There wuz several little hills or rises of ground on the lawn, and you could see from them the roofs and chimneys of two little villages a layin’ on each side of Belle Fanchon, and back of the house some distance riz up a low mountain, with trees a growin’ up clear to the top. It wuz over that mountain that we used to see the sun come up (when we _did_ see it; there wuzn’t many of us that see that act of hisen, but it paid us when we did—paid us well). First, there would be a faint pink tinge behind the tall green branches of the trees, then golden rays would shoot up like a flight of gold arrows out over the tree-tops, and then pink and yellow and pinkish white big fleecy clouds of light would roll up and tinge the hull east, and then the sun would slowly come in sight, and the world would be lit up agin. Down the western side of Belle Fanchon stretched the fair country for a long ways—trees and green fields, and anon, or oftener, a handsome house, and fur off the silvery glimpse of a river, where I spoze our little rivulet wuz a hurryin’ away to jine in with it and journey to the sea. Yes, it wuz a fair seen, a fair seen. I never see a prettier place than Belle Fanchon, and don’t expect to agin. The way it come to be named Belle Fanchon wuz as follows—Maggie told me about it the very next day after I arrived and got there: She said the man that used to own it had one little girl, the very apple of his eye, who wuz killed by poison give to her by a slave woman, out of revenge for her own child bein’ sold away from her. But it wuz done by the overseer; her Pa wuz innocent as a babe, but his heart was broke all the same. [Illustration: THE SLAVE WOMAN WHO POISONED THE CHILD.] The little girl’s name wuz Fannie—named after the girlish wife he lost at her birth. And he bein’ a foreigner, so they say, he called her all sorts of pretty names in different languages, but most of all he called her Belle Fanchon. And when the little girl died in this terrible way, though he had a housefull of boys—her half brothers—yet they said her Pa’s head wuz always bowed in grief after that. He jest shet himself up in the big old house, or wandered through the shadowy gardens, a dreamin’ of the little one he had loved and lost. And he give her name to the place, and clung to it as long as he stayed there for her sake. It is a kind of a pretty name, I thought when I first heard it, and I think so still. The little girl lay buried on a low hill at one side of the grounds, amongst some evergreens, and tall rose bushes clasping round the little white cross over her pretty head, and the rivulet made a bend here and lay round one side of the hill where the little grave wuz, like a livin’, lovin’ arm claspin’ it round to keep it safe. And its song wuz dretful low and sweet and sort o’ sad too, as it swept along here through the green shadows and then out into the sunshine agin.