ght stature who had just come from a neighboring state-room: a
slender old man leaning feebly on a thick-set youth, whom one flash of
his eye identified as the commodore and Hugh, though as they passed
toward the stair they betrayed no sign that they had observed him.

He gave his speechless brother a single look, caught the chair by its
back, lifted it over his head, and with a long, smothered cry, half
moan, half whine, crashed it down upon the balustrade--once--twice--and
again, again, hurled the last fragment underfoot, and with eyes
streaming stamped, stamped, and stamped, while the commodore and his
supporter went on up to the roof and beyond view without a glance
behind.

LIV

"CAN'T!"

On handing the will to her mother, Ramsey found her no longer leading
the conversation. The senator had the floor, the deck, and, as Ned or
Watson might have said, was "drawing all the water in the river." His
discourse was to madame and the general alternately, though now and then
he included the parson's wife and Mrs. Gilmore.

Ramsey's talent for taking in everything at once was taxed to its limit
when at the same time that she attended to him she watched an elegant
steamer, one of the Saturday-evening boats out of Cincinnati, pass
remotely on the Arkansas side behind Island Thirty-six; marked the
return of the Californian as he followed her from his conference with
the twins; noted the slow, preoccupied passing of Hugh and his
grandfather to the captain's room; measured every winged stride of the
_Votaress's_ approach toward the Third Chickasaw Bluff; observed--as
earlier bidden by the actor--the strange pink and yellow stripes of the
bluff's clay face, and recognized in the great bell's landing signal the
sad business which had become so half-conscious a habit in the boat's
routine. Yet she caught the senator's every word.

Whether a person born in slavery, although seven eighths white, he was
saying, was free by law was hardly a practical question, the matter
being so nearly independent of any mere statute. For if such a slave
sought liberty of an owner inclined to grant it there certainly was no
law to prevent its bestowal, whereas if the owner was unwilling the
burden of proof would naturally fall upon the slave, who, of course----

"No," said Ramsey, drawing his and every eye and interesting everybody
by a sweet maturity of tone to which her mourning dress lent emphasis.
"No, it would not. The judge told m