town's talk. Some folks think he goes there full often
enough. He brought his Tom there to-day to marry Chloe. I wonder the
Widow could spare her time to be married,--though, to be sure, it didn't
take long, for the minister made a mighty short prayer."

Poor Chloe! Thus they dismissed a subject which gave her a life-long
heart-ache. There was no honey in her bridal moon. She told Tom several
times she wished he would stay at home; but he was so perseveringly
good-natured, there was no possibility of quarrelling with him. By
degrees, she began to find his visits on Saturday evening rather more
entertaining than talking to herself.

"I wouldn't mind bein' so druv wi' work," said Tom, "ef I could live
like white folks do when _they_ gits married. I duz more work than them
as has a cabin o' their own, an' keeps a cow and a pig. But black folks
don't seem to git no good o' their work."

"Massa Minister says it's 'cause God cussed Ham," replied Chloe. "I
thought 'twas wicked to cuss, but Massa Minister says Ham was cussed in
the Bible. Ef I could have some o' the fish I clean and dry, I could
sen' to Lunnun for a gownd; but Missy Katy she gits all the gownds,
'cause Ham was cussed in the Bible. I don't know nothin' 'bout it; seems
drefful queer."

"Massa tole me I mus' work for nothin', 'cause Ham was cussed," rejoined
Tom. "But it seems like Ham cussed some black folks _worse_ nor others.
There's Jim Saunders, he's a nigger, too; but he gits his feed and six
dollars a month."

The words were like a stab to Chloe. She dropped half a needleful of
stitches in her knitting, and told Tom she wished he'd hold his tongue,
for he kept up such a jabbering that he made all her stitches run down.
Tom, thus silenced, soon fell asleep. She glanced at him as he sat
snoring by her side, and contrasted him with the genteel figure and
handsome features that had been so indelibly photographed on her memory
by the sunbeams of love. Tears dropped fast on her knitting-work; but
when Tom woke up, she spoke kindly, and tried to atone for her
ill-temper. Time, which gradually reconciles us to all things, produced
the same effect on her as on others. When the minister asked her, six
months afterward, how she and Tom were getting along, she replied, "I's
got used to him."

Yet life seemed more dreary to her than it did before she had that brief
experience of a free feeling. She never thought of that look without
longing to know what it was Ji