The Argosy, Vol. 75, No. 4 — page 140: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

842 ently. “ Many things seem hard and not just to us out. here which are esteemed right at home,’ he said. “The art of governing is not to be . learned in a day, Friend Upholme.” “That,” said my father, “is a great truth, and, having shed my blood on a dozen fields for my king, I have earned the right to say that it is doubly true that it will never be learned by the House of Stuart. Here have I lived for five years under my grant from Lord Clarendon, and by that grant I shall continue to hold while grass grows and water runs. It is fn fee simple and it runs ‘A thousand acres, with rights, water, and turbary, elebe, field, and quarry.’ I shall hold by what I say.” Mr. Ames shook his head again. “The letter bears the seal of the grand chancellor,’ he said. “And I have fought for a better man than that man’s master, and for my service the grant was given. What does the letter say?” For answer, Mr. Ames pulled a pa~ per from his pocket, drew the candles closer to him across the rough table, and read, spelling slowly as he fols lowed his finger across the written page. When he was done my father sat back and whistled. I can see it all as if at this moment before me. The roughly built walls of rudely squared logs, bearing only some sconces made of buckhorn in which, when we wished more light than our home-made can- dles made, we thrust the pine torches; a few pairs of deer antlers to hold our euns and clothes, and a curtain that was hung across the far end of the room, dividing the cabin into two com- , partments, This was “ Upholme Hill,” with never a hill for ten miles on any hand, except the rise on which the house stood, and to gain even this place my father had undergone dangers and pri- vations greater than most, and in ‘those days that was great indeed. He had borne King Charles’s com- / THE ARGOSY. mission as a captain of horse under Prince Rupert; but after the great cavalry fight at Edge Hill he found himself useless by reason of a pike thrust in the groin, that sent him through the rest of his life on a stick, For his services he was given this erant of land, which was afterward confirmed by Cromwell, who wisely | believed it was better to build a golden bridge for a flying enemy, and to this place we had come five years before. I was sixteen years of age at the time, so that I remembered much of our wanderings about the Continent — and the many makeshifts to which we were put to live. My father clerked in Holland for months; once he was put to it*to roll barrels from.the cargo of a Dutch lug- ger in Holland to pay for our meals alone, always striving to make and save a sum to pay our way to the grant of land in the Plantation: but it was not till five years before I write of that the death of an old cousin gave him means enough to purchase our passage and to buy for us a few bales of those things that would be of the most use to us in our new life beyond the seas. So we passed out of South- ampton Water, bound for our new home. The five years had not done much for us in the goods of this world, The whole tract was forest-covered, and it took us the first year, with the help of two negro slaves that my father had bought in the Virginias, to clear land enough to enable us to plant corn for our food and to raise enough tobacco to pay for clothes and powder, We had built the cabin on the rising eround above the Chowan where the pine forest gave place to the knee-deep. grasses, and from our door, where we sat on moonlit summer nights, we could see the great silver moon swing up out of the broad Atlantic, while the melancholy notes of the whippoorwill -sounded plaintively from the forest. Yes, this was Upholme Hill. such hard case were we brought, and EO PMIC OOO KS To | (E@)