s. He had his likes and dislikes, but he had the prudently guarded
tongue of servitude. Long before John Penhallow had understood better the
tall black man's position and won the confidence of a friendly hour, he
saw with his well-bred courtesy how pleased was the man to be called Mr.
Josiah. It sounded queer, as Pole remarked, to call a runaway darkey
Mister, but this in no way disturbed John. The friendly feeling for the
black grew as they fished together in the summer afternoons, or trapped
muskrats, or dug up hellbenders. The barber had one half-concealed
dislike. The man he was now to shave he both feared and hated. "Couldn't
tell you why, Master John. It's like the way Crocker's wife's 'feared of
cats. They ain't never hurt her none."

"Well," he said, "here I am," and in unusual silence set about his work
by dim candlelight. The patient was as silent. When Josiah had finished,
he said no word of his fee, knowing it to be a hopeless debt.

"Guess you do look the better for a shave," he remarked, as he was about
to leave. "I'll send up Billy." The uneasy guardian had seized on the
chance to get a little relief.

"No, don't go," said Lamb. "I'm in a hell of thirst. I want you to get me
some whisky. I'll pay you when I get work."

Josiah was prudent and had no will to oblige the drunkard nor any belief
in future repayment. "Couldn't do that--doctor wouldn't like it."

"What, you won't do it?"

"No, I can't do it."

"If you don't, I'll tell what I know about you."

"What do you know?" The long lost terror returned--but what could he
know?

"Oh, you ran away--I know all about it. You help me now and I'll keep
quiet--you'd better."

A fierce desire rose in the mind of Josiah to kill the rascal, and then,
by long habit prudent, he said, "I'll have to think about it." But what
could this man know?

"Best to think damn quick, or you'll have your old master down on you. I
give you till to-morrow morning early. Do you hear? It's just a nip of
whisky I want."

"Yes, I hear--got to think about it." He went out into the night, a soul
in fear. No one knew his former master's name. Then his very good
intelligence resumed control. No one really knew--only John--and he very
little. He put it aside, confident in the young fellow's discretion. Of
course, the town suspected that he was a fugitive slave, but nobody cared
or seemed to care. And yet, at times in his altogether prosperous happy
years of freedom, when he rea