rance of
this extraordinary tenant of the pavilion was as unexpected as it was
incomprehensible. At length Asa, in right of his years, and moved by the
rankling impulse of the recent quarrel, took on himself the office of
interrogator. Instead, however, of braving the resentment of his father,
of whose fierce nature, when aroused, he had had too frequent evidence
to excite it wantonly, he turned upon the cowering person of Abiram,
observing with a sneer--

"This then is the beast you were bringing into the prairies for a decoy!
I know you to be a man who seldom troubles truth, when any thing worse
may answer, but I never knew you to outdo yourself so thoroughly before.
The newspapers of Kentuck have called you a dealer in black flesh a
hundred times, but little did they reckon that you drove the trade into
white families."

"Who is a kidnapper?" demanded Abiram, with a blustering show of
resentment. "Am I to be called to account for every lie they put in
print throughout the States? Look to your own family, boy; look to
yourselves. The very stumps of Kentucky and Tennessee cry out ag'in
ye! Ay, my tonguey gentleman, I have seen father and mother and three
children, yourself for one, published on the logs and stubs of the
settlements, with dollars enough for reward to have made an honest man
rich, for--"

He was interrupted by a back-handed but violent blow on the mouth, that
caused him to totter, and which left the impression of its weight in the
starting blood and swelling lips.

"Asa," said the father, advancing with a portion of that dignity with
which the hand of Nature seems to have invested the parental character,
"you have struck the brother of your mother!"

"I have struck the abuser of the whole family," returned the angry
youth; "and, unless he teaches his tongue a wiser language, he had
better part with it altogether, as the unruly member. I'm no great
performer with the knife, but, on an occasion, could make out, myself,
to cut off a slande--"

"Boy, twice have you forgotten yourself to-day. Be careful that it does
not happen the third time. When the law of the land is weak, it is right
the law of nature should be strong. You understand me, Asa; and you know
me. As for you, Abiram, the child has done you wrong, and it is my place
to see you righted. Remember; I tell you justice shall be done; it is
enough. But you have said hard things ag'in me and my family. If the
hounds of the law have put their b