And now in place of months we must begin to count by lustrums; and the first five years, even with all the thoughts of his dead, or, at least, lost Mary, proved in Halket's case the truth of the book written by a Frenchman, to prove that man is a plant; for he had already thrown out from his head or heart so many roots in the Virginian soil that he was bidding fair to be as firmly fixed in his new sphere as a magnolia, and if that bore golden blossoms, so did he; yet, true to his first love, there was not among all these flowers one so fair as the fair-haired Mary. Nay, with all hope not yet extinguished, he had even at the end of the period resolved upon a visit to Scotland, when, strangely enough, and sadly too, he was told by Mr. Dreghorn, that having had occasion to hear from Mr. Peter Ramsay on the subject of some more horse-dealings, that person had reported to him that Mary Brown, the lover of his old stable-boy, was dead. A communication this which, if it had been made at an earlier period, would have prostrated Halket altogether, but it was softened by his long foreign anticipations, and he was thereby the more easily inclined to resign his saddened soul to the further dominion of the said god, Mammon; for, as to the notion of putting any of those beautiful half-castes he sometimes saw about the planter's house at Peach Grove, in the place of her of the golden ringlets, it was nothing better than the desecration of a holy temple. Then the power of the god increased with the offerings, one of which was his large salary as manager, a station to which he was elevated shortly after he had received the doleful tidings of Mary's death. Another lustrum is added, and we arrive at ten years; and yet another, and we come to fifteen; at the end of which time Mr. Dreghorn died, leaving Halket as one of his trustees, for behoof of his wife, in whom the great plantation vested. If we add yet another lustrum, we find the Scot--fortunate, save for one misfortune that made him a joyless worshipper of gold--purchasing from the widow, who wished to return to England, the entire plantation under the condition of an annuity.