“I really thought that I was coming to a habitable part of the globe, at least; but this is Nova Zembla! Just Nova Zembla and nothing else! A waste fragment of a continent, flung out as useless into an arctic sea!” said Miss Grip, as the old carriage pitched and tumbled along the narrow ice-encumbered isthmus towards the snow-clad promontory. “I hab heern it called a many hard names, Miss, but I nebber heered it called Dissemblance afore,” replied the negro driver. “Well, then, hold your tongue and mind your horses, or you’ll upset me,” rather irrelevantly concluded Miss Grip. When the rickety carryall drew up before the old iron gate in the old stone wall that enclosed the stern-looking gray-stone house, Miss Grip gave voice once more. “Is it a police-station, or a penitentiary, or a warehouse, or a fort, or something of the sort? This never was meant for a gentleman’s private residence.” But she did not even wait to cross the threshold before she seized the reins of government. As soon as she alighted from the carryall she began to issue her orders to the driver. “Take the carriage around to the stables—of course there are stables and you must find them—put up the carriage, feed and water the horses, then come around to the kitchen. You must get your supper before you go back. Stop! take my trunk off first and bring it up into the house.” The driver began to obey these orders as the brisk little woman ran up the steps and sounded an alarm on the iron knocker. Laban opened the door, and the driver carried in the trunk and put it down on the hall floor and departed about his other business. “How is your master?” sharply demanded Miss Grip of the astonished negro. “Jes’ de same,” replied the man, as if the answer had been rapped out of him. “How the same?” “Onsensible.” Miss Grip immediately took off her bonnet and shawl, and flung them on the hat-rack, saying: “Show me the way up through this old jail to the den where your master lies.” The man looked daggers at the insolent little woman, but he obeyed her, and led the way to the spacious upper chamber where the patient lay, watched by old Mrs. Lindsay and patient little Glo’. Miss Agrippina nodded silently to the nurse, then kissed the child and sent her out of the room, saying that a sick room was no wholesome place for a little girl. Now that Miss De Crespigney had come to take her proper place at the bedside of her suffering nephew, good Mrs. Lindsay found herself at liberty to return home and look after her own little affairs. The child wept at parting with her old friend, and said: “I know there is no work to do at the landing while all this snow and ice is piled up everywhere; but, oh, do please to send David Lindsay to see me sometimes. I shall be so lonesome when you are gone.” The gentle old dame promised to do so, and went away to look for Laban to row her over to the little isle.