looks just like horse hair, he tells every body that, the sign was painted by himself and Squire Jones. If Marmaduke don't send that fellow off the Patent, he may ornament his village with his own hands, for me." Here Richard paused a moment, and cleared his throat by a loud hem, while the negro, who was all this time busily engaged in preparing their sleigh, proceeded with his work in respectful silence. Owing to the religious scruples of the Judge, Aggy was the servant of Richard, who had his services for a time, and who, of course, commanded a legal claim to the respect of the young negro. But when any dispute between his lawful master and his real benefactor occurred, the black felt too much deference for both to express any opinion. In the mean while, Richard continued watching the negro as be fastened buckle after buckle, until, stealing a look of consciousness toward the other, he continued, "Now, if that young man, who was in your sleigh, is a real Connecticut settler, he will be telling every body how he saved my horses, when, if he had just let them alone for one half a minute longer, I would have brought them in much better, without upsetting, with the whip and rein—it spoils a horse to give him his head. I should not wonder if I had to sell the whole team, just for that one jerk that he gave them." Richard again paused, and again hemmed; for his conscience smote him a little, for censuring a man who had just saved his life—"Who is the lad, Aggy—I don't remember to have seen him before?"
The black recollected the hint about Santaclaus; and while he briefly explained how they had taken him on the top of the mountain, he forbore to add any thing concerning the accident of the wound, only saying, that he believed the
