In 1864 he had a great sorrow.  Old Mary, trying to smoke the mosquitoes out of her house with a charcoal-pan, set fire, in her shortsightedness, to the place; and everything was burned—­the savings of years, the precious Bible among the rest.  The Squire took her down to his house, and nursed her:  but she died in two days of cold and fright; and Isaac had to begin life again alone.  Kind folks built up his ajoupa, and started him afresh; and, to their astonishment, Isaac grew young again, and set to work for himself.  He had depended too much for many years on his wife’s superior intellect:  now he had to act for himself; and he acted.  But he spoke of her, like any knight of old, as of a guardian goddess—­his guardian still in the other world, as she had been in this.

He was happy enough, he said:  but I was told that he had to endure much vexation from the neighbouring Negroes, who were Baptists, narrow and conceited; and who—­just as the Baptists of the lower class in England would be but too apt to do—­tormented him by telling him that he was not sure of heaven, because he went to church instead of joining their body.  But he, though he went to chapel in wet weather, clung to his own creed like an old soldier; and came down to Massa’s house to spend the Sunday whenever there was a Communion, walking some five miles thither, and as much back again.

So much I learnt concerning old Isaac.  And when in the afternoon he toddled away, and back into the forest, what wonder if I felt like Wordsworth after his talk with the old leech-gatherer?—­

’And when he ended,
I could have laughed myself to scorn to find
In that decrepit man so firm a mind;
God, said I, be my help and stay secure,
I’ll think of thee, leech-gatherer, on the lonely moor.’

On the Monday morning there was a great parade.  All the Coolies were to come up to see the Governor; and after breakfast a long line of dark people arrived up the lawn, the women in their gaudiest muslins, and some of them in cotton velvet jackets of the richest colours.  The Oriental instinct for harmonious hues, and those at once rich and sober, such as may be seen in Indian shawls, is very observable even in these Coolies, low-caste as most of them are.  There were bangles and jewels among them in plenty; and as it was a high day and a holiday, the women had taken out the little gold or silver stoppers in their pierced nostrils, and put in their place the great gold ring which hangs down over the mouth, and is considered by them, as learned men tell us it was by Rebekah at the well, a special ornament.  The men stood by themselves; the women by themselves; the children grouped in front; and a merrier, healthier, shrewder looking party I have seldom seen.  Complaints there were none.  All seemed to look on the Squire as a father, and each face brightened when he spoke to them by name.  But the great