ften enough I've got
them off since his death. Used to ill-treat his slaves, though, they
said, and had queer ideas about women and property. Married his wife who
didn't have a red penny, and on his wedding journey, when she called him
by his name, replied to her, 'Madam, my dependants are accustomed to
address me as Mr. Timberlake.' Ha, ha! a queer bird was William."

The street was the one down which I had passed so many years ago, wedged
tightly between my mother and Mrs. Kidd, to the funeral of old Mr.
Cudlip; and it seemed to me that it held unchanged, as if it had
stagnated there between the quaint old houses, that same atmosphere of
sadness, of desolation. The houses, still half closed, appeared all but
deserted; the aged negresses, staring after us under their hollowed
palms, looked as if they had stood there forever. Progress, which had
invaded the neighbouring quarters, had left this one, as yet,
undisturbed.

Opposite to me, Sally smiled with beaming eyes when she met my gaze. I
knew that she was hugging her secret, and I knew, in some intuitive way,
that she expected this secret to afford me pleasure. The General,
peering from right to left in search of associations, kept moving his
lips as if he were thinking aloud. On his face, in the deep creases
where the perspiration had gathered, the dust, rising from the street,
had settled in greyish streaks. From time to time, in an absent-minded
manner, he got out his big white silk handkerchief and wiped it away.

"There now! I've got it! Hold on a minute, Balaam. That's the house that
Robert Carrington built clean over here on the other side of the hill.
There it is now--the one with that pink crape myrtle in the yard, and
the four columns, you can see it with your own eyes. Theophilus tried to
prove to me that Robert lived in Bushrod's house, and that he'd attended
him there in his last illness. Last illness, indeed! The truth is that
Theophilus isn't what he once was. Memory's going and he doesn't like to
own it. No use arguing with him--you can't argue with a man whose memory
is going--but there's Robert Carrington's house. You've seen it with
your own eyes. Drive on, Balaam."

Balaam drove on; and the carriage, leaving the city and the thinning
suburbs, passed rapidly into one of the country roads, white with dust,
which stretched between ragged borders of yarrow and pokeberry that were
white with dust also. The fields on either side, sometimes planted in