ves and glittered like burnished metal.
The gorgeous masses of the croton bush had drawn fresh colour from the
rain. In the woods and in the long avenues which wound up the mountain
to the Great House of every estate, the air was almost cold; but out
under the ten o'clock sun, even a West Indian could keep warm, and the
negroes sang as they reaped the cane. The sea near the shore was like
green sunlight, but some yards out it deepened into that intense hot
blue which is the final excess of West Indian colouring. The spray flew
high over the reef between Nevis and St. Kitts, glittering like the salt
ponds on the desolate end of the larger island, the roar of the breakers
audible in the room where the child who was to be called Alexander
Hamilton was born.

Rachael rose to a ceaseless demand upon her attention for which she was
grateful during the long days of Hamilton's absence. Alexander turned
out to be the most restless and monarchical of youngsters and preferred
his mother to his black attendants. She ruled him with a firm hand,
however, for she had no mind to lessen her pleasure in him, and although
she could not keep him quiet, she prevented the blacks from spoiling
him.

During the hurricane months Hamilton yielded to her nervous fears, as he
had done in the preceding year, and crossed to St. Kitts but seldom. As
a matter of fact, hurricanes of the first degree, are rare in the West
Indies, the average to each island being one in a century. But from the
25th of August, when all the Caribbean world prostrates itself in church
while prayers for deliverance from the awful visitation are read, to the
25th of October, when the grateful or the survivors join in
thanksgiving, every wind alarms the nervous, and every round woolly
cloud must contain the white squall. Rachael knew that Nevis boats had
turned over when minor squalls dashed down the Narrows between the
extreme points of the Islands, and that they were most to be dreaded in
the hurricane season. Hamilton's inclination was to spare in every
possible way the woman who had sacrificed so much for him, and he asked
little urging to idle his days in the cool library with his charming
wife and son. Therefore his business suffered, for his partners took
advantage of his negligence; and the decay of their fortunes began when
Rachael, despite the angry protests of Archibald Hamn, sold her property
on St. Kitts and gave Hamilton the money. He withdrew from the firm
whi