stretching out his arms in a circular shape,
as if he would enclose a whole globe, and
in a low, slow, deep tone, calculated to sink
deep into the imaginations of the listeners.

"If we did but know when things would
mend; " said my brother Uriah, for the first
time venturing to put in a word.

"When! " said Robinson starting up so
suddenly that his head struck against a beam
in the low one-storeyed house. "Confound
these low places," said he, turning fiery red,
and rubbing his crown, " there will be better
anon. When? say ye? Hark ye! this
colony is—how old? Eight years! and in
eight years what a town! what wealth! what
buildings! what a power of sheep and cattle!
The place is knocked down, won't it get up
again? Ay, and quickly! Here are a pair
of sturdy legs," he said, turning to Bob, who
flushed up in surprise; " but, Mrs. Tatten-
hall, you did not teach him to walk without
a few tumbles, eh? But he got up again, and
how he stands now! what a sturdy young
rogue it is! And what made him get up
again? Because he was young and strong,
and the colony is young and strong, madam.
Eight years old! What shall I give you for
a three thousand pounds purchase made
now, three years hence? Just think of
that," said the tall man, "just turn that over
a time or two," nodding solemnly to my
brother, and then to my sister-in-law, and
then cautiously glancing at the menacing
beam, and with a low duck diving out of
the house.

"What a strange fellow!" said Uriah.

"But how true!" said Mrs. Tattenhall.

"How true! What true? " asked Uriah,
astonished.

"Why," said Mrs. Tattenhall, "what he
says. It is truth, Uriah; we must buy as
much as we can."

"But," said Uriah, " only the other day he
said the clean contrary. He said everybody
was ruined."

"And he says so still," added Mrs. Tatten-
hall, enthusiastically, " but not the colony.
We must buy! We must buy, and wait.
One day we shall reap a grand harvest."

"Ah! " said Uriah; " so you let yourself,
my dear Maria, be thus easily persuaded,
because Robinson wants to sell, and thinks
we have money?"

"Is it not common sense, however? Is it
not the plainest sense? " asked Mrs. Tattenhall.
"Do you think this colony is never to
recover?"

"Never is a long while," said Uriah. " But
still—"

"Well, we will think it over, and see how
the town lies; and where the chief points of
it will be, probably, hereafter; and if this
Mr. Robinson has any land in such places, I
would buy of him, because he has given us
the first idea of it."

They thought and looked, and the end of it
was, that very soon they had bought up land
and houses, chiefly from Robinson, to the
amount of two thousand pounds. Robinson
fain would not have sold, but have mortgaged;
and that fact was the most convincing proof
that he was sincere in his expectations of a
revival. Time went on. Things were more
and more hopeless. Uriah, who had nothing
else to do, set on and cultivated a garden.
He had plenty of garden ground, and his
boys helped him, and enjoyed it vastly. As
the summer went on, and melons grew ripe,
and there were plenty of green peas and
vegetables, by the addition of meat, which
was now only one penny a-pound, they could
live almost for nothing; and Uriah thought
they could wait and maintain themselves for
years, if necessary. So, from time to time,
one tale of urgent staring distress or another
lured him on to take fresh bargains, till he saw
himself almost penniless. Things still remained
as dead as the very stones or the stumps
around them. My brother Uriah began to feel
very melancholy; and Mrs. Tattenhall, who
had so strongly advised the wholesale
purchase of property, looked very serious. Uriah
often thought: " Ah! she would do it; but—
Bless her! I will never say so, for she
did it for the best." But his boys and girls
were growing apace, and made him think.
"Bless me! In a few years they will be
shooting up into men and women; and if
this speculation should turn out all moon-
shine!—if the place should never revive!"

He sate one day on the stump of a tree on
a high ground, looking over the bay. His
mind was in the most gloomy, dejected
condition. Everything looked dark and hopeless.
No evidence of returning life around;
no spring in the commercial world; and his
good money gone; as he sate thus, his eyes
fixed on the distance, his mind sunk in the
lowering present, a man came up, and asked
him to take his land off his hands: to take it,
for Heaven's sake, and save his starving family.

"Man!" said Uriah, with a face and a
voice so savage that it made the suppliant
start even in his misery, " I have no
money! I want no land! I have too
much land. You shall have it all for as
much as will carry me back to England, and
set me down a beggar there!"

The man shook his head. " If I had a
single crown I would not ask you; but my
wife is down of the fever, and my children
are dying of dysentery. What shall I do?
and my lots are the very best in the place."

"I tell you! " said my brother Uriah, with
a fierce growl, and an angry flash of the eye,
"I have no money, and how can I buy?"

He glanced at the man in fury; but a face
so full of patient suffering and of sickness—
sickness of the heart, of the soul, and, as it
were, of famine, met his gaze, that he stopped
short, felt a pang of remorse for his anger,
and, pointing to a number of bullocks grazing
in the valley below, he said, in a softened
tone, " Look there! The other day a man