IX. THE DEATH…

IX. THE DEATH

Death is always sudden. However gradual may be its approaches, it is, in its effects upon the survivor, always sudden at last. Tiff thought, at first, that his mistress was in a fainting-fit, and tried every means to restore her. It was affecting to see him chafing the thin, white, pearly hands, in his large, rough, black paws; raising the head upon his arm, and calling in a thousand tones of fond endearment, pouring out a perfect torrent of loving devotion on the cold, unheeding ear. But, then, spite of all he could do, the face settled itself, and the hands would not be warmed; the thought of death struck him suddenly, and, throwing himself on the floor by the bed, he wept with an exceeding loud and bitter cry. Something in his heart revolted against awakening that man who lay heavily breathing by her side. He would not admit to himself, at this moment, that this man had any right in her, or that the sorrow was any part of his sorrow. But the cry awoke Cripps, who sat up bewildered in bed, clearing the hair from his eyes with the back of his hand.

"Tiff, what the durned are you howling about?"

Tiff got up in a moment, and, swallowing down his grief and his tears, pointed indignantly to the still figure on the bed.

"Dar! dar! Wouldn't b'lieve her last night! Now what you think of dat ar? See how you look now! Good Shepherd hearn you abusing de poor lamb, and he's done took her whar you'll never see her again!"

Cripps had, like coarse, animal men generally, a stupid and senseless horror of death;--he recoiled from the lifeless form, and sprang from the bed with an expression of horror.

"Well, now, who would have thought it?" he said. "That I should be in bed with a corpse! I hadn't the least idea!"

"No, dat's plain enough, you didn't! You'll believe it now, won't you? Poor little lamb, lying here suffering all alone! I tell you, when folks have been sick so long, dey has to die to make folks believe anything ails 'em!"

"Well, really," said Cripps, "this is really--why, it an't comfortable! darned if it is! Why, I'm sorry about the gal! I meant to steam her up, or done something with her. What's we to do now?"

"Pretty likely you don't know! Folks like you, dat never tends to nothing good, is always flustered when de Master knocks at de do'! I knows what to do, though. I's boun' to get up de crittur, and go up to de old plantation, and bring down a woman and do something for her, kind of decent. You mind the chil'en till I come back."

Tiff took down and drew on over his outer garment a coarse, light, woollen coat, with very long skirts and large buttons, in which he always arrayed himself in cases of special solemnity. Stopping at the door before he went out, he looked over Cripps from head to foot, with an air of patronizing and half-pitiful contempt, and delivered himself as follows:

"Now, mas'r, I's gwine up, and will be back quick as possible; and now do pray be decent, and let dat ar whiskey alone for one day in your life, and 'member death, judgment, and 'ternity. Just act, now, as if you'd got a streak of something in you, such as a man ought for to have who is married to one of de very fustest families in old Virginny. 'Flect, now, on your latter end; may be will do your poor old soul some good; and don't you go for to waking up the chil'en before I gets back. They'll learn de trouble soon enough."

Cripps listened to this oration with a stupid, bewildered stare, gazing first at the bed, and then at the old man, who was soon making all the speed he could towards Canema.

Nina was not habitually an early riser, but on this morning she had awaked with the first peep of dawn, and, finding herself unable to go to sleep again, she had dressed herself, and gone down to the garden.

She was walking up and down in one of the alleys, thinking over the perplexities of her own affairs, when her ear was caught by the wild and singular notes of one of those tunes commonly used among the slaves as dirges. The words "She ar dead and gone to heaven" seemed to come floating down upon her; and, though the voice was cracked and strained, there was a sort of wildness and pathos in it, which made a singular impression in the perfect stillness of everything around her. She soon observed a singular-looking vehicle appearing in the avenue.

This wagon, which was no other than the establishment of Cripps, drew Nina's attention, and she went to the hedge to look at it. Tiff's watchful eye immediately fell upon her, and, driving up to where she was standing, he climbed out upon the ground, and, lifting his hat, made her a profound obeisance, and "hoped de young lady was bery well, dis morning."

"Yes, quite well, thank you, Uncle," said Nina, regarding him curiously.

"We's in 'fliction to our house!" said Tiff, solemnly. "Dere's been a midnight cry dere, and poor Miss Sue (dat's my young missis), she's done gone home."

"Who is your mistress?"

"Well, her name was Seymour 'fore she married, and her ma come from de Virginny Peytons,--great family, dem Peytons! She was so misfortunate as to get married, as gals will, sometimes," said Tiff, speaking in a confidential tone. "The man wan't no 'count, and she's had a drefful hard way to travel, poor thing! and dere she's a lying at last stretched out dead, and not a woman nor nobody to do de least thing; and please, missis, Tiff comed for to see if de young lady wouldn't send a woman for to do for her--getting her ready for a funeral."

"And who are you, pray?"

"Please, missis, I's Tiff Peyton, I is. I's raised in Virginny, on de great Peyton place, and I's gin to Miss Sue's mother; and when Miss Sue married dis yer man, dey was all 'fended, and wouldn't speak to her; but I tuck up for her, 'cause what's de use of makin' a bad thing worse? I's a 'pinion, and telled 'em, dat he oughter be 'couraged to behave hisself, seein' the thing was done, and couldn't be helped. But no, dey wouldn't; so I jest tells 'em, says I, 'You may do jis you please, but old Tiff's a gwine with her,' says I. 'I'll follow Miss Sue to de grave's mouth,' says I; and ye see I has done it."

"Well done of you! I like you better for it," said Nina. "You just drive up to the kitchen, there, and tell Rose to give you some breakfast, while I go up to Aunt Nesbit."

"No, thank you, Miss Nina, I's noways hungry. 'Pears like, when a body's like as I be, swallerin' down, and all de old times risin' in der throat all de time, dey can't eat; dey gets filled all up to der eyes with feelin's. Lord, Miss Nina, I hope ye won't never know what 'tis to stand outside de gate, when de best friend you've got's gone in; it's hard, dat ar is!" And Tiff pulled out a decayed-looking handkerchief, and applied it under his spectacles.

"Well, wait a minute, Tiff." And Nina ran into the house, while Tiff gazed mournfully after her.

"Well, Lor; just de way Miss Sue used to run--trip, trip, trip!--little feet like mice! Lord's will be done!"

"Oh, Milly!" said Nina, meeting Milly in the entry, "here you are. Here's a poor fellow waiting out by the hedge, his mistress dead all alone in the house, with children,--no woman to do for them. Can't you go down? you could do so well! You know how better than any one else in the house."

"Why, that must be poor old Tiff!" said Milly; "faithful old creature! So that poor woman's gone, at last? the better for her, poor soul! Well, I'll ask Miss Loo if I may go--or you ask her, Miss Nina."

A quick, imperative tap on her door startled Aunt Nesbit, who was standing at her toilet, finishing her morning's dressing operations.

Mrs. Nesbit was a particularly systematic early riser. Nobody knew why; only folks who have nothing to do are often the most particular to have the longest possible time to do it in.

"Aunt," said Nina, "there's a poor fellow, out here, whose mistress is just dead, all alone in the house, and wants to get some woman to go there to help. Can't you spare Milly?"

"Milly was going to clear-starch my caps, this morning," said Aunt Nesbit. "I have arranged everything with reference to it, for a week past."

"Well, aunt, can't she do it to-morrow, or next day, just as well?"

"To-morrow she is going to rip up that black dress, and wash it. I am always systematic, and have everything arranged beforehand. Should like very much to do anything I could, if it wasn't for that. Why can't you send Aunt Katy?"

"Why, aunt, you know we are to have company to dinner, and Aunt Katy is the only one who knows where anything is, or how to serve things out to the cook. Besides, she's so hard and cross to poor people, I don't think she would go. I don't see, I'm sure, in such a case as this, why you couldn't put your starching off. Milly is such a kind, motherly, experienced person, and they are in affliction."

"Oh, these low families don't mind such things much," said Aunt Nesbit, fitting on her cap, quietly; "they never have much feeling. There's no use doing for them--they are miserable poor creatures."

"Aunt Nesbit, do, now, as a favor to me! I don't often ask favors," said Nina. "Do let Milly go! she's just the one wanted. Do, now, say yes!" And Nina pressed nearer, and actually seemed to overpower her slow-feeling, torpid relative, with the vehemence that sparkled in her eyes.

"Well, I don't care, if"--

"There, Milly, she says yes!" said she, springing out the door. "She says you may. Now, hurry; get things ready. I'll run and have Aunt Katy put up biscuits and things for the children; and you get all that you know you will want, and be off quick, and I'll have the pony got up, and come on behind you."

X. THE PREPARATION

The excitement produced by the arrival of Tiff, and the fitting out of Milly to the cottage, had produced a most favorable diversion in Nina's mind from her own especial perplexities.

Active and buoyant, she threw herself at once into whatever happened to come uppermost on the tide of events. So, having seen the wagon dispatched, she sat down to breakfast in high spirits.

"Aunt Nesbit, I declare I was so interested in that old man! I intend to have the pony, after breakfast, and ride over there."

"I thought you were expecting company."

"Well, that's one reason, now, why I'd like to be off. Do I want to sit all primmed up, smiling and smirking, and running to the window to see if my gracious lord is coming? No, I won't do that, to please any of them. If I happen to fancy to be out riding, I will be out riding."

"I think," said Aunt Nesbit, "that the hovels of these miserable creatures are no proper place for a young lady of your position in life."

"My position in life! I don't see what that has to do with it. My position in life enables me to do anything I please--a liberty which I take pretty generally. And, then, really, I couldn't help feeling rather sadly about it, because that Old Tiff, there (I believe that's his name), told me that the woman had been of a good Virginia family. Very likely she may have been just such another wild girl as I am, and thought as little about bad times, and of dying, as I do. So I couldn't help feeling sad for her. It really came over me when I was walking in the garden. Such a beautiful morning as it was--the birds all singing, and the dew all glittering and shining on the flowers! Why, aunt, the flowers really seemed alive; it seemed as though I could hear them breathing, and hear their hearts beating like mine. And, all of a sudden, I heard the most wild, mournful singing, over in the woods. It wasn't anything very beautiful, you know, but it was so wild, and strange! 'She is dead and gone to heaven!--she is dead and gone to heaven!' And pretty soon I saw the funniest old wagon--I don't know what to call it--and this queer old black man in it, with an old white hat and surtout on, and a pair of great, funny-looking spectacles on his nose. I went to the fence to see who he was; and he came up and spoke to me, made the most respectful bow--you ought to have seen it! And then, poor fellow, he told me how his mistress was lying dead, with the children around her, and nobody in the house! The poor old creature, he actually cried, and I felt so for him! He seemed to be proud of his dead mistress, in spite of her poverty."

"Where do they live?" said Mrs. Nesbit.

"Why, he told me over in the pine woods, near the swamp."

"Oh," said Mrs. Nesbit, "I dare say it's that Cripps family, that's squatted in the pine woods. A most miserable set--all of them liars and thieves! If I had known who it was, I'm sure I shouldn't have let Milly go over. Such families oughtn't to be encouraged; there oughtn't a thing to be done for them; we shouldn't encourage them to stay in the neighborhood. They always will steal from off the plantations, and corrupt the negroes, and get drunk, and everything else that's bad. There's never a woman of decent character among them, that ever I heard of; and, if you were my daughter, I shouldn't let you go near them."

"Well, I'm not your daughter, thank fortune!" said Nina, whose graces always rapidly declined in controversies with her aunt, "and so I shall do as I please. And I don't know what you pious people talk so for; for Christ went with publicans and sinners, I'm sure."

"Well," said Aunt Nesbit, "the Bible says we mustn't cast pearls before swine; and, when you've lived to be as old as I am, you'll know more than you do now. Everybody knows that you can't do anything with these people. You can't give them Bibles nor tracts; for they can't read. I've tried it, sometimes, visiting them, and talking to them; but it didn't do them any good. I always thought there ought to be a law passed to make 'em all slaves, and then there would be somebody to take care of them."

"Well, I can't see," said Nina, "how it's their fault. There isn't any school where they could send their children, if they wanted to learn; and, then, if they want to work, there's nobody who wants to hire them. So, what can they do?"

"I'm sure I don't know," said Aunt Nesbit, in that tone which generally means I don't care. "All I know is, that I want them to get away from the neighborhood. Giving to them is just like putting into a bag with holes. I'm sure I put myself to a great inconvenience on their account to-day; for, if there's anything I do hate, it is having things irregular. And to-day is the day for clear-starching the caps--and such a good, bright, sunny day!--and to-morrow, or any other day of the week, it may rain. Always puts me all out to have things that I've laid out to do put out of their regular order. I'd been willing enough to have sent over some old things; but why they must needs take Milly's time, just as if the funeral couldn't have got ready without her! These funerals are always miserable drunken times with them! And, then, who knows, she may catch the small-pox, or something or other. There's never any knowing what these people die of."

"They die of just such things as we do," said Nina. "They have that in common with us, at any rate."

"Yes; but there's no reason for risking our lives, as I know of--especially for such people--when it don't do any good."

"Why, aunt, what do you know against these folks? Have you ever known of their doing anything wicked?"

"Oh, I don't know that I know anything against this family in particular; but I know the whole race. These squatters--I've know them ever since I was a girl in Virginia. Everybody that knows anything knows exactly what they are. There isn't any help for them, unless, as I said before, they were made slaves; and then they could be kept decent. You may go to see them, if you like, but I don't want my arrangements to be interfered with on their account."

Mrs. Nesbit was one of those quietly-persisting people, whose yielding is like the stretching of an India-rubber band, giving way only to a violent pull, and going back to the same place when the force is withdrawn. She seldom refused favors that were urged with any degree of importunity; not because her heart was touched, but simply because she seemed not to have force enough to refuse; and whatever she granted was always followed by a series of subdued lamentations over the necessity which had wrung them from her.

Nina's nature was so vehement and imperious, when excited, that it was a disagreeable fatigue to cross her. Mrs. Nesbit, therefore, made amends by bemoaning herself as we have seen. Nina started up, hastily, on seeing her pony brought round to the door; and, soon arrayed in her riding-dress, she was cantering through the pine woods in high spirits. The day was clear and beautiful. The floor of the woodland path was paved with a thick and cleanly carpet of the fallen pine-leaves. And Harry was in attendance with her, mounted on another horse, and riding but a very little behind; not so much so but what his mistress could, if she would, keep up a conversation with him.

"You know this Old Tiff, Harry?"

"Oh, yes, very well. A very good, excellent creature, and very much the superior of his master, in most respects."

"Well, he says his mistress came of a good family."

"I shouldn't wonder," said Harry. "She always had a delicate appearance, very different from people in their circumstances generally. The children, too, are remarkably pretty, well-behaved children; and it's a pity they couldn't be taught something, and not grow up and go on these miserable ways of these poor whites!"

"Why don't anybody ever teach them?" said Nina.

"Well, Miss Nina, you know how it is: everybody has his own work and business to attend to--there are no schools for them to go to--there's no work for them to do. In fact, there don't seem to be any place for them in society. Boys generally grow up to drink and swear. And, as for girls, they are of not much account. So it goes on from generation to generation."

"This is so strange, and so different from what it is in the northern states! Why, all the children go to school there--the very poorest people's children! Why, a great many of the first men, there, were poor children! Why can't there be some such thing here?"

"Oh, because people are settled in such a scattering way they can't have schools. All the land that's good for any thing is taken up for large estates. And, then, these poor folks that are scattered up and down in between, it's nobody's business to attend to them, and they can't attend to themselves; and so they grow up, and nobody knows how they live, and everybody seems to think it a pity they are in the world. I've seen those sometimes that would be glad to do something, if they could find anything to do. Planters don't want them on their places--they'd rather have their own servants. If one of them wants to be a blacksmith, or a carpenter, there's no encouragement. Most of the large estates have their own carpenters and blacksmiths. And there's nothing for them to do, unless it is keeping dogs to hunt negroes; or these little low stores where they sell whiskey, and take what's stolen from the plantations. Sometimes a smart one gets a place as overseer on a plantation. Why, I've heard of their coming so low as actually to sell their children to traders, to get a bit of bread."

"What miserable creatures! But do you suppose it can be possible that a woman of any respectable family can have married a man of this sort?"

"Well, I don't know, Miss Nina; that might be. You see, good families sometimes degenerate; and when they get too poor to send their children off to school, or keep any teachers for them, they run down very fast. This man is not bad-looking, and he really is a person who, if he had had any way opened to him, might have been a smart man, and made something of himself and family; and when he was young and better-looking, I shouldn't wonder if an uneducated girl, who had never been off a plantation, might have liked him; he was fully equal, I dare say, to her brothers. You see, Miss Nina, when money goes, in this part of the country, everything goes with it; and when a family is not rich enough to have everything in itself, it goes down very soon."

"At any rate, I pity the poor things," said Nina. "I don't despise them, as Aunt Nesbit does."

Here Nina, observing the path clear and uninterrupted for some distance under the arching pines, struck her horse into a canter, and they rode on for some distance without speaking. Soon the horse's feet splashed and pattered on the cool, pebbly bottom of a small, shallow stream, which flowed through the woods. This stream went meandering among the pines like a spangled ribbon, sometimes tying itself into loops, leaving open spots--almost islands of green--graced by its waters. Such a little spot now opened to the view of the two travellers. It was something less than a quarter of an acre in extent, entirely surrounded by the stream, save only a small neck of about four feet, which connected it to the main-land.

Here a place had been cleared and laid off into a garden, which, it was evident, was carefully tended. The log-cabin which stood in the middle was far from having the appearance of wretchedness which Nina had expected. It was almost entirely a dense mass of foliage, being covered with the intermingled drapery of the Virginia creeper and the yellow jessamine. Two little borders, each side of the house, were blooming with flowers. Around the little island the pine-trees closed in unbroken semicircle, and the brook meandered away through them, to lose itself eventually in that vast forest of swampy land which girdles the whole Carolina shore. The whole air of the place was so unexpectedly inviting, in its sylvan stillness and beauty, that Nina could not help checking her horse, and exclaiming,--

"I'm sure, it's a pretty place. They can't be such very forsaken people, after all."

"Oh, that's all Tiff's work," said Harry. "He takes care of everything outside and in, while the man is off after nobody knows what. You'd be perfectly astonished to see how that old creature manages. He sews, and he knits, and works the garden, does the house-work, and teaches the children. It's a fact! You'll notice that they haven't the pronunciation or the manners of these wild white children; and I take it to be all Tiff's watchfulness, for that creature hasn't one particle of selfishness in him. He just identifies himself with his mistress and her children."

By this time Tiff had perceived their approach, and came out to assist them in dismounting.

"De Lord above bless you, Miss Gordon, for coming to see my poor missis! Ah! she is lying dere just as beautiful, just as she was the very day she was married! All her young looks come back to her; and Milly, she done laid her out beautiful! Lord, I's wanting somebody to come and look at her, because she has got good blood, if she be poor. She is none of your common sort of poor whites, Miss Nina. Just come in; come in, and look at her."

Nina stepped into the open door of the hut. The bed was covered with a clean white sheet, and the body, arrayed in a long white night-dress brought by Milly, lay there so very still, quiet, and life-like, that one could scarcely realize the presence of death. The expression of exhaustion, fatigue, and anxiety, which the face had latterly worn, had given place to one of tender rest, shaded by a sort of mysterious awe, as if the closed eyes were looking on unutterable things. The soul, though sunk below the horizon of existence, had thrown back a twilight upon the face radiant as that of the evening heavens.

By the head of the bed the little girl was sitting, dressed carefully, and her curling hair parted in front, apparently fresh from the brush; and the little boy was sitting beside her, his round blue eyes bearing an expression of subdued wonder.

Cripps was sitting at the foot of the bed, evidently much the worse for liquor; for, spite of the exhortation of Tiff, he had applied to the whiskey-jug immediately on his departure. Why not? He was uncomfortable--gloomy; and every one, under such circumstances, naturally inclines towards some source of consolation. He who is intellectual reads and studies; he who is industrious flies to business; he who is affectionate seeks friends; he who is pious, religion; but he who is none of these--what has he but his whiskey? Cripps made a stupid, staring inclination toward Nina and Harry, as they entered, and sat still, twirling his thumbs and muttering to himself.

The sunshine fell through the panes on the floor, and there came floating in from without the odor of flowers and the song of birds. All the Father's gentle messengers spoke of comfort; but he as a deaf man heard not--as a blind man did not regard. For the rest, an air of neatness had been imparted to the extreme poverty of the room by the joint efforts of Milly and Tiff.

Tiff entered softly, and stood by Nina, as she gazed. He had in his hand several sprays of white jessamine, and he laid one on the bosom of the dead.

"She had a hard walk of it," he said, "but she's got home! Don't she look peaceful?--poor lamb!"

The little, thoughtless, gay coquette had never looked on a sight like this before. She stood with a fixed, tender thoughtfulness, unlike her usual gayety, her riding-hat hanging carelessly by its strings from her hands, her loose hair drooping over her face.

She heard some one entering the cottage, but she did not look up. She was conscious of some one looking over her shoulder, and thought it was Harry.

"Poor thing! how young she looks," she said, "to have had so much trouble!" Her voice trembled, and a tear stood in her eye. There was a sudden movement; she looked up, and Clayton was standing by her.

She looked surprised, and the color deepened in her cheek, but was too ingenuously and really in sympathy with the scene before her even to smile. She retained his hand a moment, and turned to the dead, saying, in an under-tone, "See here!"

"I see," he said. "Can I be of service?"

"The poor thing died last night," said Nina. "I suppose some one might help about a funeral. Harry," she said, walking softly towards the door, and speaking low, "you provide a coffin; have it made neatly."

"Uncle," she said, motioning Tiff towards her, "where would they have her buried?"

"Buried?" said Tiff. "O Lord! buried!" And he covered his face with his hard hands, and the tears ran through his fingers.

"Lord, Lord! Well, it must come, I know, but 'pears like I couldn't! Laws, she's so beautiful! Don't, to-day! don't!"

"Indeed, Uncle," said Nina, tenderly, "I'm sorry I grieved you; but you know, poor fellow, that must come."

"I's known her ever since she's dat high!" said Tiff. "Her har was curly, and she used to war such pretty red shoes, and come running after me in de garden. 'Tiff, Tiff,' she used to say--and dar she is now, and troubles brought her dar! Lord, what a pretty gal she was! Pretty as you be, Miss Nina. But since she married dat ar," pointing with his thumb over his shoulder, and speaking confidentially, "everything went wrong. I's held her up--did all I could; and now here she is!"

"Perhaps," said Nina, laying her hand on his, "perhaps she's in a better place than this."

"Oh, Lord, dat she is! She told me dat when she died. She saw de Lord at last,--she did so! Dem's her last words. 'Tiff,' she says, 'I see Him, and He will give me rest. Tiff,' she says,--I'd been asleep, you know, and I kinder felt something cold on my hand, and I woke up right sudden, and dar she was, her eyes so bright, looking at me and breathing so hard; and all she says was, 'Tiff, I've seen Him, and I know now why I've suffered so; He's gwine to take me, and give me rest!'"

"Then, my poor fellow, you ought to rejoice that she is safe."

"'Deed I does," said Tiff; "yet I's selfish. I wants to be dere too, I does--only I has de chil'en to care for."

"Well, my good fellow," said Nina, "we must leave you now. Harry will see about a coffin for your poor mistress; and whenever the funeral is to be, our carriage will come over, and we will all attend."

"Lord bless you, Miss Gordon! Dat ar too good on ye! My heart's been most broke, tinking nobody cared for my poor young mistress! you's too good, dat you is!"

Then, drawing near to her, and sinking his voice, he said: "'Bout de mourning, Miss Nina. He an't no 'count, you know--body can see how 'tis with him very plain. But missis was a Peyton, you know; and I's a Peyton, too. I naturally feels a 'sponsibility he couldn't be 'spected fur to. I's took de ribbons off of Miss Fanny's bonnet, and done de best I could trimming it up with black crape what Milly gave me; and I's got a band of black crape on Master Teddy's hat; and I 'lowed to put one on mine, but there wasn't quite enough. You know, missis, old family servants always wars mourning. If missis just be pleased to look over my work! Now, dis yer is Miss Fanny's bonnet. You know I can't be 'spected for to make it like a milliner."

"They are very well indeed, Uncle Tiff."

"Perhaps, Miss Nina, you can kind of touch it over."

"Oh, if you like, Uncle Tiff, I'll take them all home, and do them for you."

"The Lord bless you, Miss Gordon! Dat ar was just what I wanted, but was most 'fraid to ask you. Some gay young ladies doesn't like to handle black."

"Ah! Uncle Tiff, I've no fears of that sort; so put it in the wagon, and let Milly take it home."

So saying, she turned and passed out of the door where Harry was standing holding the horses. A third party might have seen, by the keen, rapid glance with which his eye rested upon Clayton, that he was measuring the future probability which might make him the arbiter of his own destiny--the disposer of all that was dear to him in life. As for Nina, although the day before a thousand fancies and coquetries would have colored the manner of her meeting Clayton, yet now she was so impressed by what she had witnessed, that she scarcely appeared to know that she had met him. She placed her pretty foot on his hand, and let him lift her on to the saddle, scarcely noticing the act, except by a serious, graceful inclination of her head.

One great reason of the ascendency which Clayton had thus far gained over her, was that his nature, so quiet, speculative, and undemonstrative, always left her such perfect liberty to follow the more varying moods of her own. A man of a different mould would have sought to awake her out of the trance--would have remarked on her abstracted manner, or rallied her on her silence. Clayton merely mounted his horse and rode quietly by her side, while Harry, passing on before them, was soon out of sight.

XI. THE LOVERS

They rode on in silence, till their horses' feet again clattered in the clear, pebbly water of the stream. Here Nina checked her horse; and, pointing round the circle of pine forests, and up the stream, overhung with bending trees and branches, said:

"Hush!--listen!" Both stopped, and heard the swaying of the pine-trees, the babble of the waters, the cawing of distant crows, and the tapping of the woodpecker.

"How beautiful everything is!" she said. "It seems to me so sad that people must die! I never saw anybody dead before, and you don't know how it makes me feel! To think that that poor woman was just such a girl as I am, and used to be just so full of life, and never thought any more than I do that she should lie there all cold and dead! Why is it things are made so beautiful, if we must die?"

"Remember what you said to the old man, Miss Nina. Perhaps she sees more beautiful things, now."

"In heaven? Yes; I wish we knew more about heaven, so that it would seem natural and home-like to us, as this world does. As for me, I can't feel that I ever want to leave this world--I enjoy living so much! I can't forget how cold her hand was! I never felt anything like that cold!"

In all the varying moods of Nina, Clayton had never seen anything that resembled this. But he understood the peculiar singleness and earnestness of nature which made any one idea, or impression, for a time absolute in her mind. They turned their horses into the wood-path, and rode on in silence.

"Do you know," said she, "it's such a change coming from New York to live here? Everything is so unformed, so wild, and so lonely! I never saw anything so lonesome as these woods are. Here you can ride miles and miles, hours and hours, and hear nothing but the swaying of the pine-trees, just as you hear it now. Our place (you never were there, were you?) stands all by itself, miles from any other; and I've been for so many years used to a thickly-settled country, that it seems very strange to me. I can't help thinking things look rather deserted and desolate, here. It makes me rather sober and sad. I don't know as you'll like the appearance of our place. A great many things are going to decay about it; and yet there are some things that can't decay; for papa was very fond of trees and shrubbery, and we have a good deal more of them than usual. Are you fond of trees?"

"Yes; I'm almost a tree-worshipper. I have no respect for a man who can't appreciate a tree. The only good thing I ever heard of Xerxes was, that he was so transported with the beauty of a plane-tree, that he hung it with chains of gold. This is a little poetical island in the barbarism of those days."

"Xerxes!" said Nina. "I believe I studied something about him in that dismal, tedious history at Madame Ardaine's; but nothing so interesting as that, I'm sure. But what should he hang gold chains on a tree for?"

"'Twas the best way he knew of expressing his good opinion."

"Do you know," said Nina, half checking her horse, suddenly, "that I never had the least idea that these men were alive that we read about in these histories, or that they had any feelings like ours? We always studied the lessons, and learnt the hard names, and how forty thousand were killed on one side, and fifty thousand on the other; and we don't know any more about it than if we never had. That's the way we girls studied at school, except a few 'poky' ones, who wanted to be learned, or meant to be teachers."

"An interesting résumé, certainly," said Clayton, laughing.

"But how strange it is," said Nina, "to think that all those folks we read about are alive now, doing something somewhere; and I get to wondering where they are--Xerxes, and Alexander, and the rest of them. Why, they were so full of life they kept everything in commotion while in this world; and I wonder if they have been keeping a going ever since. Perhaps Xerxes has been looking round at our trees--nobody knows. But here we are coming now to the beginning of our grounds. There, you see that holly-hedge! Mamma had that set out. She travelled in England, and liked the hedges there so much that she thought she would see what could be done with our American holly. So she had these brought from the woods, and planted. You see it all grows wild, now, because it hasn't been cut for many years. And this live-oak avenue my grandfather set out. It's my pride and delight."

As she spoke, a pair of broad gates swung open, and they cantered in beneath the twilight arches of the oaks. Long wreaths of pearly moss hung swinging from the branches, and, although the sun now was at high noon, a dewy, dreamy coolness seemed to rustle through all the leaves. As Clayton passed in, he took off his hat, as he had often done in foreign countries in cathedrals.

"Welcome to Canema!" said she, riding up to him, and looking up frankly into his face.

The air, half queenly, half childish, with which this was said, was acknowledged by Clayton with a grave smile, as he replied, bowing,--

"Thank you, madam."

"Perhaps," she added, in a grave tone, "you'll be sorry that you ever came here."

"What do you mean by that?" he replied.

"I don't know; it just came into my head to say it. We none of us ever know what's going to come of what we do."

At this instant, a violent clamor, like the cawing of a crow, rose on one side of the avenue; and the moment after Tomtit appeared, caricoling, and cutting a somerset; his curls flying, his cheeks glowing.

"Why, Tomtit, what upon earth is this for?" said Nina.

"Laws, missis, deres been a gen'elman waiting for you at the house these two hours. And missis, she's done got on her best cap, and gone down in the parlor for him."

Nina felt herself blush to the roots of her hair, and was vexed and provoked to think she did so. Involuntarily her eyes met Clayton's. But he expressed neither curiosity nor concern.

"What a pretty drapery this light moss makes!" said he. "I wasn't aware that it grew so high up in the state."

"Yes; it is very pretty," said Nina, abstractedly.

Clayton, however, had noticed both the message and the blush, and was not so ill-informed as Nina supposed as to the whole affair, having heard from a New York correspondent of the probability that an arrival might appear upon the field about this time. He was rather curious to watch the development produced by this event. They paced up the avenue, conversing in disconnected intervals, till they came out on the lawn which fronted the mansion--a large, gray, three-story building, surrounded on the four sides by wide balconies of wood. Access was had to the lower of these by a broad flight of steps. And there Nina saw, plain enough, her Aunt Nesbit in all the proprieties of cap and silk gown, sitting, making the agreeable to Mr. Carson.

Mr. Frederic Augustus Carson was one of those nice little epitomes of conventional society, which appear to such advantage in factitious life, and are so out of place in the undress, sincere surroundings of country life. Nina had liked his society extremely well in the drawing-rooms and opera-houses of New York. But, in the train of thought inspired by the lonely and secluded life she was now leading, it seemed to her an absolute impossibility that she could, even in coquetry and in sport, have allowed such an one to set up pretensions to her hand and heart. She was vexed with herself that she had done so, and therefore not in the most amiable mood for a meeting. Therefore, when, on ascending the steps, he rushed precipitately forward, and, offering his hand, called her Nina, she was ready to die with vexation. She observed, too, a peculiar swelling and rustling of Aunt Nesbit's plumage,--an indescribable air of tender satisfaction, peculiar to elderly ladies who are taking an interest in an affair of the heart, which led her to apprehend that the bachelor had commenced operations by declaring his position to her. 'Twas with some embarrassment that Nina introduced Mr. Clayton, whom Aunt Nesbit received with a most stately curtsey, and Mr. Carson with a patronizing bow.

"Mr. Carson has been waiting for you these two hours," said Aunt Nesbit.

"Very warm riding, Nina," said Mr. Carson, observing her red cheeks. "You've been riding too fast, I fear. You must be careful of yourself. I've known people bring on very grave illnesses by over-heating the blood!"

Clayton seated himself near the door, and seemed to be intent on the scene without. And Carson, drawing his chair close to Nina, asked, in a confidential under-tone,--

"Who is that gentleman?"

"Mr. Clayton, of Claytonville," said Nina, with as much hauteur as she could assume.

"Ah, yes!--Hem!--hem! I've heard of the family--a very nice family--a very worthy young man--extremely, I'm told. Shall be happy to make his acquaintance."

"I beg," said Nina, rising, "the gentlemen will excuse me a moment or two."

Clayton replied by a grave bow, while Mr. Carson, with great empressement, handed Nina to the door. The moment it was closed, she stamped, with anger, in the entry.

"The provoking fool! to take these airs with me! And I, too--I deserve it! What on earth could make me think I could tolerate that man?"

As if Nina's cup were not yet full, Aunt Nesbit followed her to her chamber with an air of unusual graciousness.

"Nina, my dear, he has told me all about it! and I assure you I'm very much pleased with him!"

"Told you all about what?" said Nina.

"Why, your engagement, to be sure! I'm delighted to think you've done so well! I think your Aunt Maria, and all of them, will be delighted! Takes a weight of care off my mind!"

"I wish you wouldn't trouble yourself about me, or my affairs, Aunt Nesbit!" said Nina. "And, as for this old pussy-cat, with his squeaking boots, I won't have him purring round me, that's certain! So provoking, to take that way towards me! Call me Nina, and talk as though he were lord paramount of me, and everything here! I'll let him know!"

"Why, Nina! Seems to me this is very strange conduct! I am very much astonished at you!"

"I dare say you are, aunt! I never knew the time I didn't astonish you! But this man I detest!"

"Well, then, my dear, what were you engaged to him for?"

"Engaged! Aunt, for pity's sake, do hush! Engaged! I should like to know what a New York engagement amounts to! Engaged at the opera!--Engaged for a joke! Why, he was my bouquet-holder! The man is just an opera libretto! He was very useful in his time. But who wants him afterwards?"

"But, my dear Nina, this trifling with gentlemen's hearts!"

"I'll warrant his heart! It's neither sugar nor salt, I'll assure you. I'll tell you what, aunt, he loves good eating, good drinking, nice clothes, nice houses, and good times generally! and he wants a pretty wife as a part of a whole; and he thinks he'll take me. But he is mistaken. Calling me 'Nina,' indeed! Just let me have a chance of seeing him alone! I'll teach him to call me 'Nina'! I'll let him know how things stand!"

"But, Nina, you must confess you've given him occasion for all this."

"Well, supposing I have? I'll give him occasion for something else, then!"

"Why, my dear," said Aunt Nesbit, "he came on to know when you'll fix the day to be married!"

"Married! Oh, my gracious! Just think of the creature's talking about it! Well, it is my fault, as you say; but I'll do the best I can to mend it."

"Well, I'm really sorry for him," said Aunt Nesbit.

"You are, aunt? Why don't you take him yourself, then? You are as young and good-looking as he is."

"Nina, how you talk!" said Aunt Nesbit, coloring and bridling. "There was a time when I wasn't bad-looking, to be sure; but that's long since past."

"Oh, that's because you always dress in stone-color and drab," said Nina, as she stood brushing and arranging her curls. "Come, now, and go down, aunt, and do the best you can till I make my appearance. After all, as you say, I'm the most to blame. There's no use in being vexed with the old soul. So, aunt, do be as fascinating as you can; see if you can't console him. Only remember how you used to turn off lovers, when you were of my age."

"And who is this other gentleman, Nina?"

"Oh, nothing, only he is a friend of mine. A very good man--good enough for a minister, any day, aunt, and not so stupid as good people generally are, either."

"Well, perhaps you are engaged to him?"

"No, I am not; that is to say, I won't be to anybody. This is an insufferable business! I like Mr. Clayton, because he can let me alone, don't look at me in that abominably delighted way all the time, and dance about, calling me Nina! He and I are very good friends, that's all. I'm not going to have any engagements anywhere."

"Well, Nina, I'll go down, and you make haste."

While the gentlemen and Aunt Nesbit were waiting in the saloon, Carson made himself extremely happy and at home. It was a large, cool apartment, passing, like a hall, completely through the centre of the house. Long French windows, at either end, opened on to balconies. The pillars of the balconies were draped and garlanded with wreaths of roses now in full bloom. The floor of the room was the polished mosaic of different colors to which we have formerly alluded. Over the mantel-piece was sculptured in oak the Gordon arms. The room was wainscoted with dark wood, and hung with several fine paintings, by Copley and Stuart, of different members of the family. A grand piano, lately arrived from New York, was the most modern-looking article in the room. Most of the furniture was of heavy dark mahogany, of an antique pattern. Clayton sat by the door, still admiring the avenue of oaks which were to be seen across the waving green of the lawn.

In about half an hour Nina reappeared in a flossy cloud of muslin, lace, and gauzy ribbons. Dress was one of those accomplishments for which the little gypsy had a natural instinct; and, without any apparent thought, she always fell into that kind of color and material which harmonized with her style of appearance and character. There was always something floating and buoyant about the arrangement of her garments and drapery; so that to see her move across the floor gave one an airy kind of sensation, like the gambols of thistle-down. Her brown eyes had a peculiar resemblance to a bird's; and this effect was increased by a twinkling motion of the head, and a fluttering habit of movement peculiar to herself; so that when she swept by in rosy gauzes, and laid one ungloved hand lightly on the piano, she seemed to Clayton much like some saucy bird--very good indeed if let alone, but ready to fly on the slightest approach.

Clayton had the rare faculty of taking in every available point of observation, without appearing to stare.

"'Pon my word, Nina," said Mr. Carson, coming towards her with a most delighted air, "you look as if you had fallen out of a rainbow!"

Nina turned away very coolly, and began arranging her music.

"Oh, that's right!" said Carson; "give us one of your songs. Sing something from the Favorita. You know it's my favorite opera," said he, assuming a most sentimental expression.

"Oh, I'm entirely out of practice--I don't sing at all. I'm sick of all those opera-songs!" And Nina skimmed across the floor, and out of the open door by which Clayton was lounging, and began busying herself amid the flowers that wreathed the porch. In a moment Carson was at her heels; for he was one of those persons who seem to think it a duty never to allow any one to be quiet, if they can possibly prevent it.

"Have you ever studied the language of flowers, Nina?" said he.

"No, I don't like to study languages."

"You know the signification of a full-blown rose?" said he, tenderly presenting her with one.

Nina took the rose, coloring with vexation, and then, plucking from the bush a rose of two or three days' bloom, whose leaves were falling out, she handed it to him, and said,--

"Do you understand the signification of this?"

"Oh, you have made an unfortunate selection! This rose is all falling to pieces!" said Mr. Carson, innocently.

"So I observed," said Nina, turning away quickly; then, making one of her darting movements, she was in the middle of the saloon again, just as the waiter announced dinner.

Clayton rose gravely, and offered his arm to Aunt Nesbit; and Nina found herself obliged to accept the delighted escort of Mr. Carson, who, entirely unperceiving, was in the briskest possible spirits, and established himself comfortably between Aunt Nesbit and Nina.

"You must find it very dull here--very barren country, shockingly so! What do you find to interest yourself in?" said he.

"Will you take some of this gumbo?" replied Nina.

"I always thought," said Aunt Nesbit, "it was a good plan for girls to have a course of reading marked out to them when they left school."

"Oh, certainly," said Carson. "I shall be happy to mark out one for her. I've done it for several young ladies."

At this moment Nina accidentally happened to catch Clayton's eye, which was fixed upon Mr. Carson with an air of quiet amusement greatly disconcerting to her.

"Now," said Mr. Carson, "I have no opinion of making blues of young ladies; but still, I think, Mrs. Nesbit, that a little useful information adds greatly to their charms. Don't you?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Nesbit. "I've been reading 'Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' lately."

"Yes," said Nina, "aunt's been busy about that ever since I can remember."

"That's a very nice book," said Mr. Carson, looking solemnly at Nina; "only, Mrs. Nesbit, an't you afraid of the infidel principle? I think, in forming the minds of the young, you know, one cannot be too careful."

"Why, he struck me as a very pious writer!" said Aunt Nesbit, innocently. "I'm sure, he makes the most religious reflections, all along. I liked him particularly on that account."

It seemed to Nina that, without looking at Clayton, she was forced to meet his eye. No matter whether she directed her attention to the asparagus or the potatoes, it was her fatality always to end by a rencounter with his eye; and she saw, for some reason or other, the conversation was extremely amusing to him.

"For my part," said Nina, "I don't know what sort of principles Aunt Nesbit's history, there, has; but one thing I'm pretty certain of,--that I'm not in any danger from any such thick, close-printed, old, stupid-looking books as that. I hate reading, and I don't intend to have my mind formed; so that nobody need trouble themselves to mark out courses for me! What is it to me what all these old empires have been, a hundred years ago? It is as much as I can do to attend to what is going on now."

"For my part," said Aunt Nesbit, "I've always regretted that I neglected the cultivation of my mind when I was young. I was like Nina, here, immersed in vanity and folly."

"People always talk," said Nina, reddening, "as if there was but one kind of vanity and folly in the world. I think there can be as much learned vanity and folly as we girls have!" And she looked at Clayton indignantly, as she saw him laughing.

"I agree with Miss Gordon, entirely. There is a great deal of very stupid respectable trifling, which people pursue under the head of courses of reading," he said. "And I don't wonder that most compends of history which are studied in schools should inspire any lively young lady with a life-long horror, not only of history, but of reading."

"Do you think so?" said Nina, with a look of inexpressible relief.

"I do, indeed," said Clayton. "And it would have been a very good thing for many of our historians, if they had been obliged to have shaped their histories so that they would interest a lively school-girl. We literary men, then, would have found less sleepy reading. There is no reason why a young lady, who would sit up all night reading a novel, should not be made to sit up all night with a history. I'll venture to say there's no romance can come up to the gorgeousness and splendor, and the dramatic power, of things that really have happened. All that's wanting is to have it set before us with an air of reality."

"But, then," said Nina, "you'd have to make the history into a romance."

"Well, a good historical romance is generally truer than a dull history; because it gives some sort of conception of the truth; whereas, the dull history gives none."

"Well, then," said Nina, "I'll confess, now, that about all the history I do know has been got from Walter Scott's novels. I always told our history-teacher so; but she insisted upon it that it was very dangerous reading."

"For my part," said Mrs. Nesbit, "I've a great horror of novel-reading, particularly for young ladies. It did me a great deal of harm when I was young. It dissipates the mind; it gives false views of life."

"Oh, law!" said Nina. "We used to write compositions about that, and I've got it all by heart--how it raises false expectations, and leads people to pursue phantoms, rainbows, and meteors, and all that sort of thing!"

"And yet," said Clayton, "all these objections would lie against perfectly true history, and the more so just in proportion to its truth. If the history of Napoleon Bonaparte were graphically and minutely given, it would lie open to the very same objections. It would produce the very same cravings for something out of the commonplace course of life. There would be the same dazzling mixture of bad and good qualities in the hero, and the same lassitude and exhaustion after the story was finished. And common history does not do this, simply because it is not true--does not produce a vivid impression of the reality as it happened."

Aunt Nesbit only got an indefinite impression, from this harangue, that Clayton was defending novel-reading, and felt herself called to employ her own peculiar line of reasoning to meet it, which consisted in saying the same thing over and over, at regular intervals, without appearing to hear or notice anything said in reply. Accordingly, she now drew herself up, with a slightly virtuous air, and said to Mr. Clayton,--

"I must say, after all, that I don't approve of novel-reading. It gives false views of life, and disgusts young people with their duties."

"I was only showing, madam, that the same objection would apply to the best-written history," said Clayton.

"I think novel-reading does a great deal of harm," rejoined Aunt Nesbit. "I never allow myself to read any work of fiction. I'm principled against it."

"For my part," said Nina, "I wish I could find that kind of history you are speaking of; I believe I could read that."

"'Twould be very interesting history, certainly," said Mr. Carson. "I should think it would prove a very charming mode of writing. I wonder somebody don't produce one."

"For my part," said Aunt Nesbit, "I confine myself entirely to what is practically useful. Useful information is all I desire."

"Well, I suppose, then, I'm very wicked," said Nina; "but I don't like anything useful. Why, I've sometimes thought, when I've been in the garden, that the summer-savory, sage, and sweet-marjoram, were just as pretty as many other flowers; and I couldn't see any reason why I shouldn't like a sprig of one of them for a bouquet, except that I've seen them used for stuffing turkeys. Well, now, that seems very bad of me, don't it?"

"That reminds me," said Aunt Nesbit, "that Rose has been putting sage into this turkey again, after all that I said to her. I believe she does it on purpose."

At this moment Harry appeared at the door, and requested to speak to Nina.

After a few moments' whispered conversation, she came back to the table, apparently disconcerted.

"I'm so sorry--so very sorry!" she said. "Harry has been riding all round the country to find a minister to attend the funeral, this evening. It will be such a disappointment to that poor fellow! You know the negroes think so much of having prayers at the grave!"

"If no one else can be found to read prayers, I will," said Clayton.

"Oh, thank you! will you, indeed?" said Nina. "I'm glad of it, now, for poor Tiff's sake. The coach will be out at five o'clock, and we'll ride over together, and make as much of a party as we can."

---------

"Why, child," said Aunt Nesbit to Nina, after they returned to the parlor, "I did not know that Mr. Clayton was an Episcopalian."

"He isn't," said Nina. "He and his family all attend the Presbyterian church."

"How strange that he should offer to read prayers!" said Aunt Nesbit. "I don't approve of such things, for my part."

"Such things as what?"

"Countenancing Episcopal errors. If we are right, they are wrong, and we ought not to countenance them."

"But, aunt, the burial-service is beautiful."

"Don't approve of it!" said Aunt Nesbit.

"Why, you know, as Clayton isn't a minister, he would not feel like making an extempore prayer."

"Shows great looseness of religious principle," said Aunt Nesbit. "Don't approve of it!"

XII. EXPLANATIONS

The golden arrows of the setting sun were shooting hither and thither through the pine woods, glorifying whatever they touched with a life not its own. A chorus of birds were pouring out an evening melody, when a little company stood around an open grave. With instinctive care for the feeling of the scene, Nina had arrayed herself in a black silk dress, and plain straw bonnet with black ribbon--a mark of respect to the deceased remembered and narrated by Tiff for many a year after.

Cripps stood by the head of the grave, with that hopeless, imbecile expression with which a nature wholly gross and animal often contemplates the symbols of the close of mortal existence. Tiff stood by the side of the grave, his white hat conspicuously draped with black crape, and a deep weed of black upon his arm. The baby, wrapped in an old black shawl, was closely fondled in his bosom, while the two children stood weeping bitterly at his side. The other side of the grave stood Mr. Carson and Mr. Clayton, while Milly, Harry, and several plantation slaves, were in a group behind.

The coffin had been opened, that all might take that last look, so coveted, yet so hopeless, which the human heart will claim on the very verge of the grave. It was but a moment since the coffin had been closed; and the burst of grief which shook the children was caused by that last farewell. As Clayton, in a musical voice, pronounced the words, "I am the resurrection and the life," Nina wept and sobbed as if the grief had been her own; nor did she cease to weep during the whole touching service. It was the same impulsive nature which made her so gay in other scenes that made her so sympathetic here. When the whole was over, she kissed the children, and, shaking hands with old Tiff, promised to come and see them on the morrow. After which, Clayton led her to the carriage, into which he and Carson followed her.

"Upon my word," said Carson, briskly, "this has been quite solemn! Really, a very interesting funeral, indeed! I was delighted with the effect of our church service; in such a romantic place, too! 'Twas really very interesting. It pleases me, also, to see young ladies in your station, Nina, interest themselves in the humble concerns of the poor. If young ladies knew how much more attractive it made them to show a charitable spirit, they would cultivate it more. Singular-looking person, that old negro! Seems to be a good creature. Interesting children, too! I should think the woman must have been pretty when she was young. Seen a great deal of trouble, no doubt, poor thing! It's a comfort to hope she is better off now."

Nina was filled with indignation at this monologue; not considering that the man was giving the very best he had in him, and laboring assiduously at what he considered his vocation, the prevention of half an hour of silence in any spot of earth where he could possibly make himself heard. The same excitement which made Nina cry made him talk. But he was not content with talking, but insisted upon asking Nina, every moment, if she didn't think it an interesting occasion, and if she had not been much impressed.

"I don't feel like talking, Mr. Carson," said Nina.

"Oh--ah--yes, indeed! You've been so deeply affected--yes. Naturally does incline one to silence. Understand your feelings perfectly. Very gratifying to me to see you take such a deep interest in your fellow-creatures."

Nina could have pushed him out of the carriage.

"For my part," continued Carson, "I think we don't reflect enough about this kind of thing--I positively don't. It really is useful sometimes to have one's thoughts turned in this direction. It does us good."

Thus glibly did Carson proceed to talk away the impression of the whole scene they had witnessed. Long before the carriage reached home, Nina had forgotten all her sympathy in a tumult of vexation. She discovered an increasing difficulty in making Carson understand, by any degree of coolness, that he was not acceptable; and saw nothing before her but explanations in the very plainest terms, mortifying and humiliating as that might be. His perfect self-complacent ease, and the air with which he constantly seemed to appropriate her as something which of right belonged to himself, filled her with vexation. But yet her conscience told her that she had brought it upon herself.

"I won't bear this another hour!" she said to herself, as she ascended the steps toward the parlor. "All this before Clayton too! What must he think of me?" But they found tea upon the table and Aunt Nesbit waiting.

"It's a pity, madam, you were not with us. Such an interesting time!" said Mr. Carson, launching, with great volubility, into the tide of discourse.

"It wouldn't have done for me at all," said Mrs. Nesbit. "Being out when the dew falls, always brings on hoarseness. I have been troubled in that way these two or three years. Now I have to be very careful. Then I'm timid about riding in a carriage with John's driving."

"I was amused enough," said Nina, "with Old Hundred's indignation at having to get out the carriage and horses to go over to what he called a 'cracker funeral.' I really believe, if he could have upset us without hurting himself, he would have done it."

"For my part," said Aunt Nesbit, "I hope that family will move off before long. It's very disagreeable having such people round."

"The children look very pretty and bright," said Nina.

"Oh, there's no hope for them! They'll grow up and be just like their parents. I've seen that sort of people all through and through. I don't wish them any evil; only I don't want to have anything to do with them!"

"For my part," said Nina, "I'm sorry for them. I wonder why the legislature, or somebody, don't have schools, as they do up in New York State? There isn't anywhere there where children can't go to school, if they wish to. Besides, aunt, these children really came from an old family in Virginia. Their old servant-man says that their mother was a Peyton."

"I don't believe a word of it! They'll lie--all of them. They always do."

"Well," said Nina, "I shall do something for these children, at any rate."

"I quite agree with you, Nina. It shows a very excellent spirit in you," said Mr. Carson. "You'll always find me ready to encourage everything of that sort."

Nina frowned, and looked indignant. But to no purpose. Mr. Carson went on remorselessly with his really good-hearted rattle, till Nina, at last, could bear it no longer.

"How dreadfully warm this room is!" said she, springing up. "Come, let's go back into the parlor."

Nina was as much annoyed at Clayton's silence, and his quiet, observant reserve, as with Carson's forth-putting. Rising from table, she passed on before the company, with a half-flying trip, into the hall, which lay now cool, calm, and breezy, in the twilight, with the odor of the pillar-roses floating in at the window. The pale white moon, set in the rosy belt of the evening sky, looked in at the open door. Nina would have given all the world to be still; but, well aware that stillness was out of the question, she determined to select her own noise; and, sitting down at the piano, began playing very fast, in a rapid, restless, disconnected manner. Clayton threw himself on a lounge by the open door; while Carson busied himself fluttering the music, opening and shutting music-books, and interspersing running commentaries and notes of admiration on the playing.

At last, as if she could bear it no longer, she rose, with a very decided air, from the piano, and, facing about towards Mr. Carson, said:--

"It looks very beautifully out doors. Don't you want to come out? There's a point of view at the end of one of the paths, where the moon looks on the water, that I should like to show you."

"Won't you catch cold, Nina?" said Aunt Nesbit.

"No, indeed! I never catch cold," said Nina, springing into the porch, and taking the delighted Mr. Carson's arm. And away she went with him, with almost a skip and a jump, leaving Clayton tête-à-tête with Aunt Nesbit.

Nina went so fast that her attendant was almost out of breath. They reached a little knoll, and there Nina stopped suddenly, and said, "Look here, Mr. Carson; I have something to say to you."

"I should be delighted, my dear Nina! I'm perfectly charmed!"

"No--no--if you please--don't!" said Nina, putting up her hand to stop him. "Just wait till you hear what I have to say. I believe you did not get a letter which I wrote you a few days ago, did you?"

"A letter! no, indeed. How unfortunate!"

"Very unfortunate for me!" said Nina; "and for you, too. Because, if you had, it would have saved you and me the trouble of this interview. I wrote that letter to tell you, Mr. Carson, that I cannot think of such a thing as an engagement with you! That I've acted very wrong and very foolishly; but that I cannot do it. In New York, where everybody and everything seemed to be trifling, and where the girls all trifled with these things, I was engaged--just for frolic--nothing more. I had no idea what it would amount to; no idea what I was saying, nor how I should feel afterwards. But every hour since I've been home, here, since I've been so much alone, has made me feel how wrong it is. Now, I'm very sorry, I'm sure. But I must speak the truth, this time. But it is--I can't tell you how--disagreeable to me to have you treat me as you have since you've been here!"

"Miss Gordon!" said Mr. Carson, "I am positively astonished! I--I don't know what to think!"

"Well, I only want you to think that I am in earnest; and that, though I can like you very well as an acquaintance, and shall always wish you well, yet anything else is just as far out of the question as that moon there is from us. I can't tell you how sorry I am that I've made you all this trouble. I really am," said she, good-naturedly; "but please now to understand how we stand." She turned, and tripped away.

"There!" said she, to herself, "at any rate, I've done one thing!"

Mr. Carson stood still, gradually recovering from the stupor into which this communication had thrown him. He stretched himself, rubbed his eyes, took out his watch and looked at it, and then began walking off with a very sober pace in the opposite direction from Nina. Happily-constituted mortal that he was, nothing ever could be subtracted from his sum of complacence that could not be easily balanced by about a quarter of an hour's consideration. The walk through the shrubbery in which he was engaged was an extremely pretty one, and wound along on the banks of the river through many picturesque points of view, and finally led again to the house by another approach. During the course of this walk Mr. Carson had settled the whole question for himself. In the first place, he repeated the comfortable old proverb, that there were as good fish in the sea as ever were caught. In the second place, as Mr. Carson was a shrewd business-man, it occurred to him, in this connection, that the plantation was rather run down, and not a profitable acquisition. And, in the third place, contemplating Nina as the fox of old did his bunch of sour grapes, he began to remember that, after all, she was dressy, expensive, and extravagant. Then, as he did not want that imperturbable good-nature which belongs to a very shallow capability of feeling, he said to himself that he shouldn't like the girl a bit the less. In fact, when he thought of his own fine fortune, his house in New York, and all the accessories which went to make up himself, he considered her, on the whole, as an object of pity; and, by the time that he ascended the balcony steps again, he was in as charitable and Christian a frame as any rejected suitor could desire.

He entered the drawing-room. Aunt Nesbit had ordered candles, and was sitting up with her gloves on, alone. What had transpired during his walk, he did not know; but we will take our readers into confidence.

Nina returned to the house with the same decided air with which she went out, and awakened Mr. Clayton from a reverie with a brisk little tap of her fan on his shoulder.

"Come up here with me," she said, "and look out of the library window, and see this moonlight."

And up she went, over the old oaken staircase, stopping on each landing; and, beckoning to Clayton, with a whimsically authoritative gesture, threw open the door of a large, black-wainscoted room, and ushered him in. The room lay just above the one where they had been sitting, and, like that, opened on to the veranda by long-sashed windows, through which, at the present moment, a flood of moonlight was pouring. A large, mahogany writing-table, covered with papers, stood in the middle of the room, and the moon shone in so brightly that the pattern of the bronze inkstand, and the color of the wafers and sealing-wax, were plainly revealed. The window commanded a splendid view of the river over the distant tree-tops, as it lay shimmering and glittering in the moonlight.

"Isn't that a beautiful sight?" said Nina, in a hurried voice.

"Very beautiful!" said Clayton, sitting down in the large lounging-chair before the window, and looking out with the abstracted air which was habitual with him.

After a moment's thought, Nina added, with a sudden effort,--

"But, after all, that was not what I wanted to speak to you about. I wanted to see you somewhere, and say a few words which it seems to me it is due to you that I should say. I got your last letter, and I'm sure I am very much obliged to your sister for all the kind things she says; but I think you must have been astonished at what you have seen since you have been here."

"Astonished at what?" said Clayton, quietly.

"At Mr. Carson's manners towards me."

"I have not been astonished at all," replied Clayton, quietly.

"I think, at all events," said Nina, "I think it is no more than honorable that I should tell you exactly how things have stood. Mr. Carson has thought that he had a right to me and mine; and I was so foolish as to give him reason to think so. The fact is, that I have been making a game of life, and saying and doing anything and everything that came into my head, just for frolic. It don't seem to me that there has been anything serious or real about me, until very lately. Somehow, my acquaintance with you has made things seem more real to me than they ever did before; and it seems to me now perfectly incredible, the way we girls used to play and trifle with everything in the world. Just for sport, I was engaged to that man; just for sport, too, I have been engaged to another one."

"And," said Clayton, breaking the silence, "just for sport, have you been engaged to me?"

"No," said Nina, after a few moments' silence, "not in sport, certainly; but, yet, not enough in earnest. I think I am about half waked up. I don't know myself. I don't know where or what I am, and I want to go back into that thoughtless dream. I do really think it's too hard to take up the responsibility of living in good earnest. Now, it seems to me just this,--that I cannot be bound to anybody. I want to be free. I have positively broken all connection with Mr. Carson; I have broken with another one, and I wish"--

"To break with me?" said Clayton.

"I don't really know as I can say what I do wish. It is a very different thing from any of the others, but there's a feeling of dread, and responsibility, and constraint, about it; and, though I think I should feel very lonesome now without you, and though I like to get your letters, yet it seems to me that I cannot be engaged,--that is a most dreadful feeling to me."

"My dear friend," said Clayton, "if that is all, make yourself easy. There's no occasion for our being engaged. If you can enjoy being with me and writing to me, why, do it in the freest way, and to-morrow shall take care for the things of itself. You shall say what you please, do what you please, write when you please, and not write when you please, and have as many or as few letters as you like. There can be no true love without liberty."

"Oh, I'm sure I'm much obliged to you!" said Nina, with a sigh of relief. "And, now, do you know, I like your sister's postscript very much; but I can't tell what it is in it, for the language is as kind as can be, that would give me the impression that she is one of those very proper kind of people, that would be dreadfully shocked if she knew of all my goings on in New York."

Clayton could hardly help laughing at the instinctive sagacity of this remark.

"I'm sure I don't know," said he, "where you could have seen that,--in so short a postscript, too."

"Do you know, I never take anybody's handwriting into my hand, that I don't feel an idea of them come over me, just as you have when you see people? And that idea came over me when I read your sister's letter."

"Well, Nina, to tell you the truth, sister Anne is a little bit conventional--a little set in her ways; but, after all, a large-hearted, warm-hearted woman. You would like each other, I know."

"I don't know about that," said Nina. "I am very apt to shock proper people. Somehow or other, they have a faculty of making me contrary."

"Well, but, you see, Anne isn't merely a conventional person; there's only the slightest crust of conventionality, and a real warm heart under it."

"Whereas," said Nina, "most conventional people are like a shallow river, frozen to the bottom. But, now, really, I should like very much to have your sister come and visit us, if I could think that she would come as any other friend; but, you know, it isn't very agreeable to have anybody come to look one over to see if one will do."

Clayton laughed at the naïve, undisguised frankness of this speech.

"You see," said Nina, "though I'm nothing but an ignorant school-girl, I'm as proud as if I had everything to be proud of. Now, do you know, I don't much like writing to your sister, because I don't think I write very good letters! I never could sit still long enough to write."

"Write exactly as you talk," said Clayton. "Say just what comes into your head, just as you would talk it. I hope you will do that much, for it will be very dull writing all on one side."

"Well," said Nina, rising, with animation, "now, Mr. Edward Clayton, if we have settled about this moonlight, we may as well go down into the parlor, where Aunt Nesbit and Mr. Carson are tête-à-tête."

"Poor Carson!" said Clayton.

"Oh, don't pity him! Good soul! he's a man that one night's rest would bring round from anything in creation. He's so thoroughly good-natured! Besides, I shall like him better, now. He did not use to seem to me so intrusive and disagreeable. We girls used to like him very well, he was such a comfortable, easy-tempered, agreeable creature, always brisk and in spirits, and knowing everything that went on. But he is one of those men that I think would be really insufferable, if anything serious were the matter with me. Now, you heard how he talked coming from that funeral! Do you know, that if he had been coming from my funeral, it would have been just so?"

"Oh, no, not quite so bad," said Clayton.

"Indeed he is," said Nina. "That man! why, he just puts me in mind of one of these brisk blue-flies, whirring and whisking about, marching over pages of books, and alighting on all sorts of things. When he puts on that grave look, and begins to talk about serious things, he actually looks to me just as a fly does when he stands brushing his wings on a Bible! But, come, let's go down to the good soul."

Down they went, and Nina seemed like a person enfranchised. Never had she seemed more universally gracious. She was chatty and conversable with Carson, and sang over for him all her old opera-songs, with the better grace that she saw that Clayton was listening intently.

As they were sitting and conversing together, the sound of a horse's heels was heard coming up the avenue.

"Who can that be, this time of night?" said Nina, springing to the door, and looking out.

She saw Harry hastening in advance to meet her, and ran down the veranda steps to speak to him.

"Harry, who is coming?"

"Miss Nina, it's Master Tom," said Harry, in a low voice.

"Tom! Oh, mercy!" said Nina, in a voice of apprehension. "What sent him here, now?"

"What sends him anywhere?" said Harry.

Nina reascended the steps, and stood looking apprehensively towards the horseman, who approached every moment nearer. Harry came up on the veranda, and stood a little behind her. In a few moments the horse was up before the steps.

"Hallo, there!" said the rider. "Come, take my horse, you rascal!"

Harry remained perfectly still, put his arms by his side, and stood with a frowning expression on his forehead.

"Don't you hear?" said the horseman, throwing himself off, with an oath. "Come here, boy, and take my horse!"

"For pity's sake," said Nina, turning and looking in Harry's face, "don't have a scene here! Do take his horse, quick! Anything to keep him quiet!"

With a sudden start, Harry went down the steps, and took the bridle from the hand of the newly-arrived in silence.

The horseman sprang up the steps.

"Hallo, Nin, is this you?" And Nina felt herself roughly seized in the arms of a shaggy great-coat, and kissed by lips smelling of brandy and tobacco. She faintly said, as she disengaged herself,--

"Tom, is it you?"

"Yes, to be sure! Who did you think it was? Devilish glad to see me, an't you? Suppose you was in hopes I wouldn't come!"

"Hush, Tom, do! I am glad to see you. There are gentlemen in there; don't speak so loud!"

"Some of your beaux, hey? Well, I am as good a fellow as any of 'em! Free country, I hope! No, I an't going to whisper, for any of them. So now, Nin-- If there isn't old Starchy, to be sure!" said he, as Aunt Nesbit came to the door. "Hallo, old girl, how are you?"

"Thomas!" said Mrs. Nesbit, softly, "Thomas!"

"None of your Thomasing me, you old pussy-cat! Don't you be telling me, neither, to hush! I won't hush, neither! I know what I am about, I guess! It's my house, as much as it is Nin's, and I'm going to do as I have a mind to here! I an't going to have my mouth shut on account of her beaux! So, clear out, I tell you, and let me come in!" and Aunt Nesbit gave back. He pushed his way into the apartment.

He was a young man, about twenty-five years old, who evidently had once possessed advantages of face and figure; but every outline in the face was bloated and rendered unmeaning by habits of constant intemperance. His dark eyes had that muddy and troubled expression which in a young man too surely indicates the habitual consciousness of inward impurity. His broad, high forehead was flushed and pimpled, his lips swollen and tumid, and his whole air and manner gave painful evidence that he was at present too far under the influence of stimulus justly to apprehend what he was about.

Nina followed him, and Clayton was absolutely shocked at the ghastly paleness of her face. She made an uncertain motion towards him, as if she would have gone to him for protection. Clayton rose; Carson, also; and all stood for a moment in silent embarrassment.

"Well, this is a pretty business, to be sure! Nina," said he, turning to her, with a tremendous oath, "why don't you introduce me? Pretty way to meet a brother you haven't seen for three or four years! You act as if you were ashamed of me! Confound it all! introduce me, I say!"

"Tom, don't speak so!" said Nina, laying her hand on his arm, in a soothing tone. "This gentleman is Mr. Clayton; and, Mr. Clayton," she said, lifting her eyes to him, and speaking in a trembling voice, "this is my brother."

Mr. Clayton offered his hand, with the ordinary expressions of civility.

"Mr. Carson," said Nina, "my brother."

There was something inexpressibly touching and affecting in the manner in which this was said. One other person noticed it. Harry, who had given the horse to a servant, stood leaning against the doorway, looking on. A fiery gleam, like that of a steel blade, seemed to shoot from his blue eyes; and each time that Nina said "my brother," he drew in his breath, as one who seeks to restrain himself in some violent inward emotion.

"I suppose you don't any of you want to see me much," said the new-comer, taking a chair, and sitting down doggedly in the centre of the group, with his hat on his head.

"Well, I have as good a right as anybody to be here!" he continued, spitting a quid of tobacco at Aunt Nesbit's feet.

"For my part, I think relations ought to have natural affection, and be glad to see one another. Well, now, you can see, gentlemen, with your own eyes, just how it is here! There's my sister, there. You better believe me, she hasn't seen me for three years! Instead of appearing glad, or anything, there she sits, all curled up in a corner! Won't come near me, more than if I had the plague! Come here, now, you little kit, and sit in my lap!"

He made a movement to pull Nina towards him, which she resisted with an air of terror, looking at her aunt, who, more terrified still, sat with her feet drawn up on the sofa, as if he had been a mad dog. There was reason enough for the terror which seemed to possess them both. Both had too vivid recollections of furious domestic hurricanes that had swept over the family when Tom Gordon came home. Nina remembered the storms of oaths and curses that had terrified her when a child; the times that she had seen her father looking like death, leaning his head on his hand, and sighing as only those sigh who have an only son worse than dead.

It is no wonder, therefore, that Nina, generally courageous and fearless as she was, should have become fearful and embarrassed at his sudden return.

"Tom," she said, softly, coming up to him, "you haven't been to supper. Hadn't you better come out?"

"No you don't!" said he, catching her round the waist, and drawing her on his knee. "You won't get me out of the room, now! I know what I am about! Tell me," continued he, still holding her on his knee, "which of them is it, Nin?--which is the favored one?"

Clayton rose and went out on the veranda, and Mr. Carson asked Harry to show him into his room.

"Hallo! shelling out there, are they? Well, Nin, to tell the truth, I am deuced hungry. For my part, I don't see what the thunder keeps my Jim out so long. I sent him across to the post-office. He ought to have been back certainly as soon as I was. Oh, here he comes! Hallo! you dog, there!" said he, going to the door, where a very black negro was dismounting. "Any letters?"

"No, mas'r. I spect de mails have gin up. Der an't been no letters dere, for no one, for a month. It is some 'quatic disorganization of dese yer creeks, I s'pose. So de letter-bags goes anywhere 'cept der right place."

"Confound it all! I say, you Nin," turning round, "why don't you offer a fellow some supper? Coming home, here, in my own father's house, everybody acts as if they were scared to death! No supper!"

"Why, Tom, I've been asking you, these three or four times."

"Bless us!" said Jim, whispering to Harry. "De mischief is, he an't more than half-primed! Tell her to give him a little more brandy, and after a little we will get him into bed as easy as can be!"

And the event proved so; for, on sitting down to supper, Tom Gordon passed regularly through all the stages of drunkenness; became as outrageously affectionate as he had been before surly, kissed Nina and Aunt Nesbit, cried over his sins and confessed his iniquities, laughed and cried feebly, till at last he sank in his chair asleep.

"Dar, he is done for, now!" said Jim, who had been watching the gradual process. "Now, just you and I, let's tote him off," said he to Harry.

Nina, on her part, retired to a troubled pillow. She foresaw nothing before her but mortification and embarrassment, and realized more than ever the peculiar loneliness of her situation.

For all purposes of consultation and aid, Aunt Nesbit was nobody in her esteem, and Nina was always excited and vexed by every new attempt that she made to confide in her.

"Now, to-morrow," she said to herself, as she lay down, "no one knows what will turn up. He will go round as usual, interfering with everything--threatening and frightening my servants, and getting up some difficulty with Harry. Dear me! it seems to me life is coming over me hard enough, and all at once, too!"

As Nina said this, she saw some one standing by her bed. It was Milly, who stooped tenderly over her, smoothing and arranging the bed-clothes in a motherly way.

"Is that you, Milly? Oh, sit down here a minute! I am so troubled! It seems to me I've had so much trouble to-day! Do you know Tom came home to-night so drunk! Oh, dear Milly, it was horrid! Do you know he took me in his arms and kissed me; and, though he is my only brother, it's perfectly dreadful to me! And I feel so worried, and so anxious!"

"Yes, lamb, I knows all about dese yer things," said Milly. "I's seen him many and many times."

"The worst of it is," said Nina, "that I don't know what he will do to-morrow--and before Mr. Clayton, too! It makes me feel so helpless, ashamed, and mortifies me so!"

"Yes, yes, chile," said Milly, gently stroking her head.

"I stand so much alone!" said Nina. "Other girls have some friend or relation to lean on; but I have nobody!"

"Why don't you ask your Father to help you?" said Milly to Nina, in a gentle tone.

"Ask who?" said Nina, lifting up her head from the pillow.

"Your Father!" said Milly, with a voice of solemnity. "Don't you know 'Our Father who art in Heaven'? You haven't forgot your prayers, I hope, honey."

Nina looked at her with surprise. And Milly continued, "Now, if I was you, lamb, I would tell my Father all about it. Why, chile, He loves you! He wouldn't like nothing better, now, than to have you just come to Him and tell Him all about your troubles, and He'll make 'em all straight. That's the way I does, and I's found it come out right, many and many a time."

"Why, Milly, you wouldn't have me go to God about my little foolish affairs?"

"Laws, chile, what should you go to Him 'bout, den? Sure dese are all de 'fairs you's got."

"Well, but, Milly," said Nina, apprehensively, "you know I've been a very bad girl about religion. It's years and years since I've said any prayers. At school, the girls used to laugh at anybody who said prayers; and so I never did. And, since I've neglected my heavenly Father when things went well with me, it wouldn't be fair to call on Him now, just because I've got into trouble. I don't think it would be honorable."

"De Lord bless dis yer chile! Do hear her talk! Just as if de heavenly Father didn't know all about you, and hadn't been a loving and watching you de whole time! Why, chile, He knows what poor foolish creatures we be; and He an't noways surprised, nor put out. Why, laws, don't you know He's de good shepherd? And what you suppose dey has shepherds fur, 'cept de sheeps are all de time running away, and getting into trouble? Why, honey, dat's what dey's fur."

"Well, but it is so long since I prayed, that I don't know anything how to pray, Milly."

"Bless you, chile, who wanted you to pray? I never prays myself. Used to try, but I made such drefful poor work on it that I gin it up. Now, I just goes and talks to de Father, and tells Him anything and everything; and I think He likes it a great deal better. Why, He is just as willing to hear me now, as if I was the greatest lady in the land. And he takes such an interest in all my poor 'fairs! Why, sometimes I go to Him when my heart is so heavy; and, when I tells Him all about it, I comes away as light as a feather!"

"Well, but, after I've forgotten Him so many years!"

"Why, honey, now just look yere! I 'member once, when you was a little weety thing, that you toddles down dem steps dere, and you slips away from dem dat was watching you, and you toddles away off into de grove, yonder, and dere you got picking flowers, and one thing and another, mighty tickled and peart. You was down dere 'joying yourself, till, by and by, your pa missed you; and den such another hunt as dere was! Dere was a hurrying here, and a looking dere; and finally your pa run down in de woods, and dere you'd got stuck fast in de mud! both your shoes off, and well scratched with briers; and dere you stood a crying, and calling your pa. I tell you he said dat ar was de sweetest music he ever heard in his life. I 'member he picked you up, and came up to de house kissing you. Now, dere 'twas, honey! You didn't call on your pa till you got into trouble. And laws, laws, chile, dat's de way with us all. We never does call on de Father till we gets into trouble; and it takes heaps and heaps of trouble, sometimes, to bring us round. Some time, chile, I'll tell you my sperence. I's got a sperence on this point. But, now, honey, don't trouble yourself no more; but just ask your Father to take care of your 'fairs, and turn over and go to sleep. And He'll do it. Now you mind."

So saying, Milly smoothed the pillow with anxious care, and, kissing Nina on the forehead, departed.

XIII. TOM GORDON

"I say, Nina," said her brother, coming in, a day or two after, from a survey he had been taking round the premises, "you want me here to manage this place. Everything going at sixes and sevens; and that nigger of a Harry riding round with his boots shining. That fellow cheats you, and feathers his own nest well. I know! These white niggers are all deceitful."

"Come, Tom, you know the estate is managed just as father left word to have it; and Uncle John says that Harry is an excellent manager. I'm sure nobody could have been more faithful to me; and I am very well satisfied."

"Yes, I dare say. All left to you and the executors, as you call them; as if I were not the natural guardian of my sister! Then I come here to put up with that fellow's impudence!"

"Whose?--Harry's? He is never impudent. He is always gentlemanly. Everybody remarks it."

"Gentlemanly! There it is, Nin! What a fool you are to encourage the use of that word in connection with any of your niggers! Gentleman, forsooth! And while he plays gentleman, who takes care? I tell you what, you'll find one of these days how things are going on. But that's just the way! You never would listen to me, or pay the least attention to my advice."

"Oh, Tom, don't talk about that--don't! I never interfere about your affairs. Please leave me the right to manage mine in my own way."

"And who is this Clayton that's hanging about here? Are you going to have him, or he you--hey?"

"I don't know," said Nina.

"Because I, for one, don't like him; and I shan't give my consent to let him have you. That other one is worth twice as much. He has one of the largest properties in New York. Joe Snider has told me about him. You shall have him."

"I shall not have him, say what you please; and I shall have Mr. Clayton, if I choose!" said Nina, with a heightened color. "You have no right to dictate to me of my own affairs; and I shan't submit to it, I tell you frankly."

"Highty-tighty! We are coming up, to be sure!" said Tom.

"Moreover," said Nina, "I wish you to let everything on this place entirely alone; and remember that my servants are not your servants, and that you have no control over them whatever."

"Well, we will see how you'll help yourself! I am not going to go skulking about on my father's own place as if I had no right or title there; and if your niggers don't look sharp, they'll find out whether I am the master here or not, especially that Harry. If the dog dare so much as to lift his fingers to countermand any one of my orders, I'd put a bullet through his head as soon as I would through a buck's. I give you warning!"

"Oh, Tom, pray don't talk so!" said Nina, who really began to be alarmed. "What do you want to make me such trouble for?"

The conversation was here suspended by the entrance of Milly.

"If you please, Miss Nina, come and show me which of your muslins you wish to be done up, as I's starching for Miss Loo."

Glad of an opportunity to turn the conversation, Nina ran up to her room, whither she was followed by Milly, who shut the door, and spoke to her in mysterious tones.

"Miss Nina, can't you make some errand to get Harry off the place for two or three days, while Mas'r Tom's round?"

"But what right," said Nina, with heightened color, "has he to dictate to my servants, or me? or to interfere with any of our arrangements here?"

"Oh, dere's no use talking about rights, honey. We must all do jest what we ken. Don't make much odds whether our rights is one way or t'other. You see, chile, it's just here. Harry's your right hand. But you see he an't learnt to bend 'fore the wind, like the rest of us. He is spirity; he is just as full now as a powder-box; and Mas'r Tom is bent on aggravating him. And, laws, chile, dere may be bloody work--dere may so!"

"Why, do you think he'd dare"--

"Chile, don't talk to me! Dare!--yes; sure 'nough he will dare! Besides, dere's fifty ways young gentlemen may take to aggravate and provoke. And, when flesh and blood can't bear it no longer, if Harry raises his hand, why, den shoot him down! Nothing said--nothing done. You can't help yourself. You won't want to have a lawsuit with your own brother; and, if you did, 'twouldn't bring Harry to life! Laws, chile, ef I could tell you what I've seen--you don't know nothing 'bout it. Now, I tell you, get up some message to your uncle's plantation; send him off for anything or nothing; only have him gone! And then speak your brother fair, and then may be he will go off. But don't you quarrel! don't you cross him, come what may! Dere an't a soul on the place that can bar de sight on him. But, then, you see the rest dey all bends! But, chile, you must be quick about it! Let me go right off and find him. Just you come in the little back room, and I'll call him in."

Pale and trembling, Nina descended into the room; and, in a few moments after, Milly appeared, followed by Harry.

"Harry!" said Nina, in a trembling voice, "I want you to take your horse and go over to Uncle John's plantation, and carry a note for me."

Harry stood with his arms folded, and his eyes fixed upon the ground, and Nina continued,--

"And, Harry, I think you had better make some business or errand to keep you away two or three days, or a week."

"Miss Nina," said Harry, "the affairs of the place are very pressing now, and need overlooking. A few days' neglect now may produce a great loss, and then it will be said that I neglected my business to idle and ride round the country."

"Well, but if I send you, I take the responsibility, and I'll bear the loss. The fact is, Harry, I'm afraid that you won't have patience to be here, now Tom is at home. In fact, Harry, I'm afraid for your life! And now, if you have any regard for me, make the best arrangement with the work you can, and be off. I'll tell him that I sent you on business of my own, and I am going to write a letter for you to carry. It's the only safe way. He has so many ways in which he can provoke and insult you, that, at last, you may say or do something that will give him occasion against you; and I think he is determined to drive you to this."

"Isn't this provoking, now? isn't this outrageous!" said Harry, between his teeth, looking down, "that everything must be left, and all because I haven't the right to stand up like a man, and protect you and yours!"

"It is a pity! it is a shame!" said Nina. "But, Harry, don't stop to think upon it; do go!" She laid her hand softly on his. "For my sake, now, be good--be good!"

The room where they were standing had long windows, which opened, like those of the parlor, on the veranda, and commanded a view of a gravel-walk bordered with shrubbery. As Harry stood, hesitating, he started at seeing Lisette come tripping up the walk, balancing on her head a basket of newly-ironed muslins and linens. Her trim little figure was displayed in a close-fitting gown of blue, a snowy handkerchief crossed upon her bust, and one rounded arm raised to steady the basket upon her head. She came tripping forward, with her usual airy motion, humming a portion of a song; and attracted, at the same moment, the attention of Tom Gordon and of her husband.

"'Pon my word, if that isn't the prettiest concern!" said Tom, as he started up and ran down the walk to meet her.

"Good-morning, my pretty girl!" he said.

"Good-morning, sir," returned Lisette, in her usual tone of gay cheerfulness.

"Pray, who do you belong to, my pretty little puss! I think I've never seen you on this place."

"Please, sir, I'm Harry's wife."

"Indeed! you are, hey? Devilish good taste he has!" said he, laying his hand familiarly on her shoulder.

The shoulder was pulled away, and Lisette moved rapidly on to the other side of the path, with an air of vexation which made her look rather prettier.

"What, my dear, don't you know that I am your husband's young master? Come, come!" he said, following her, and endeavoring to take hold of her arm.

"Please let me alone!" said Lisette, coloring, and in a petted, vexed tone.

"Let you alone? No, that I shan't, not while you ask it in such a pretty way as that!" And again the hand was laid upon her shoulder.

It must be understood that Harry had witnessed so far, in pantomime, this scene. He had stood with compressed lips, and eyes slowly dilating, looking at it. Nina, who was standing with her back to the window, wondered at the expression of his countenance.

"Look there, Miss Nina!" he said. "Do you see my wife and your brother?"

Nina turned, and in an instant the color mounted to her cheeks; her little form seemed to dilate, and her eyes flashed fire; and before Harry could see what she was doing, she was down in the gravel-walk, and had taken Lisette's hand.

"Tom Gordon," she said, "I'm ashamed of you! Hush! hush!" she continued, fixing her eyes on him, and stamping her foot. "Dare to come to my place, and take such liberties here! You shall not be allowed to while I am mistress; and I am mistress! Dare to lay a finger on this girl while she is here under my protection! Come, Lisette!" And she seized the trembling girl by the hand, and drew her along towards the house.

Tom Gordon was so utterly confused at this sudden burst of passion in his sister, that he let them go off without opposition. In a few moments he looked after her, and gave a long, low whistle.

"Ah! Pretty well up for her! But she'll find it's easier said than done, I fancy!" And he sauntered up to the veranda, where Harry stood with his arms folded, and the veins in his forehead swelling with repressed emotion.

"Go in, Lisette," said Nina; "take the things into my room, and I'll come to you."

"'Pon my word, Harry," said Tom, coming up, and addressing Harry in the most insulting tone, "we are all under the greatest obligations to you for bringing such a pretty little fancy article here!"

"My wife does not belong to this place," said Harry, forcing himself to speak calmly. "She belongs to a Mrs. Le Clere, who has come into Belleville plantation."

"Ah! thank you for the information! I may take a fancy to buy her, and I'd like to know who she belongs to. I've been wanting a pretty little concern of that sort. She's a good housekeeper, isn't she, Harry? Does up shirts well? What do you suppose she could be got for? I must go and see her mistress."

During this cruel harangue Harry's hands twitched and quivered, and he started every now and then, looking first at Nina, and then at his tormentor. He turned deadly pale; even his lips were of ashy whiteness; and, with his arms still folded, and making no reply, he fixed his large blue eyes upon Tom, and, as it sometimes happened in moments of excitement and elevation, there appeared on the rigid lines of his face, at that moment, so strong a resemblance to Colonel Gordon, that Nina noticed and was startled by it. Tom Gordon noticed it also. It added fuel to the bitterness of his wrath; and there glared from his eyes a malignancy of hatred that was perfectly appalling. The two brothers seemed like thunder-clouds opposing each other, and ready to dart lightning. Nina hastened to interfere.

"Hurry, hurry, Harry! I want that message carried. Do, pray, go directly!"

"Let me see," said Tom, "I must call Jim, and have my horse. Which is the way to that Belleville plantation? I think I'll ride over." And he turned and walked indolently down the steps.

"For shame, Tom! you won't! you can't! How can you want to trouble me so?" said Nina.

He turned and looked upon her with an evil smile, turned again, and was gone.

"Harry, Harry, go quick! Don't you worry; there's no danger!" she added, in a lower voice. "Madam Le Clere never would consent."

"There's no knowing!" said Harry, "never any knowing! People act about money as they do about nothing else."

"Then--then I'll send and buy her myself!" said Nina.

"You don't know how our affairs stand, Miss Nina," said Harry hurriedly. "The money couldn't be raised now for it, especially if I have to go off this week. It will make a great difference, my being here or not being here; and very likely Master Tom may have a thousand dollars to pay down on the spot. I never knew him to want money when his will was up. Great God! haven't I borne this yoke long enough?"

"Well, Harry," said Nina, "I'll sell everything I've got--my jewels--everything. I'll mortgage the plantation, before Tom Gordon shall do this thing! I'm not quite so selfish as I've always seemed to be. I know you've made the sacrifice of body and soul to my interest; and I've always taken it because I loved my ease, and was a spoiled child. But, after all, I know I've as much energy as Tom has, when I am roused, and I'll go over this very morning and make an offer for her. Only you be off. You can't stand such provocation as you get here; and if you yield, as any man will do, at last, then everything and everybody will go against you, and I can't protect you. Trust to me. I'm not so much of a child as I have seemed to be! You'll find I can act for myself, and you too! There comes Mr. Clayton through the shrubbery--that's right! Order two horses round to the door immediately, and we'll go over there this morning."

Nina gave her orders with a dignity as if she had been a princess, and in all his agitation Harry could not help marvelling at the sudden air of womanliness which had come over her.

"I could serve you," he said, in a low voice, "to the last drop of my blood! But," he added, in a tone which made Nina tremble, "I hate everybody else! I hate your country! I hate your laws!"

"Harry," said Nina, "you do wrong--you forget yourself!"

"Oh, I do wrong, do I? We are the people that are never to do wrong! People may stick pins in us, and stick knives in us, wipe their shoes on us, spit in our face--we must be amiable! we must be models of Christian patience! I tell you, your father should rather have put me into quarters and made me work like a field-negro, than to have given me the education he did, and leave me under the foot of every white man that dares tread on me!"

Nina remembered to have seen her father in transports of passion, and was again shocked and startled to see the resemblance between his face and the convulsed face before her.

"Harry," she said, in a pitying, half-admonitory tone, "do think what you are saying! If you love me, be quiet!"

"Love you? You have always held my heart in your hand. That has been the clasp upon my chain. If it hadn't been for you, I should have fought my way to the north before now, or I would have found a grave on the road!"

"Well, Harry," said Nina, after a moment's thought, "my love shall not be a clasp upon any chain; for, as there is a God in heaven, I will set you free! I'll have a bill introduced at the very next legislature, and I know what friend will see to it. So go, now, Harry, go!"

Harry stood a moment, then suddenly raised the hand of his little mistress to his lips, turned, and was gone.

Clayton, who had been passing through the shrubbery, and who had remarked that Nina was engaged in a very exciting conversation, had drawn off, and stood waiting for her at the foot of the veranda steps. As soon as Nina saw him, she reached out her hand frankly, saying,--

"Oh, there, Mr. Clayton, you are just the person! Wouldn't you like to take a ride with me?"

"Of course I should," said he.

"Wait here a moment," said she, "till I get ready. The horses will be here immediately." And, running up the steps, she passed quickly by him, and went into the house.

Clayton had felt himself in circumstances of considerable embarrassment ever since the arrival of Tom Gordon, the evening before. He had perceived that the young man had conceived an instinctive dislike of himself, which he was at no particular pains to conceal; and he had found it difficult to preserve the appearance of one who does not notice. He did not wish to intrude upon Nina any embarrassing recognition of her situation, even under the guise of sympathy and assistance; and waited, therefore, till some word from her should authorize him to speak. He held himself, therefore, ready to meet any confidence which she might feel disposed to place in him; not doubting, from the frankness of her nature, that she would soon find it impossible not to speak of what was so deeply interesting to her.

Nina soon reappeared, and, mounting their horses, they found themselves riding through the same forest-road that led to the cottage of Tiff, from which a divergent path went to the Belleville plantation.

"I'm glad to see you alone this morning, for many reasons," said Nina; "for I think I never needed a friend's help more. I'm mortified that you should have seen what you did last night; but, since you have, I may as well speak of it. The fact is, that my brother, though he is the only one I have, never did treat me as if he loved me. I can't tell what the reason is: whether he was jealous of my poor father's love for me, or whether it was because I was a wilful, spoiled girl, and so gave him reason to be set against me, or whatever the reason might be,--he never has been kind to me long at a time. Perhaps he would be, if I would always do exactly as he says; but I am made as positive and wilful as he is. I never have been controlled, and I can't recognize the right which he seems to assume to control me, and to dictate as to my own private affairs. He was not left my guardian; and, though I do love him, I shan't certainly take him as one. Now, you see, he has a bitter hatred, and a most unreasonable one, towards my Harry; and I had no idea, when I came home, in how many ways he had the power to annoy me. It does seem as if an evil spirit possessed them both when they get together; they seem as full of electricity as they can be, and I am every instant afraid of an explosion. Unfortunately for Harry, he has had a much superior education to the generality of his class and station, and the situation of trust in which he has been placed has given him more the feelings of a free man and a gentleman than is usual; for, except Tom, there isn't one of our family circle that hasn't always treated him with kindness, and even with deference; and I think this very thing angers Tom the more, and makes him take every possible occasion of provoking and vexing. I believe it is his intention to push Harry up to some desperate action; and, when I see how frightfully they look at each other, I tremble for the consequences. Harry has lately married a very pretty wife, with whom he lives in a little cottage on the extremity of the Belleville estate; and this morning Tom happened to spy her, and it seemed to inspire him with a most ingenious plan to trouble Harry. He threatened to come over and buy her of Madam Le Clere; and so, to quiet Harry, I promised to come over here before him, and make an offer for her."

"Why," said Clayton, "do you think her mistress would sell her?"

"I can't say," said Nina. "She is a person I am acquainted with only by report. She is a New Orleans creole who has lately bought the place. Lisette, I believe, hired her time of her. Lisette is an ingenious, active creature, and contrives, by many little arts and accomplishments, to pay a handsome sum, monthly, to her mistress. Whether the offer of a large sum at once would tempt her to sell her, is more than I know until it's tried. I should like to have Lisette, for Harry's sake."

"And do you suppose your brother was really serious?"

"I shouldn't be at all surprised if he were. But, serious or not serious, I intend to make the matter sure."

"If it be necessary to make an immediate payment," said Clayton, "I have a sum of money which is lying idle in the bank, and it's but drawing a check which will be honored at sight. I mention this, because the ability to make an immediate payment may make the negotiation easier. You ought to allow me the pleasure of joining you in a good work."

"Thank you," said Nina, frankly. "It may not be necessary; but, if it should be, I will take it in the same spirit in which it is offered."

After a ride of about an hour, they arrived in the boundaries of Belleville plantation.

In former days, Nina had known this as the residence of an ancient rich family, with whom her father was on visiting terms. She was therefore uncomfortably struck with the air of poverty, waste, and decay, everywhere conspicuous through the grounds.

Nothing is more depressing and disheartening than the sight of a gradual decay of what has been arranged and constructed with great care; and when Nina saw the dilapidated gateway, the crushed and broken shrubbery, the gaps in the fine avenue where the trees had been improvidently cut down for fire-wood, she could not help a feeling of depression.

"How different this place used to be when I came here as a child!" said she. "This madam, whatever her name is, can't be much of a manager."

As she said this, their horses came up the front of the house, in which the same marks of slovenly neglect were apparent. Blinds were hanging by one hinge; the door had sunk down into the rotten sill; the wooden pillars that supported it were decayed at the bottom; and the twining roses which once climbed upon them laid trailing, dishonored, upon the ground. The veranda was littered with all kinds of rubbish,--rough boxes, saddles, bridles, overcoats; and various nondescript articles formed convenient hiding-places and retreats, in which a troop of negro children and three or four dogs were playing at hide-and-go-seek with great relish and noise. On the alighting of Nina and Clayton at the door, they all left their sports, and arranged themselves in a grinning row, to see the new-comers descend. Nothing seemed to be further from the minds of the little troop than affording the slightest assistance in the way of holding horses or answering questions. All they did was alternately to look at each other and the travellers, and grin.

A tattered servant-man, with half a straw hat on his head, was at length raised by a call of Clayton, who took their horses--having first distributed a salutation of kicks and cuffs among the children, asking where their manners were that they didn't show the gentleman and lady in. And Nina and Clayton were now marshalled by the whole seven of them into an apartment on the right of the great hall. Everything in the room appeared in an unfinished state. The curtains were half put up at the windows, and part lying in a confused heap on the chairs. The damp, mouldy paper, which hung loosely from the wall, had been torn away in some places, as if to prepare for repapering; and certain half-opened rolls of costly wall-paper lay on the table, on which appeared the fragment of some ancient luncheon; to wit, plates, and pieces of bread and cheese, dirty tumblers, and an empty bottle. It was difficult to find a chair sufficiently free from dust to sit down on. Nina sent up her card by one of the small fry, who, having got half-way up the staircase, was suddenly taken with the desire to slide down the banisters with it in his hand. Of course he dropped the card in the operation; and the whole group precipitated themselves briskly on to it, all in a heap, and fought, tooth and nail, for the honor of carrying it up stairs. They were aroused, however, by the entrance of the man with half a hat; who, on Nina's earnest suggestion, plunged into the troop, which ran, chattering and screaming like so many crows, to different parts of the hall, while he picked up the card, and, with infinite good-will beaming on his shining black face, went up with it, leaving Nina and Clayton waiting below. In a few moments he returned.

"Missis will see de young lady up stairs."

Nina tripped promptly after him, and left Clayton the sole tenant of the parlor for an hour. At length she returned, skipping down the stairs, and opening the door with great animation.

"The thing is done!" she said. "The bill of sale will be signed as soon as we can send it over."

"I had better bring it over myself," said Clayton, "and make the arrangement."

"So be it!" said Nina. "But pray let us be delivered from this place! Did you ever see such a desolate-looking house? I remember when I've seen it a perfect paradise--full of the most agreeable people."

"And pray what sort of a person did you find?" said Clayton, as they were riding homeward.

"Well," said Nina, "she's one of the tow-string order of women. Very slack-twisted, too, I fancy--tall, snuffy, and sallow. Clothes looked rough-dry, as if they had been pulled out of a bag. She had a bright-colored Madras handkerchief tied round her head, and spoke French a little more through her nose than French people usually do. Flourished a yellow silk pocket-handkerchief. Poor soul! She said she had been sick for a week with toothache, and kept awake all night! So, one mustn't be critical! One comfort about these French people is, that they are always 'ravis de vous voir,' let what will turn up. The good soul was really polite, and insisted on clearing all the things off from a dusty old chair for me to sit down in. The room was as much at sixes and sevens as the rest of the house. She apologized for the whole state of things by saying that they could not get workmen out there to do anything for her; and so everything is left in the second future tense; and the darkeys, I imagine, have a general glorification in the chaos. She is one of the indulgent sort, and I suspect she'll be eaten up by them like the locusts. Poor thing! she is shockingly home-sick, and longing for Louisiana, again. For, notwithstanding her snuffy appearance, and yellow pocket-handkerchief, she really has a genuine taste for beauty; and spoke most feelingly of the oleanders, crape myrtles, and cape jessamines, of her native state."

"Well, how did you introduce your business?" said Clayton, laughing at this description.

"Me?--Why, I flourished out the little French I have at command, and she flourished her little English; and I think I rather prepossessed the good soul, to begin with. Then I made a sentimental story about Lisette and Harry's amours; because I know French people always have a taste for the sentimental. The old thing was really quite affected, wiped her little black eyes, pulled her hooked nose as a tribute to my eloquence, called Lisette her 'enfant mignon,' and gave me a little lecture on the tender passion, which I am going to lay up for future use."

"Indeed!" said Clayton. "I should be charmed to have you repeat it. Can't you give us a synopsis?"

"I don't know what synopsis means. But, if you want me to tell you what she said, I shan't do it. Well, now, do you know I am in the best spirits in the world, now that I've got this thing off my mind, and out of that desolate house? Did you ever see such a direful place? What is the reason, when we get down south, here, everything seems to be going to destruction, so? I noticed it all the way down through Virginia. It seems as if everything had stopped growing, and was going backwards. Well, now, it's so different at the north! I went up, one vacation, into New Hampshire. It's a dreadfully poor, barren country; nothing but stony hills, and poor soil. And yet the people there seem to be so well off! They live in such nice, tight, clean-looking white houses! Everything around them looks so careful and comfortable; and yet their land isn't half so good as ours, down here. Why, actually, some of those places seem as if there were nothing but rock! And, then, they have winter about nine months in the year, I do believe! But these Yankees turn everything to account. If a man's field is covered with rock, he'll find some way to sell it, and make money out of it; and if they freeze up all winter, they sell the ice, and make money out of that. They just live by selling their disadvantages!"

"And we grow poor by wasting our advantages," said Clayton.

"Do you know," said Nina, "people think it's a dreadful thing to be an abolitionist? But, for my part, I've a great inclination to be one. Perhaps because I have a contrary turn, and always have a little spite against what everybody else believes. But, if you won't tell anybody, I'll tell you--I don't believe in slavery!"

"Nor I, either!" said Clayton.

"You don't! Well, really, I thought I was saying something original. Now, the other day, Aunt Nesbit's minister was at our house, and they sat crooning together, as they always do; and, among other things, they said, 'What a blessed institution it was to bring these poor Africans over here to get them Christianized!' So, by way of saying something to give them a start, I told them I thought they came nearer to making heathen of us than we to making Christians of them."

"That's very true," said Clayton. "There's no doubt that the kind of society which is built up in this way constantly tends to run back towards barbarism. It prevents general education of the whites, and keeps the poorer classes down to the lowest point, while it enriches a few."

"Well, what do we have it for?" said Nina. "Why don't we blow it up, right off?"

"That's a question easier asked than answered. The laws against emancipation are very stringent. But I think it is every owner's business to contemplate this as a future resort, and to educate his servants in reference to it. That is what I am trying to do on my plantation."

"Indeed!" said Nina, looking at him with a good deal of interest. "Well, now, that reminds me of what I was going to say to you. Generally speaking, my conscience don't trouble me much about my servants, because I think they are doing about as well with me as they would be likely to do anywhere else. But, now, there's Harry! He is well-educated, and I know that he could do for himself, anywhere, better than he does here. I have always had a kind of sense of this; but I've thought of it more lately, and I'm going to try to have him set free at the next legislature. And I shall want you to help me about all the what-do-you-call-'ems."

"Of course, I shall be quite at your service," said Clayton.

"There used to be some people, when I was up at the north, who talked as if all of us were no better than a pack of robbers and thieves. And, of course, when I was there I was strong for our institutions, and would not give them an inch of ground. It set me to thinking, though; and the result of my thinking is, that we have no right to hold those to work for us who clearly can do better. Now, there's Aunt Nesbit's Milly--there's Harry and Lisette. Why, it's clear enough, if they can support themselves and us too, they certainly can support themselves alone. Lisette has paid eight dollars a month to her mistress, and supported herself besides. I'm sure it's we that are the helpless ones!"

"Well, do you think your Aunt Nesbit is going to follow your example?"

"No! catch her at it! Aunt Nesbit is doubly fortified in her religion. She is so satisfied with something or other about 'cursed be Canaan,' that she'd let Milly earn ten dollars a month for her, all the year round, and never trouble her head about taking every bit of it. Some folks, you know, have a way of calling everything they want to do a dispensation of providence! Now, Aunt Nesbit is one of 'em. She always calls it a dispensation that the negroes were brought over here, and a dispensation that we are the mistresses. Ah! Milly will not get free while Aunt Nesbit is alive! And do you know, though it does not seem very generous in me, yet I'm resigned to it, because Milly is such a good soul, and such a comfort to me?--do you know she seems a great deal more like a mother to me than Aunt Nesbit? Why, I really think, if Milly had been educated as we are, she would have made a most splendid woman--been a perfect Candace queen of Ethiopia. There's a vast deal that is curious and interesting in some of these old Africans. I always did love to be with them; some of them are so shrewd and original! But I wonder, now, what Tom will think of my cutting him out so neatly? 'Twill make him angry, I suppose."

"Oh, perhaps, after all, he had no real intention of doing anything of the kind," said Clayton. "He may have said it merely for bravado."

"I should have thought so, if I hadn't known that he always had a grudge against Harry."

At this moment the galloping of a horse was heard in the woodland path before them; and very soon Tom Gordon appeared in sight accompanied by another man, on horseback, with whom he was in earnest conversation. There was something about the face of this man which, at the first glance, Nina felt to be very repulsive. He was low, thickset, and yet lean; his features were thin and sharp; his hair and eyebrows bushy and black, and a pair of glassy, pale-blue eyes formed a peculiar contrast to their darkness. There was something in the expression of the eye which struck Nina as hard and cold. Though the man was habited externally as a gentleman, there was still about him an under-bred appearance, which could be detected at the first glance, as the coarseness of some woods will reveal themselves through every varnish.

"Good-morrow, Nina," said her brother, drawing his horse up to meet hers, and signing to his companion to arrest his, also. "Allow me to present to you my friend, Mr. Jekyl. We are going out to visit the Belleville plantation."

"I wish you a pleasant ride!" said Nina. And, touching her horse, she passed them in a moment. Looking back almost fiercely, a moment, she turned and said to Clayton:

"I hate that man!"

"Who is it?" said Clayton.

"I don't know!" said Nina. "I never saw him before. But I hate him! He is a bad man! I'd as soon have a serpent come near me as that man!"

"Well, the poor fellow's face isn't prepossessing," said Clayton. "But I should not be prepared for such an anathema."

"Tom's badness," continued Nina, speaking as if she were following out a train of thought, without regarding her companion's remark, "is good turned to bad. It's wine turned to vinegar. But this man don't even know what good is!"

"How can you be so positive about a person that you've only seen once!" said Clayton.

"Oh," said Nina, resuming her usual gay tones, "don't you know that girls and dogs, and other inferior creatures, have the gift of seeing what's in people? It doesn't belong to highly-cultivated folks like you, but to us poor creatures, who have to trust to our instincts. So, beware!" And, as she spoke, she turned to him with a fascinating air of half-saucy defiance.

"Well," said Clayton, "have you seen, then, what is in me?"

"Yes, to be sure!" said Nina, with energy; "I knew what you were the very first time I saw you. And that's the reason why"--

Clayton made an eager gesture, and his eye met hers with a sudden flash of earnestness. She stopped, and blushed, and then laughed.

"What, Nina?"

"Oh, well, I always thought you were a grandfatherly body, and that you wouldn't take advantage of 'us girls,' as some of the men do. And so I've treated you with confidence, as you know. I had just the same feeling that you could be trusted, as I have that that other fellow cannot!"

"Well," said Clayton, "that deduction suits me so well that I should be sorry to undermine your faith. Nevertheless, I must say such a way of judging isn't always safe. Instinct may be a greater matter than we think; yet it isn't infallible, any more than our senses. We try the testimony even of our eyesight by reason. It will deceive us, if we don't. Much more we ought to try this more subtle kind of sight."

"May be so," said Nina; "yet I don't think I shall like that man, after all. But I'll give him a chance to alter my feeling, by treating him civilly if Tom brings him back to dinner. That's the best I can do."

XIV. AUNT NESBIT'S LOSS

On entering the house, Nina was met at the door by Milly, with a countenance of some anxiety.

"Miss Nina," she said, "your aunt has heard bad news this morning."

"Bad news!" said Nina, quickly,--"what?"

"Well, honey, ye see dere has been a lawyer here," said Milly, following Nina as she was going up stairs; "and she has been shut up with him all de mornin'; and when he come out I found her taking on quite dreadful! And she says she has lost all her property."

"Oh! is that all?" said Nina. "I didn't know what dreadful thing might have happened. Why, Milly, this isn't so very bad. She hadn't much to lose."

"Oh, bless you, chile! nobody wants to lose all they got, much or little!"

"Yes; but," said Nina, "you know she can always live here with us; and what little money she wants to fuss with, to buy new caps, and paregoric for her cough, and all such little matters, we can give her, easily enough."

"Ah, Miss Nina, your heart is free enough; you'd give away both ends of the rainbow, if you had 'em to give. But the trouble is, chile, you haven't got 'em. Why, chile, dis yer great place, and so many mouths opened to eat and eat, chile, I tell you it takes heaps to keep it a going. And Harry, I tell you, finds it hard work to bring it even all the year round, though he never says nothing to you about his troubles,--wants you always to walk on flowers, with both hands full, and never think where they come from. I tell you what, chile, we's boun' to think for you a little; and I tell you what, I's jist a going to hire out."

"Why, Milly, how ridiculous!"

"It an't ridiculous, now. Why, just look on it, Miss Nina. Here's Miss Loo, dat's one; here's me, dat's two; here's Polly,--great grown girl,--three; dere's Tomtit, four; all on us eating your bread, and not bringing in a cent to you, 'cause all on us together an't done much more than wait on Miss Loo. Why, you's got servants enough of your own to do every turn that wants doing in dis yer house. I know, Miss Nina, young ladies don't like to hear about dese things; but the fac' is, victuals cost something, and dere must be some on us to bring in something. Now, dat ar gentleman what talked with your aunt, he said he could find me a right good place up dar to the town, and I was jest a going. Sally, she is big enough now to do everything that I have been used to doing for Miss Loo, and I am jest a going; besides, to tell you the truth, I think Miss Loo has kind o' set her heart upon it. You know she is a weakly kind of thing,--don't know how to do much 'cept sit in her chair and groan. She has always been so used to having me make a way for her; and when I told her about dis yer, she kind o' brightened up."

"But, Milly, what shall I do? I can't spare you at all," said Nina.

"Law bless you, chile! don't you suppose I's got eyes? I tell you, Miss Nina, I looked that gen'leman over pretty well for you, and my opinion is he'll do."

"Oh, come, you hush!" said Nina.

"You see, chile, it wouldn't be everybody that our people would be willing to have come on to de place, here, but there an't one of 'em that wouldn't go in for dis yar, now I tell you. Dere's Old Hundred, as you calls him, told me 'twas just as good as a meeting to hear him reading de prayers dat ar day at de funeral. Now, you see, I's seen gen'lemen handsome, and rich, and right pleasant, too, dat de people wouldn't want at all; 'cause why? dey has dere frolics and drinks, and de money flies one way for dis ting and one way for dat, till by and by it's all gone. Den comes de sheriff, and de people is all sold, some one way and some another way. Now, Mr. Clayton, he an't none of dem."

"But, Milly, all this may be very well; but if I couldn't love him?"

"Law sakes, Miss Nina! You look me in the face and tell me dat ar? Why, chile, it's plain enough to see through you. 'Tis so! The people's all pretty sure, by this time. Sakes alive, we's used to looking out for the weather; and we knows pretty well what's coming. And now, Miss Nina, you go right along and give him a good word, 'cause you see, dear lamb, you need a good, husband to take care of you,--dat's what you want, chile. Girls like you has a hard life being at the head of a place, especially your brother being just what he is. Now, if you had a husband here, Mas'r Tom 'ud be quiet, 'cause he knows he couldn't do nothing. But just as long as you's alone he'll plague you. But, now, chile, it's time for you to be getting ready for dinner."

"Oh, but, do you know, Milly," said Nina, "I've something to tell you, which I had liked to have forgotten! I have been out to the Belleville plantation, and bought Harry's wife."

"You has, Miss Nina! Why, de Lord bless you! Why, Harry was dreadful worked, dis yer morning, 'bout what Mas'r Tom said. 'Peared like he was most crazy."

"Well," said Nina, "I've done it. I've got the receipt here."

"Why, but, chile, where alive did you get all the money to pay right sudden so?"

"Mr. Clayton lent it to me," said Nina.

"Mr. Clayton! Now, chile, didn't I tell you so? Do you suppose, now, you'd a let him lend you dat ar money if you hadn't liked him? But, come, chile, hurry! Dere's Mas'r Tom and dat other gen'leman coming back, and you must be down to dinner."

The company assembled at the dinner-table was not particularly enlivening. Tom Gordon, who, in the course of his morning ride, had discovered the march which his sister had stolen upon him, was more sulky and irritable than usual, though too proud to make any allusion to the subject. Nina was annoyed by the presence of Mr. Jekyl, whom her brother insisted should remain to dinner. Aunt Nesbit was uncommonly doleful, of course. Clayton, who, in mixed society, generally took the part of a listener rather than a talker, said very little; and had it not been for Carson, there's no saying whether any of the company could have spoken. Every kind of creature has its uses, and there are times when a lively, unthinking chatterbox is a perfect godsend. Those unperceiving people, who never notice the embarrassment of others, and who walk with the greatest facility into the gaps of conversation, simply because they have no perception of any difficulty there, have their hour; and Nina felt positively grateful to Mr. Carson for the continuous and cheerful rattle which had so annoyed her the day before. Carson drove a brisk talk with the lawyer about the value of property, percentage, etc.; he sympathized with Aunt Nesbit on her last-caught cold; rallied Tom on his preoccupation; complimented Nina on her improved color from her ride; and seemed on such excellent terms both with himself and everybody else, that the thing was really infectious.

"What do you call your best investments, down here,--land, eh?" he said to Mr. Jekyl.

Mr. Jekyl shook his head.

"Land deteriorates too fast. Besides, there's all the trouble and risk of overseers, and all that. I've looked this thing over pretty well, and I always invest in niggers."

"Ah!" said Mr. Carson, "you do?"

"Yes, sir, I invest in niggers; that's what I do; and I hire them out, sir,--hire them out. Why, sir, if a man has a knowledge of human nature, knows where to buy and when to buy, and watches his opportunity, he gets a better percentage on his money that way than any other. Now, that was what I was telling Mrs. Nesbit, this morning. Say, now, that you give one thousand dollars for a man,--and I always buy the best sort, that's economy,--well, and he gets--put it at the lowest figure--ten dollars a month wages, and his living. Well, you see there, that gives you a pretty handsome sum for your money. I have a good talent of buying. I generally prefer mechanics. I have got now working for me three bricklayers. I own two first-rate carpenters, and last month I bought a perfect jewel of a blacksmith. He is an uncommonly ingenious man; a fellow that will make, easy, his fifteen dollars a month; and he is the more valuable because he has been religiously brought up. Why, some of them, now, will cheat you if they can; but this fellow has been brought up in a district where they have a missionary, and a great deal of pains has been taken to form his religious principles. Now, this fellow would no more think of touching a cent of his earnings than he would of stealing right out of my pocket. I tell people about him, sometimes, when I find them opposed to religious instruction. I tell them, 'See there, now--you see how godliness is profitable to the life that now is.' You know the Scriptures, Mrs. Nesbit?"

"Yes," said Aunt Nesbit, "I always believed in religious education."

"Confound it all!" said Tom, "I don't! I don't see the use of making a set of hypocritical sneaks of them! I'd make niggers bring me my money; but, hang it all, if he came snuffling to me, pretending 'twas his duty, I'd choke him! They never think so,--they don't and they can't--and it's all hypocrisy, this religious instruction, as you call it!"

"No, it isn't," said the undiscouraged Mr. Jekyl, "not when you found it on right principles. Take them early enough, and work them right, you'll get it ground into them. Now, when they begun religious instruction, there was a great prejudice against it in our part of the country. You see they were afraid that the niggers would get uppish. Ah, but you see the missionaries are pretty careful; they put it in strong in the catechisms about the rights of the master. You see the instruction is just grounded on this, that the master stands in God's place to them."

"D--d bosh!" said Tom Gordon.

Aunt Nesbit looked across the table as if she were going to faint. But Mr. Jekyl's composure was not in the slightest degree interrupted.

"I can tell you," he said, "that, in a business, practical view,--for I am used to investments,--that, since the publishing of those catechisms, and the missionaries' work among the niggers, the value of that kind of property has risen ten per cent. They are better contented. They don't run away, as they used to. Just that simple idea that their master stands in God's place to them. Why, you see, it cuts its way."

"I have a radical objection to all that kind of instruction," said Clayton.

Aunt Nesbit opened her eyes, as if she could hardly believe her hearing.

"And pray what is your objection?" said Mr. Jekyl, with an unmoved countenance.

"My objection is that it is all a lie," said Clayton, in such a positive tone that everybody looked at him with a start.

Clayton was one of those silent men who are seldom roused to talk, but who go with a rush when they are. Not seeming to notice the startled looks of the company, he went on: "It's a worse lie, because it's told to bewilder a simple, ignorant, confiding creature. I never could conceive how a decent man could ever look another man in the face and say such things. I remember reading, in one of the missionary reports, that when this doctrine was first propounded in an assembly of negroes somewhere, all the most intelligent of them got up and walked deliberately out of the house; and I honor them for it."

"Good for them!" said Tom Gordon. "I can keep my niggers down without any such stuff as that!"

"I have no doubt," said Clayton, "that these missionaries are well-intending, good men, and that they actually think the only way to get access to the negroes at all is to be very positive in what will please the masters. But I think they fall into the same error that the Jesuits did when they adulterated Christianity with idolatry in order to get admission in Japan. A lie never works well in religion, nor in morals."

"That's what I believe," said Nina, warmly.

"But, then, if you can't teach them this, what can you teach them?" said Mr. Jekyl.

"Confound it all!" said Tom Gordon, "teach them that you've got the power!--teach them the weight of your fist! That's enough for them. I am bad enough, I know; but I can't bear hypocrisy. I show a fellow my pistol. I say to him, You see that, sir! I tell him, You do so and so, and you shall have a good time with me. But, you do that, and I'll thrash you within an inch of your life! That's my short method with niggers, and poor whites, too. When one of these canting fellows comes round to my plantation, let him see what he'll get, that's all!"

Mr. Jekyl appeared properly shocked at this declaration. Aunt Nesbit looked as if it was just what she had expected, and went on eating her potato with a mournful air, as if nothing could surprise her. Nina looked excessively annoyed, and turned a sort of appealing glance upon Clayton.

"For my part," said Clayton, "I base my religious instruction to my people on the ground that every man and every woman must give an account of themselves to God alone; and that God is to be obeyed first, and before me."

"Why," said Mr. Jekyl, "that would be destructive of all discipline. If you are going to allow every fellow to judge for himself, among a parcel of ignorant, selfish wretches, what the will of God is, one will think it's one thing, another will think it's another; and there will be an end of all order. It would be absolutely impossible to govern a place in that way."

"They must not be left an ignorant set," said Clayton. "They must be taught to read the Scriptures for themselves, and be able to see that my authority accords with it. If I command anything contrary to it, they ought to oppose it!"

"Ah! I should like to see a plantation managed in that way!" said Tom Gordon, scornfully.

"Please God, you shall see such an one, if you'll come to mine," said Clayton, "where I should be very happy to see you, sir."

The tone in which this was said was so frank and sincere, that Tom was silenced, and could not help a rather sullen acknowledgment.

"I think," said Mr. Jekyl, "that you'll find such a course, however well it may work at first, will fail at last. You begin to let people think, and they won't stop where you want them to; they'll go too far; it's human nature. The more you give, the more you may give. You once get your fellows to thinking, and asking all sorts of questions, and they get discontented at once. I've seen that thing tried in one or two instances, and it didn't turn out well. Fellows got restless and discontented. The more was given to them, the more dissatisfied they grew, till finally they put for the free states."

"Very well," said Clayton; "if that's to be the result, they may all 'put' as soon as they can get ready. If my title to them won't bear an intelligent investigation, I don't wish to keep them. But I never will consent to keep them by making false statements to them in the name of religion, and presuming to put myself as an object of obedience before my Maker."

"I think," said Mr. Carson, "Mr. Clayton shows an excellent spirit--excellent spirit! On my word, I think so. I wish some of our northern agitators, who make such a fuss on the the subject, could hear him. I'm always disgusted with these abolitionists producing such an unpleasantness between the north and the south, interrupting trade, and friendship, and all that sort of thing."

"He shows an excellent spirit," said Mr. Jekyl; "but I must think he is mistaken if he thinks that he can bring up people in that way, under our institutions, and not do them more harm than good. It's a notorious fact that the worst insurrections have arisen from the reading of the Bible by these ignorant fellows. That was the case with Nat Turner, in Virginia. That was the case with Denmark Vesey, and his crew, in South Carolina. I tell you, sir, it will never do, this turning out a set of ignorant people to pasture in the Bible! That blessed book is a savor of life unto life when it's used right; but it's a savor of death unto death when ignorant people take hold of it. The proper way is this: administer such portions only as these creatures are capable of understanding. This admirable system of religious instruction keeps the matter in our own hands, by allowing us to select for them such portions of the word as are best fitted to keep them quiet, dutiful, and obedient; and I venture to predict that whoever undertakes to manage a plantation on any other system will soon find it getting out of his hands."

"So you are afraid to trust the Lord's word without holding the bridle!" said Tom, with a sneer. "That's pretty well for you!"

"I am not!" said Clayton. "I'm willing to resign any rights to any one that I am not able to defend in God's word--any that I cannot make apparent to any man's cultivated reason. I scorn the idea that I must dwarf a man's mind, and keep him ignorant and childish, in order to make him believe any lie I choose to tell him about my rights over him! I intend to have an educated, intelligent people, who shall submit to me because they think it clearly for their best interests to do so; because they shall feel that what I command is right in the sight of God."

"It's my opinion," said Tom, "that both these ways of managing are humbugs. One way makes hypocrites, and the other makes rebels. The best way of educating is, to show folks that they can't help themselves. All the fussing and arguing in the world isn't worth one dose of certainty on that point. Just let them know that there are no two ways about it, and you'll have all still enough."

From this point the conversation was pursued with considerable warmth, till Nina and Aunt Nesbit rose and retired to the drawing-room. Perhaps it did not materially discourage Clayton, in the position he had taken, that Nina, with the frankness usual to her, expressed the most eager and undisguised admiration of all that he said.

"Didn't he talk beautifully? Wasn't it noble?" she said to Aunt Nesbit, as she came in the drawing-room. "And that hateful Jekyl! isn't he mean?"

"Child!" said Aunt Nesbit, "I'm surprised to hear you speak so! Mr. Jekyl is a very respectable lawyer, an elder in the church, and a very pious man. He has given me some most excellent advice about my affairs; and he is going to take Milly with him, and find her a good place. He's been making some investigations, Nina, and he's going to talk to you about them, after dinner. He's discovered that there's an estate in Mississippi worth a hundred thousand dollars, that ought properly to come to you!"

"I don't believe a word of it!" said Nina. "Don't like the man!--think he is hateful!--don't want to hear anything he has to say!--don't believe in him!"

"Nina, how often have I warned you against such sudden prejudices--against such a good man, too!"

"You won't make me believe he is good, not if he were elder in twenty churches!"

"Well, but, child, at any rate you must listen to what he has got to say. Your brother will be very angry if you don't, and it's really very important. At any rate, you ought not to offend Tom, when you can help it."

"That's true enough," said Nina; "and I'll hear, and try and behave as well as I can. I hope the man will go, some time or other! I don't know why, but his talk makes me feel worse than Tom's swearing! That's certain."

Aunt Nesbit looked at Nina as if she considered her in a most hopeless condition.

XV. MR. JEKYL'S OPINIONS

After the return of the gentlemen to the drawing-room, Nina, at the request of Tom, followed him and Mr. Jekyl into the library.

"Mr. Jekyl is going to make some statements to us, Nina, about our property in Mississippi, which, if they turn out as he expects, will set us up in the world," said Tom.

Nina threw herself carelessly into the leather arm-chair by the window, and looked out of it.

"You see," said Mr. Jekyl, also seating himself, and pulling out the stiff points of his collar, "having done law business for your father, and known, in that way, a good deal about the family property, I have naturally always felt a good deal of interest in it; and you remember your father's sister, Mrs. Stewart, inherited, on the death of her husband, a fine estate in Mississippi."

"I remember," said Tom,--"well, go on."

"Well, she died, and left it all to her son. Well, he, it seems, like some other young men, lived in a very reprehensible union with a handsome quadroon girl, who was his mother's maid; and she, being an artful creature, I suppose, as a great many of them are, got such an ascendency over him, that he took her up to Ohio, and married her, and lived there with her some years, and had two children by her. Well, you see, he had a deed of emancipation recorded for her in Mississippi, and just taking her into Ohio, set her free by the laws of that state. Well, you see, he thought he'd fixed it so that the thing couldn't be undone, and she thought so too; and I understand she's a pretty shrewd woman--has a considerable share of character, or else she wouldn't have done just what she has; for, you see, he died about six months ago, and left the plantation and all the property to her and her children, and she has been so secure that she has actually gone and taken possession. You see, she is so near white, you must know that there isn't one in twenty would think what she was,--and the people round there, actually, some of them, had forgotten all about it, and didn't know but what she was a white woman from Ohio; and so, you see, the thing never would have been looked into at all, if I hadn't happened to have been down there. But, you see, she turned off an overseer that had managed the place, because the people complained of him; and I happened to fall in with the man, and he began telling me his story, and, after a little inquiry, I found who these people were. Well, sir, I just went to one of the first lawyers, for I suspected there was false play; and we looked over the emancipation laws together, and we found out that, as the law stood, the deed of emancipation was no more than so much waste paper. And so, you see, she and her children are just as much slaves as any on her plantation; and the whole property, which is worth a hundred thousand dollars, belongs to your family. I rode out with him, and looked over the place, and got introduced to her and her children, and looked them over. Considered as property, I should call them a valuable lot. She is past forty, but she don't look older than twenty-seven or twenty-eight, I should say. She is a very good-looking woman, and then, I'm told, a very capable woman. Well, her price in the market might range between one thousand and fifteen hundred dollars. Smalley said he had seen no better article sold for two thousand dollars; but, then, he said, they had to give a false certificate as to the age,--and that I couldn't hear of, for I never countenance anything like untruth. Then, the woman's children: she has got two fine-looking children as I have ever seen--almost white. The boy is about ten years old; the little girl, about four. You may be sure I was pretty careful not to let on, because I consider the woman and children are an important part of the property, and, of course, nothing had better be said about it, lest she should be off before we are ready to come down on them. Now, you see, you Gordons are the proper owners of this whole property; there isn't the slightest doubt in my mind that you ought to put in your claim immediately. The act of emancipation was contrary to law, and, though the man meant well, yet it amounted to a robbery of the heirs. I declare, it rather raised my indignation to see that creature so easy in the possession of property which of right belongs to you. Now, if I have only the consent of the heirs, I can go on and commence operations immediately."

Nina had been sitting regarding Mr. Jekyl with a fixed and determined expression of countenance. When he had finished, she said to him,--

"Mr. Jekyl, I understand you are an elder in the church; is that true?"

"Yes, Miss Gordon, I have that privilege," said Mr. Jekyl, his sharp, business tone subsiding into a sigh.

"Because," said Nina, "I am a wild young girl, and don't profess to know much about religion; but I want you to tell me, as a Christian, if you think it would be right to take this woman and children, and her property."

"Why, certainly, my dear Miss Gordon; isn't it right that every one should have his own property? I view things simply with the eye of the law; and, in the eye of the law, that woman and her children are as much your property as the shoe on your foot; there is no manner of doubt of it."

"I should think," said Nina, "that you might see with the eye of the Gospel, sometimes! Do you think, Mr. Jekyl, that doing this is doing as I should wish to be done by, if I were in the place of this woman?"

"My dear Miss Gordon, young ladies of fine feeling, at your time of life, are often confused on this subject by a wrong application of the Scripture language. Suppose I were a robber, and had possession of your property? Of course, I shouldn't wish to be made to give it up. But would it follow that the golden rule obliged the lawful possessor not to take it from me? This woman is your property; this estate is your property, and she is holding it as unlawfully as a robber. Of course, she won't want to give it up; but right is right, notwithstanding."

Like many other young persons, Nina could feel her way out of sophistry much sooner than she could think it out; and she answered to all this reasoning,--

"After all, I can't think it would be right."

"Oh, confound the humbug!" said Tom; "who cares whether it is right or not? The fact is, Nin, to speak plain sense to you, you and I both are deuced hard up for money, and want all we can get; and what's the use of being more religious than the very saints themselves at our time of day? Mr. Jekyl is a pious man--one of the tallest kind! He thinks this is all right, and why need we set ourselves all up? He has talked with Uncle John, and he goes in for it. As for my part, I am free to own I don't care whether it's right or not! I'll do it if I can. Might makes right,--that's my doctrine!"

"Why," said Mr. Jekyl, "I have examined the subject, and I haven't the slightest doubt that slavery is a divinely-appointed institution, and that the rights of the masters are sanctioned by God; so, however much I may naturally feel for this woman, whose position is, I must say, an unfortunate one, still it is my duty to see that the law is properly administered in the case."

"All I have to say, Mr. Jekyl," said Nina, "is just this: that I won't have anything to do with this matter; for, if I can't prove it's wrong, I shall always feel it is."

"Nina, how ridiculous!" said Tom.

"I have said my say," said Nina, as she rose and left the room.

"Very natural,--fine feelings, but uninstructed," said Mr. Jekyl.

"Certainly, we pious folks know a trick worth two of that, don't we?" said Tom. "I say, Jekyl, this sister of mine is a pretty rapid little case, I can tell you, as you saw by the way she circumvented us, this morning. She is quite capable of upsetting the whole dish, unless we go about it immediately. You see, her pet nigger, this Harry, is this woman's brother; and if she gave him the word, he'd write at once, and put her on the alarm. You and I had better start off to-morrow, before this Harry comes back. I believe he is to be gone a few days. It's no matter whether she consents to the suit or not. She don't need to know anything about it."

"Well," said Jekyl, "I advise you to go right on, and have the woman and children secured. It's a perfectly fair, legal proceeding. There has been an evident evasion of the law of the state, by means of which your family are defrauded of an immense sum. At all events, it will be tried in an open court of justice, and she will be allowed to appear by her counsel. It's a perfectly plain, above-board proceeding; and, as the young lady has shown such fine feelings, there's the best reason to suppose that the fate of this woman would be as good in her hands as in her own."

Mr. Jekyl was not now talking to convince Tom Gordon, but himself; for, spite of himself, Nina's questions had awakened in his mind a sufficient degree of misgiving to make it necessary for him to pass in review the arguments by which he generally satisfied himself. Mr. Jekyl was a theologian, and a man of principle. His metaphysical talent, indeed, made him a point of reference among his Christian brethren; and he spent much of his leisure time in reading theological treatises. His favorite subject of all was the nature of true virtue; and this, he had fixed in his mind, consisted in a love of the greatest good. According to his theology, right consisted in creating the greatest amount of happiness; and every creature had rights to be happy in proportion to his capacity of enjoyment or being. He whose capacity was ten pounds had a right to place his own happiness before that of him who had five, because, in that way, five pounds more of happiness would exist in the general whole. He considered the right of the Creator to consist in the fact that he had a greater amount of capacity than all creatures put together, and, therefore, was bound to promote his own happiness before all of them put together. He believed that the Creator made himself his first object in all that He did; and, descending from Him, all creatures were to follow the same rule, in proportion to their amount of being; the greater capacity of happiness always taking precedence of the less. Thus, Mr. Jekyl considered that the Creator brought into the world yearly myriads of human beings with no other intention than to make them everlastingly miserable; and that this was right, because his capacity of enjoyment being greater than all theirs put together, He had a right to gratify himself in this way.

Mr. Jekyl's belief in slavery was founded on his theology. He assumed that the white race had the largest amount of being; therefore, it had a right to take precedence of the black. On this point he held long and severe arguments with his partner, Mr. Israel McFogg, who, belonging to a different school of theology, referred the whole matter to no natural fitness, but to a divine decree, by which it pleased the Creator in the time of Noah to pronounce a curse upon Canaan. The fact that the African race did not descend from Canaan was, it is true, a slight difficulty in the chain of the argument; but theologians are daily in the habit of surmounting much greater ones. Either way, whether by metaphysical fitness or Divine decree, the two partners attained the same practical result.

Mr. Jekyl, though a coarse-grained man, had started from the hands of nature no more hard-hearted or unfeeling than many others; but his mind, having for years been immersed in the waters of law and theology, had slowly petrified into such a steady consideration of the greatest general good, that he was wholly inaccessible to any emotion of particular humanity. The trembling, eager tone of pity, in which Nina had spoken of the woman and children who were about to be made victims of a legal process, had excited but a moment's pause. What considerations of temporal loss and misery can shake the constancy of the theologian who has accustomed himself to contemplate and discuss, as a cool intellectual exercise, the eternal misery of generations?--who worships a God that creates myriads only to glorify himself in their eternal torments?

XVI. MILLY'S STORY

Nina spent the evening in the drawing-room; and her brother, in the animation of a new pursuit, forgetful of the difference of the morning, exerted himself to be agreeable, and treated her with more consideration and kindness than he had done any time since his arrival. He even made some off-hand advances towards Clayton, which the latter received with good-humor, and which went further than she supposed to raise the spirits of Nina; and so, on the whole, she passed a more than usually agreeable evening. On retiring to her room, she found Milly, who had been for some time patiently waiting for her, having dispatched her mistress to bed some time since.

"Well, Miss Nina, I am going on my travels in de morning. Thought I must have a little time to see you, lamb, 'fore I goes."

"I can't bear to have you go, Milly! I don't like that man you are going with."

"I 'spects he's a nice man," said Milly. "Of course he'll look me out a nice place, because he has always took good care of Miss Loo's affairs. So you never trouble yourself 'bout me! I tell you, chile, I never gets where I can't find de Lord; and when I finds Him, I gets along. 'De Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.'"

"But you have never been used to living except in our family," said Nina, "and, somehow, I feel afraid. If they don't treat you well, come back Milly; will you?"

"Laws, chile, I isn't much feared but what I'll get along well enough. When people keep about dere business, doing de best dey ken, folks doesn't often trouble dem. I never yet seed de folks I couldn't suit," she added, with a glow of honest pride. "No, chile, it isn't for myself I's fearing; it's just for you, chile. Chile, you don't know what it is to live in dis yer world, and I wants you to get de Best Friend to go with you. Why, dear lamb, you wants somebody to go to and open your heart; somebody dat'll love you, and always stand by you; somebody dat'll always lead you right, you know. You has more cares than such a young thing ought for to have; great many looking to you, and 'pending on you. Now, if your ma was alive, it would be different; but, just now, I see how 'tis; dere'll be a hundred things you'll be thinking and feeling, and nobody to say 'em to. And now, chile, you must learn to go to de Lord. Why, chile, He loves you! Chile, He loves you just as you be; if you only saw how much, it would melt your heart right down. I told you I was going some time fur to tell you my sperience--how I first found Jesus. Oh Lord, Lord! but it is along story."

Nina, whose quick sympathies were touched by the earnestness of her old friend, and still more aroused by the allusion to her mother, answered,--

"Oh, yes, come, tell me about it!" And, drawing a low ottoman, she sat down, and laid her head on the lap of her humble friend.

"Well, well, you see, chile," said Milly, her large, dark eyes fixing themselves on vacancy, and speaking in a slow and dreamy voice, "a body's life, in dis yer world, is a mighty strange thing! You see, chile, my mother--well, dey brought her from Africa; my father, too. Heaps and heaps my mother has told me about dat ar. Dat ar was a mighty fine country, where dey had gold in the rivers, and such great, big, tall trees, with de strangest beautiful flowers on them you ever did see! Laws, laws! well, dey brought my mother and my father into Charleston, and dere Mr. Campbell,--dat was your ma's father, honey,--he bought dem right out of de ship; but dey had five children, and dey was all sold, and dey never knowed where dey went to. Father and mother couldn't speak a word of English when dey come ashore; and she told me often how she couldn't speak a word to nobody, to tell 'em how it hurt her.

"Laws, when I was a chile, I 'member how often, when de day's work was done, she used to come out and sit and look up at de stars, and groan, groan, and groan! I was a little thing, playing round; and I used to come up to her, dancing, and saying,--

"'Mammy, what makes you groan so? what's de matter of you?'

"'Matter enough, chile!' she used to say. 'I's a thinking of my poor children. I likes to look at de stars, because dey sees de same stars dat I do. 'Pears like we was in one room; but I don't know where dey is! Dey don't know where I be!'

"Den she'd say to me,--

"'Now, chile, you may be sold away from your mammy. Der's no knowing what may happen to you, chile; but, if you gets into any trouble, as I does, you mind, chile, you ask God to help you.'

"'Who is God, mammy,' says I, 'anyhow?'

"'Why, chile,' says she, 'He made dese yer stars.'

"And den I wanted mammy to tell me more about it; only she says,--

"'He can do anything he likes; and, if ye are in any kind of trouble, He can help you.'

"Well, to be sure, I didn't mind much about it--all dancing round, because pretty well don't need much help. But she said dat ar to me so many times, I couldn't help 'member it. 'Chile, troubles will come; and, when dey does come, you ask God, and He will help you.'

"Well, sure enough, I wasn't sold from her, but she was took from me, because Mr. Campbell's brother went off to live in Orleans, and parted de hands. My father and mother was took to Orleans, and I was took to Virginny. Well, you see, I growed up along with de young ladies,--your ma, Miss Harrit, Miss Loo, and de rest on 'em,--and I had heaps of fun. Dey all like Milly. Dey couldn't nobody run, nor jump, nor ride a horse, nor row a boat, like Milly; and so it was Milly here, and Milly dere, and whatever de young ladies wanted, it was Milly made de way for it.

"Well, dere was a great difference among dem young ladies. Dere was Miss Loo--she was de prettiest, and she had a great many beaux; but, den, dere was your ma--everybody loved her; and den dere was Miss Harrit--she had right smart of life in her, and was always for doing something--always right busy 'tending to something or other, and she liked me because I'd always go in with her. Well, well! dem dar was pleasant times enough; but when I got to be about fourteen or fifteen, I began to feel kind o' bad--sort of strange and heavy. I really didn't know why, but 'peared like's when I got older, I felt I was in bondage.

"'Member one day your ma came in, and seed me looking out of window, and she says to me,--

"'Milly, what makes you so dull lately?'

"'Oh,' says I, 'I, somehow, I don't have good times.'

"'Why?' says she; 'why not? Don't everybody make much of you, and don't you have everything that you want?'

"'Oh, well,' says I, 'missis, I's a poor slave-girl, for all dat.'

"Chile, your ma was a weety thing, like you. I 'member just how she looked dat minute. I felt sorry, 'cause I thought I'd hurt her feelings. But says she,--

"'Milly, I don't wonder you feel so. I know I should feel so myself, if I was in your place.'

"Afterwards, she told Miss Loo and Miss Harrit; but dey laughed, and said dey guessed der wasn't many girls who were as well off as Milly. Well, den, Miss Harrit, she was married de first. She married Mr. Charles Blair; and when she was married, nothing was to do but she must have me to go with her. I liked Miss Harrit; but, den, honey, I'd liked it much better if it had been your ma. I'd always counted that I wanted to belong to your ma, and I think your ma wanted me; but, den, she was still, and Miss Harrit she was one of de sort dat never lost nothing by not asking for it. She was one of de sort dat always got things by hook or by crook. She always had more clothes, and more money, and more everything, dan de rest of them, 'cause she was always wide awake, and looking out for herself.

"Well, Mr. Blair's place was away off in another part of Virginny, and I went dere with her. Well, she wan't very happy, no ways, she wan't; because Mr. Blair, he was a high fellow. Laws, Miss Nina, when I tells you dis yere one you've got here is a good one, and I 'vise you to take him, it's because I knows what comes o' girls marrying high fellows. Don't care how good-looking dey is, nor what dere manners is,--it's just de ruin of girls that has them. Law, when he was a courting Miss Harrit, it was all nobody but her. She was going to be his angel, and he was going to give up all sorts of bad ways, and live such a good life! Ah! she married him; it all went to smoke! 'Fore de month was well over, he got a going in his old ways; and den it was go, go, all de time, carousing and drinking,--parties at home, parties abroad,--money flying like de water.

"Well, dis made a great change in Miss Harrit. She didn't laugh no more; she got sharp and cross, and she wan't good to me like what she used to be. She took to be jealous of me and her husband. She might have saved herself de trouble. I shouldn't have touched him with a pair of tongs. But he was always running after everything that came in his way; so no wonder. But, 'tween them both, I led a bad life of it.

"Well, things dragged kind along in this way. She had three children, and, at last, he was killed, one day, falling off his horse when he was too drunk to hold the bridle. Good riddance, too, I thought. And den, after he's dead, Miss Harrit, she seemed to grow more quiet like, and setting herself picking up what pieces and crumbs was left for her and de children. And I 'member she had one of her uncles dere a good many days helping her in counting up de debts. Well, dey was talking one day in missis' room, and dere was a little light closet on one side, where I got set down to do some fine stitching; but dey was too busy in their 'counts to think anything 'bout me. It seemed dat de place and de people was all to be sold off to pay de debts,--all 'cept a few of us, who were to go off with missis, and begin again on a small place,--and I heard him telling her about it.

"'While your children are small,' he says, 'you can live small, and keep things close, and raise enough on the place for ye all; and den you can be making the most of your property. Niggers is rising in de market. Since Missouri came in, they's worth double; and so you can just sell de increase of 'em for a good sum. Now, there's that black girl Milly, of yourn.'--You may be sure, now, I pricked up my ears, Miss Nina.--'You don't often see a girl of finer breed than she is,' says he, just as if I'd been a cow, you know. 'Have you got her a husband?'

"'No,' said Miss Harrit; and then says she, 'I believe Milly is something of a coquette among the young men. She's never settled on anybody yet,' says she.

"'Well,' says he, 'that must be attended to, 'cause that girl's children will be an estate of themselves. Why, I've known women to have twenty! and her children wouldn't any of 'em be worth less than eight hundred dollars. There's a fortune at once. If dey's like her, dey'll be as good as cash in the market, any day. You can send out and sell one, if you happen to be in any straits, just as soon as you can draw a note on the bank.'

"Oh, laws, Miss Nina, I tell you dis yer fell on me like so much lead. 'Cause, you see, I'd been keeping company with a very nice young man, and I was going to ask Miss Harrit about it dat very day; but, dere--I laid down my work dat minute, and thinks, says I, 'True as de Lord's in heaven I won't never be married in dis world!' And I cried 'bout it, off and on, all day, and at night I told Paul 'bout it. He was de one, you know. But Paul, he tried to make it all smooth. He guessed it wouldn't happen; he guessed missis would think better on't. At any rate, we loved each other, and why shouldn't we take as much comfort as we could? Well, I went to Miss Harrit, and told her just what I thought 'bout it. Allers had spoke my mind to Miss Harrit 'bout everything, and I wan't going to stop den. And she laughed at me, and told me not to cry 'fore I's hurt. Well, things went on so two or three weeks, and finally Paul he persuaded me. And so we was married. When our first child was born, Paul was so pleased, he thought strange that I wan't.

"'Paul,' said I, 'dis yer child an't ourn; it may be took from us, and sold, any day.'

"'Well, well,' says he, 'Milly, it may be God's child, any way, even if it an't ourn.'

"'Cause, you see, Miss Nina, Paul, he was a Christian. Ah, well, honey, I can't tell you; after dat I had a great many chil'en, girls and boys, growing up round me. Well, I's had fourteen chil'en, dear, and dey's all been sold from me, every single one of 'em. Lord, it's a heavy cross! heavy, heavy! None knows but dem dat bears it!"

"What a shame!" said Nina. "How could Aunt Harriet be such a wicked woman?--an aunt of mine do so!"

"Chile, chile," said Milly, "we doesn't none of us know what's in us. When Miss Harrit and I was gals together, hunting hens' eggs and rowing de boat in de river,--well, I wouldn't have thought it would have been so, and she wouldn't have thought so, neither. But, den, what little's bad in girls when dey's young and handsome, and all de world smiling on 'em--Oh, honey, it gets drefful strong when dey gets grown women, and de wrinkles comes in der faces! Always, when she was a girl,--whether it was eggs, or berries, or chincapins, or what,--it was Miss Harrit's nature to get and to keep; and when she got old, dat all turned to money."

"Oh! but," said Nina, "it does seem impossible that a woman--a lady born, too, and my aunt--could do such a thing!"

"Ah, ah, honey! ladies born have some bad stuff in dem, sometimes, like de rest of us. But, den, honey, it was de most natural thing in de world, come to look on't; for now, see here, honey, dere was your aunt--she was poor, and she was pestered for money. Dere was Mas'r George's bills and Peter's bills to pay, and Miss Susy's; and every one of 'em must have everything, and dey was all calling for money, money; and dere has been times she didn't know which way to turn. Now, you see, when a woman is pestered to pay two hundred here and tree hundred dere, and when she has got more niggers on her place dan she can keep, and den a man calls in and lays down eight hundred dollars in gold and bills before her, and says, 'I want dat ar Lucy or George of yourn,' why, don't you see? Dese yer soul-drivers is always round, tempting folks dey know is poor; and dey always have der money as handy as de devil has his. But, den, I oughtn't fur to be hard upon dem poor soul-drivers, neither, 'cause dey an't taught no better. It's dese yer Christians, dat profess Christ, dat makes great talks 'bout religion, dat has der Bibles, and turns der backs upon swearing soul-drivers, and tinks dey an't fit to speak to--it's dem, honey, dat's de root of de whole business. Now, dere was dat uncle of hern,--mighty great Christian he was, with his prayer-meetings, and all dat!--he was always a putting her up to it. Oh, dere's been times--dere was times 'long first, Miss Nina, when my first chil'en was sold--dat, I tell you. I poured out my soul to Miss Harrit, and I've seen dat ar woman cry so dat I was sorry for her. And she said to me, 'Milly, I'll never do it again.' But, Lord! I didn't trust her,--not a word on't,--'cause I knowed she would. I knowed dere was dat in her heart dat de devil wouldn't let go of. I knowed he'd no kind of objection to her 'musing herself with meetin's, and prayers, and all dat; but he'd no notion to let go his grip on her heart.

"But, Lord! she wasn't quite a bad woman,--poor Miss Harrit wasn't,--and she wouldn't have done so bad, if it hadn't been for him. But he'd come and have prayers, and exhort, and den come prowling round my place like a wolf, looking at my chil'en.

"'And, Milly,' he'd say, 'how do you do now? Lucy is getting to be a right smart girl, Milly. How old is she? Dere's a lady in Washington has advertised for a maid,--a nice woman, a pious lady. I suppose you wouldn't object, Milly? Your poor mistress is in great trouble for money.'

"I never said nothing to that man. Only once, when he asked me what I thought my Lucy would be worth, when she was fifteen years old, says I to him:--

"'Sir, she is worth to me just what your daughter is worth to you.'

"Den I went in and shut de door. I didn't stay to see how he took it. Den he'd go up to de house, and talk to Miss Harrit. 'Twas her duty, he'd tell her, to take proper care of her goods. And dat ar meant selling my chil'en. I 'member, when Miss Susy came home from boarding-school, she was a pretty girl: but I didn't look on her very kind, I tell you, 'cause three of my chil'en had been sold to keep her at school. My Lucy,--ah, honey!--she went for a lady's maid. I knowed what dat ar meant, well enough. De lady had a son grown, and he took Lucy with him to Orleans, and dere was an end of dat. Dere don't no letters go 'tween us. Once gone, we can't write, and it is good as being dead. Ah, no, chile, not so good! Paul used to teach Lucy little hymns, nights, 'fore she went to sleep. And if she'd a died right off after one of dem, it would have been better for her. Oh, honey, 'long dem times I used to rave and toss like a bull in a net--I did so!

"Well, honey, I wasn't what I was. I got cross and ugly. Miss Harrit, she grew a great Christian, and joined de church, and used to have heaps of ministers and elders at her house; and some on 'em used to try and talk to me. I told 'em I'd seen enough of der old religion, and I didn't want to hear no more. But Paul, he was a Christian; and when he talked to me, I was quiet, like, though I couldn't be like what he was. Well, last, my missis promised me one. She'd give me my youngest child, sure and certain. His name was Alfred. Well, dat boy!--I loved dat child better dan any of de rest of 'em. He was all I'd got left to love; for, when he was a year old, Paul's master moved away down to Louisiana, and took him off, and I never heard no more of him. So it 'peared as if dis yer child was all I had left. Well, he was a bright boy. Oh, he was most uncommon! He was so handy to anything, and saved me so many steps! Oh, honey, he had such ways with him--dat boy!--would always make me laugh. He took after larnin' mighty, and he larned himself to read; and he'd read de Bible to me, sometimes. I just brought him up and teached him de best way I could. All dat made me 'fraid for him was, dat he was so spirity. I's 'fraid 'twould get him into trouble.

"He wan't no more spirity dan white folks would like der chil'en fur to be. When white chil'en holds up der heads, and answers back, den de parents laugh, and say, 'He's got it in him! He's a bright one!' But, if one of ourn does so, it's a drefful thing. I was allers talking to Alfred 'bout it, and telled him to keep humble. It 'peared like there was so much in him, you couldn't keep it down. Laws, Miss Nina, folks may say what dey like about de black folks, dey'll never beat it out of my head;--dere's some on 'em can be as smart as any white folks, if dey could have de same chance. How many white boys did you ever see would take de trouble for to teach theirselves to read? And dat's what my Alfred did. Laws, I had a mighty heap of comfort in him, 'cause I was thinkin' to get my missis to let me hire my time; den I was going to work over hours, and get money, and buy him; because, you see, chile, I knowed he was too spirity for a slave. You see he couldn't learn to stoop; he wouldn't let nobody impose on him; and he always had a word back again to give anybody as good as dey sent. Yet, for all dat, he was a dear, good boy to me; and when I used to talk to him, and tell him dese things was dangerous, he'd always promise fur to be kerful. Well, things went on pretty well while he was little, and I kept him with me till he got to be about twelve or thirteen years old. He used to wipe de dishes, and scour de knives, and black de shoes, and such-like work. But, by and by, dey said it was time dat he should go to de reg'lar work; and dat ar was de time I felt feared. Missis had an overseer, and he was real aggravating, and I felt feared dere'd be trouble; and sure enough dere was, too. Dere was always somethin' brewing 'tween him and Alfred; and he was always running to missis with tales, and I was talking to Alfred. But 'peared like he aggravated de boy so, dat he couldn't do right. Well, one day, when I had been up to town for an errand, I come home at night, and I wondered Alfred didn't come home to his supper. I thought something was wrong; and I went to de house, and dere sat Miss Harrit by a table covered with rolls of money, and dere she was a counting it.

"'Miss Harrit,' says I, 'I can't find Alfred. An't you seen him?' says I.

"At first she didn't answer, but went on counting--fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three. Finally I spoke again.

"'I hope there an't nothing happened to Alfred, Miss Harrit?'

"She looked up, and says she to me,--

"'Milly,' says she, 'de fact is, Alfred has got too much for me to manage, and I had a great deal of money offered for him; and I sold him.'

"I felt something strong coming up in my throat, and I just went up and took hold of her shoulders, and said I,--

"'Miss Harrit, you took de money for thirteen of my chil'en, and you promised me, sure enough, I should have dis yer one. You call dat being a Christian?' says I.

"'Why,' says she, 'Milly, he an't a great way off; you can see him about as much. It's only over to Mr. Jones's plantation. You can go and see him, and he can come and see you. And you know you didn't like the man who had the care of him here, and thought he was always getting him into trouble.'

"'Miss Harrit,' says I, 'you may cheat yourself saying dem things; but you don't cheat me, nor de Lord neither. You folks have de say all on your side, with your ministers preaching us down out of de Bible; you won't teach us to read. But I'm going straight to de Lord with dis yer case. I tell you, if de Lord is to be found, I'll find him; and I'll ask him to look on't,--de way you've been treating me,--selling my chil'en, all de way 'long, to pay for your chil'en, and now breaking your word to me, and taking dis yer boy, de last drop of blood in my heart! I'll pray de Lord to curse every cent of dat ar money to you and your chil'en!'

"Dat ar was de way I spoke to her, child. I was poor, ignorant cretur, and didn't know God, and my heart was like a red-hot coal. I turned and walked right straight out from her. I didn't speak no more to her, and she didn't speak no more to me. And when I went to bed at night, dar, sure 'nough, was Alfred's bed in de corner, and his Sunday coat hanging up over it, and his Sunday shoes I had bought for him with my own money; 'cause he was a handsome boy, and I wanted him always to look nice. Well, so, come Sunday morning, I took his coat and his shoes, and made a bundle of 'em, and I took my stick, and says I, 'I'll just go ever to Jones's place and see what has 'come of Alfred.' All de time, I hadn't said a word to missis, nor she to me. Well, I got about half-way over to de place, and dere I stopped under a big hickory-tree to rest me a bit, and I looked along and seed some one a coming; and pretty soon I knowed it was Huldah. She was one that married Paul's cousin, and she lived on Jones's place. And so I got up and went to meet her, and told her I was going over to see 'bout Alfred.

"'Lord!' says she, 'Milly, haven't you heard dat Alfred's dead?'

"Well, Miss Nina, it seemed as if my heart and everything in it stopped still. And said I, 'Huldah, has dey killed him?'

"And said she, 'Yes.' And she told me it was dis yer way: Dat Stiles--he dat was Jones's overseer--had heard dat Alfred was dreadful spirity; and when boys is so, sometimes dey aggravates 'em to get 'em riled, and den dey whips 'em to break 'em in. So Stiles, when he was laying off Alfred's task, was real aggravating to him; and dat boy--well, he answered back, just as he allers would be doing, 'cause he was smart, and it 'peared like he couldn't keep it in. And den dey all laughed round dere, and den Stiles was mad, and swore he'd whip him; and den Alfred, he cut and run. And den Stiles he swore awful at him, and he told him to 'come here, and he'd give him hell, and pay him de cash.' Dem is de very words he said to my boy. And Alfred said he wouldn't come back; he wasn't going to be whipped. And just den young Master Bill come along, and wanted to know what was de matter. So Stiles told him, and he took out his pistol, and said, 'Here, young dog, if you don't come back before I count five, I'll fire!'

"'Fire ahead!' says Alfred; 'cause, you see, dat boy never knowed what fear was. And so he fired. And Huldah said he just jumped up and give one scream, and fell flat. And dey run up to him, and he was dead; 'cause you see, de bullet went right through his heart. Well, dey took off his jacket and looked, but it wan't of no use; his face settled down still. And Huldah said dat dey just dug a hole and put him in. Nothing on him--nothing round him--no coffin; like he'd been a dog. Huldah showed me de jacket. Dere was de hole, cut right round in it, like it was stamped, and his blood running out on it. I didn't say a word. I took up de jacket, and wrapped it up with his Sunday clothes, and I walked straight--straight home. I walked up into missis' room, and she was dressed for church, sure enough, and sat dere reading her Bible. I laid it right down under her face, dat jacket. 'You see dat hole!' said I; 'you see dat blood! Alfred's killed! You killed him; his blood be on you and your chil'en! O Lord God in heaven, hear me, and render unto her double!'"

Nina drew in her breath hard, with an instinctive shudder. Milly had drawn herself up, in the vehemence of her narration, and sat leaning forward, her black eyes dilated, her strong arms clenched before her, and her powerful frame expanding and working with the violence of her emotion. She might have looked, to one with mythological associations, like the figure of a black marble Nemesis in a trance of wrath. She sat so for a few minutes, and then her muscles relaxed, her eyes gradually softened; she looked tenderly, but solemnly, down on Nina. "Dem was awful words, chile; but I was in Egypt den. I was wandering in de wilderness of Sinai. I had heard de sound of de trumpet, and de voice of words; but, chile, I hadn't seen de Lord. Well--I went out, and I didn't speak no more to Miss Harrit. Dere was a great gulf fixed 'tween us; and dere didn't no words pass over it. I did my work--I scorned not to do it; but I didn't speak to her. Den it was, chile, dat I thought of what my mother told me, years ago; it came to me, all fresh--'Chile, when trouble comes, you ask de Lord to help you;' and I saw dat I hadn't asked de Lord to help me; and now, says I to myself, de Lord can't help me; 'cause he couldn't bring back Alfred, no way you could fix it; and yet I wanted to find de Lord, 'cause I was so tossed up and down. I wanted just to go and say, 'Lord, you see what dis woman has done.' I wanted to put it to him, if he'd stand up for such a thing as that. Lord, how de world, and everything, looked to me in dem times! Everything goin' on in de way it did; and dese yer Christians, dat said dat dey was going into de kingdom, doing as dey did! I tell you, I sought de Lord early and late. Many nights I have been out in de woods and laid on de ground till morning, calling and crying, and 'peared like nobody heerd me. Oh, how strange it used to look, when I looked up to de stars! winking at me, so kind of still and solemn, but never saying a word! Sometimes I got dat wild, it seemed as if I could tear a hole through de sky, 'cause I must find God; I had an errand to him, and I must find him.

"Den I heard 'em read out de Bible, 'bout how de Lord met a man on a threshing-floor, and I thought maybe if I had a threshing-floor he would come to me. So I threshed down a place just as hard as I could under de trees; and den I prayed dere--but he didn't come. Den dere was coming a great camp-meeting; and I thought I'd go and see if I could find de Lord dere; because, you see, missis, she let her people go Sunday to de camp-meeting. Well, I went into de tents and heerd dem sing; and I went afore de altar, and I heerd preaching; but it 'peared like it was no good. It didn't touch me nowhere; and I couldn't see nothing to it. I heerd 'em read out of de Bible, 'Oh, dat I knew where I might find him. I would come even to his seat. I would order my cause before him. I would fill my mouth with arguments;' and I thought, sure enough, dat ar's just what I want. Well, came on dark night, and dey had all de camp-fires lighted up, and dey was singing de hymns round and round, and I went for to hear de preaching. And dere was a man--pale, lean man he was, with black eyes and black hair. Well, dat ar man, he preached a sermon, to be sure, I never shall forget. His text was, 'He that spared not his own Son, but freely delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him freely give us all things?' Well, you see, the first sound of dis took me, because I'd lost my son. And the man, he told us who de son of God was,--Jesus,--Oh, how sweet and beautiful he was! How he went round doing for folks. O Lord, what a story dat ar was! And, den, how dey took him, and put de crown of thorns on his head, and hung him up bleeding, bleeding, and bleeding! God so loved us dat he let his own dear Son suffer all dat for us. Chile, I got up, and I went to de altar, and I kneeled down with de mourners; and I fell flat on my face, and dey said I was in a trance. Maybe I was. Where I was, I don't know; but I saw de Lord! Chile, it seemed as if my very heart was still. I saw him, suffering, bearing with us, year in and year out--bearing--bearing--bearing so patient! 'Peared like, it wan't just on de cross; but, bearing always, everywhar! Oh, chile, I saw how he loved us!--us all--all--every one on us!--we dat hated each other so! 'Peared like he was using his heart up for us, all de time--bleedin' for us like he did on Calvary, and willin' to bleed! Oh, chile, I saw what it was for me to be hatin', like I'd hated. 'O Lord,' says I, 'I give up? O Lord, never see you afore; I didn't know. Lord, I's a poor sinner! I won't hate no more!' And oh, chile, den dere come such a rush of love in my soul! Says I, 'Lord, I ken love even de white folks!' And den came another rush; and says I, 'Yes, Lord, I love poor Miss Harrit, dat's sole all my chil'en, and been de death of my poor Alfred! I loves her.' Chile, I overcome--I did so--I overcome by de blood of de Lamb--de Lamb!--Yes, de Lamb, chile!--'cause if he'd been a lion I could a kept in; 'twas de Lamb dat overcome.

"When I come to, I felt like a chile. I went home to Miss Harrit; and I hadn't spoke peaceable to her since Alfred died. I went in to her. She'd been sick, and she was in her room, looking kinder pale and yaller, poor thing; 'cause her son, honey, he got drunk and 'bused her awful. I went in, and says I, 'Oh, Miss Harrit, I's seen de Lord! Miss Harrit, I an't got no more hard feelin's; I forgive ye, and loves ye with all my heart, just as de Lord does.' Honey, ye ought to see how dat woman cried! Says she, 'Milly, I's a great sinner.' Says I, 'Miss Harrit, we's sinners, both on us, but de Lord gives hisself for us both; and if he loves us poor sinners, we mustn't be hard on each other. Ye was tempted, honey,' says I (for you see I felt like makin' scuses for her); 'but de Lord Jesus has got a pardon for both on us.'

"After dat, I didn't have no more trouble with Miss Harrit. Chile, we was sisters in Jesus. I bore her burdens, and she bore mine. And, dear, de burdens was heavy; for her son he was brought home a corpse; he shot hisself right through de heart trying to load a gun when he was drunk. Oh, chile, I thought den how I'd prayed de Lord to render unto her double; but I had a better mind den. Ef I could have brought poor Mas'r George to life, I'd a done it; and I held de poor woman's head on my arm all dat ar night, and she a screamin' every hour. Well, dat ar took her down to de grave. She didn't live much longer; but she was ready to die. She sent and bought my daughter Lucy's son, dis here Tom, and gin him to me. Poor thing! she did all she could.

"I watched with her de night she died. Oh, Miss Nina, if ever ye're tempted to hate anybody, think how 't'll be with 'em when dey comes to die.

"She died hard, poor thing! and she was cast down, 'bout her sins. 'Oh, Milly,' says she, 'the Lord and you may forgive me, but I can't forgive myself.'

"'And,' says I to her, 'Oh, missis, don't think of it no more! de Lord's hid it in his own heart!' Oh, but she struggled long, honey; she was all night dyin', and 'twas 'Milly! Milly!' all de time; 'Oh, Milly, stay with me!'

"And, chile, I felt I loved her like my own soul; and when de day broke de Lord set her free, and I laid her down like she'd been one o' my babies. I took up her poor hand. It was warm, but the strength was all gone out on't; and, 'Oh,' I thought, 'ye poor thing, how could I ever have hated ye so?' Ah, chile, we mustn't hate nobody; we's all poor creaturs, and de dear Lord he loves us all."

XVII. UNCLE JOHN

About four miles east of Canema lay the plantation of Nina's uncle, whither Harry had been sent on the morning which we have mentioned. The young man went upon his errand in no very enviable mood of mind. Uncle Jack, as Nina always called him, was the nominal guardian of the estate, and a more friendly and indulgent one Harry could not have desired. He was one of those joyous, easy souls, whose leading desire seemed to be that everybody in the world should make himself as happy as possible, without fatiguing him with consultations as to particulars. His confidence in Harry was unbounded; and he esteemed it a good fortune that it was so, as he was wont to say, laughingly, that his own place was more than he could manage. Like all gentlemen who make the study of their own ease a primary consideration, Uncle Jack found the whole course of nature dead-set against him. For, as all creation is evidently organized with a view to making people work, it follows that no one has so much care as the man who resolves not to take any. Uncle Jack was systematically, and as a matter of course, cheated and fleeced, by his overseers, by his negroes, and the poor whites of his vicinity; and, worst of all, continually hectored and lectured by his wife therefor. Nature, or destiny, or whoever the lady may be that deals the matrimonial cards, with her usual thoughtfulness in balancing opposites, had arranged that jovial, easy, care-hating Uncle John should have been united to a most undaunted and ever-active spirit of enterprise and resolution, who never left anything quiet in his vicinity. She it was who continually disturbed his repose, by constantly ferreting out, and bringing before his view, all the plots, treasons, and conspiracies, with which plantation-life is ever abounding; bringing down on his devoted head the necessity of discriminations, decisions, and settlements, most abhorrent to an easy man.

The fact was, that responsibility, aggravated by her husband's negligence, had transformed the worthy woman into a sort of domestic dragon of the Hesperides; and her good helpmeet declared that he believed she never slept, nor meant anybody else should. It was all very well, he would observe. He wouldn't quarrel with her for walking the whole night long, or sleeping with her head out of the window, watching the smoke-house; for stealing out after one o'clock to convict Pompey, or circumvent Cuff, if she only wouldn't bother him with it. Suppose the half of the hams were carried off, between two and three, and sold to Abijah Skinflint for rum?--He must have his sleep; and, if he had to pay for it in ham, why, he'd pay for it in ham; but sleep he must, and would. And, supposing he really believed, in his own soul, that Cuffy, who came in the morning, with a long face, to announce the theft, and to propose measures of discovery, was in fact the main conspirator--what then? He couldn't prove it on him. Cuff had gone astray from the womb, speaking lies ever since he was born; and what would be the use of his fretting and sweating himself to death to get truth out of Cuff? No, no! Mrs. G., as he commonly called his helpmeet, might do that sort of thing, but she mustn't bother him about it. Not that Uncle Jack was invariable in his temper; human nature has its limits, and a personage who finds "mischief still for idle hands to do" often seems to take a malicious pleasure in upsetting the temper of idle gentlemen. So, Uncle Jack, though confessedly the best fellow in the world, was occasionally subject to a tropical whirlwind of passion, in which he would stamp, tear, and swear, with most astounding energy; and in those ignited moments all the pent-up sorrows of his soul would fly about him, like red-hot shot, in every direction. And then he would curse the negroes, curse the overseers, curse the plantation, curse Cuff and Pomp and Dinah, curse the poor white folks round, curse Mr. Abijah Skinflint, and declare that he would send them and the niggers all severally to a department which politeness forbids us to mention. He would pour out awful threats of cutting up, skinning alive, and selling to Georgia. To all which commotion and bluster the negroes would listen, rolling the whites of their eyes, and sticking their tongues in their cheeks, with an air of great satisfaction and amusement; because experience had sufficiently proved to them that nobody had ever been cut up, skinned alive, or sent to Georgia, as the result of any of these outpourings. So, when Uncle Jack had one of these fits, they treated it as hens do an approaching thunderstorm,--ran under cover, and waited for it to blow over.

As to Madam Gordon, her wrath was another affair. And her threats they had learned to know generally meant something; though it very often happened that, in the dispensation of most needed justice, Uncle Jack, if in an extra good humor, would rush between the culprit and his mistress, and bear him off in triumph, at the risk of most serious consequences to himself afterwards. Our readers are not to infer from this that Madam Gordon was really and naturally an ill-natured woman. She was only one of that denomination of vehement housekeepers who are to be found the world over--women to whom is appointed the hard mission of combating, single-handed, for the principles of order and exactness, against a whole world in arms. Had she had the good fortune to have been born in Vermont or Massachusetts, she would have been known through the whole village as a woman who couldn't be cheated half a cent on a pound in meat, and had an instinctive knowledge whether a cord of wood was too short, or a pound of butter too light. Put such a woman at the head of the disorderly rabble of a plantation, with a cheating overseer, surrounded by thieving poor whites, to whom the very organization of society leaves no resource but thieving, with a never-mind husband, with land that has seen its best days, and is fast running to barrenness, and you must not too severely question her temper, if it should not be at all times in perfect subjection. In fact, Madam Gordon's cap habitually bristled with horror, and she was rarely known to sit down. Occasionally, it is true, she alighted upon a chair; but was in a moment up again, to pursue some of her household train, or shout, at the top of her lungs, some caution toward the kitchen.

When Harry reined up his horse before the plantation, the gate was thrown open for him by old Pomp, a superannuated negro, who reserved this function as his peculiar sinecure.

"Lord bress you, Harry, dat you? Bress you, you ought fur to see mas'r! Such a gale up to de house!"

"What's the matter, Pomp?"

"Why, mas'r, he done got one of he fits! Tarin' round dar, fit to split!--stompin' up and down de 'randy, swarin' like mad! Lord, if he an't! He done got Jake tied up, dar!--swars he's goin' to cut him to pieces! He! he! he! Has so! Got Jake tied up dar! Ho! ho! ho! Real curus! And he's blowin' hisself out dere mighty hard, I tell you! So, if you want to get word wid him, you can't do it till he done got through wid dis yer!" And the old man ducked his pepper-and-salt-colored head, and chuckled with a lively satisfaction.

As Harry rode slowly up the avenue to the house, he caught sight of the portly figure of its master, stamping up and down the veranda, vociferating and gesticulating in the most violent manner. He was a corpulent man, of middle age, with a round, high forehead, set off with grizzled hair. His blue eyes, fair, rosy, fat face, his mouth adorned with brilliant teeth, gave him, when in good-humor, the air of a handsome and agreeable man. At present his countenance was flushed almost to purple, as he stood storming, from his rostrum, at a saucy, ragged negro, who, tied to the horse-post, stood the picture of unconcern; while a crowd of negro men, women, and children, were looking on.

"I'll teach you!" he vociferated, shaking his fist. "I won't--won't bear it of you, you dog, you! You won't take my orders, won't you? I'll kill you--that I will! I'll cut you up into inch-pieces!"

"No, you won't, and you know you won't!" interposed Mrs. Gordon, who sat at the window behind him. "You won't, and you know you won't! and they know you won't, too! It will all end in smoke, as it always does. I only wish you wouldn't talk and threaten, because it makes you ridiculous!"

"Hold your tongue, too! I'll be master in my own house, I say! Infernal dog!--I say, Cuff, cut him up!--Why don't you go at him?--Give it to him!--What you waiting for?"

"If mas'r pleases!" said Cuff, rolling up his eyes, and making a deprecating gesture.

"If I please! Well, blast you, I do please! Go at him!--thrash away! Stay, I'll come myself." And, seizing a cow-hide, which lay near him, he turned up his cuffs, and ran down the steps; but, missing his footing in his zeal, came head-first against the very post where the criminal was tied.

"There! I hope, now, you are satisfied! You have killed me!--you have broke my head, you have! I shall be laid up a month, all for you, you ungrateful dog!"

Cuffy and Sambo came to the rescue, raised him up carefully, and began brushing the dust off his clothes, smothering the laughter with which they seemed ready to explode, while the culprit at the post seemed to consider this an excellent opportunity to put in his submission.

"Please, mas'r, do forgive me! I tole 'em to go out, and dey said dey wouldn't. I didn't mean no harm when I said 'Mas'r had better go hisself;' 'cause I thinks so now. Mas'r had better go! Dem folks is curus, and dey won't go for none of us. Dey just acts ridiculous, dey does! And I didn't mean fur to be sarcy, nor nothin.' I say 'gin, if mas'r'll take his horse and go over dar, mas'r drive dose folks out; and nobody else can't do it! We done can't do it--dey jest sarce us. Now, for my Heavenly Master, all dis yere is de truth I've been telling. De Lord, de Master, knows it is; and, if mas'r'll take his horse, and ride down dere, he'd see so; so dere, just as I've been telling mas'r. I didn't mean no harm at all, I didn't!"

The quarrel, it must be told, related to the ejecting of a poor white family which had squatted, as the phrase is, in a deserted cabin, on a distant part of the Gordon plantation. Mrs. Gordon's untiring assiduity having discovered this fact, she had left her husband no peace till something was undertaken in the way of ejectment. He accordingly commissioned Jake, a stout negro, on the morning of the present day, to go over and turn them off. Now, Jake, who inherited to the full the lofty contempt with which the plantation negro regards the poor white folks, started upon his errand, nothing loth, and whistled his way in high feather, with two large dogs at his heels. But, when he found a miserable, poor, sick woman, surrounded by four starving children, Jake's mother's milk came back to him; and, instead of turning them out, he actually pitched a dish of cold potatoes in among them, which he picked up in a neighboring cabin, with about the same air of contemptuous pity with which one throws scraps to a dog. And then, meandering his way back to the house, informed his master that "He couldn't turn de white trash out; and, if he wanted them turned out, he would have to go hisself."

Now, we all know that a fit of temper has very often nothing to do with the thing which appears to give rise to it. When a cloud is full charged with electricity, it makes no difference which bit of wire is put in. The flash and the thunder come one way as well as another. Mr. Gordon had received troublesome letters on business, a troublesome lecture from his wife, his corn-cake had been over-done at breakfast, and his coffee burned bitter; besides which, he had a cold in his head coming on, and there was a settlement brewing with the overseer. In consequence of all which things, though Jake's mode of delivering himself wasn't a whit more saucy than ordinary, the storm broke upon him then and there, and raged as we have described. The heaviest part of it, however, being now spent, Mr. Gordon consented to pardon the culprit on condition that he would bring him up his horse immediately, when he would ride over and see if he couldn't turn out the offending party. He pressed Harry, who was rather a favorite of his, into the service; and, in the course of a quarter of an hour, they were riding off in the direction of the squatter's cabin.

"It's perfectly insufferable, what we proprietors have to bear from this tribe of creatures!" he said. "There ought to be hunting-parties got up to chase them down, and exterminate 'em, just as we do rats. It would be a kindness to them; the only thing you can do for them is to kill them. As for charity, or that kind of thing, you might as well throw victuals into the hollow logs as to try to feed 'em. The government ought to pass laws,--we will have laws, somehow or other,--and get them out of the state."

And, so discoursing, the good man at length arrived before the door of a miserable, decaying log-cabin, out of whose glassless windows dark emptiness looked, as out of the eye-holes of a skull. Two scared, cowering children disappeared round the corner as he approached. He kicked open the door, and entered. Crouched on a pile of dirty straw, sat a miserable, haggard woman, with large, wild eyes, sunken cheeks, dishevelled, matted hair, and long, lean hands, like bird's-claws. At her skinny breast an emaciated infant was hanging, pushing, with its little skeleton hands, as if to force the nourishment which nature no longer gave; and two scared-looking children, with features wasted and pinched blue with famine, were clinging to her gown. The whole group huddled together, drawing as far as possible away from the new-comer, looked up with large, frightened eyes, like hunted wild animals.

"What you here for?" was the first question of Mr. Gordon, put in no very decided tone; for, if the truth must be told, his combativeness was oozing out.

The woman did not answer, and, after a pause, the youngest child piped up, in a shrill voice,--

"An't got nowhere else to be!"

"Yes," said the woman, "we camped on Mr. Durant's place, and Bobfield--him is the overseer--pulled down the cabin right over our head. 'Pears like we couldn't get nowhere."

"Where is your husband?"

"Gone looking for work. 'Pears like he couldn't get none nowhere. 'Pears like nobody wants us. But we have got to be somewhere, though!" said the woman, in a melancholy, apologetic tone. "We can't die, as I see!--wish we could!"

Mr. Gordon's eye fell upon two or three cold potatoes in a piece of broken crock, over which the woman appeared keeping jealous guard.

"What you doing with those potatoes?"

"Saving them for the children's dinner."

"And is that all you've got to eat, I want to know?" said Mr. Gordon, in a high, sharp tone, as if he were getting angry very fast.

"Yes," said the woman.

"What did you have to eat yesterday?"

"Nothing!" said the woman.

"And what did you eat the day before?"

"Found some old bones round the nigger houses; and some on 'em give us some corn-cake."

"Why the devil didn't you send up to my house, and get some bacon? Picking up bones, slop, and swill, round the nigger huts? Why didn't you send up for some ham, and some meal? Lord bless you, you don't think Madam Gordon is a dog to bite you, do you? Wait here till I send you down something fit to eat. Just end in my having to take care of you, I see! And, if you are going to stay here, there will be something to be done to keep the rain out!"

"There, now," he said to Harry, as he was mounting his horse, "just see what 'tis to be made with hooks in one's back, like me! Everybody hangs on to me, of course! Now, there's Durant turns off these folks; there's Peters turns them off! Well, what's the consequence? They come and litter down on me, just because I am an easy, soft-hearted old fool! It's too devilish bad! They breed like rabbits! What God Almighty makes such people for, I don't know! I suppose He does. But there's these poor, miserable trash have children like sixty; and there's folks living in splendid houses, dying for children, and can't have any. If they manage one or two, the scarlet-fever or whooping-cough makes off with 'em. Lord bless me, things go on in a terrible mixed-up way in this world! And, then, what upon earth I'm to say to Mrs. G.! I know what she'll say to me. She'll tell me she told me so--that's what she always says. I wish she'd go and see them herself--I do so! Mrs. G. is the nicest kind of a woman--no mistake about that; but she has an awful deal of energy, that woman! It's dreadful fatiguing to a quiet man, like me--dreadful! But I'm sure I don't know what I should do without her. She'll be down upon me about this woman; but the woman must have some ham, that's flat! Cold potatoes and old bones! Pretty story! Such people have no business to live at all; but, if they will live, they ought to eat Christian things! There goes Jake. Why couldn't he turn 'em off before I saw 'em? It would have saved me all this plague! Dog knew what he was about, when he got me down here! Jake! Oh, Jake, Jake! come here!"

Jake came shambling along up to his master, with an external appearance of the deepest humility, under which was too plainly seen to lurk a facetious air of waggish satisfaction.

"Here, you, Jake; you get a basket"--

"Yes, mas'r!" said Jake, with an air of provoking intelligence.

"Be still saying 'Yes, mas'r,' and hear what I've got to say! Mind yourself!"

Jake gave a side glance of inexpressible drollery at Harry, and then stood like an ebony statue of submission.

"You go to your missis, and ask her for the key of the smoke-house, and bring it to me."

"Yes, sir."

"And you tell your missis to send me a peck of meal. Stay--a loaf of bread, or some biscuit, or corn-cake, or anything else which may happen to be baked up. Tell her I want them sent out right away."

Jake bowed and disappeared.

"Now we may as well ride down this path, while he is gone for the things. Mrs. G. will blow off on him first, so that rather less of it will come upon me. I wish I could get her to see them herself. Lord bless her, she is a kind-hearted woman enough! but she thinks there's no use doing,--and there an't. She is right enough about it. But, then, as the woman says, there must be some place for them to be in the world. The world is wide enough, I'm sure! Plague take it! why can't we pass a law to take them all in with our niggers, and then they'd have some one to take care of them! Then we'd do something for them, and there'd be some hope of keeping 'em comfortable."

Harry felt in no wise inclined to reply to any of this conversation, because he knew that, though nominally addressed to him, the good gentleman was talking merely for the sake of easing his mind, and that he would have opened his heart just as freely to the next hickory-bush, if he had not happened to be present. So he let him expend himself, waiting for an opportunity to introduce subjects which lay nearer his heart.

In a convenient pause, he found opportunity to say,--

"Miss Nina sent me over here, this morning."

"Ah, Nin! my pretty little Nin! Bless the child! She did? Why couldn't she come over herself, and comfort an old fellow's heart? Nin is the prettiest girl in the county! I tell you that, Harry!"

"Miss Nina is in a good deal of trouble. Master Tom came home last night drunk, and to-day he is so cross and contrary she can't do anything with him."

"Drunk? Oh, what a sad dog! Tom gets drunk too often! Carries that too far, altogether! Told him that, the last time I talked to him. Says I, 'Tom, it does very well for a young man to have a spree once in one or two months. I did it myself, when I was young. But,' says I, 'Tom, to spree all the time, won't do, Tom!' says I. 'Nobody minds a fellow being drunk occasionally; but he ought to be moderate about it, and know where to stop,' says I; 'because, when it comes to that, that he is drunk every day, or every other day, why, it's my opinion that he may consider the devil's got him!' I talked to Tom just so, right out square; because, you see, I'm in a father's place to him. But, Lord, it don't seem to have done him a bit of good! Good Lord! they tell me he is drunk one half his time, and acts like a crazy creature! Goes too far, Tom does, altogether. Mrs. G. an't got any patience with him. She blasts at him every time he comes here, and he blasts at her; so it an't very comfortable having him here. Good woman at heart, Mrs. Gordon, but a little strong in her ways, you know; and Tom is strong, too. So it's fire fight fire when they get together. It's no ways comfortable to a man wanting to have everybody happy around him. Lord bless me! I wish Nin were my daughter! Why can't she come over here, and live with me? She hasn't got any more spirit in her than just what I like. Just enough fizz in her to keep one from flatting out. What about those beaux of hers? Is she going to be married? Hey?"

"There's two gentlemen there, attending upon Miss Nina. One is Mr. Carson, of New York"--

"Hang it all! she isn't going to marry a d----d Yankee! Why, brother would turn over in his grave!"

"I don't think it will be necessary to put himself to that trouble," said Harry, "for I rather think it's Mr. Clayton who is to be the favored one."

"Clayton! good blood!--like that! Seems to be a gentlemanly good fellow, doesn't he?"

"Yes, sir. He owns a plantation, I'm told, in South Carolina."

"Ah! ah! that's well! But I hate to spare Nin! I never half liked sending her off to New York. Don't believe in boarding-schools. I've seen as fine girls grown on plantations as any man need want. What do we want to send our girls there, to get fipenny-bit ideas? I thank the Lord, I never was in New York, and I never mean to be! Carolina born and raised, I am; and my wife is Virginia--pure breed! No boarding-school about her! And, when I stood up to be married to her, there wasn't a girl in Virginia could stand up with her. Her cheeks were like damask roses! A tall, straight, lively girl, she was! Knew her own mind, and had a good notion of speaking it, too. And there isn't a woman, now, that can get through the business she can, and have her eyes always on everything. If it does make me uncomfortable, every now and then, I ought to take it, and thank the Lord for it. For, if it wan't for her, what with the overseer, and the niggers, and the poor white trash, we should all go to the devil in a heap!"

"Miss Nina sent me over here to be out of Master Tom's way," said Harry, after a pause. "He is bent upon hectoring me, as usual. You know, sir, that he always had a spite against me, and it seems to grow more and more bitter. He quarrels with her about the management of everything on the place; and you know, sir, that I try to do my very best, and you and Mrs. Gordon have always been pleased to say that I did well."

"So we did, Harry, my boy! So we did! Stay here as long as you like. Just suit yourself about that. Maybe you'd like to go out shooting with me."

"I'm worried," said Harry, "to be obliged to be away just at the time of putting in the seed. Everything depends upon my overseeing."

"Why don't you go back, then? Tom's ugliness is nothing but because he is drunk. There's where it is! I see through it! You see, when a fellow has had a drunken spree, why, the day after it he is all at loose ends and cross--nerves all ravelled out, like an old stocking. Then fellows are sulky and surly like. I've heard of their having temperance societies up in those northern states, and I think something of that sort would be good for our young men. They get drunk too often. Full a third of them, I should reckon, get the delirium tremens before they are fifty. If we could have a society like them, and that sort of thing, and agree to be moderate! Nobody expects young men to be old before their time; but, if they'd agree not to blow out more than once a month, or something in that way!"

"I'm afraid," said Harry, "Master Tom's too far gone for that."

"Oh, ay! yes! Pity, pity! Suppose it is so. Why, when a fellow gets so far, he's like a nigger's old patched coat--you can't tell where the real cloth is. Now, Tom; I suppose he never is himself--always up on a wave, or down in the trough! Heigho! I'm sorry!"

"It's very hard on Miss Nina," said Harry. "He interferes, and I have no power to stand for her. And, yesterday, he began talking to my wife in a way I can't bear, nor won't! He must let her alone!"

"Sho! sho!" said Mr. Gordon. "See what a boy that is, now! That an't in the least worth while--that an't! I shall tell Tom so. And, Harry, mind your temper! Remember, young men will be young; and, if a fellow will treat himself to a pretty wife, he must expect trials. But Tom ought not to do so. I shall tell him. High! there comes Jake, with the basket and the smoke-house key. Now for something to send down to those poor hobgoblins. If people are going to starve, they mustn't come on to my place to do it. I don't mind what I don't see--I wouldn't mind if the whole litter of 'em was drowned to-morrow; but, hang it, I can't stand it if I know it! So, here, Jake, take this ham and bread, and look 'em up an old skillet, and see if you can't tinker up the house a bit. I'd set the fellow to work, when he comes back; only we have two hands to every turn, now, and the niggers always plague 'em. Harry, you go home, and tell Nin Mrs. G. and I will be over to dinner."