“If this man is black, we don’t want to encourage him.  If he ’s the right sort, we ’ll invite him to the house.”

“And make him feel at home,” added Mrs. Clayton, on hospitable thoughts intent.

“We must ask Sadler about him to-morrow,” said Mr. Clayton, when he had drunk his coffee and lighted his cigar.  “If he ’s the right man he shall have cause to remember his visit to Groveland.  We ’ll show him that Washington is not the only town on earth.”

The uncertainty of the family with regard to Mr. Brown was soon removed.  Mr. Solomon Sadler, who was supposed to know everything worth knowing concerning the colored race, and everybody of importance connected with it, dropped in after supper to make an evening call.  Sadler was familiar with the history of every man of negro ancestry who had distinguished himself in any walk of life.  He could give the pedigree of Alexander Pushkin, the titles of scores of Dumas’s novels (even Sadler had not time to learn them all), and could recite the whole of Wendell Phillips’s lecture on Toussaint l’Ouverture.  He claimed a personal acquaintance with Mr. Frederick Douglass, and had been often in Washington, where he was well known and well received in good colored society.

“Let me see,” he said reflectively, when asked for information about the Honorable Hamilton M. Brown.  “Yes, I think I know him.  He studied at Oberlin just after the war.  He was about leaving there when I entered.  There were two H.M.  Browns there—­a Hamilton M. Brown and a Henry M. Brown.  One was stout and dark and the other was slim and quite light; you could scarcely tell him from a dark white man.  They used to call them ‘light Brown’ and ‘dark Brown.’  I did n’t know either of them except by sight, for they were there only a few weeks after I went in.  As I remember them, Hamilton was the fair one—­a very good-looking, gentlemanly fellow, and, as I heard, a good student and a fine speaker.”

“Do you remember what kind of hair he had?” asked Mr. Clayton.

“Very good indeed; straight, as I remember it.  He looked something like a Spaniard or a Portuguese.”

“Now that you describe him,” said Alice, “I remember quite well dancing with such a gentleman; and I ’m wrong about my ‘H.M.B.’  The dark man must have been some one else; there are two others on my card that I can’t remember distinctly, and he was probably one of those.”

“I guess he ’s all right, Alice,” said her father when Sadler had gone away.  “He evidently means business, and we must treat him white.  Of course he must stay with us; there are no hotels in Groveland while he is here.  Let ’s see—­he ’ll be here in three days.  That is n’t very long, but I guess we can get ready.  I ’ll write a letter this afternoon—­or you write it, and invite him to the house, and say I ’ll meet him at the depot.  And you may have carte blanche for making the preparations.”

“We must have some people to meet him.”