"Look here, Mr. Joseph JEREMIAH Corbin," she returned with languid
impertinence, "if instead of cavortin' round on yo' knees trying to
conciliate an old woman who never had a stroke of luck till you killed
her son, and a young girl who won't be above letting on afore you think
it that your conciliatin' her means SPARKIN' her; if instead of that
foolishness you'd turn your hand to trying to conciliate the folks here
and keep 'em from going into that fool's act of breaking up these United
States; if instead of digging up second-hand corpses that's already been
put out of sight once you'd set to work to try and prevent the folks
about here from digging up their old cranks and their old whims, and
their old women fancies, you'd be doing something like a Christian and
a man! What's yo' blood-guiltiness--I'd like to know--alongside of the
blood-guiltiness of those fools who are just wild to rush into it, led
by such turkey-cocks as yo' friend Colonel Starbottle? And you've been
five years in California--a free State--and that's all yo' 've toted out
of it--a dead body! There now, don't sit there and swing yo' hat under
that chyar, but rouse out and come along with me to the pawty if you can
shake a foot, and show Miss Pinkney and the gyrls yo' fit for something
mo' than to skirmish round as a black japanned spittoon for Julia
Jeffcourt!" It is not recorded that Corbin accepted this cheerful
invitation, but for a few days afterwards he was more darkly observant
of, and respectful to, Miss Sally. Strange indeed if he had not
noticed--although always in his resigned fashion--the dull green
stagnation of the life around him, or when not accepting it as part
of his trouble he had not chafed at the arrested youth and senile
childishness of the people. Stranger still if he had not at times been
startled to hear the outgrown superstitions and follies of his youth
voiced again by grown-up men, and perhaps strangest of all if he had not
vaguely accepted it all as the hereditary curse of that barbarism under
which he himself had survived and suffered.

The reconciliation between himself and Mrs. Jeffcourt was superficially
effected, so far as a daily visit by him to the house indicated it to
the community, but it was also known that Julia was invariably absent
on these occasions. What happened at those interviews did not transpire,
but it may be surmised that Mrs. Jeffcourt, perhaps recognizing the fact
that Corbin was really giving