if my ole
gran'ther could have knowed you would speak to his funeral, he'd have
been proud, Sir!"

"He was a simple-minded old soul!" replied the Judge, pleasantly. "And
you're another, Williams! However, I am glad you are satisfied. So this
difficulty is settled, too." For already one very serious difficulty had
been arranged through this man's kindness.

Did I neglect to mention it,--how, when the old negro died, his family
had no place to bury him? The rest of his race, dying before him, had
been gathered to the mother's bosom in distant places: long lines of
dusky ancestors in Africa; a few descendants in America,--here and there
a grave among New-England hills. Only one, a child of Mr. Williams's,
had died in Timberville, and been placed in the old burying-ground over
yonder. But that was now closed against interments. And as for
purchasing a lot in the new cemetery,--how could poor Mr. Williams ever
hope to raise money to pay for it?

"Williams," said the Judge, "I own several lots there, and if you'll be
a good boy, I'll make you a present of one."

Ah, Gingerford! Gingerford! was it pure benevolence that prompted the
gift? Was the smile with which you afterwards related the circumstance
to dear Mrs. Gingerford a smile of sincere satisfaction at having done a
good action and witnessed the surprise and gratitude of your black
coachman? Tell us, was it altogether an accident, with no tincture
whatever of pleasant malice in it, that the lot you selected, out of
several, to be the burial-place of negroes, lay side by side with the
proud family-vault of your neighbor Frisbie?

The Judge was one of those cool heads, who, when they have received an
injury, do not go raving of it up and down, but put it quietly aside,
and keep their temper, and rest content to wait patiently, perhaps
years, perhaps a lifetime, for the opportunity of a sudden and pat
revenge. Indeed, I suppose he would have been well satisfied to answer
Frisbie's spite with the nobler revenge of magnanimity and smiling
forbearance, had not the said opportunity presented itself. It was a
temptation not to be resisted. And he, the most philanthropical of men,
proved himself capable of being also the most cruel.

There, in the choicest quarter of the cemetery, shone the white
ancestral monuments of the Frisbies. Death, the leveller, had not,
somehow, levelled them,--proud and pretentious even in their tombs. You
felt, as you read the sculptured recor