Such was the energy with which Uncle Shade managed the rougher details of the plantation work, that at the end of the first year his mistress saw her way clear to enlarging her plans. She found that within five years she would be able to pay off all the old debts and make large profits to boot. So she sent her boys back to school, bought two of the four hired hands, and hired four more. These new ones, under Uncle Shade's management, worked as willingly as the others. In this way the estate was cleared of debt, and gradually enlarged, and Mrs. Rivers had been able, in the midst of it all, to send her boys to Princeton, where they took high rank in their studies.
The youngest drifted to California in the fifties, and disappeared; the second went into business in Charleston as a cotton factor and commission merchant. The oldest, after taking a law course, settled down at home, practiced law a little and farmed a great deal. He finally fell in love with a schoolma'am from Connecticut. His mother, who had been through the mill, as the saying is, and knew all about the dignity and lack of dignity there is in labor, rather approved the match,
