"That don't follow of course, my gosling," said the cotton-broker. "You're green, young man! You're green! I swear, I'd give a good deal to get sight of Duncan's wench. She must be devilish handsome, or he wouldn't keep her so close." Alfred Noble had always felt an instinctive antipathy to this man, who was often letting fall some remark that jarred harshly with his romantic ideas of women,--something that seemed to insult the memories of a beloved mother and sister gone to the spirit-world. But he had never liked him less than at this moment; for the sly wink of his eye, and the expressive leer that accompanied his coarse words, were very disagreeable things to be associated with that charming vision of the circling doves and the innocent child. SCENE II. Time passed away, and with it the average share of changing events. Alfred Noble became junior partner in the counting-house he had entered as clerk, and not long afterward the elder partner died. Left thus to rely upon his own energy and enterprise, the young man gradually extended his business, and seemed in a fair way to realize his favorite dream of making a fortune and returning to the North to marry. The subject of Slavery was then seldom discussed. North and South seemed to have entered into a tacit agreement to ignore the topic completely. Alfred's experience was like that of most New Englanders in his situation. He was at first annoyed and pained by many of the peculiarities of Southern society, and then became gradually accustomed to them. But his natural sense of justice was very strong; and this, added to the influence of early education, and strengthened by scenes of petty despotism which he was frequently compelled to witness, led him to resolve that he would never hold a slave. The colored people in his employ considered him their friend, because he was always kind and generous to them. He supposed that comprised the whole of duty, and further than that he never reflected upon the subject. The pretty little picture at Pine Grove, which had made so lively an impression on his imagination, faded the more rapidly, because unconnected with his affections. But a shadowy semblance of it always flitted through his memory, whenever he saw a beautiful child, or observed any unusual combination of trees and vines.