The Galers lived on the summit of a long hill sloping down to the brink of the Chattahoochee River, and nearly opposite the small town of Roswell. Above the house and below it stretched the fertile acres of a fine plantation worked by many slaves; for old Jabez Galer was rich in land and negroes, besides owning a large interest in a wool factory over the river. Roswell was really the most important manufacturing town in Georgia before the War, though it was scattered so picturesquely over the river hills with no railroad market nearer than Atlanta. But it does not enter the province of this short sketch to give a history of the old town with its factories scattered along short canals, fed from the river, its traditions reaching back into the early days of the settling of Georgia—its "lover’s leap" on the brink of a wide creek, a cliff of gray rocks with lovely maidenhair ferns growing thickly around its base—but of the Galers living across the river from it in the midst of their small kingdom, surrounded by their black retainers, and of an old love story. The house was big and white and squarely built, with the piazzas—without which no Southern house would have seemed complete—wide halls and large rooms belonging to a certain period of colonial architecture. The lower hall was ornamented with the antlers of a stag or two, some leopard-skin rugs, and with a stuffed owl perched above the door. The rooms wrere sparely furnished after the stiff fashion of the day, but linen closets and clothes-presses were full and overflowing; for there wrere swift spinners and skillful weavers among the negro women on the place, and a careful mistress to look after them. In the rear of the main dwelling were the negro quarters, and off at one side the barns and stables. The grassy lawn was shaded with fine old oaks and mimosa trees. In the back yard the little negroes disported, and a dozen hounds had their kennels; for Mr. Jabez Galer was fond of riding forth over the river hills in the early dawn, with dogs and gun and hunting-horn. His family consisted of himself, his meek, gentle sister, Miss Jane, and his grand-daughter, fair Pamela. Mr. Jabez Galer was a character in his day and generation. He was impulsive and could be generous, but had a most tyrannical will and a violent temper. He ruled his household like an autocrat. There was something domineering in his very tread, the roll of his keen eye, the fit of the white linen arraying his portly person. He was a rather fine-looking old man, gray-haired and blue-eyed, and with evidences of good living in every line of his clean-shaven face. No man could be more genial than he when in a good humor, or appreciate a story or a joke more keenly; and he was kind to his negroes. True, they did not dare disobey him without expecting and receiving punishment, and they worked hard; but they were well clothed, housed and fed, and enjoyed their regular holidays and merrymakings.