North and South seemed to have entered into a tacit agreement to ignore the topic completely.  Alfred’s experience was like that of most New Englanders in his situation.  He was at first annoyed and pained by many of the peculiarities of Southern society, and then became gradually accustomed to them.  But his natural sense of justice was very strong; and this, added to the influence of early education, and strengthened by scenes of petty despotism which he was frequently compelled to witness, led him to resolve that he would never hold a slave.  The colored people in his employ considered him their friend, because he was always kind and generous to them.  He supposed that comprised the whole of duty, and further than that he never reflected upon the subject.

The pretty little picture at Pine Grove, which had made so lively an impression on his imagination, faded the more rapidly, because unconnected with his affections.  But a shadowy semblance of it always flitted through his memory, whenever he saw a beautiful child, or observed any unusual combination of trees and vines.

Four years after his interview with Mr. Duncan, business called him to the interior of the State, and for the sake of healthy exercise he chose to make the journey on horseback.  His route lay mostly through a monotonous region of sandy plain, covered with pines, here and there varied by patches of cleared land, in which numerous dead trees were prostrate, or standing leafless, waiting their time to fall.  Most of the dwellings were log-houses, but now and then the white villa of some wealthy planter might be seen gleaming through the evergreens.  Sometimes the sandy soil was intersected by veins of swamp, through which muddy water oozed sluggishly, among bushes and dead logs.  In these damp places flourished dark cypresses and holly-trees, draped with gray Spanish moss, twisted around the boughs, and hanging from them like gigantic cobwebs.  Now and then, the sombre scene was lighted up with a bit of brilliant color, when a scarlet grosbeak flitted from branch to branch, or a red-headed woodpecker hammered at the trunk of some old tree, to find where the insects had intrenched themselves.  But nothing pleased the eye of the traveller so much as the holly-trees, with their glossy evergreen foliage, red berries, and tufts of verdant mistletoe.  He had been riding all day, when, late in the afternoon, an uncommonly beautiful holly appeared to terminate the road at the bend where it stood.  Its boughs were woven in with a cypress on the other side, by long tangled fringes of Spanish moss.  The setting sun shone brightly aslant the mingled foliage, and lighted up the red berries, which glimmered through the thin drapery of moss, like the coral ornaments of a handsome brunette seen through her veil of embroidered lace.  It was unlike the woodland picture he had seen at Pine Grove, but it recalled it to his memory more freshly than he had seen it for a long time.  He watched the peculiar