rton wouldn't wash his dishes ef dey was nebber washed,"
confided Maum June to Elsy, as they caught sight of David's shining
pans.

The schoolmaster could have had a retinue of servants for a small price,
or no price at all; but, to tell a truth which he never told, he could
not endure them about him.

"I must have one spot to myself," he said feverishly, after he had
labored all day among them, teaching, correcting untidy ways,
administering simple medicines, or binding up a bruised foot. But he
never dreamed that this very isolation of his personality, this very
thrift, were daily robbing him of the influence which he so earnestly
longed to possess. In New England every man's house was his castle, and
every man's hands were thrifty. He forgot the easy familiarity, the
lordly ways, the crowded households, and the royal carelessness to which
the slaves had always been accustomed in their old masters' homes.

At first the Captain attempted intimacy.

"No reason why you and me shouldn't work together," he said with a
confidential wink. "This thing's being done all over the South, and easy
done, too. Now's the time for smart chaps like us--'transition,'you
know. The old Southerners are mad, and won't come forward, so we'll just
sail in and have a few years of it. When they're ready to come
back--why, we'll give 'em up the place again, of course, if our pockets
are well lined. Come, now, just acknowledge that the negroes have got to
have somebody to lead 'em."

"It shall not be such as you," said David indignantly. "See those two
men quarreling; that is the work of the liquor you have given them!"

"They've as good a right to their liquor as other men have," replied the
Captain carelessly; "and that's what I tell 'em; they ain't slaves
now--they're free. Well, boss, sorry you don't like my ideas, but can't
help it; must go ahead. Remember, I offered you a chance, and you would
not take it. Morning."

The five months had grown into six and seven, and Jubilee Town was known
far and wide as a dangerous and disorderly neighborhood. The old people
and the children still came to school, but the young men and boys had
deserted in a body. The schoolmaster's cotton-field was neglected; he
did a little there himself every day, but the work was novel, and his
attempts were awkward and slow. One afternoon Harnett Ammerton rode by
on horseback; the road passed near the angle of the field where the
schoolmaster was at work.

"H