the custom in that old settled country that whoever should be earliest up, and say "Christmas gift!" to others, should receive some little token in farthings or kind.

"Bah!" answered the Jew. "Look in yonder, where the best of your religion lie, perished by your inhumanity, and behold your Christmas gift to them!"

There, where no friendly feet but those of negroes and slaves had entered for months, the strengthening morning showed a young wife, almost white, and the most beautiful of her type, with comely features, and eyes and hair that the proudest white beauty might envy. The gauntness of death had scarcely diminished those charms which had brought the pride of the world's esteem and the prudence of religion to her feet, and lifted her to virtuous matrimony, only to banish her lover from the hearthstones of his race and make them both outcasts, the poorest of the creatures of God, even on Chincoteague. A slight sense of self-accusation touched the bystanders.

"He was a good preacher," said one, "and I was converted under him. He baptized my children. That he should have married a darkey!"

"She was a pious girl," added another, "and from her youth up was in temptation, which she resisted, like a white woman. That she should have ruined this preacher!"

"He was a poet," said a third. "'Peared like as if he believed every thing he preached. But, my sakes! we can't have sich things in our church."

"She loved him, too, the hussy!" exclaimed a fourth. "She would have been his slave if he had asked her. Oh! what misery she felt when she knew that his passion for her was starving him, body and soul!"

They slipped away, with a feeling that, somehow, two very guilty people had been punished in those two. The negroes made the funeral procession. The Jew walked amongst the negroes.

"O Father Abraham," he said, chuckling to himself, "forgive me that I stand here, no renegade to my faith, yet the only white Christian on Chincoteague!"

Issachar was oyster-man, sailor, and sutler in one. He advanced money to build pungy boats, knit nets, and make huts. He kept a trading place, packed fish, and dealt with the Eastern port cities by a schooner whose crew he shipped himself and sometimes commanded her. He was a wrecker, too, prompt and enterprising; passed middle life, but full of vitality; bold and cunning in equal degree; and he had been, it was guessed, a slaver, and some said a pirate. He was called by the negroes the King of Chincoteague. His schooner was named The Eli.

Chincoteague is the principal inhabited island along the one hundred miles of coast between the capes of the Delaware and of the Chesapeake—a coast of low bars, divided into long and slender islands by a dozen inlets, which, almost filled with sand, permit only light-draught vessels to enter; and it is destruction to any ship to go ashore on that coast, where five successive lighthouses warn the commerce of the Atlantic off, but are unable to intimidate the storms which sweep the low shores and almost threaten to leap over the peninsula and submerge it. Chincoteague lies like a tongue between two inlets, and partly protrudes into the sea, but is also sheltered in part by the bar of Assateague, whose light has flamed for years. Chincoteague is about ten miles long, and behind it an inland bay stretches continuously, under various names, for thirty miles, protected from the ocean, and scarcely flavored with its salt, except near the outlet at Chincoteague, where the oysters lie in the brackish sluices, and all sorts of fish, from shrimps to sharks, hover around the oyster beds. In the green depths they can be seen, and there the crab darts sidewise, like a shooting star. In the sandy beach grows the mamano, or snail-clam, putting his head from his shell at high tide to suck nutrition from the mysterious food of the sea, and giving back such chowder to man as makes the eater feel his stomach to possess a nobility above the pleasures of the brain. The bay of Chincoteague is five or six miles wide, and the nearest hamlet is in Virginia, as is Chincoteague island also. The hamlet takes the name of Horntown, and not far from there is the old court-house seat of Snow Hill, in Maryland. Every soul on Chincoteague was native there or thereabout, except Issachar the Jew.

He had appeared amongst them after a sudden storm, the solitary survivor of a wreck that had partly drifted ashore, and, as he said, gone down with all his fortune. The mild air and easy livelihood of the spot pleased the Jew, after his first despair, and he set about making another fortune. Capable, solitary and active, he soon outstripped all the people of the islands, and neither beloved nor unbeloved, lived grimly, as chance ordained, and until now, had never shown more than business benevolence. It was a surprising thing to the people of Chincoteague, when the news went round that he had been over to court at Drummond-town and given his recognizance to bring up the orphan boy—whom he named Abraham Purnell—so that the county should not be at the expense of him, and he also brought out from New York, on the Eli's next trip, a Hebrew woman to be the boy's matron. Suckled at a negro's breast, Abraham grew to a vigorous youth, resembling his guardian's race and his mother's as well, in the curling nature of his hair and the brightness of his eyes. The Old Testament Scriptures alone were taught him, and Issachar himself joined the family circle at daily prayer to encourage the faith of Israel in the stranger. The finest of the lean, tough ponies, bred only on Chincoteague, and renowned throughout the peninsula for their endurance, was bought for the boy, as he grew older. He was made Issachar's companion, and, in course of time, passed in fireside talk for a Jew, like his protector.

Only once the superior comfort and clothing of Issachar's protégé provoked the remark from one of a group of men that Abraham was "only a stuck-up nigger, anyway;" and then, like a maniac, Old Issachar dashed from his store with a boat-hook and struck down the offender like a dead man.

But the boy was of such docile and beautiful nature that he excited no general antagonism. He was four removals from pure African blood, and as his mother had been a freed girl, he was a citizen, or might be if he pleased. The certain heir of Issachar's possessions, the only thing except gold that Issachar loved, and of a parentage which linked misfortune with piety, his mysterious nativity gave him with the negroes a sacred character. They believed that he would become their king and priest and lead them out of bondage to a promised land; and this involuntary homage so pleased old Issachar that his heart inclined toward the black race above the Christian whites around him. If an aged negro fell sick, the Jew sent, by his ward, medicine and food. If a very poor negro was buried, the Jew contributed to the expenses. He gave the first counsel of worldly wisdom to the negro freedmen, and gave them faithful interest on their savings. One slave that he possessed he set free, saying:

"By Jacob's staff! I will not hold as cattle the blood people of my son!"

His enlarged benevolence made no difference in his business. It grew to the widest limits of that humble society, and by the accident of a younger life coming forward to bear his honor up, Issachar grew into sympathy with the social life of all the lower peninsula. If they wanted money for public enterprise on the mainland, the Jew of Chincoteague was first to be thought of. His credit, Masonic in its reach, extended to his compatriots in distant cities, and the politicians crossed the Sound to bring him into alliance with their parties. To personal flattery he was obtuse, except when it reached his ward, and then a melting mood came over him. At every Christmas he led