That night when Amanda returned home she found Gordon Lee preoccupied and silent.  He ate gingerly of the tempting meal she prepared, and refused to have his bed straightened before he went to sleep.

“Huccome you put yer pillow on the floor?” she asked.

“I ain’t believin’ in feathers,” he answered sullenly; “dey meks me heah things.”

In vain Amanda tried to cheer him; she recounted the affairs of the day; she gave him all the gossip of the Order of the Sisters of the Star.  He lay perfectly stolid, his horizontal profile resembling a mountain-range the highest peak of which was his under lip.

Finally Amanda’s patience wore thin.

“Whut’s the matter with you, Gordon Lee Surrender Jones?” she demanded.  “Whut you mean by stickin’ out yer lip lak a circus camel?”

Now that the opportunity for action had come, he feared to take advantage of it.  Amanda, small as she was, looked firm and determined, and he knew by experience that he was no match for her.

“‘Tain’t fer you to be astin’ me whut’s de matter,” he began significantly.  “De glove’s on de other han’.”

“Whut you ‘sinuatin’, nigger?” cried Amanda, now thoroughly roused.

“I’s tired layin’ heah under dis heah spell,” complained Gordon Lee.  “I knowed all ’long ’twas a hoodoo, but I neber ’spicioned till to-day who was ‘sponsible fer hit.  Aunt Kizzy tried de test, an’, ’fore de Lawd, hit p’inted powerful’ near home.”

Amanda sank into the one rocking-chair the cabin boasted, and dropped her hands in her lap.  Her anger had given place for the moment to sheer amazement.

“Well, if this ain’t the beatenest thing I ever heard tell of in all my born days!  Do you mean to say that that honery old cross-eyed nigger Kizzy had the audacity to set up before my fire, in my house, an’ tell my husband I’d laid a spell on him?”

“Dat’s whut de signs p’int to,” said Gordon Lee, doggedly.

Amanda rose, and it seemed to him that she towered to the ceiling.  With hands on hips and head thrown back, she delivered herself, and her voice rang with suppressed passion.

“Yas, I laid a spell on yer!  I laid a spell on yer when I let you quit work, an’ lay up in bed wid nothin’ to do but to circulate yer symtems.  I put a spell on yer when I nuss you an’ feed you an’ s’port you an’ spile the life plumb outen you.  I ain’t claimin’ ’t wasn’t rheumatism in the fust place, but it’s a spell now, all right—­a spell I did lay on yer, a spell of laziness pure an’ simple!”

After this outburst the relations were decidedly strained in the little cabin at the far end of Hurricane Hollow.  Gordon Lee persistently refused to eat anything his wife cooked for him, depending upon the food that Aunt Kizzy or other neighbors brought in.

To Amanda the humiliation of this was acute.  She used every strategy to conciliate him, and at last succeeded by bringing home some pig’s feet.  His appetite got the better of his resentment, and he disposed of four with evident relish.