lure in his competition with other men. Money would come somehow, it
always had; but Hamilton dethroned, shoved out of the ranks of planters
and merchants, reduced to the status of one of his own overlookers,
almost was a new and strange being, and she dared not bid forth her
hiding thoughts.

Fortunately the details of moving made life impersonal and commonplace.
The three slaves whose future had been the last concern but one of Mary
Fawcett, were sent, wailing, to Archibald Hamn. Two of the others were
retained to wait upon the children, the rest sold with the old mahogany
furniture and the library. The Hamiltons set sail for St. Croix on a day
in late April. The sympathy of their friends had been expressed in more
than one offer of a lucrative position, but Hamilton was intensely
proud, and too mortified at his failure to remain obscure among a people
who had been delighted to accept his princely and exclusive hospitality.
On St. Croix he was almost unknown.

They made the voyage in thirty-two hours, but as the slaves were ill,
after the invariable habit of their colour, Rachael had little respite
from her baby, or Hamilton from Alexander, whose restless legs and
enterprising mind kept him in constant motion; and the day began at five
o'clock. There was no opportunity for conversation, and Hamilton was
grateful to the miserable mustees. He had the tact to let his wife
readjust herself to her damaged idols without weak excuses and a
pleading which would have distressed her further, but he was glad to be
spared intimate conversation with her.

As they sailed into the bright green waters before Frederikstadt, the
sun blazed down upon the white town on the white plain with a vicious
energy which Rachael had never seen on Nevis during the hottest and most
silent months of the year. She closed her eyes and longed for the cool
shallows of the harbour, and even Alexander ceased to watch the flying
fish dart like silver blades over the water, and was glad to be stowed
comfortably into one of the little deck-houses. As for the slaves,
weakened by illness, they wept and refused to gather themselves
together.

But Rachael's soul, which had felt faint for many days, rose triumphant
in the face of this last affliction. Like all West Indians, she hated
extreme heat, and during those months on her own Islands when the trades
hibernated, rarely left the house. She remembered little of St. Croix.
Her imagination had disassociated