On the opposite point of the mouth of the river was the struggling little village of Churchill Point,—a great colonial seaport town, withered in the germ—now only an occasional depot for tobacco raised in the immediate neighborhood, and shipped thence to Baltimore by the little packets that traded up and down the river, and sometimes stopped there to take in freight. A large old barn of a storehouse, where produce was left till carried away—a large, old, white-framed tavern, half-furnished, where passengers went to meet the packets, a blacksmith’s shop, a country merchant’s store, a post-office, kept by the widow of the late post-master, a few cottages, tenanted by wool, cotton, and flax dyers, by domestic counterpane and carpet weavers, and other country laborers, made up the staple of the village. About a quarter of a mile back from the village, in a clearing in the forest, stood the Episcopal Church of the Crucifixion. Divine service was performed here only once a fortnight, as the pastor had two parishes under his charge.[2] Footnote 2: This is frequently the case, even at this day, in remote counties of Maryland. To return to Churchill Hall. This estate had once been highly valuable, both as to size and productiveness. Running over its natural boundaries, it extended beyond the river and creek, and for miles into the forest behind—and for fertility it was called the garden spot of Maryland. But many acres had passed from the possession of the family, and what was left was worn out by that wretched system of agriculture which has ruined the once highly productive lands of Maryland. I mean the continual drain upon the resources of the soil, without ever giving it rest or food; sowing a field years at a stretch, without giving it the repose of a single season, or the nutriment of a single bushel of manure. All that was left of the once beautiful farm was the sterile heath and ruined Hall I have described, when the estate, by the death of his father, passed into the possession of Ignatius, the last heir of the Churchills, who, and his two sisters, Sophie and Rosalie, were the only remaining members of the family. His poverty and his incumbrances did not prevent him from loving and marrying a beautiful girl in his neighborhood, Agatha Gormon, who left a luxurious home to share his poverty in the ruined Hall at the Heath; nor could his love save her from death, when, in the second year of her marriage, she passed away, leaving an infant daughter of a day old. He had loved her with an exclusive, absorbing passion, and from the hour of her sudden death he pined away, and in less than a year thereafter was laid in her grave—opened to receive him. The orphan heiress of a ruin and a desert, the infant Agatha—or, as from her wild, dark beauty, she was nicknamed, _Hagar_—was left in charge of his sisters. These ladies, though poor, were quite comfortable. The lower rooms of the old house were kept in tolerable order.