CHAPTER I. A VIRGINIA PLANTATION. I wont have it, Pearson; so its no use your talking. If I had my way you shouldnt touch any of the field hands. And when I get my way-that wont be so very long-I will take very good care you shant. But you shant hit Dan. He is not one of the regular house hands, was the reply; and I shall appeal to Mrs. Wingfield as to whether I am to be interfered with in the discharge of my duties. You may appeal to my mother if you like, but I dont think that you will get much by it. You are too fond of that whip, Pearson. It never was heard on the estate during my fathers time, and it shant be again when it comes to be mine, I can tell you. Come along, Dan; I want you at the stables. Vincent Wingfield turned on his heel, and followed by Dan, a negro lad of some eighteen years old, he walked toward the house, leaving Jonas Pearson, the overseer of the Orangery Estate, looking after him with an evil expression of face. Vincent Wingfield was the son of an English officer, who, making a tour in the States, had fallen in love with and won the hand of Winifred Cornish, a Virginia heiress, and one of the belles of Richmond. After the marriage he had taken her to visit his family in England; but she had not been there many weeks before the news arrived of the sudden death of her father. A month later she and her husband returned to Virginia, as her presence was required there in reference to business matters connected with the estate, of which she was now the mistress. The Orangery, so called from a large conservatory built by Mrs. Wingfields grandfather, was the family seat, and the broad lands around it were tilled by upward of two hundred slaves. There were in addition three other properties lying in different parts of the State. Here Vincent, with two sisters, one older and one younger than himself, had been born. When he was eight years old Major and Mrs. Wingfield had gone over with their children to England, and had left Vincent there for four years at school, his holidays being spent at the house of his fathers brother, a country gentleman in Sussex. Then he had been sent for unexpectedly; his father saying that his health was not good, and that he should like his son to be with him. A year later his father died. Vincent was now nearly sixteen years old, and would upon coming of age assume the reins of power at the Orangery, of which his mother, however, would be the actual mistress as long as she lived. The four years Vincent had passed in the English school had done much to render the institution of slavery repugnant to him, and his father had had many serious talks with him during the last year of his life, and had shown him that there was a good deal to be said upon both sides of the subject. There are good plantations and bad plantations, Vincent; and there are many more good ones than bad ones. There are brutes to be found everywhere. There are bad masters in the Southern States just as there are bad landlords in every European country. But even from self-interest alone, a planter has greater reason for