"He was, indeed, of the old type. Formerly, I believe, planters--at least the well-born and well-reputed--were content, if their estates yielded them the means of living generously and hospitably, without display or excessive luxury. They took life easily, and let their people do the same. I have heard that Judge Harvey moved off here, from one of the older Slave States, when the money-making mania came in, hoping to keep up for himself and his people the primitive régime they had grown up under. I believe he was no advocate of slavery." "The only forcible thing about him was his dislike of it. He had the greatest compassion for the slave of any man I ever saw, and with the best reason, for he was one himself. He was as much the property of his worshippers as the Grand Lama. He always entertained the intention of emancipating himself. But there were legal forms to be gone through with. To encounter them required an immense moral force. His hundred tyrants were, of course, all as happy as clams, and had as little thought of a change of domicile. So there was nothing to stir him up, and there was never any more reason for acting to-day than there had been yesterday. I must do him the justice, however, to say that he made provision for his son's living in freedom, in case he should choose it. In spite of the loose way in which the estate was managed, it yielded, as of its own free will, a pretty fair income. The old man spent little, and so put by really a respectable sum, half of which was to be employed in securing an independence to his son, and the other half in compensating his natural proprietors for the loss of his valuable services. Shaler was not original: the scheme he carried out in the end was old Judge Harvey's exactly,--if, indeed, it was his, and not his daughter's. I always suspected that it originated in the head of that little girl. You know Shaler and she were own cousins. The abolition vein, they say, came down from a grandmother. At any rate, Judge Harvey's plan, as he detailed it to me, was to colonize his blacks in a Free State, each with a pretty little sum in his pocket for a nest egg. He had taken into his confidence---- No, there was no confidence about it; the Judge was as liberal of his thoughts as of everything else; there was not an urchin on the place that might not have known what was planning, for the fatigue of listening; but the gentle flow of the Judge's words was heard as the notes of the birds and the frogs were,--with a little more respect, perhaps, but with no more inquiry after meaning. He had taken, not as the confidant, then, but as the partner of his day-dreams, a man who governed his estate for him,--as far as it was governed,--one of the blackest negroes I ever saw, and one of the cleverest, by name Jasper." "Jasper!" exclaimed Harry.