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prisoner. The horse was an intelligent old hunter which she had picked up for a few pounds in the easy colonial horse-keeping way; or rather, which had been bought and bargained for by old Mead, the Damons’ Irish soldier-retainer, who conducted all business on a dignified basis of what was suitable to the “fust families” in any part of the world. Mead was an Irishman, his wife a Scotchwoman of deepest dye, and together they made a fair working government. Mead was of a liberal nature; he was willing to give away every vegetable, fowl, or article of live stock in his mistress’s possession, if the visitor of the moment happened to please his fancy, or to praise his own principal friend and adviser—a very bald, ancient, and one-eyed fox terrier. Mrs. Mead, on the contrary, was prudent, if not parsimonious; and to the desires of the children to eat unlimited peach jam, or of her mistress to wear her second-best silk dresses in the evening, Mrs. Mead turned as little attention as Captain Nelson when the admiral’s signal waved before his blind eye—unless, indeed, she thought the occasion worthy of such splendour. Fortunately for her thrifty nature, Clare was always willing to wear what was put out for her, and was for the most part oblivious as to her outer woman—equally happy in a dust-coat which had seen