past. “I was young then—not yet thirty—work was plenty and times were quieter. Good, God-fearing folk there was then—folk that had need of more baskets and less powder and ball. Then people were glad to be able to do each other a favor; now nothing will do them but that they’ll cut one another’s throats.”

“Times and people are always changing,” said George, agreeably. “But riches change folk more than anything else, perhaps,” he philosophized. “There’s your neighbor Camp, the merchant. He’s altered greatly in forty years, I’ll warrant you.”

“Why, not so much as you’d think,” said the basket maker. “Except for the fact that he prefers to live far away in the country and gives but little of his time to his trade or his ships, he’s much the same as he’s always been.”

George laughed.

[149]“His hard and fast manner did not come with age, then?” remarked he. “As a young man he must have been a most forcible character.”

[149]

The old basket weaver nodded. “Always just the same in temper,” said he. “Just as you see him to-day. If a thing didn’t please him, he’d storm like a fury. But he was always good-hearted and honest; I’ll say that for him, Tory as he is.”

“It’s an odd thing—or so I’ve thought sometimes—that a man’s kin are so seldom like him.”

“That’s a true saying,” agreed the basket weaver, as he worked away industriously in the sunshine. “A very true saying, young sir. And perhaps it is even oftener the case than you’d think. In the matter of Merchant Camp, there are few that belong to him that have any but a trace of his quality. Miss Peggy is more like him than any one else. She has his pride in full and a rare bit of his peppery temper. But her brother is a surly young dog. He’s a patriot, of course,” and the old man grimaced, “but his deeds in that way will never break him down.”

[150]“What do you mean?” asked George.

[150]

“Why, he went into the army when General Lee came, and strutted with the best of them. But now that there is a chance of employment against the enemy, he’s given up his commission—resigned, they tell me.”

This was news to George. True, he had seen nothing of Herbert Camp since his return to New York; and he had made no inquiries, thinking it best, for one 

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