"And now," said Lindsay, "as we have so successfully identified each other, let me know, at once, what has happened to my good friends the Hilliards, who I thought were fixed here for life. Why do I see their house a heap of ruins? Have the family been reduced to poverty?"
"Lawful heart, no," exclaimed the negro: "Masser Neddy been away so long in foreign parts, he forget how when people here in 'Merica give up their old houses, it's a'most always acause they've got new ones. Now old Abram Hilliard he got richer and richer every minute—though I guess he was pretty rich when you know'd him, only he never let on. And so he build him fine stone house beyont his piece of oak-woods, and there he live this blessed day.—And we goes there quite another road.—And so he gove this old frame to old Pharaoh; and so I had the whole house carted off, all that was good of it, and put it up on the road-side, just beyont here, in place of my old tumble-down cabin what I used to live in, that I've altered into a pig-pen. So now me and Binkey am quite comfabull."
"Show me the way," said Lindsay, "to the new residence of Mr. Hilliard. I have come from Philadelphia on purpose to visit the family."
"Bless your heart, masser, for that," said the old negro, as he held the stirrup for Lindsay to mount; and walking by his side, he proceeded with the usual garrulity of the African race, to relate many particulars of the Hilliards and their transit.
"Of course, Masser Neddy," said Pharaoh, "you 'member old Abram's two boys Isaac and Jacob, what you used to play with. You know Isaac mostly whipped you when you fout with him. Well, when they growed up, they thought they'd help'd their father long enough, and as they wanted right bad to go west, the old man gove 'em money to buy back land. So each took him horse—Isaac took Mike, and Jacob took Morgan, and they started west, and went to a place away back—away back—seven hundred thousand miles beyont Pitchburg. And they're like to get mighty rich; and word's come as Jacob's neighbours is going to set him up for congress, and I shouldn't be the least 'prized if he's presidump. You 'member, Masser Neddy, Jacob was always the tonguiest of the two boys."
"And where are Mr. Hilliard's daughters?" asked Lindsay.
"Oh, as to the two oldest," replied Pharaoh, "Kitty married Billy Pleasants, as keeps the store over at Candyville, and Betsey made a great match with a man what has a terrible big farm over on Siskahanna. And old Abram, after he got into him new house, sent him two youngest to the new school up at Wonderville, where they teaches the gals all sorts of wit and larning."
"And how are your own wife and children, Pharaoh?" inquired Lindsay; "I remember them very well."
"Bless your heart for that, masser!" replied the negro; "why Rose is hired at Abram Hilliard's—you know they brungt her up. And Cato lives out in Philadelphy—I wonders masser did not see him. And as for old Binkey, she holds her own pretty well. You know, masser, Binkey was always a great hand at quiltings, and weddings, and buryings, and such like frolics, and used to be sent for, high and low, to help cook at them times. But now she's a getting old,—being most a thousand,—and her birthday mostly comes on the forty-second of Feberwary—and so she stays at home, and makes rusk and gingerbread and molasses beer. This is molasses I have in the jemmy-john; I've jist come from the store. So she sells cakes and beer—that's the reason we lives on the road-side—and I works about. We used to have a sign that Sammy Spokes the wheelwright painted for us, for he was then the only man in these parts that had paints. There was two ginger-cakes on it, and one rusk, and a coal-black bottle with the beer spouting up high, and falling into a tumbler without ever spilling a drap. We were desperate pleased with the sign, for folks said it looked so nateral, and Sammy Spokes made us a present of it, and would not take it out in cakes and beer, as we wanted him, and that shewed him to be very much of a gemplan."
"As no doubt he is," remarked Lindsay; "I find, since my return to America, that gentlemen are 'as plenty as blackberries.'"