y too well to
forget the distance between me and the end. Neither you nor I will ever
be the better for what we have done, unless we thoroughly finish what is
so well begun. Ay, that is the doctrine of the whole world, I judge: I
heard a travelling preacher, who was skirting it down the Ohio, a time
since, say, if a man should live up to the faith for a hundred years,
and then fall from his work a single day, he would find the settlement
was to be made for the finishing blow that he had put to his job,
and that all the bad, and none of the good, would come into the final
account."

"And you believed the hungry hypocrite!"

"Who said that I believed it?" retorted Abiram with a bullying look,
that betrayed how much his fears had dwelt on the subject he affected to
despise. "Is it believing to tell what a roguish--And yet, Ishmael, the
man might have been honest after all! He told us that the world was,
in truth, no better than a desert, and that there was but one hand that
could lead the most learned man through all its crooked windings. Now,
if this be true of the whole, it may be true of a part."

"Abiram, out with your grievances like a man," interrupted the squatter,
with a hoarse laugh. "You want to pray! But of what use will it be,
according to your own doctrine, to serve God five minutes and the devil
an hour? Harkee, friend; I'm not much of a husband-man, but this I know
to my cost; that to make a right good crop, even on the richest bottom,
there must be hard labour; and your {snufflers} liken the 'arth to a
field of corn, and the men, who live on it, to its yield. Now I tell
you, Abiram, that you are no better than a thistle or a mullin; yea, ye
ar' wood of too open a pore to be good even to burn!"

The malign glance, which shot from the scowling eye of Abiram, announced
the angry character of his feelings, but as the furtive look quailed,
immediately, before the unmoved, steady, countenance of the squatter, it
also betrayed how much the bolder spirit of the latter had obtained the
mastery over his craven nature.

Content with his ascendency, which was too apparent, and had been too
often exerted on similar occasions, to leave him in any doubt of its
extent, Ishmael coolly continued the discourse, by adverting more
directly to his future plans.

"You will own the justice of paying every one in kind," he said; "I have
been robbed of my stock, and I have a scheme to make myself as good as
before, by taking