kes, and you mean
bizzness; and I don't intend to consume no more of your valuable
solicitous time. Dyce, fetch me that plank bottom cher to stand on."

"Fetch it yourself. Paddling your own canoe, means headin' for the mill
dam."

Bedney hastened to procure the designated chair, which he mounted in
front of the mantel piece, and thence reaching up to the portrait of
President Lincoln, took it carefully down from the hook. With the blade
of his pocket-knife, he loosened some tacks which secured the thin pine
slats at the back of the picture, and removed them. He took everything
from the frame, and blank dismay seized him, when the desired object
was nowhere visible.

"Marse Alfred, I swear I tacked that hank'cher in the back of this here
portrait, between the pasteboard and the brown paper, only yestiddy;
and 'fore Gord! I haint seen it since."

Grasping his wife's shoulder, he shook her, until her tall turban
quivered and bent over like the Tower of Pisa, and Mr. Churchill saw
that in his unfeigned terror, drops of perspiration broke out on his
wrinkled forehead.

"Have you turned idjut, that you want us both to be devoured by the
roarin' lion of the Law? My mammy named me Bedney, not Dani-yell, and
she had oughter, for Gord knows, you have kept me in a fiery furnace
ever since I tuck you for better for wurser, mostly wurser. I want that
hank'cher, and you'd better believe--I want it quick. I found it, and
I'm gwine to give it up; and you have got no right to jeppardy my life,
if you are fool enough to resk your own stiff neck. Gim'me that
hank'cher! Fantods is played out. I would ruther play leap frog over a
buzz-saw than--than--pester and rile Marse Alfred, and have the
cunstable clawing my collar."

"You poor, pitiful, rascally, cowardly creetur! Whar's that oath you
done swore, to help 'fend Miss Ellie's child? And you a deacon, high in
the church! If I had found that hank'cher, I would hide it, till
Gabriel's horn blows; and I would go to jail or to Jericho; and before
I would give testimony agin my dear young Mistiss's poor friendless
gal, I would chaw my tongue into sassage meat. That's the diffunce
between a palavering man full of 'screshun, and a 'oman who means what
she says; and will stand by her word, if it rains fire and brimstone.
Betrayin' and denying the innercent, has been men's work, ever since
the time of Judas and Peter. Now, Marse Alfred, Bedney did tack the
hank'cher inside the portrait of