height (5 feet 10 inches)—­all valuable data for identification in case the chattel conceived a notion of moving further north (an unnecessary precaution in Todd’s case).  To this was added the further information that the boy had been raised under his master’s heels, that he therefore knew his pedigree, and that his sole and only reason for sparing him from his own immediate service was his own poverty and the fact that while under St. George’s care the boy could learn how “to wait on quality.”

As to the house itself—­the “Temple Mansion,” as it was called—­that was as much a part of Kennedy Square as the giant magnolias gracing the park, or the Noah’s Ark church, with its quaint belfry and cracked bell, which faced its shady walks.  Nobody, of course, remembered how long it had been built—­that is, nobody then alive—­I mean the very date.  Such authorities as Major Clayton were positive that the bricks had been brought from Holland; while Richard Horn, the rising young scientist, was sure that all the iron and brass work outside were the product of Sheffield; but in what year they had all been put together had always been a disputed question.

That, however, which was certain and beyond doubt, was that St. George’s father, old General Dorsey Temple, had purchased the property near the close of the preceding century; that he had, with his characteristic vehemence, pushed up the roof, thrust in two dormer windows, and smashed out the rear wall, thus enlarging the dining-room and giving increased space for a glass-covered porch ending in a broad flight of wooden steps descending to a rose-garden surrounded by a high brick wall; that thus encouraged he had widened the fireplaces, wainscoted the hall, built a new mahogany spider-web staircase leading to his library on the second floor, and had otherwise disported himself after the manner of a man who, having suddenly fallen heir to a big pot of money, had ever after continued oblivious to the fact that the more holes he punched in its bottom the less water would spill over its top.  The alterations complete, balls, routs, and dinners followed to such distinguished people as Count Rochambeau, the Marquis de Castellux, Marquis de Lafayette, and other high dignitaries, coming-of-age parties for the young bloods—­quite English in his tastes was the old gentleman—­not to mention many other extravagances which were still discussed by the gossips of the day.

With the general’s death—­it had occurred some twenty years before—­the expected had happened.  Not only was the pot nearly empty, but the various drains which it had sustained had so undermined the family rent-roll that an equally disastrous effect had been produced on the mansion itself (one of the few pieces of property, by the way, that the father had left to his only son and heir unencumbered, with the exception of a suit in chancery from which nobody ever expected a penny), the only dry spots in St. George’s finances being the few ground rents remaining from his grandmother’s legacy and the little he could pick up at the law.