“Hold on there,” said Sleeny.  “Don’t say nothin’ you’ll have to take back.  Ef you say anything ag’in her, you’ll have to swaller it, or whip me.”

Saul looked at him with amazement.

“Well! you beat me, the pair of you!  You’re crazy to want her, and she’s crazy not to want you.  She liked to a’ bit my head off for perposin’ you, and you want to lick me for calling her a fool.”

“She ain’t no fool,” said Sleeny with sullen resignation; “she knows what she’s about,” and lie picked up another shaving and ruminated upon it.

The old man walked to and fro, fidgeting with his tools.  At last he came back to the young man and said, awkwardly dusting the bench with his hand: 

“Sam, you wasn’t ‘lowin’ to leave along o’ this here foolishness?”

“That’s just what I was ‘lowin’ to do, sir.”

“Don’t you be a dern fool, Sam!” and Saul followed up this judicious exhortation with such cogent reasons that poor Sleeny was glad to be persuaded that his chance was not over yet, and that he would much better stay where he was.

“How’ll she like it?”

“Oh! it won’t make a mite o’ difference to her,” said the old man airily, and poor Sam felt in his despondent heart that it would not.

He remained and became like the least of her servants.  She valued his attachment much as a planter valued the affection of his slaves, knowing they would work the better for it.  He did all her errands; fetched and carried for her; took her to church on evenings when she did not care to stay at home.  One of the few amusements Saul Matchin indulged in was that of attending spiritualist lectures and seances, whenever a noted medium visited the place.  Saul had been an unbeliever in his youth, and this grotesque superstition had rushed in at the first opportunity to fill the vacuum of faith in his mind.  He had never succeeded, however, in thoroughly indoctrinating his daughter.  She regarded her father’s religion with the same contempt she bestowed upon the other vulgar and narrow circumstances of her lot in life, and so had preferred her mother’s sober Presbyterianism to the new and raw creed of her sire.  But one evening, when she was goaded by more than usual restlessness, Sleeny asked her if she would go with him to a “sperritual lectur.”  To escape from her own society, she accepted, and the wild, incoherent, and amazingly fluent address she heard excited her interest and admiration.  After that, she often asked him to take her, and in the long walk to and from the Harmony Hall, where the long-haired brotherhood held their sessions, a sort of confidential relation grew up between them, which meant nothing to Maud, but bound the heart of Sleeny in chains of iron.  Yet he never dared say a word of the feeling that was consuming him.  He feared he should lose her forever, if he opened his lips.