s,
I'll see you for a moment on the back gallery." His wife tried to catch
his eye, but a voice within him commended him to his own self-command,
and he passed down the hall, the mulatto following. Johanna, crouching
and nodding against the wall, straightened up as he passed. His footfall
sounded hope to the strained ear of the Judge's son in the kitchen.
Virginia slipped away. In the veranda, under the moonlight, Garnet
turned and said, in a voice almost friendly:

"Cornelius."

"Yass, sah."

"Cornelius, why did you go off and hire yourself out, sir?"

At the last word the small listener in the kitchen trembled.

"Dass jess what I 'How to 'splain to you, sah."

"It isn't necessary. Cornelius, you know that if ever one class of human
beings owed a lifelong gratitude to another, you negroes owe it to your
old masters, don't you? Stop! don't you dare to say no? Here you all
are; never has one of you felt a pang of helpless hunger or lain one day
with a neglected fever. Food, clothing, shelter, you've never suffered a
day's doubt about them! No other laboring class ever were so free from
the cares of life. Your fellow-servants have shown some gratitude;
they've stayed with their mistress till I got home to arrange with them
under these new conditions. But you--you! when I let you push on ahead
and leave me sick and wounded and only half way home--your home and
mine, Cornelius--with your promise to wait here till I could come and
retain you on wages--you, in pure wantonness, must lift up your heels
and prance away into your so-called new liberty. You're a fair sample of
what's to come, Cornelius. You've spent your first wages for whiskey.
Silence, you perfidious reptile!

"Oh, Cornelius, you needn't dodge in that way, sir, I'm not going to
take you to the stable; thank God I'm done whipping you and all your
kind, for life! Cornelius, I've only one business with you and it's only
one word! Go! at once! forever! You should go if it were
only----Cornelius, I've been taking care of my own horse! Don't you dare
to sleep on these premises to-night. Wait! Tell me what you've done to
offend Judge March?"

"Why, Mahse John Wesley, I ain't done nothin' to Jedge Mahch; no, sah,
neither defensive nor yit offensive. An' yit mo', I ain't dream o;
causin' you sich uprisin' he'plessness. Me and Jedge Mahch"--he began to
swell--"has had a stric'ly private disparitude on the subjec' o' extry
wages, account'n o' his disinterpretatio