e about
the Indians. Just then, Master Charlie awoke from a comfortable nap of
an hour or two, having dropped asleep shortly after the sorrel horse
dropped dead; and, to make believe that he had been as wide awake as a
weasel from the very start, began asking such a string of questions as
seemed likely to have no end. After a droll jumbling of Washington
with Jack the Giant-killer, old Lord Fairfax with Bluebeard, poor old
Hobby, the wooden-legged schoolmaster, with the Roving Red Robber, he
at last so far got the better of his sleepy senses as to know what he
would be driving at; when he said, "Uncle Juvinell, did his father let
him keep his little hatchet after he had cut the cherry-tree?"

"History, my little nephew," replied his uncle with a sober
countenance, "does not inform us whether he did or not; but you may be
quite sure that he did, well knowing that a little boy who would
choose rather to take a whipping than tell a lie, or suffer another to
be punished for an offence he had himself committed, would never be
guilty the second time of doing that wherein he had once been
forbidden."

"What became of black Jerry after he turned a somerset in the snow,
and went rolling over and over down the hill?" Charlie went on.

"Jerry, I am happy to say," replied his uncle, "was so won over by the
kindness and noble self-devotion of his brave little master, that he
made up his mind to mend his ways from that very moment; and in a
short time, from having been the worst, became the best behaved
negroling to be found on either side of the Rappahannock, for more
than a hundred miles up and down."

"What is a negroling?" inquired Master Charlie, as if bent on sifting
this matter to the very bottom.

"A negroling," replied Uncle Juvinell with a smile, "is to a
full-grown negro what a gosling is to a full-grown goose. Now, can you
tell me what it is?"

"A gosling negro, I suppose," was Charlie's answer; and then he asked,
"Did old Hobby go on teaching school after little George left him?"

"Of course he did," answered his uncle; "but, you may depend upon it,
he never took another scholar as far as the single rule of three."
Then, winking slyly at two or three of the older children, he
continued: "This worthy schoolmaster lived to the good old age of
ninety-nine; when, feeling that his earthly pilgrimage was drawing to
a close, he for the last time hung up his big cocked hat on the
accustomed peg, and for the last time un