h Commandment. She had started her career as a destroyer of
domestic peace with a capital of good looks, a gift for cookery, a voice
of silver, and two small unpremeditated children. "A single pussen like
me wid two chillen," would be her plaintive excuse for demanding the
good offices of the brothers in cutting wood or "palin' in her gyardin";
and too often, under the spell of Susannah's eyes and Susannah's voice
and Susannah's cooking, the end of an innocent neighborly kindness was a
jealous wife and a "parting." Sometimes Susannah wedded the departing
husband, sometimes she flouted him; but steadily, single or wedded,
Susannah's little garden-plot grew more beautiful, Susannah's kitchen
range accumulated a more dazzling array of tin and copper, and
Susannah's best room was more splendidly bedecked with curtains,
pillow-shams, and a gilt mirror.

At present speaking, the dark enchantress was the lawful wedded wife of
the young blacksmith, and the whole plantation had admired to see her
enter the holy estate in white Swiss muslin and a voluminous veil which
she utilized, later, as a window-curtain. She now inquired with much
pleasing modesty of mien: "I jes want to ask, Mist' Cheerman, how're
we-all to git Sist' Humphreys to go if she don' wanter?"

Sighs, allied to groans, bore testimony that she had voiced the
forebodings of the audience. But a visiting brother who had the courage
of his non-residence, came to the front; he suggested that a letter be
sent to the sister, announcing the sense of the meeting, saying that the
congregation was not edified by her ministrations and that the
church-house would be closed until a new pastor had been selected.

"De motion, as de cheer un'erstands it, are to dismiss Sist' Esmeraldy
Humphreys an' shet de do's on her," said the chairman. "Is--what is it,
Sist' Macklin?"

He spoke kindly, and the woman whom he addressed seemed in need of
kindness, since she was trembling visibly. She was a little creature in
the pathetic compromise for mourning which poverty makes with grief--her
accustomed winter jacket of brown, but with a somber garnishment of
crape, black ribbons on her old gray hat, and a black border to her
handkerchief.

The congregation looked at her, pityingly, as she began in the
high-pitched voice of the unaccustomed speaker:

"Bruddah Morrow--I mean Bruddah Cheerman, I are right mortified Sist'
Humphreys done chastice you all; but I jest got to b'ar my testimony