proceeding which, in Harry Heathcote's aristocratic and patriarchal
views of life, was altogether ungentleman-like. How were the "hands"
to be kept in their place if one employer of labor did not back up
another?

He had been warned to be on his guard against fire. The warnings had
hardly been implicit, but yet had come in a shape which made him
unable to ignore them. Old Bates, whom he trusted implicitly, and who
was a man of very few words, had told him to be on his guard. The
German, at whose hut he had been in the morning, Karl Bender by name,
and a servant of his own, had told him that there would be fire about
before long.

"Why should any one want to ruin me?" Harry had asked. "Did I ever
wrong a man of a shilling?"

The German had learned to know his young master, had made his way
through the crust of his master's character, and was prepared to be
faithful at all points--though he too could have quarreled and have
avenged himself had it not chanced that he had come to the point of
loving instead of hating his employer.

"You like too much to be governor over all," said the German, as he
stooped over the fire in his own hut in his anxiety to boil the water
for Heathcote's tea.

"Somebody must be governor, or every thing would go to the devil,"
said Harry.

"Dat's true--only fellows don't like be made feel it," said the