ors and their sins, the actual presences of those dead men and
women, now more unreal substance than the dust of their shrouds. He
liked to carry this mediaeval Iliad round with him, and, taking it out
at propitious places, go jotting his pencil down the page. He had heard
it called an incomprehensible puzzle of poetry; it gave him pleasure,
then, to unriddle and proclaim it plain as print. He was thus
delectating himself one day, while Flor, still in her phase of
moodiness, stood behind Miss Agatha's chair; and, the passage pleasing
him, he read it aloud to Miss Agatha, whom, in the absence of his son,
her husband, he was wont to consider his opponent in the abstract,
however dear and precious in the concrete.

"As, shall I say, some Ethiop, past pursuit
Of all enslavers, dips a shackled foot,
Burnt to the blood, into the drowsy, black,
Enormous watercourse which guides him back
To his own tribe again, where he is king;
And laughs, because he guesses, numbering
The yellower poison-wattles on the pouch
Of the first lizard wrested from its couch
Under the slime, (whose skin, the while, he strips
To cure his nostril with, and festered lip,
And eyeballs bloodshot through the desert blast,)
That he has reached its boundary, at last
May breathe; thinks o'er enchantments of the South,
Sovereign to plague his enemies, their mouth,
Eyes, nails, and hair; but, these enchantments tried
In fancy, puts them soberly aside
For truth, projects a cool return with friends,
The likelihood of winning mere amends
Erelong; thinks that, takes comfort silently,
Then from the river's brink his wrongs and he,
Hugging revenge close to their hearts, are soon
Offstriding to the Mountains of the Moon."

Flor stood listening, with eyes that shone strangely out of the gloom of
her face.

"Well, child," said her master to Miss Agatha, "how does that little
monodrame strike you? Which do you find preferable, tell me, Ashantee at
home or Ashantee abroad? civilized or barbarized? the institution or the
savage? Eh, Blossom," turning to Flor, "what do you think of the
condition of that ancestor of yours?"

"Mas'r Henry," said Flor, gravely, "he was free."

"Eh? Free? What! are you bitten, too?"

And Mas'r Henry laughed at the thought, and pictured to himself his
dancer dancing off altogether, like the swamp-fire she was. Then his
tone changed.

"Flor," sa