nestly backed up by Quashy, who,
with eyes that absolutely glowed, said--

"You's right, massa--sure an' sartin! Modesty am de grandest t'ing I
knows. Once I knowed a young nigger gal what libbed near your fadder's
mill--Sooz'n dey calls 'er--an' she's _so_ modest, so--oh! I not kin
'splain rightly--but I say to 'er one day, when I'd got my courage
screwed up, `Sooz'n,' ses I. `Well,' ses she. `I--I lub you,' ses I,
`more nor myself, 'cause I t'ink so well ob you. Eberybody t'inks well
ob you, Sooz'n. What--what--' (I was gitten out o' bref by dis time
from 'citement, and not knowin' what more to say, so I ses) `what--what
you t'ink ob _you'self_ Sooz'n?'

"`Nuffin',' ses she! Now, _wasn't_ dat modest?"

"It certainly was, Quashy. Couldn't have been more so," said Pedro.
"And after that we couldn't, I think, do better than turn in."

The fire had by that time burned low, and the gale was still raging
around them, driving the snowdrift wildly against the hut, and sometimes
giving the door so violent a shake as to startle poor Quashy out of
sweet memories of Sooz'n into awful thoughts of the ghost that had not
yet been laid.

Each man appropriated a vacant corner of the hut in which to spread his
simple couch, the negro taking care to secure that furthest from the
door.

Lawrence Armstrong thought much over his supposed discovery before
falling asleep that night, and the more he thought the more he felt
convinced that the Indian girl was indeed a princess, and owed her good
looks, sweet disposition, graceful form and noble carriage to her
descent from a race which had at one period been highly civilised when
all around them were savage. It was a curious subject of contemplation.
The colour of his waking thoughts naturally projected itself into the
young man's dreams. He was engaged in an interesting anthropological
study. He found himself in the ancient capital of the Incas. He beheld
a princess of great beauty surrounded by courtiers, but she was _brown_!
He thought what an overwhelming pity it was that she was not _white_!
Then he experienced a feeling of intense disappointment that he himself
had not been born brown. By degrees his thoughts became more confused
and less decided in colour--whitey-brown, in fact,--and presented a
series of complicated regrets and perplexing impossibilities, in a vain
effort to disentangle which he dropped asleep.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THINGS BEGIN TO LOOK BRIGHTER-