her the example of respecting nothing else. I have been a fraud, and
wonder that she is not wordly-wise."

He found his infirm will very obdurate against making love to his wife
again, but the request he had just made of Heaven, to lead him into the
right steps, prevailed upon him to make his worship at home this
morning.

"Yes," he said, "I will start right. She is sick and alone, and Vesta
taken from her. I will send a note to the rector to announce the
marriage, as Vesta requested, and do my worship at Teackle Hall this
day."

The Manokin, spreading wider as it flowed farther from the town, and
widening from a brook to a creek, till it moistened fringes of marsh and
cut low bluffs into the fields, never seemed to invite him so much to
wander along its sluices as this morn.

"If my wife would only walk with me into the country," he said,
restlessly, "how more companionable we would have been to each other!
But she cannot walk at all; all masculine intercourse ceased between us
years ago, and the dull, small range of household talk, and the dynastic
gossip of the good families, wear down my spirits. But I have been a
truant husband, and my tongue is parched by dusty rovings in prodigal
ways. Let me woo her again with all my might!"

He walked through Princess Anne, worship now having commenced in all the
churches, and saw nobody upon the street except a divided group before
the tavern. There he heard Jimmy Phoebus speak to Levin Dennis
sharply:

"Levin, what you doin' with that nigger buyer? Ain't you got no Dennis
pride left in you?"

The Judge saw that Joe Johnson, safe from civil process on Sunday, even
if his enemy had not been helpless in bed, was washing Levin Dennis's
brandy-sickened head under the street pump, plying the pump-handle and
shampooing him with alternate hands.

"Jimmy," answered Levin, when he was free from the spout, "this
gentleman's give me a job. I'm goin' to take him out for tarrapin on the
Sound. He's goin' to pay me for it."

"Tarrapin-catchin' on a Sunday ain't no respectable job for a Dennis,
nohow," cried Jimmy Phoebus, bluntly; "an' doin' it with a nigger
buyer is a fine splurge fur you, by smoke! I can't see where your pride
is, Levin, to save my life."

Jack Wonnell, wearing a bell-crown, looked on with timid enjoyment of
this plain talk, opening his mouth to grin, shutting it to shudder.

The big stranger, dropping Levin Dennis, strode in his long jack-boots,
in which