pined or not, or
whether she was lonely, is a question that this chronicler is not called
on to discuss.

Now, the fact of Ike's popularity with the whites had struck Mr.
Hotchkiss as a very unfavourable sign, and he set himself to work to
bring about a change. He sent some of the negro leaders to talk with
Ike, who sent them about their business in short order. Then Mr.
Hotchkiss took the case in hand, and called on Ike at his house. The two
had an argument over the matter, Ike interspersing his remarks with
random rhymes which Hotchkiss thought very coarse and crude. At the
conclusion of the argument, Hotchkiss saw that the negro had been
laughing at him all the way through, and he resented this attitude more
than another would. He went away in a huff, resolved to leave the negro
with his idols.

This would have been very well, if the matter had stopped there, but
Edie put her finger in the pie. One day when Ike was away, she called to
Hotchkiss as he was passing on his way to town, and invited him into the
house. There was something about the man that had attracted the wild
and untamed passions of the woman. He was not a very handsome man, but
his refinement of manner and speech stood for something, and Edie had
resolved to cultivate his acquaintance. He went in, in response to her
invitation, and found that she desired to ask his advice as to the best
and easiest method of converting Ike into a Union Leaguer. Hotchkiss
gave her such advice as he could in the most matter-of-fact way, and
went on about his business. Otherwise he paid no more attention to her
than if she had been a sign in front of a cigar-store. Edie was not
accustomed to this sort of thing, and it puzzled her. She went to her
looking-glass and studied her features, thinking that perhaps something
was wrong. But her beauty had not even begun to fade. A melancholy
tenderness shone in her lustrous eyes, her rosy lips curved archly, and
the glow of the peach-bloom was in her cheeks.

"I didn't know the man was a preacher," she said, laughing at herself in
the glass.

Time and again she called Mr. Hotchkiss in as he went by, and on some
occasions they held long consultations at the little gate in front of
her door. Ike was not at all blind to these things; if he had been,
there was more than one friendly white man to call his attention to
them. The negro was compelled to measure Hotchkiss by the standard of
the most of the white men he knew. He was w