uncompromising quality of her hatred was one thing that
had made dissimulation easy, and through all Hugh's childhood she had
practised it perfectly in every relation and direction on every one but
him. Another easement had been her indomitable, unflagging triple
purpose to be free, to be reunited to her master, and to be revenged.

And a third, craftily won through the trustfulness of Hugh's Quaker
mother, had been the opportunity to wreak the frequent overflow of her
resentments on him. The fact that he was almost of the exact age of her
own lost offspring had forever goaded her, and to him, with each
maltreatment, she had told again her heart's whole burden, outermost
wrong, innermost rage, thus recovering poise to treat his sisters and
brother with exemplary care and tenderly to discuss with their mother
Hugh's precocious reticence and gravity. Always she had held a
self-command cunningly tempered in the fire of her triple resolve and
fitted to the desperate chances with which she unceasingly crossed
daggers. She never tired of telling her little white slave that, having
herself once got the lash, she was only paying interest on it through
him. Him, at least, she would teach to hate slavery as she hated it.

Hugh's listener moved as if to touch him. A boat was coming by. They
paused in their "thort-ships" walk and with a slight choke in her voice
Ramsey asked: "You know what I hope?" Her voice went lower. "I hope you
learned."

"That's the strangest part," said Hugh. "I did."

The boat passed, a cloud of burning gems. "Go on," said Ramsey, "I can
see that and hear you at the same time."

But Hugh's mind was too masculine for such legerdemain and though she
sighed and sighed again he waited until the vision grew dim astern.
Then, as he was about to resume, she interrupted.

XXXI

THE BURNING BOAT

"Where was the commodore all that time?" she asked.

"In Europe. We did business there too. It wasn't all river and boats
those days."

"Humph!" She preferred it to be all river and boats.

"But at length," said Hugh----

"What length?"

"Ten years. Grandfather was coming home, to stay. We were all to go up
to Saint Louis on the _Quakeress_."

"Phyllis too?"

"Yes, to meet him there and bring him back with us."

"Ten years!" marvelled Ramsey. "Hadn't Phyllis ever heard from my--from
Walnut Hills?"

"Now and then, yes; and when those ten years seemed to have worn her,
body and soul, to the bre