This honour entails on the holder of it the necessity of living at or
within reach of Spanish Town for some ten weeks towards the chose of
every year. Now on the whole face of the uninhabited globe there is
perhaps no spot more dull to look at, more Lethean in its aspect,
more corpse-like or more cadaverous than Spanish Town. It is the
head-quarters of the government, the seat of the legislature, the
residence of the governor;--but nevertheless it is, as it were, a
city of the very dead.

Here, as we have said before, lived Miss Jack in a large forlorn
ghost-like house in which her father and all her family had lived
before her. And as a matter of course Maurice Cumming when he came
up to attend to his duties as a member of the legislature took up his
abode with her.

Now at the time of which we are specially speaking he had completed
the first of these annual visits. He had already benefited his
country by sitting out one session of the colonial parliament, and
had satisfied himself that he did no other good than that of keeping
away some person more objectionable than himself. He was however
prepared to repeat this self-sacrifice in a spirit of patriotism for
which he received a very meagre meed of eulogy from Miss Jack, and an
amount of self-applause which was not much more extensive.

"Down at Mount Pleasant I can do something," he would say over and
over again, "but what good can any man do up here?"

"You can do your duty," Miss Jack would answer, "as others did before
you when the colony was made to prosper." And then they would run