attractive to the little girls, while their mothers pitied him,
wondering why he had been permitted to come there, and watch-
ing for the change in him, which was sure to ensue.
  Not all at once did Hugh conform to the customs of his
uncle's household, and at first there often came over him a long-
ing for something different, a yearning for the refinements of
his early home among the Northern hills, and a wish to infuse
into Chloe, the colored housekeeper, some of his mother's neat-
ness. But a few attempts at reform had taught him how futile
was the effort, Aunt Chloe always meeting him with the argu-
ment:
  "'Taint no use, Mr. Hugh. A nigger's a nigger; and I spec'
ef you're to talk to me till you was hoarse 'bout your Yankee
ways of scrubbin', and sweepin', and moppin' with a broom, I
shouldn't be an atomer white-folksey than I is now. Besides
Mas'r John wouldn't bar no finery; he's only happy when the
truck is mighty nigh a foot thick, and his things is lyin' round
loose and handy."
  To a certain extent this was true, for John Stanley would
have felt sadly out of place in any spot where, as Chloe said,
" his things were not lying round loose and handy," and as habit
is everything, so Hugh soon grew accustomed to his surround-
ings, and became as careless of his external appearance as his
uncle could desire. Only once had there come to him an awak-
ening-a faint conception of the happiness there might arise
from constant association with the pure and refined, such as his
uncle had labored to make him believe did not exist. He was
thinking of that incident now, and as he thought the veins upon
his broad, white forehead stood out round and full, while the
hands clasped above the head worked nervously together, and
it was not strange that he did not heed his mother when she
spoke, for Hugh was far away from Spring Bank, and the
wild storm beating against its walls was to him like the sound
of the waves dashing against the vessel's side, just as they did
years ago on that night he remembered so well, shuddering as
he heard again the murderous hiss of the devouring flames,
covering the fatal boat with one sheet of fire, and driving into
the water as a safer friend the shrieking, frightened wretches
who but an hour before had been so full of life and hope, dancing
gayly above the red-tongued demon stealthily creeping upward
from the hold below, where it had taken life. What a fearful
scene that was, and the veins grew larger on Hugh's brow while



8



BAD HEUGHR