d,--this long and wasting heart-martyrdom, this
slow, daily bleeding away of the inward life, drop by drop, hour after
hour,--this is the true searching test of what there may be in man or
woman.

When Tom stood face to face with his persecutor, and heard his threats,
and thought in his very soul that his hour was come, his heart swelled
bravely in him, and he thought he could bear torture and fire, bear
anything, with the vision of Jesus and heaven but just a step beyond;
but, when he was gone, and the present excitement passed off, came back
the pain of his bruised and weary limbs,--came back the sense of his
utterly degraded, hopeless, forlorn estate; and the day passed wearily
enough.

Long before his wounds were healed, Legree insisted that he should be
put to the regular field-work; and then came day after day of pain and
weariness, aggravated by every kind of injustice and indignity that the
ill-will of a mean and malicious mind could devise. Whoever, in _our_
circumstances, has made trial of pain, even with all the alleviations
which, for us, usually attend it, must know the irritation that comes
with it. Tom no longer wondered at the habitual surliness of his
associates; nay, he found the placid, sunny temper, which had been the
habitude of his life, broken in on, and sorely strained, by the inroads
of the same thing. He had flattered himself on leisure to read his
Bible; but there was no such thing as leisure there. In the height of
the season, Legree did not hesitate to press all his hands through,
Sundays and week-days alike. Why shouldn't he?--he made more cotton by
it, and gained his wager; and if it wore out a few more hands, he could
buy better ones. At first, Tom used to read a verse or two of his Bible,
by the flicker of the fire, after he had returned from his daily toil;
but, after the cruel treatment he received, he used to come home so
exhausted, that his head swam and his eyes failed when he tried to
read; and he was fain to stretch himself down, with the others, in utter
exhaustion.

Is it strange that the religious peace and trust, which had upborne him
hitherto, should give way to tossings of soul and despondent darkness?
The gloomiest problem of this mysterious life was constantly before his
eyes,--souls crushed and ruined, evil triumphant, and God silent. It
was weeks and months that Tom wrestled, in his own soul, in darkness and
sorrow. He thought of Miss Ophelia's letter to his Kentucky