"They wanted to go away from the county, but I told them they'd better stay where they were known. It could be lived down sooner here than anywhere else. Upon my soul they were the most devoted married couple I ever saw. But the Thorntons were short-lived people, and Jack died at forty. That killed Virginia. She never held up her head afterward. I don't think she lived six months. The madam said it was better she should die than live. They had no children. And a lot of damned, thrifty, industrious Yankees bought Northend, and they've got a confounded steam-plow that frightens all my horses, and they raise hay all over the place, and they've built an infernal ice-house on top of the ground instead of under it, and they work the whole place with twenty hands instead of sixty, as Jack Thornton did, and make more money than all the rest of the county put together, and I want a julep--d'ye hear, you yellow rascal?" THE VALBELLA BROTHERS. It isn't necessary for me to tell how I drifted into the burnt-cork profession, but I tell you, after my preliminary experience of life without burnt cork, I was glad enough when I could march up to the manager's office and get my fifteen dollars a week for amusing my masters, the public. And I was always in such a hurry to get my money--we were paid Saturday night, after the performance--that I didn't wait to wash the burnt cork off before dropping in for the three five-dollar notes which I was certain to get; for old Sam Stacker, God bless him! was full of cranks, and always had a particular way of paying us. Now I can't say I was a brilliant performer. I never reached the dignity of interlocutor, to say nothing of the envied height of Bones or the end man. I just stood a good way back, and pretended to play on the 'cello--I couldn't play a note, and was nothing but a dummy, but I could sing pretty well. I remember how when I came to the front I used to bring the house down with "The Nightingale." I was great on sentimental songs. Sam Stacker used to say I was a good all-round man. I was quick at figures--Sam wasn't--and I helped him out in his accounts. Then I could talk to the theatre managers and write them letters. I had had some education and bringing up in my pre-Sam Stacker days, and so somehow I stayed on with the company, and saw it expand from a small variety show into a first-class minstrel performance, and old Sam always said it never would have come to that if it hadn't been for me. Of course my salary was raised after a while, and I got to putting some of it away for a rainy day.