ave been a much better man if she had married him, and I a
much worse one. Somehow, I can't help feeling that it wasn't quite just,
and that I ought to square up things with Dick at Judgment Day. I shouldn't
like to reap any good from his mistakes, poor fellow." He broke off for an
instant, lay gazing at the lightwood blaze, and then took up the thread.
"He had his fall at last, and it's been on my conscience ever since that I
didn't toss that bowl of apple toddy through the window when I saw him
going towards it. We were at Chericoke on Christmas Eve in a big snowstorm,
and Dick couldn't resist his glass--he never could so long as there was a
drop at the bottom of it--the more he drank, the thirstier he got, he used
to say. Well, he took a good deal, more than he could stand, and when the
Major began toasting the ladies and called them the prettiest things God
ever made, Dick flew into a rage and tried to fight him. 'There are two
prettier sights than any woman that ever wore petticoats,' he thundered;
'and (here he ripped out an oath) I'll prove it to you at the sword's point
before sunrise. God made but one thing, sir, prettier than the cobwebs on a
bottle of wine, and that's the bottle of wine without the cobwebs!' Then he
went at the Major, and we had to hold him back and rub snow on his temples.
That night I drove home with Julia, and she accepted me before we passed
the wild cherry tree on the way to Uplands."

As he fell silent the old negro, treading softly, came into the room and
made the preparations for his simple supper, which he carried outside
beneath the trees. In a little bared place amid charred wood, a fire was
started, and Dan watched through the open doorway the stooping figures of
the two negroes as they bent beside the flames. In a little while Big Abel
came into the room and beckoned him, but he shook his head impatiently and
turned away, sickened by the thought of food.

"Go, my boy," said the Governor, as if he had seen it through closed eyes.
"I never saw a private yet that wasn't hungry--one told me last week that
his diet for a year had varied only three times--blackberries, chinquapins,
and persimmons had kept him alive, he said."

Then his mind wandered again, and he talked in a low voice of the wheat
fields at Uplands and of the cradles swinging all day in the sunshine. Dan,
moving to the door, stared, with aching eyes, at the rich twilight which
crept like purple mist among the trees. Th