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The Fernlands estate had been the family property of the N s since the conquest for aught I know. He was a worthy unsuspecting fellow, but at last saw his way clearer, and as he thought got out, though a very heavy loser.
At Fernlands the eleven strokes of the grandfather's clock in the great hall found the gray-eyed lady in the arms of a young fellow who had but that instant bounded lightly up the walk from the sleigh Major Verney had dispatched to Cotesville to meet the Northern Express.
While awaiting its manifestation he would studiously avoid the Colonel, and would slip across to Fernlands, once the pseudo Job was safe in the oven, and beg the gray-eyed lady to accept a dollar a week of the grocer's money in his inspired scheme of self-redemption.
In the library a blazing wood fire leaped and crackled, while in the dining-room the table was spread for breakfast. A great bowl of purple orchids glowed at Mrs. Fairfax's plate. Fernlands The Colonel greeted the Christmas festoons of holly in the library with a stare of astonished approval. A question had risen to his lips, but the warning look in Uncle Noah's eyes as they rested on Mrs.
The fact that the Colonel's old friend and neighbor had driven in from Fernlands to meet the radiant lady whose great gray eyes, Uncle Noah now recalled, had had the Verney look which endeared the owner of Fernlands to all who knew him, seemed to the watching negro a direct interposition of Providence.
"And so the Fernlands is to be sold at last," I said, casually meeting Mr. Nibble, our under-sheriff "Poor N , I am grieved for him, he has struggled hard against oppression." "It is quite true, sir," replied the man of the law, "a horning came down last night, but it will answer no end for Messrs. Sharke and Scrapepen, have advertised the whole of the property for public roup on Tuesday next."
In consequence of this scrape he wrote to his son in India, to say, that unless he could remit him a large sum, which he named, it would be impossible to keep his ground at Fernlands.
Back through the snow in his rickety carriage rolled Uncle Noah, rattling home along the snowy road down which he had trudged in the early evening, chuckling now intermittently in a mental rehearsal of his new plan. "Fifty cents a day!" he thought, "an' to-morrow I'se a-goin' to slip over to Fernlands in de mornin' an' ask her to lemme buy maself back on de 'stallment plan.
N , in the depth of his distress had early sent for me to consult whether even at the eleventh hour something could not be done to avert the calamity. A sinking man catches at a straw. It wanted less than three hours of the time of sale when I entered the grounds of Fernlands.
I know all about it, and to-night you're all going back to Fernlands with me to celebrate the betrothal of these two youngsters." "It has been a day of mysteries," the Colonel said; "but will someone please tell me what Uncle Noah was doing over at Fernlands this morning when he was needed here?" A silence fell over the little group.
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