“Your favor of the 8th instant lies before me. I beg leave to reiterate now what I said at parting—viz: that I have not the slightest hesitation in leaving the plantation to your own exclusive charge and direction—having no doubt that self-interest will guide your talent into the surest means of recruiting the resources of the estate. Let Hardbargain, by all means, if it pleases you to do it, remembering that I have nothing to do with that cunningly acquired little piece of property of yours. Regarding the dismissal of the housekeeper, the overseer, and the hired farm-laborers, whom you consider as supernumeraries, send them off, by all means, if you think it proper to do so. I, myself, perhaps, should have hesitated, ere I sent them adrift upon the world. But money-saving is, I presume, a plebeian instinct.
“Finally, pray govern in your own way, without ever again thinking it to be necessary to consult,
“Your servant,
“ARCHER CLIFTON.”
CHAPTER XXXV.
CATHERINE’S PROGRESS.
And she grew a noble lady,
And her people loved her much.—Tennyson.
Catherine’s arrangements for the year were all completed by the first of January; and with less inconvenience to others, and consequently with less pain to herself, than she had dared to anticipate.
She heard that Turnbull, the cashiered overseer, had purchased a piece of land in the valley—(doubtless with the embezzled funds, but of that she did not think)—built upon it a log cabin, and set up as a farmer upon his own footing; and that he had taken his tribe of sons and nephews to assist him. She was very much pleased to know that they were out of the way of swindling others as they had swindled Clifton, and also that they were equally removed from want and suffering.
Mrs. Mercer, by her warm recommendation, had found a very eligible situation as housekeeper to an elderly, single gentleman—a planter in the neighborhood—and her benevolence was set at rest in regard to the old woman.