Mrs. Macauley having discreetly retired, they played “London Bridge is swept away,” furnishing the music with their own voices. The figures and changes made it very similar to the “Virginia Reel,” and Mrs. Macauley would have thought it sounded like a dance had she not known “London Bridge,” to be an innocent marching play. Supper was served at ten o’clock, with plates and white-handled knives and forks held upon the knee, this variety of refreshment being called a lap supper. The Macauley genius for cookery shone resplendent. Such cold meats and pickles and spiced breads, such coffee (made at a neighboring house in a wash-boiler, by Mrs. Macauley, just before she retired), such varieties of cake and pie, such metheglin and root beer, flowed upon the guests as only Macauleys knew how to make and brew. “You don’t seem to be havin’ as good a time as the rest,” observed Philip Welchammer to Theophilus Gill, when the plates were being collected, and his plate retained a pile of scarcely touched dainties. “Oh, I’m gittin’ along, I’m gittin’ along,” said Theophilus. “You ’pear kind o’ sober.” “Well, ’twas a scare,” apologized Theophilus. “But that’s all over now.” “Yes, it’s all over,” assented the black-bearded lover, with a sigh. And plucking up animation, he added, “Mart has kind o’ took the bit in his teeth, hain’t he?” “He has that. It’s a match now, if Persilla’s a mind to have him. The old lady, she’s turned round and set herself that way too. I shouldn’t be surprised if the’s an infair to this house by next Chris’mas.” “No, neither would I,” said Theophilus, shaking his head, and making a grimace as if the action hurt him. He had a stirring, money-making disposition, while Mart Macauley’s tastes were those of a student, and he thought himself as good a match. But there was no accounting for the tricks of fate. Philip laughed in a heartening and sympathetic fashion. “I reckon the’ won’t be no chance for you next Sunday night, nor any other Sunday night this year, now,” he said. “Mebby not,” said Theophilus. “But if Mart Macauley gits her, he gits the Queen of the Swamp, sure as you’re born. She’ll always be that, come what will.” THE STIRRING-OFF TIME, 1850 Davis’s boys said to all the young men at singing-school, “Come over to’r sugar-camp Saturday night; we’re goin’ to stir off.” The young men, sitting on the fence to which horses were tied in dusky rows, playfully imitated the preacher when he gave out appointments, and replied they would be there, no preventing Providence, at early candle-lighting. Jane Davis, attended by her cousin, also circulated among the girls in the school-house during that interval in singing-school called recess, and invited them to the stirring-off.