not been _tried_. I have
never suffered my distrust of that fellow to go to sleep--it is unsafe,
with an Indian, unless you have a strong hold on his gratitude."

"But, Willoughby, he it was who found this manor for us," rejoined the
wife. "Without him, we should never have been the owners of this lovely
place, this beaver-dam, and all else that we so much enjoy."

"True, my dear; and without good golden guineas, we should not have had
Nick."

"But, sir, I pay as liberally as he can wish," observed the major. "If
bribes will buy him, mine are as good as another's."

"We shall see--under actual circumstances, I think we shall be, in
every respect, safer, by keeping nothing back, than by telling all to
the people."

The captain now put on his hat, and issued through the undefended
gateway, followed by every individual of his family. As the summons had
been general, when the Willoughbys and the chaplain appeared on the
lawn, every living soul of that isolated settlement, even to infants in
the arms, was collected there. The captain commanded the profound
respect of all his dependants, though a few among them did not love
him. The fault was not his, however, but was inherent rather in the
untoward characters of the disaffected themselves. His habits of
authority were unsuited to their habits of a presuming equality,
perhaps; and it is impossible for the comparatively powerful and
affluent to escape the envy and repinings of men, who, unable to draw
the real distinctions that separate the gentleman from the low-minded
and grovelling, impute their advantages to accidents and money. But,
even the few who permitted this malign and corrupting tendency to
influence their feelings, could not deny that their master was just and
benevolent, though he did not always exhibit this justice and
benevolence precisely in the way best calculated to soothe their own
craving self-love, and exaggerated notions of assumed natural claims.
In a word, captain Willoughby, in the eyes of a few unquiet and bloated
imaginations among his people, was obnoxious to the imputation of
pride; and this because he saw and felt the consequences of education,
habits, manners, opinions and sentiments that were hidden from those
who not only had no perception of their existence, but who had no
knowledge whatever of the qualities that brought them into being.
Pope's familiar line of "what can we reason but from what we know?" is
peculiarly applicable to per