days together, they knew each other and each other’s generations like a book, and this effectually estopped pretension of all sorts. It was a picturesque, gay, pleasure-loving life, its Arcadian simplicity sometimes interrupted by tragedies, but it only lasted until the railroad and the telegraph brought all the world within speaking distance. The rivers, broad and shallow and salt, that made in from the ocean bays, were the spots wisely chosen for the homesteads. The plantations extended back into a slightly rolling country, but every “p’int,” as the negroes called it, was the site for a house. At Deerchase, from the long stone porch covered with climbing tea roses, which faced the shining river, half a dozen rambling brick houses on their respective “p’ints” could be seen. The farthest off was only a mile up the river as the crow flies, but the indentations of the stream made it more, and when one undertook to go by land, the multitude of gates to be opened between different properties and the various windings and turnings to get there at all made it seem a dozen miles at least. This last place was Newington, where Mr. and Mrs. Jack Blair lived, and which Bulstrode so freely predicted would be in the market soon on account of a grudge owed the Blairs by the Great Panjandrum--Richard Skelton, Esquire. The next place to Deerchase was Belfield, where old Tom Shapleigh and that wonderful woman, Mrs. Shapleigh, lived with their daughter Sylvia, who had inherited more than her father’s brains and less than her mother’s beauty. Only a shallow creek, running into a marsh, divided Deerchase and Belfield, and it was not twenty minutes’ walk from one house to the other. This nearness had been very convenient to old Tom in managing the Skelton property, but it had not conduced to any intimacy between guardian and ward. Richard Skelton was not much above Mr. Shapleigh’s shoulder when he took to asking to be excused when his guardian called. Old Tom resented this impertinence as an impetuous, full-blooded, middle-aged gentleman might be expected to. He stormed up and down the Deerchase hall, nearly frightened Bob Skinny, the black butler, into fits, blazed away at the tutor, who would go and plead with the boy through the keyhole of a locked door. “My dear Richard, come out and see your guardian; Mr. Shapleigh particularly wants to see you.” “And I particularly don’t want to see Mr. Shapleigh; so go away and leave me,” young Skelton would answer in his smooth, soft voice.