y their leisure with a
higher zest.'"

"Strange sentiments from one such as you pictured to me last night."

"Lord love ye, that's his way. He beats all the Temperance 'Postles
about condemning drink. He can tell more anecdotes of the mischief it
works, explain better its evil on the health, and the injury it works
in a man's natur', than all the talkers ever came out of the May ne
Convention."

"Which scarcely says much for the force of his convictions," said
Layton, smiling.

"I only wish he heard you say so, Britisher; if he would n't chase
you up a pretty high tree, call _me_ a land crab! I remember well,
one night, how he lectured on that very point and showed that what was
vulgarly called hypocrisy was jest neither more nor less than a diseased
and exaggerated love of approbation,--them's his words; I took 'em down
and showed 'em to him next morning, and all he said was, 'I suppose I
said it arter dinner.'"

"Am I to see your friend and make his acquaintance?" asked Layton.

"Well," said the other, with some hesitation, "I rayther suspect not; he
said as much that he did n't like meeting any one from the old country.
It's my idea that he warn't over well treated there, somehow, though he
won't say it."

"But as one who has never seen him before, and in all likelihood is
never to see him again--"

"No use; whenever he makes up his mind in that quiet way he never
changes, and he said, 'I 'll do all you want, only don't bring me
forward. I have my senses now, and shame is one of 'em!'"

"You increase my desire to see and know this poor fellow."

"Mayhap you're a-thinkin', Britisher, whether, if you could wile him
away from me, you could n't do a good stroke of work with him down
South,--eh? wasn't that it?"

"No, on my word; nothing of the kind. My desire was simply to know if I
could n't serve him where he was, and where he is probably to remain."

"Where he is sartainly to remain, I 'd say, sir,--sar-tainly to remain!
I 'd rayther give up the Temple, ay, and all the fixin's, than I 'd give
up that man. There ain't one spot in creation he ain't fit for. Take him
North, and he 'll beat all the Abolitionists ever talked; bring him down
to the old South State, and hear him how he 'll make out that the Bible
stands by slavery, and that Blacks are to Whites what children are
to their elders,--a sort of folk to be fed, and nourished, and looked
arter, and, maybe, cor-rected a little betimes. Fetch him up to