`Nothing gone wrong, I hope, sir?'

`No, Mark. Where's your friend?'

`The mad woman, sir?' said Mr. Tapley. `Oh! she's all right, sir.'

`Did she find her husband?'

`Yes, sir. Leastways she's found his remains,' said Mark, correcting himself.

`The man's not dead, I hope?'

`Not altogether dead, sir,' returned Mark; `but he's had more fevers and agues than is quite reconcileable with being alive. When she didn't see him a-waiting for her, I thought she'd have died herself, I did!'

`Was he not here, then?'

`He wasn't here. There was a feeble old shadow come a-creeping down at last, as much like his substance when she know'd him, as your shadow when it's drawn out to its very finest and longest by the sun, is like you. But it was his remains, there's no doubt about that. She took on with joy, poor thing, as much as if it had been all of him!'

`Had he bought land?' asked Mr. Bevan.

`Ah! He'd bought land,' said Mark, shaking his head, `and paid for it too. Every sort of nateral advantage was connected with it, the agents said; and there certainly was one, quite unlimited. No end to the water!'

`It's a thing he couldn't have done without, I suppose,' observed Martin, peevishly.

`Certainly not, sir. There it was, any way; always turned on, and no water-rate. Independent of three or four slimy old rivers close by, it varied on the farm from four to six foot deep in the dry season. He couldn't say how deep it was in the rainy time, for he never had anything long enough to sound it with.'

`Is this true?' asked Martin of his companion.

`Extremely probable,' he answered. `Some Mississippi or Missouri lot, I dare say.'

`However,' pursued Mark, `he came from I-don't-know-where and-all, down to New York here, to meet his wife and children; and they started off again in a steam-boat this blessed afternoon, as happy to be along with each other, as if they were going to Heaven. I should think they was, pretty straight, if I may judge from the poor man's looks.'

`And may I ask,' said Martin, glancing, but not with any displeasure, from Mark to the negro, `who this gentleman is? Another friend of yours?'

`Why sir,' returned Mark, taking him aside, and speaking confidentially in his ear, `he's a man of colour, sir!'

`Do you take me for a blind man,' asked Martin, somewhat impatiently, `that you think it necessary to tell me that, when his face is the blackest that ever was seen?'

`No, no; when I say a man of colour,' returned Mark, `I mean that he's been one of them as there's picters of in the shops. A man and a brother, you know, sir,' said Mr. Tapley, favouring his master with a significant indication of the figure so often represented in tracts and cheap prints.

`A slave!' cried Martin, in a whisper.