“Why, Aunt Deel, what in the world do you mean?” I asked.

“It’s Purvis’s brain that does the poundin’, I guess,” said my uncle.  “It’s kind o’ got the habit.  It’s a reg’lar beetle brain.  To hear him talk, ye’d think he an’ you could clean out the hull Mexican nation—­barrin’ accidents.  Why, anybody would suppose that yer enemies go to climbin’ trees as soon as they see ye comin’ an’ that you pull the trees up by the roots to git at ’em.”

“A certain amount of such deviltry is necessary to the comfort of Mr. Purvis,” I remarked.  “If there is nobody else to take the responsibility for it he assumes it himself.  His imagination has an intense craving for blood and violence.  It’s that type of American who, egged on by the slave power, is hurrying us into trouble with Mexico.”

Purvis came in presently with a look in his face which betrayed his knowledge of the fact that all the cobwebs spun by his fancy were now to be brushed away.  Still he enjoyed them while they lasted and there was a kind of tacit claim in his manner that there were subjects regarding which no honest man could be expected to tell the truth.

As we ate our dinner they told me that an escaped slave had come into a neighboring county and excited the people with stories of the auction block and of negroes driven like yoked oxen on plantations in South Carolina, whence he had escaped on a steamboat.

“I b’lieve I’m goin’ to vote for abolition,” said Uncle Peabody.  “I wonder what Sile Wright will say to that.”

“He’ll probably advise against it, the time isn’t ripe for so great a change,” was my answer.  “He thinks that the whole matter should be left to the glacial action of time’s forces.”

Indeed I had spoken the view of the sounder men of the North.  The subject filled them with dread alarm.  But the attitude of Uncle Peabody was significant.  The sentiment in favor of a change was growing.  It was now to be reckoned with, for the abolition party was said to hold the balance of power in New York and New England and was behaving itself like a bull in a china shop.

After dinner I tried to put on some of my old clothes, but found that my nakedness had so expanded that they would not cover it, so I hitched my white mare on the spring wagon and drove to the village for my trunk.

Every week day after that I worked in the fields until the Senator arrived in Canton about the middle of August.  On one of those happy days I received a letter from old Kate, dated, to my surprise, in Saratoga.  It said: 

“DEAR BARTON BAYNES—­I thought I would let you know that my father is dead.  I have come here to rest and have found some work to do.  I am better now.  Have seen Sally.  She is very beautiful and kind.  She does not know that I am the old witch, I have changed so.  The others do not know—­it is better that way.  I think it was the Lord that brought me here.  He has a way of taking care of