. "I was unable to get any of the other servants in time, and I didn't want to trouble Mirandy. She's old and stiff in the joints, you know. So I have made your fire for you myself." And when Mr. Sinjinn had arisen to dress he had found fresh water from the well in his pitcher, and had been overwhelmed with a sense of mingled pride and humility. "By Heavens!" he had said. "Nobody but a gentleman like him would have done it!" "It isn't Simon, nor Ommirandy, nor your sweet, unselfish wife, dear Nancy, nor any one on the place that my remark affects in the slightest, Jeems," said Mr. Sinjinn. "I have been your guest here at Kingsmill continuously, now going on how many?-yes, eight-no, nearly nine years; and if the place had belonged to me during all that time if I had been the undisputed heir of all its memories and traditions and glories, I might not have been treated with a more unstinted and generous kindness by every person, white and black, upon it. They say that blood is thicker than water; but with no kinship between us, Jeems, I have learned that friendship can be stronger even than the ties of blood." Young Mars' Jeems's eyes shone with an unwonted light. Mr. Sinjinn's generous words stirred the deep of his heart, as the angel once troubled the pool of Bethesda. "What is it, Alston, that any of us can do for you?" "Jeems," said Mr. Sinjinn, "I want one hundred dollars.' It was the only time in their lives that a matter of money had ever been broached between them. On the first day of every month for nearly nine years. past Mr. Sinjinn had been accustomed to find on the mantelpiece of his bedchamber, when he retired, a five-dollar bill, put there by the master of Kingsmill, usually at the cost of self-denial, and often of anxious effort. But the gift was as regular and unfailing in its appearance as were the cheap new suit of ready-made clothes and the fresh supply of linen on his bedroom sofa in the spring and autumn of each returning year. Mr. Sinjinn had tacitly taken the money for his small personal necessities, as he had accepted the recurrent raiment, with the apparent good conscience that found no embarrassment in the acceptance of either. But when he unexpectedly asked for a hundred dollars the land-poor master of the baronial estate of Kingsmill felt his heart sink within him. If, like a little child, he had requested a gift of the moon, the request would have less disconcerted young Mars' Jeems. "A hundred, Alston?" he repeated, with an almost imperceptible quaver in his voice. "Why, certainly. It will give me the greatest pleasure. It is a pleasure to me for you to suggest it, my dear old friend.” "I knew that you would feel that way about it, Jeems," said Mr. Sinjinn in his soft drawl and with a kindly smile playing about his fine, aquiline face, which Mis' Nancy always said reminded her of a medallion of one of the Roman emperors. "If I had thought for a moment that you would regard my request with embarrassment, I should never have mentioned the matter, important as it is for me to have the money, and helpless as I am to find it elsewhere.' "Don't give yourself a moment of concern about it, Alston," said young Mars' Jeems, his fears overwhelmed by the perception of his friend's necessity. Then he added: "Would it be satisfactory if I should arrange it in a week? Of course, if it is urgent, I shall get it for you tomorrow this evening time. But in the country, you know, where we have no banks- It may take a day or two, Alston, possibly.' any Young Mars' Jeems stroked his imperial, as was his custom when he was most thoughtful. "Oh," said Mr. Sinjinn, picking up his Powhatan pipe from the porch floor and filling it again from the embroidered tobacco-pouch which Mis' Nancy had given him last Christmas. “Of course, you must suit your convenience and not worry about it in the slightest. This week, next week, or even two weeks, Jeems, if you find it necessary. I am sincerely glad that you do not regard me in the light of a suppliant for a favor." "Favor, again, Alston?" repeated young Mars' Jeems. "Is there anything on earth that could be a favor between you and me? Don't speak of favors, after all our years of friendship and affection." Mr. Sinjinn struck a sulphur match, and the blue smoke curled and spiraled up from the bowl of the Powhatan pipe. Then he looked with a contented and preoccupied gaze down the river and beheld, as in a dream, the blue waters There were perhaps as many as a dozen of the old-fashioned, highly glazed cartes-de-visite, as they were called in his youth, with the name engraved in script, which Mr. Sinjinn had brought with him when he had come to Kingsmill on young Mars' Jeems's invitation now. nearly nine years ago "to spend a week or two and do some hunting." Other cards, equally old in appearance but not so elaborate of design, were mixed with them and a bundle of tapetied papers in the old black portmanteau, which always remained locked in Mr. Sinjinn's bedchamber at Kingsmill -the "best room, overlooking the river to the east; and these also, when once or twice during his "visit" he had come across them as he took from the bag the embroidered waistcoat of plumcolored velvet for some special function in the old mansion, always stirred gentle emotions and tender memories of his more prosperous past. If the glazed pieces of pasteboard recalled the halcyon days of his long-faded youth, with sometimes a pang in their suggestion of balls and "hops" and parties and beautiful women and charming men, the soberer cards, containing the legend, "Seymour & St. John, Attorneys at Law," brought back no less vividly the period of his purposeful young manhood and his earlier middleage, when he and his now long-dead friend and partner had been successful country lawyers, as success then went, in the little town in the southside section of the State. It was with something more than a touch of transient sentiment that Mr. Sinjinn, on such few and far-separated occasions, would revisualize the offices that the firm had occupied, and recall the rugged face of Mr. Arthur Seymour. These offices had consisted of a back room in a small, one-story building in the court-house yard, where the head of the partnership, who had a natural aptitude for legal studies, combined with an unhallowed inclination to worship at the |