decrees, that I shall surrender this home, yet as token of the love I bear this wretched country, I will abide by her; I will cherish her as my wife, my mother, my child; I will defend her with my sword, my speech, my life, and I will be to my oppressed countrymen, their friend, their champion and their brother. I abhor these natural sons of Belial who are whetting the knife that will drink their blood;" so exclaimed the old soldier without a blemish upon his name. So thought the fire-tried christian who was appealing to the ultimate tribunal for right; so thought the man who was harrassed by every resource of vengeance, as he turned his rigid face from the jeering crowd, the assassins of his peace. The old man with fading memory tried in vain to recollect the transactions he had had with James W. Bowden, to whom he once owed twenty-five thousand dollars, and to whom he had conveyed in trusts the valuable estate of Ingleside. He asked appealingly of his daughter "Have you no knowledge of these affairs that will aid me in this extremity." "My dear father," she answered reflectively, "I am sure the debt has been paid. Indeed I heard you say that you paid it in gold." "But where are my papers?" he asked; "Scattered to the winds by the school mistress and her negro pupils. Shall I ever be able to exhibit any proof of its payment? Can you not assist me? Perhaps we may find somewhere the cancelled note." Bowden was dead and a profligate son alone survived. There were a hundred negroes who thronged the negro auctioneer. "What is I bid fur dis plantashun?" "Fifteen thousand dollars." "Hold!" interrupted Colonel Seymour now advancing. "I forbid the sale of this land or any part of it, the debt is paid." "Ha, Ha. Ha," jeered the negroes, "dat dar secesh's mind is a puryfied wanderin," shouted a chorus of voices. "Cry de bid Mr. auctioneer," shouted the negro Wiggins. "Ef dat ar white man mak eny mo sturbance, we's agwine ter slap him in de jail forthwid. I warrantees de title fer de boss." "Twenty thousand----twenty-five thousand----once, twice, free, times dun und gone to Mr. Laflin." The whole affair seemed an illusion, an unnatural evaporation of land and houses--the Ingleside plantation dissipated into thin vapor like the genii of the sealed casket in the Arabian Nights. "Great God," exclaimed the broken hearted old man, "and Laflin the wretch! Laflin the monster standing there in dumb show, and nodding his head in savage and pantomimic gravity when the hammer fell."