"Can't say, masser," replied Pharaoh. "All people's much the same. Best not be too personal. But I b'lieve I'm he." "Have you no recollection of Edward Lindsay?" inquired our hero. "Lawful heart, masser!" exclaimed the negro. "I do b'lieve you're little Neddy, what used to come from town and stay at old Abram Hilliard's of summers, and what still kept wisiting there, by times, till you goed over sea." "I am that identical Neddy," replied Lindsay, holding out his hand to the old negro, who evinced his delight by a series of loud laughs. "Yes--yes," pursued Pharaoh, "now I look sharper at you, masser, I see plain you're 'xactly he. You've jist a same nose, and a same eyes, and a same mouth, what you had when you tumbled down the well, and fall'd out the chestnut tree, and when you was peck'd hard by the big turkey-cock, and butted by the old ram." "Truly," said Lindsay, "you seem to have forgotten none of my juvenile disasters." "To be sure not," replied Pharaoh, "I 'member every one of them, and a heap more, only I don't want to be personal." "And now," said Lindsay, "as we have so successfully identified each other, let me know, at once, what has happened to my good friends the Hilliards, who I thought were fixed here for life. Why do I see their house a heap of ruins? Have the family been reduced to poverty?" "Lawful heart, no," exclaimed the negro: "Masser Neddy been away so long in foreign parts, he forget how when people here in 'Merica give up their old houses, it's a'most always acause they've got new ones. Now old Abram Hilliard he got richer and richer every minute--though I guess he was pretty rich when you know'd him, only he never let on. And so he build him fine stone house beyont his piece of oak-woods, and there he live this blessed day.--And we goes there quite another road.--And so he gove this old frame to old Pharaoh; and so I had the whole house carted off, all that was good of it, and put it up on the road-side, just beyont here, in place of my old tumble-down cabin what I used to live in, that I've altered into a pig-pen. So now me and Binkey am quite comfabull." "Show me the way," said Lindsay, "to the new residence of Mr. Hilliard. I have come from Philadelphia on purpose to visit the family." "Bless your heart, masser, for that," said the old negro, as he held the stirrup for Lindsay to mount; and walking by his side, he proceeded with the usual garrulity of the African race, to relate many particulars of the Hilliards and their transit.