"She was nearly blind, poor woman, yet I think
she did whatever work was done. I have often seen her hoeing. I
believe that Demming was always good to her, though. He is a most
amiable creature."

"Singular how a woman will bear any amount of laziness, actual
worthlessness, indeed, in a man who is good to her," the Bishop
remarked.

"Beautiful trait in her character," said Talboys. "Where should we be
without it?"

"Have the Demmings never had any children?" asked Louise, who did not
like the turn the talk was taking.

"Yes, one," the Bishop answered, "a little girl. She died three years
ago. Demming was devotedly attached to her. He can't talk of her now
without the tears coming to his eyes. He really," said the Bishop,
meditatively, "seemed more affected when he told me about her death
than he was yesterday. She died of some kind of low fever, and was ill
a long time. He used to walk up and down the little path through the
woods, holding her in his arms. She would wake up in the night and
cry, and he would wrap her in an old army blanket, and pace in front
of the house for hours. Often the teamsters driving into town at break
of day, with their loads of wood, would come on him thus, walking and
talking to the child, with the little thin face on his shoulder, and
the ragged blanket trailing on the ground. Ah, Demming is not
altogether abandoned, he has an affectionate heart!"

Neither of his listeners made any response. Talboys, because of his
slender faith in Demming; Louise, because she was thinking that if the
Aiken laundresses were intrusted with her father's lawn many more
times there would be nothing left to darn. They went on silently,
therefore, until the Bishop said, in a low voice, "Here we are!"

The negro driver, with the agility of a country coachman, had already
sprung to the ground, and was holding the carriage door open.

Before them lay a small cleared tract of land, where a pleasant
greenness of young potato vines hid the sand. In the centre was a
tumble-down cabin, with a mud chimney on the outside. The one window
had no sash, and its rude shutter hung precariously by a single
leathern hinge. The door was open, revealing that the interior was
papered with newspapers. Three or four yelping curs seemed to be all
the furniture.

There was nothing extraordinary in the picture; one could see fifty
such cabins, in a radius of half a mile. Nor was there anything of
mark in the appearance of Demmi