CHAPTER XVII.





MELROSE, Lizzie Heartwell's home, was a manufacturing village in the
northern part of a Southern State. A more picturesque or inviting
spot is seldom found. It crowned the summit of one of a range of
long, sloping hills, that stretched back from a river, as a diadem
crowns the brow of a monarch. The snowy houses, nestled amid the
clustering foliage, and the carefully trimmed hedge-rows, imparted
to the place an English air of aristocratic seclusion. The clear
silver river, too, which turned the spindles of the far-famed
factories, encircled this romantic village as a mother the child of
her love. These factories, that had been in successful operation for
nearly a quarter of a century, gave employment to scores of honest,
industrious people, that otherwise might have gone scantily clad and
miserably fed, perhaps have perished.

Mr. Caleb Schuyler, the superintendent and proprietor of these
factories, was a large-hearted New Englander, who had brought to
this Southern State his native thrift and enterprise, and had spent
a useful and comparatively long life in the work of building up and