Miss Arabella drew rein, affecting to pause that she might admire the prospect, which was fair enough to warrant it.  Yet out of the corner of those hazel eyes she scanned this fellow very attentively as he came nearer.  She corrected her first impression of his dress.  It was sober enough, but hardly gentlemanly.  Coat and breeches were of plain homespun; and if the former sat so well upon him it was more by virtue of his natural grace than by that of tailoring.  His stockings were of cotton, harsh and plain, and the broad castor, which he respectfully doffed as he came up with her, was an old one unadorned by band or feather.  What had seemed to be a periwig at a little distance was now revealed for the man’s own lustrous coiling black hair.

Out of a brown, shaven, saturnine face two eyes that were startlingly blue considered her gravely.  The man would have passed on but that she detained him.

“I think I know you, sir,” said she.

Her voice was crisp and boyish, and there was something of boyishness in her manner — if one can apply the term to so dainty a lady.  It arose perhaps from an ease, a directness, which disdained the artifices of her sex, and set her on good terms with all the world.  To this it may be due that Miss Arabella had reached the age of five and twenty not merely unmarried but unwooed.  She used with all men a sisterly frankness which in itself contains a quality of aloofness, rendering it difficult for any man to become her lover.

Her negroes had halted at some distance in the rear, and they squatted now upon the short grass until it should be her pleasure to proceed upon her way.

The stranger came to a standstill upon being addressed.

“A lady should know her own property,” said he.

“My property?”

“Your uncle’s, leastways.  Let me present myself.  I am called Peter Blood, and I am worth precisely ten pounds.  I know it because that is the sum your uncle paid for me.  It is not every man has the same opportunities of ascertaining his real value.”

She recognized him then.  She had not seen him since that day upon the mole a month ago, and that she should not instantly have known him again despite the interest he had then aroused in her is not surprising, considering the change he had wrought in his appearance, which now was hardly that of a slave.

“My God!” said she.  “And you can laugh!”

“It’s an achievement,” he admitted.  “But then, I have not fared as ill as I might.”

“I have heard of that,” said she.