squire assured her, and was a mark of nobility of a certain sort. This pleased her immensely, and she was glad to recall the fact that those who got glimpses of the Grand-Duke in the half-hour when his car waited at the station had seen only his head and shoulders, and no doubt, if his legs could have been seen, they would have been discovered to be bare. There were perquisites in her laundress's office, and after a year or so there were enough cast-off garments actually belong ing to the little Duke for Becky to dress him from top to toe in what stood for the latest mode, and to walk down the main road with him on Sunday mornings, having no fear of the carriages she might encounter on the way, and again there were other Sundays when it seemed best to take a cut through the woods.

These last were of course the days of his high feather. Becky was herself a comely little black girl, and during the

VOL. XCVIII.-No. 584.-40

years of Duke's childhood there was more than one lover who came and stood beside her and lifted her tubs while she washed at the spring under the trees. But she remained as truly a widow as she had ever been, and her boy grew up knowing no law beyond hers until his eighth year, when he entered the district school.

Duke was popular among the girls of his vicinity, and the boys liked him toobut with reservations. While they liked to come and swing on his gate-and they liked the taste of Becky's cookies, toothey were always conscious in a way of the dollar around his neck, even when it was covered, and it represented a certain superiority that was apt to assert itself under very slight provocation.

For instance, when on one occasion one of them spoke of the cabin as a house, Duke retorted, arrogantly: "House! What you callin' a house, I like to know? Dat's Chinkapin Castle-dat what it is.

Of course this was final. Everybody respected what the squire said, and although the small cabin beyond the chinkapin hedge was never seriously referred to as a castle, there was a feeling in the popular mind that, as one old man contemptuously expressed it, it mought spout a tower an' a cupalow any night."

Indeed, at one period of his callow youth it is a question whether a sudden apparition of battlements and towers emanating from his humble roof would have surprised its imaginative boy owner or not.

He had learned many things at the squire's feet in the long summer evenings when he went to carry a message, to ask for an extry allowance o' starch," or "a cake o' soap," or "bag o' blue" beyond the ordinary. Duke was a dawdler and a stayer, a listener, an asker of strange questions. And his memory was good.

When he was as old as seventeen years he believed as truly as he believed his rayers that a man of his rank and station would have to remain a bachelor until such a time as he should be courted by the lady of his heart. Starting with the proposition, "the queen has to do the proposing," and arguing inversely that she whom he would marry would be in a manner his queen-a duchess being only one remove from her royal highness-the application of this etiquette of courts is apparent.

Had the boy been less amiable and good-looking than he was, and less magnetic, this in itself would have been enough to make him cordially hated. As it was, his sweethearts accepted it as they did the rest of his pretensions, as a silly joke that had a certain amount of truth back of it. Of course there was truth somewhere, for there were the house and the name, and hanging over Becky's mantel was a formidable-looking document framed in gilt and resplendent in its hanging of red cord and tassel. It was her first tax-receipt, and here any

one who could read might see recorded the full royal intitlemints," in the handwriting and with the great red seal of the court. The framing of this effective document was the suggestion of the squire, and in the expenditure of the dollar and sixty-five cents which it cost her Becky was quick to see a way to get even with certain of her acquaintances who had certificates of another sort in this place of honor in their cabins, a fashion dating from the memorable revival under the preaching of the Reverend Brother Saul Saunders of the Buckeye Confer

ence.

From the time he could remember Alexis had had more girl than boy friends, and he was a little fellow when he began, as his mother fondly expressed it, "layin' down de law" to them.

"Yer know what yer got to be ef you marries me, don't yer? Yer got to be a gran' duchess-'case dat's de law." So he would open fire, sitting upon his own gate-post, and addressing the half-dozen girls who either climbed beside him or played "jack-stones" on their dress skirts spread on the grass below.

"Purty-lookin' gran'-juke you is, I'll be bound," one would answer, while the rest set up a howl of derision.

"Well, I can't he'p it. I is one, all de samee," he would insist. "He laid his han' on my head an' passed it on-" "Passed what on?"

"Why, de intitlemints, dat's whatde dukeship. An' all de high-an'-mighties in de car seen 'im do it, too."

"What high-an'-mighties? You mean to say de car was full o' jukes?”

"No. of co'se not. How is you talkin'? Dey warn't no jukes in de car but jes me an' de yether Juke."

At this there would be a chorus, "Look at de gran'-juke-barefeeted, an'a ole—”

"I don' keer ef my hat is ole an' tore. I knows good tobacker when I sees it— an' I loves a dorg an' a gun-an' I likes to set down an' talk, an' tell jokes, an' spit. All dem is jukish ways de world over-you ax de squire." And seeing that no one opposed him, he would add: "Jukes don't go by clo'es, noliow. You couldn't nair one be dressed up into a juke, ur a gran'-duchess neither, an' nobody couldn't strip me out o' my title. Don' keer of I stan's up in my bare skin, I's a gran'-juke, an' don't you forgit it."

And with this milord would turn a somersault over the head of any one within range, and seeing her dodge, he would roll over on the grass and howl with laughter.

Alexis had been beautiful from his birth, and at eighteen he was a young Apollo, as light and graceful as a fawn, and about as care-free and irresponsible. True, there had been times when he had wept copiously and loudly beneath the chastening rod of the fond mother, who had not hesitated to perform her full double parental duty so far as she knew it. Nor did she hesitate at language, under provocation. There were оссаsions when "mammy's boy" answered with a quicker step than was his wont such appellations as "impo' darkness," and "black buzzard," and even another that is not pretty enough to write. The mother part of her was so tender to her offspring, however, that she turned such odious epithets to the account of the abstract pater-as, for instance, when, on one occasion, she was overheard to exclaim, as she stood fluting a little dress for him to wear, “You nee'n't to think, 'caze I'm a-standin' up a-mammyin' yer wid dis flutin'-machine, dat I won't come over dah an' daddy yer over de head wid dis flat-iron ef you don't quit yo' foolin'." It is hard to be mother and father too to a boy, and considering that for the father part she had to project herself, she did fairly well.

But one day Beck laid her slim little body down on her bed, and took both herself and her boy by surprise by quietly dying. She had not even known herself ill until the day previous, and not very ill until about an hour before it was all over, when she called her boy to her, and held his hand, and told him several things. She told him, for one thing, that she thought more of him than she had ever let on; and when she saw that this depressed him, she changed the subject, and mentioned that Mis' Trimble owed for three weeks' washing, and there was a dollar and forty-five cents in the clock; and then she admonished him to "keep on bein' a good boy," and to "go ax de squire whenever he was unsettled in his mind about anything"; and she added, in a whisper. “Don't never ac' low-down about nothin', an' don't forgit who you is!" Then, feeling herself failing, she essayed to say something else and couldn't;

and Alexis, seeing a change, ran with all his might and called a neighbor, and when he presently returned with three women there was no one in the cabin. That which had seemed to be his mother a few minutes before looked remote and awful to him, and he ran from it to the woods, and cried aloud to God that his mammy was "dead, dead, dead, DEAD, DEAD!" And he rolled in the fallen leaves and tore his hair; and then, seeing some ripe berries near, he gathered them, sobbing, and ate them greedily, not knowing what he did until a mocking-bird on a limb above his head began to sing, when he remembered, and screamed to him to shut his mouth, and told him, as he had told God, that his mammy was dead. And then he ran home, and stood outside the door and watched the strange movements of the women as they covered the furniture with sheets, and said things with pulpit words in them, such as "howsoever," and wherefore," and "springeth up," and "amen." And he knew that he was alone in the world.

The church" Society for the Promotion of Widows an' Orphans," to which she had belonged, gave Becky as fine a funeral as was available. One of its proudest properties was a second-hand hearse and two sets of "plumes," black for the married, and white for such as died in childhood or single. It was deemed fitting to use two of each on this occasion, and the boy, seeing in the white a tribute to his mother's youth and fairer qualities, took pride in the mixed emblems.

When he sat beside the Reverend Mr. Marvin in the buggy, behind the hearse, and saw the procession of women following in poke-bonnets and shoulder-capes, and the men with crêpe bows upon their sleeves, it seemed for a moment as if the hour of his triumph had come, and he said to Mr. Marvin, "Ef mammy could only 'a' lived to see all dis, wouldn't she 'a' been proud?" And Mr. Marvin assured him that she did see it, and that she saw him at that minute, and Duke glanced nervously over his shoulder and shuddered.

There was only one of Duke's young companions who did not come to the funeral. Her name was Talula Malinda, and she worked in the field. Talula and Alexis had been companions all their lives, and she was the one girl whom he knew of whom he was afraid.

Perhaps she was the only one who did not in a manner fear him. She had quarrelled with him, and fought for him, and made fun of him, and despised him, and dearly loved him ever since she could remember. Talula was a dimpled maid two years his junior, of a color suggesting bell-copper at its richest, and with just enough kink in her hair to carry a glint adown the single braid that fell to her waist. Her father, albeit he was a slave negro," was half Indian, and in his family there were traditions of tribal distinction that were strong enough to make him so poor a slave, that he had spent more than half his time in hiding in the cane-brakes until after the emancipation, when he settled down with his former owners and served them devoted ly all his life. If it was his African wife who gave the little daughter Talula her temperament, there was something of the spirit of her father in the girl that dis tinguished her even more than the Indian name, Tuckapaw Lou," by which she was familiarly known-the Attakapas being her grandfather's tribe.

When she heard of Becky's death and saw the women running, she stole away to the woods and remained all day. The women were going from house to house talking about it, she knew, and she feared some one would look at her, and she could not stand it. And when, during the week following, she knew that the girls were going over to Alexis's cabin and carrying baskets of cakes and pies, and that they sat in his door and talked to him, she never went near there, but one dark night she slipped out when her mother was in bed, and put a note under his door, and the note said she was sorry his mother was dead, but for him not to be a fool because all the girls brought him cakes, but to go in the field and work. This made Duke very angry, and as soon as he read it he put on his best clothes-which were not his at all, but a young lawyer's for whom his mother had washed and proceeded to call upon a girl whom he knew Talula did not like, and they walked down the road together; but he did not tell her about the note.

Then, the next thing Talula heard was that Aunt Ettie Dolittle and her girl Miami had moved into Duke's cabin, and were washing at Becky's spring, and the people said that he and Miami were keepin' company." Then somebody

told her that "Lexius had p'intedly set out to marry," and had announced himself as open to proposals," which last was true and seemed important, though he had done the same many a time.

In a week or two it really appeared as if poor Becky had been forgotten. Duke had never been so well dressed-that is, not on week-days. The fact is, he had arranged with all his mother's customers who were what he called “my sized men" to let Aunt Ettie retain their washing, and for a short time Ettie felt a sort of delicacy in interfering with his use of it. But there soon arrived a day of reckoning, and milord was constrained to return to first principles, and to take his chances in getting such "loans " from his tenant's customers as she saw fit to accord him for special occasions. Nor was this his only trouble. No man of society can get along smoothly without any money. It has been done on next to none, but Duke had not any. The promising arrangement which afforded him board and washing, and left him absolutely free to come and go, was found to be imperfect. He had never carried money in his pocket, and it had not occurred to him that he would need any. His first shock was the presentation of his tax-bill. Of course he knew about the taxes, but somehow, even while he lived with the framed first receipt ever in view, he forgot all about them. And then his shoes wore out, and no one offered him a good second-hand pair. His mother had seen to all these small matters, and he had never inquired particularly how she did it. He got shoes by trading some chickens at the store, and then he tried to trade a fightingrooster and two "frying sizes" for his taxes, which amounted to two dollars and thirty-five cents, but he found they would not take trade in the court-house; but he succeeded in selling these chickens and a half-dozen young hens for ten cents more than his taxes, and he came home perfectly happy, with a bottle of ginger pop inside his person and a wad of chewing-gum in his mouth. And this was the beginning of a new trouble. taste of money is like a taste of blood. In a week Duke had sold all his chickens and the two geese and the guineas, and had treated the girls to ginger pop and root beer and chewing-gum, and he owed the candy man ten cents, with no pros

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