Beside it stood a large brick building, one half fitted as a tobacco shed, where the leaf could lie for months, if need be, without taking harm, and the other arranged as a merchant's store with roomy cellars and wide garrets.

I relinquished the warehouse by the James Town quay, and to my joy I was able to relinquish Mr.Lambie.That timid soul had been on thorns ever since I mooted my new projects.

He implored me to put them from me; he drew such pictures of the power of the English traders, you would have thought them the prince merchants of Venice; he saw all his hard-won gentility gone at a blow, and himself an outcast precluded for ever from great men's recognition.

He could not bear it, and though he was loyal to my uncle's firm in his own way, he sought a change.

One day he announced that he had been offered a post as steward to a big planter at Henricus, and when I warmly bade him accept it, he smiled wanly, and said he had done so a week agone.