t. Now they were of the eccentric old
man, who had been to him a father, and from whom he had received Spring
Bank, together with the many peculiar ideas which made him the strange,
odd creature he was, a puzzle and a mystery to his own sex, and a kind
of terror to the female portion of the neighborhood, who looked upon him
as a woman-hater, and avoided or coveted his not altogether disagreeable
society, just as their fancy dictated. For years the old man and the boy
had lived together alone in that great, lonely house, enjoying vastly
the freedom from all restraint, the liberty of turning the parlors into
kennels if they chose, and converting the upper rooms into a hay-loft,
if they would. No white woman was ever seen upon the premises, unless
she came as a beggar, when some new gown, or surplice, or organ, or
chandelier, was needed for the pretty little church, lifting its modest
spire so unobtrusively among the forest trees, not very far from Spring
Bank. John Stanley didn't believe in churches; nor gowns, nor organs,
nor women, but he was proverbially liberal, and so the fair ones of
Glen's Creek neighborhood ventured into his den, finding it much
pleasanter to do so after the handsome, dark-haired boy came to live
with him; for about that frank, outspoken boy there was then something
very attractive to the little girls, while their mothers pitied him,
wondering why he had been permitted to come there, and watching 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 longing 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 neatness. But a few attempts at reform
had taught him how futile was the effort, Aunt Chloe always meeting him
with the argument:

"'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