The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-09-06

began. Then changed the direction or his probe. But there were others as deserving of Commiseration."
 You did not seem quite like the others"
 "I am not" said he.
 "Oh!' she stared at him, bridling little. You have a good opinion of yourself"
 "On the contrary. The others are all worthy rebels. am not"
 But if you are not a rebel, how come you here?"
 Faith, now, it's a long story" said he.
 And one perhaps that you would prefer not to tell?" Briefly on that he told it her.
 My God!" What an infamy!" she cried, when he had done.
 .'Oh, it's a sweet country England under King James! There's no need to commiserate me further. All things considered I prefer Barbados. Here at least one can believe in God"
 ''Is that so difficult elsewhere" she asked him, and she was very grave.
 "Men make it SOL.
 She moved on. Her negroes sprang up, and went trotting after her. It was a fair enough prospect, he re- flected, but it was a prison, and, in announcing that he preferred it to England, he had indulged that almost laudable form of boasting which lies in belittling our misadventures.
 Of the forty-two who had been landed with him from the Jamaica Merchant, Colonel Bishop had pur- chased no less than twenty-five. The remainder had gone to lesser planters. some of them to Speightstown, and others still farther north. What may have been the lot of the latter he could not tell, but among Bishops slaves Peter Blood came and went freely, and their lot he knew to be a brutalizing misery. If their labors flag ged, there were the whips of the over seer and his men to quicken thcm They went almost naked they dwelt ill squalor and they were ill-nourished on salted meat and maize dumplings. To curb insubordination, one of them who had rebelled against Kent, the brutal overseer, was lashed to death by ne- groes under his comrades eyes.
 Occasionally Peter Blood saw Miss Bishop, and they seldom met but that she paused to hold him in conversa- tion for some moments evincing her interest in him.
 Though the same blood ran in her veins as in those of Colonel Bishop, yet hers was free of the vices that tainted her uncle's, for these vices were not natural to that blood they were, in his case, acquired. Her father, Tom Bishop (that same Colonel Bishops brother), had been a kindly, chivalrous, gentle soul, who, broken-hearted by the early death of young wife, had aban- doned the Old World and sought an anodyne for his grief in the New. He had come out to the Antilles, bringing with him his little daughter, then five years of age, and had given himself up to the life of a planter. He had prOspered from the first. as men some times will who care nothing for pros- perity. PrOspering, he had bethought him of his younger brother, a soldier, at home reputed something wild. He had advised him to come out to Bar bados; and the advice, which at an- other season William Bishop might have scOrned. reached him at a mo- ment when his wildness was beginning to bear such fruit that a change of climate was desirable. William came, and was admitted by his generous brother to a partnership in the pros porous plantation. Some six years later, when Arabella was fifteen, her father died, leaving her in her uncle's guardianship, As things were. there was little love between uncle and niece. But she was dutiful to him, and he was circumspect in his be- haviour before her.
 (Continued Monday.)