"Alas!" said Hulda, "I am of them; how can I wish harm to my stepfather
and my grand-dame? They are not what I wish, but I am commanded to honor
them."

"By whom, fair Hulda?"

"By God. I read it in the Book after I heard it from a slave."

"_Donde esta!_ What slave that we know was so God-read?"

"Poor drunken Dave. He was a good man before he knew us. He told me all
the Commandments for a drink of brandy, and I wrote them down and
afterwards I found them in a book."

"_Chis! chito!_ how graceful is your mind, Hulda! It comes out of the
absolute blank of your condition and discovers things, as the young
osprey, untaught before, knows where to dive for fish. Who that ever
comes to Johnson's Cross-roads brings the Bible?"

"Colonel McLane."

"He? the self-righteous crocodile! he gave you the Book?"

"Yes. He told me Joe and grandma were good people--'conservative good
people,' I think he called it; but he said you believed nothing, and
there was no basis, I think he called it, for 'conservative good' in
you."

"_O hala hala!_ But this is good," the Captain softly remarked, stroking
his golden mustache with the hand that carried the lustrous ring. "Patty
Cannon may be saved; I must be damned; and Allan McLane will sit in
judgment. No, I believe nothing, because such as they believe!"

"That is why nobody likes you," Hulda frankly observed, "agreeable as
you are."

"And can you believe in anything after the surroundings of your
childhood, touching crime like the pond-lily that grows among the
water-snakes?"

"The lily cannot help it, and is just as white as if it grew under
glass, because--"

"Because the lily has none of the blood of the snake?" the captain
lisped. "Do you enter that claim?"

"No," said Hulda; "I know I am born from wicked parents, a daughter of
crime, my father hanged, my mother of dreadful origin, but never have I
felt that God held me accountable for their works if I kept my heart
humble and my hands from sin; and never have I been tempted yet from
within my own nature to enjoy a single moment of such hideous
selfishness. And I thank my kind Maker that something to love and
believe in, though unhappy as myself, has come down the sad pathway I
looked along so many years, and found me waiting for him."

Without reply, the Captain kept his own thoughts for several minutes,
and finally sighed:

"I know one thing in which I might believe, pretty child."

"Oh, then embrace it," Huld