"Not in the least," said I. "We are strangers just landed from the brig that came in this evening; and as our hostess and I here happen, to my great surprise, to be relations, her joy has shoved her a little off her balance, as you see?" "Balance!" said the person addressed, with a good-natured smile--"Sally Frenche was never very famous for keeping her balance." "Oh, Massa Jacob," said the placable Sally, "how can you say so?" "But you are her relation you say, sir," continued the stranger; and here he turned round as if recollecting himself, and stuck his head through the window that looked into the piazza. Addressing some one who was tumbling portmanteaus and luggage about there--"I say, Felix, he can't be a brown chap, eh?--he don't look like it." "Poo, poo! what if he be?" said the person spoken to--"What if he be?--order supper, man--curse this portmanteau! the straps are as stiff as iron hoops, and have broken my nails. You villain, Twister, why don't you come and help me, that I may get out my clothes?" "Here, massa," said a blackie from the street, and the gentleman who had spoken now entered. Sally had asked leave for the new comers to join our party, and as this might be according to rule in Jamaica, we consented of course, and they were presently seated at the same board. The shortest of the two was a stout, sun-burned man, about thirty, with a round face, but a fine white forehead, and beautiful clustering brown hair. He was dressed in very short nankeen trowsers, very much faded, silk stockings, and shoes--rather an out-of-the-way rig for a traveller through dirty roads, as it struck me; and wore a long French-cut blue military frock or pelisse, garnished with a perfect plague of frogs.