His deliverance was so quick and sudden that for a day or two he was almost as dazed as the Africans after the hurricane.  One day Hugh Knox sent him out a copy of the St. Christopher newspaper which had published his description of the storm.  With some pride in his first-born, he read it aloud to his aunt.  Before he was halfway down the first column she was on the sofa with her smelling-salts, vowing she was more terrified than when she had expected to be killed every minute.  When he had finished she upbraided him for torturing people unnecessarily, but remarked that he was even cleverer than she had thought him.  The next morning she asked him to read it again; then read it herself.  On the following day Hugh Knox rode out.

Alexander was at one of the mills.  Knox told Mrs. Mitchell that he had sent a copy of the newspaper to the Governor of St. Croix, who had called upon him an hour later and insisted upon knowing the name of the writer.  Knox not only had told him, but had expanded upon Alexander’s abilities and ambitions to such an extent that the Governor at that moment was with Peter Lytton, endeavouring to persuade him to open his purse-strings and send the boy to college.

“He will not do all,” added Knox, “and I rely upon you to do the rest.  Between you, Alexander can get, first the education he wants now more than anything in life, then the chance to make a great reputation among men.  If you keep him here you’re no better than criminals, and that’s all I have to say.”

Mrs. Mitchell shuddered.  “Do you think he really wants to go?” she asked.

“Do I think he wants to go!” roared Hugh Knox.  “Do I think—­Good God! why he’s been mad to go for five years.  He’d have thought of nothing else if he hadn’t a will like a bar of iron made for a hurricane door, and he’d have grown morbid about it if he hadn’t been blest with a cheerful and a sanguine disposition.  You adore him, and you couldn’t see that!”

“He never said much about it,” said Mrs. Mitchell, meekly; “but I think I can see now that you are right.  It will make me ill to part with him, but he ought to go, and if Peter Lytton will pay half his expenses, I’ll pay the other half, and keep him in pocket coin besides.  Of course Tom won’t give a penny, but I have something of my own, and he is welcome to it.  Do have everything arranged before my husband’s return.  He is alive and well.  I had a letter from him by the sloop that came from St. Kitts, and he’ll be here by the next or the one after.”

As soon as Knox had gone Mrs. Mitchell ordered her coach and drove to Lytton’s Fancy.  Her love for Alexander had struggled quite out of its fond selfishness, and she determined that go to New York he should and by the next ship.  She found her brother-in-law meditating upon the arguments of the Governor, and had less difficulty in persuading him than she had anticipated.