d all the
things fixed in it just the way she liked to have them when she was
alive, and nobody ever slept there. The old lady took care of the room
herself, though there was plenty of niggers, and she sewed there a
good deal and read her Bible there mostly.

Well, as I was saying about the parlor, there was beautiful curtains
on the windows: white, with pictures painted on them of castles with
vines all down the walls, and cattle coming down to drink. There was a
little old piano, too, that had tin pans in it, I reckon, and nothing
was ever so lovely as to hear the young ladies sing "The Last Link is
Broken" and play "The Battle of Prague" on it. The walls of all the
rooms was plastered, and most had carpets on the floors, and the whole
house was whitewashed on the outside.

It was a double house, and the big open place betwixt them was roofed
and floored, and sometimes the table was set there in the middle of
the day, and it was a cool, comfortable place. Nothing couldn't be
better. And warn't the cooking good, and just bushels of it too!

CHAPTER XVIII

Col. Grangerford was a gentleman, you see. He was a gentleman all
over; and so was his family. He was well born, as the saying is, and
that's worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the Widow
Douglas said, and nobody ever denied that she was of the first
aristocracy in our town; and pap he always said it, too, though he
warn't no more quality than a mudcat himself. Col. Grangerford was
very tall and very slim, and had a darkish-paly complexion, not a sign
of red in it anywheres; he was clean-shaved every morning all over his
thin face, and he had the thinnest kind of lips, and the thinnest kind
of nostrils, and a high nose, and heavy eyebrows, and the blackest
kind of eyes, sunk so deep back that they seemed like they was looking
out of caverns at you, as you may say. His forehead was high, and his
hair was gray and straight and hung to his shoulders. His hands was
long and thin, and every day of his life he put on a clean shirt and a
full suit from head to foot made out of linen so white it hurt your
eyes to look at it; and on Sundays he wore a blue tail-coat with brass
buttons on it. He carried a mahogany cane with a silver head to it.
There warn't no frivolishness about him, not a bit, and he warn't ever
loud. He was as kind as he could be--you could feel that, you know,
and so you had confidence. Sometimes he smiled, and it was good to
see; but