‘But what on earth am I to do without you?’

’Persevere in the course you are now pursuing.  Stick honestly to good principles, Mr. Jessup, and you will continue to prosper.’

‘Damn it, I know better,’ exclaimed Jessup pettishly; ’I mean—­I swear I don’t know what I mean, [Hiram’s cold blue eye was fixed calmly on him,] cussed if I do; but I say ’tan’t honesty which has done the thing for me.  No; old Smith is honest—­so is his son; I respect both of them for being so, yes I do.  You are honest, too, Hiram; straight as a shingle—­have always found you so; but I can’t tell why, yours seems another sort of honesty from Smith’s honesty, and that’s a fact.’

Benjamin Jessup had a dim perception of the truth, but the more he tried to explain, the more he floundered, till Hiram came to his relief and to his own also, for he did not greatly enjoy the comparison Jessup was attempting to institute.

’I think I understand you.  The fact is, in the management of your business, I have endeavored to combine what tact and shrewdness I am master of with scrupulous fair dealing and integrity.’

’That’s it, Hiram, now you’ve hit it, but it’s the shrewdness that’s done the work.  Oh!  I shall never get a man who can fill your place.’

* * * * *

In due course, Hiram left for Burnsville.  The prayers and good wishes of the village went with him.  Mary Jessup was disconsolate; but why?  Hiram had never committed himself.  All the girls said:  ’What a fool she is to think he was going to marry any body older than himself!’ and they laughed about Mary Jessup.

NEWBERN AS IT WAS AND IS.

That part of North-Carolina borders on the Sound, has within the past six months became the theatre of events of the most exciting nature, in which Newbern, its principal town, has borne a prominent part.

It may be interesting to review its history.  The earliest notice of it dates back to the explorations of Raleigh’s colony in 1584, when they visited an Indian town named Newsiok, ’situated on a goodly river called the Neus,’ but the adventurers did not examine the river, and more than a century elapsed before any further record of the visit of white men occurred.  The north-eastern counties had, however, been partially settled by refugees from Virginia, where in the absence of law and gospel they became as degraded a community as there was on the continent.  Their descendants have, to a considerable extent, overrun the South to the Mississippi and on to Texas.

But it was the good fortune of the counties on the Neuse to derive their immigrants from and to have their institutions formed by a better class than the inferior families of Virginia, further degraded by a residence in Eastern North-Carolina, at that period known as the harbor for rogues and pirates.