salary. But you must go. I've thought, thought about it, and I'll think
more." He almost wished he had not married; but as he had no other cause
to regret his venture, even his interest in young Hamilton did not urge
him to deprive his little family of the luxuries so necessary in the
West Indies. Economy on his salary would mean a small house instead of
large rooms where one could forget the heat; curtailment of the
voluminous linen wardrobes so soon demolished on the stones of the
river; surrender of coach and horses. He trusted to a moment of sudden
insight on the part of Peter Lytton, assisted by his own eloquent
argument; and his belief in Alexander's destiny never wavered. Once he
approached Mrs. Mitchell, for he knew she had money of her own; but, as
he had expected, she went into immediate hysterics at the suggestion to
part with her idol, and he hastily retreated.

Alexander turned over every scheme of making money his fertile brain
conceived, and went so far as to ask his aunt to send him to New York,
where he could work in one of the West Indian houses, and attend college
by some special arrangement. He, too, retreated before Mrs. Mitchell's
agitation, but during the summer another cause drove him to work, and
without immediate reference to the wider education.

Mr. Mitchell was laid up with the gout and spent the summer on his
plantation. His slaves fled at the sound of his voice, his wife wept
incessantly at this the heaviest of her life's trials, and it was not
long before Alexander was made to feel his dependence so keenly by the
irascible planter that he leaped on his horse one day and galloped five
miles under the hot sun to Lytton's Fancy.

"I want to work," he announced, with his usual breathless impetuosity
when excited, bursting in upon Mr. Lytton, who was mopping his face