"Did you call, sah?" asked Moses, coming very deliberately into the room. "I am under the impression that I did, though it requires an extraordinary exercise of the memory to recall an event which happened so long ago. Have you any 'vallables' for me?" Moses _thought_ he had. This was as near an approach to anything like a positive statement as Moses ever made. He would go to his room and ascertain. Among many other evidences of unusual wisdom on the part of the old negro was this, that he believed himself fully capable of recognizing a valuable letter whenever he saw it; and it was one of his self-imposed duties, whenever the post brought letters for any absent member of his constituency, to look them over and sequestrate all the "vallables" until the return of the owner, so that they might be delivered with his own hand. Returning now he brought two "vallables" for Mr. Pagebrook. One of them was a printed circular, but the other proved to be the desired letter, which was a formal tender of a professorship in a New England college, with an entirely satisfactory salary attached. Accompanying the official notice of election was a note informing him that his duties, in the event of acceptance, would not begin until the first of January, the engagement of the retiring professor terminating at that time. Under the influence of this news our young friend's face brightened quite as perceptibly as his boots did in the hands of the old servitor. He wrote his letter of acceptance at once, and then proceeded to dress for breakfast at the Girard House, whither he walked with as light a step and as cheerful a bearing as if he had not been a sadly disappointed lover at all. CHAPTER III. _Mr. Pagebrook Eats his Breakfast._ Robert Pagebrook had never seen his cousin, and yet they were not altogether strangers to each other. Robert's father and William Barksdale's mother were brother and sister, and Shirley, the old Virginian homestead, which had been in the family for nearly two centuries, had passed to young Barksdale's mother by the voluntary act of Robert's father when, upon coming of age, he had gone west to try his fortune in a busier world than that of the Old Dominion. The two boys, William and Robert, had corresponded quite regularly in boyhood and quite irregularly after they grew up, and so they knew each other pretty well, though, as I have said, they had never met. "I am glad, very glad to see you, William," said Robert as he grasped his cousin's hand.