The next morning broke bright and cheerful, emancipated by the morning
sun from the mists and clouds of the previous night. Kate Spotswood was
up with the lark, brushing the dew from the grass and flowers with an elastic
foot, which seemed made on purpose only to bound over nature's brightest and
freshest beauties, so fawn-like were her movements. Yet her occupation on
this morning seemed of a quite homely and domestic kind. She wore a sun
bonnet, and carried a basket on her arm. She took the path leading across
the garden and down towards the brook and in a few minutes ascended the
rising ground opposite, leading towards the negro quarter. In the basket
were various phials and papers, all labelled in the most careful manner, and
arranged so as to be of instant use. She entered the door of one of the white
cottages rather apart from, and larger than the others, and called, in plantation
language, the sick house. Here, around a pretty extensive and well
ventilated room, were arranged sundry cots, upon which lay about one dozen
negroes; some tossing in the restless delirium of fever, and others cadaverous
with the hues of an ague. She approached their bedsides in succession, followed
by an old crone, called the nurse, who scarcely ceased to bless her
young mistress even to put a spoon between the teeth of a refractory patient.

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“God a mighty, bress miss Kate; poor nigger been dead but for her. Sheneber
forget em! neber!”

She had not been long thus engaged, when a little pale faced white girl,
dressed in linsey woolsey, entered the sick house, and stood before the young
lady, dropping an awkward curtesy.

“Father begs, ma'm, that you'll come down and see him this morning,
he's laid up with the rheumatis, and can't move a hand or foot.”

“And who is your father, child!”

“He lives, ma'm, in the small log house on the other side of the overseer's,
just beyond the nigger landing.”

“Oh! old Jarvis, the fisherman? I remember him now. Run home, and
tell your father that I will be there directly.”

This fisherman's hut was full half a mile beyond the negro quarter, but
she never hesitated. With alacrity she tripped over the damp grass, throwing
back her hood as the blood came bounding into her cheeks with the glow
of health and exercise, her fair cheeks fanned by the gentle breeze just rippling
the bay. Neither ditches nor fences stopped her progress: she bounded
over the one and climbed the other, like one accustomed to such obstacles.
When she arrived within the fisherman's hut, she found old Jarvis laid up
indeed, as his daughter had described, and racked with fever and pain. She
felt his pulse long and carefully, looked at his tongue, and made many enquiries
as to the manner of contracting his disease.

“I fear, Jarvis,” she said at length, “that your case is rather beyond my
skill, not that I would fail to try some of my simples to relieve you, but good
old Dr. Evylin is at the house, and I will bring him to see you presently.”

And then she turned to the old woman, his wife, and made many kind enquiries
as to their means of living and present supplies, stroking her hand over
the white headed urchins clustering around all the while. She soon after
took her leave, promising to send supplies to the old woman as soon as she
got home.

A goodly company assembled that morning at breakfast. Dorothea at the
head of the table, and lady Spotswood on her right hand, with many other
ladies, married and single, occupying the upper, while the gentlemen sat round
the Governor at the lower end.

Dorothea seemed to have enjoyed the benefits of exercise, and the consequent
glow and bloom of health as well as her sister, but she had been drilling
the dairy maids, and marshalling fine pans of new milk, eggs, and butter, and,
truth to say, her fair, ruddy face looked as if she enjoyed these good things
herself with no little relish. Not that she was at all coarse or vulgar in her
appearance, or that there was any thing in these rural occupations, tending
that way. We only meant to say, that she looked more like a red cheeked
country lass, the daughter of some respectable farmer, than a descendant of
an aristocratic stock. She chatted volubly, but with no effort. She laughed
heartily whenever she felt like it, and that was not seldom.

“Ha, Miss Catherine,” said the Rev. Commissary, as that young lady
entered and took her seat at the table, “had you been up with the lark this
fine morning, and engaged as I saw your sister, you might have transferred
the bloom of that pretty flower in your hair to your fair cheek.”

“If your Reverence will but examine that flower,” plucking it from her
hair and handing it across the table to him, “you will perceive that it is not
one to be had by stepping into the garden. I plead guilty to the remissness of
dairy duty.”

“This is truly a flower,” said the old gentleman, examining it with his glass,
“which is not to be found among your father's exotics. Is it not so?” handing
it to Bernard Moore, “you have just returned from the hot houses and parterres
of Europe.” Bernard quietly slipped the beautiful little subject of dispute

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into the button-hole of his vest, before he replied, “That it was a native plant,
and scarcely grew within a mile of the house.”

Dorothea laughed a low musical chuckle, at the sly way in which Bernard
appropriated the flower, and the blush with which her sister watched the
proceeding. “I think, Reverend Sir,” said she slily, “that the pursuit and
capture of that flower has given sister quite as much color as my dairy performances.”

The Governor did not seem to enjoy this small talk with his usual relish, for
he was wont to encourage these playful sallies of his children, and loved
above all things to see them cheerful. But now he sat silent and dispirited;
and an occasional glance at his son John, who was beside him, seemed by no
means calculated to inspirit him. That youth was so nervous that he could
scarcely carry his cap to his head at all, and had not touched any thing to eat.
He looked, too, haggard, bloated and sullen. He had once been the Governor's
chief hope and delight, and he was equally the favorite of the old clergyman,
who sat opposite to him, for his brilliant native abilities, and the highly
creditable manner in which he acquitted himself of all his collegiate duties.
It is true, that he was known then to be wild, but not viciously so. Now,
however, his whole nature was changed. He scarcely noticed his sisters,
whose still clinging affection he seemed to loathe. His mother he avoided
on all possible occasions, and for these general family meetings in the country
he had an especial abhorrence. There was a stealthy, suspicious glance
about his eye, as foreign to his former nature as it was inexplicable to his
father now, as he, from time to time, cast a sidelong glance at his rapidly
depreciating heir.

There was one person at that table who understood the mystery of John
Spotswood's peculiar behavior of late, and that was old Dr. Evylin, but he
seemed to observe him even less than any other person at the table. Many
strange things were told about John by the servants, such as his great precautions
at night before he would go to bed; getting up in the night and calling for
lights, swearing that some one was under the bed; at other times he would
take a notion that some one was locked up in a certain closet. These things
the whole family knew; they had been observed at his former visits, and now
he was an object of the most undisguished solicitude to the whole of them,
and to his father of dread. He thought his mind touched, and that ere long
he would lose his reason, if, indeed, he had not partially done so already.

Catherine's brightest smiles were instantly clouded, if poor John happened
to come within the range of her vision. At this very breakfast, she sat
scarcely listening to the playful, bantering mood of Bernard Moore, so entirely
was she abstracted by observing the more than commonly ferocious aspect of
her elder brother. She would sit looking at him, lost in abstraction, until the
speaker had twice or thrice repeated his words, and then she would reply without
seeming entirely conscious of what she said. In short, a settled dejection
brooded over the party since John had entered and taken his seat.

As Dr. Evylin was about to leave the table, Kate stepped behind his chair,
and whispered a few words into his ear, which brightened up the old man's
countenance instantly. “Ha!” said he aloud, catching her hand, and drawing
back her retreating figure, “this young lady suffered herself to lie under
mistaken imputations, when she ought not to have done so; she has been a
mile this morning on foot, before breakfast, to visit a poor sick fisherman.”

“Ah!” said the Governor, “is old Jarvis sick?”

“He is,” continued the Doctor, “and so ill that my pretty pupil has called a
consultation upon his case.”

“I owe you an apology, my dear Catherine,” said the good Commissary,
“and hope whenever I do get in your debt, it may be always for a similar
cause, and as happily liquidated. You were right not to divulge the matter;

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the right hand should not know what the left doeth. These are services
which God reserves for his own special pleasure of rewarding, and not subject
to the poor payment of worldly praise.” Kate had broken away and ran,
before the old Doctor's sermon (as John called it,) was half over.