“Got just to the most interesting part,” said Fry dolefully, “where he comes under a chap called Legree; and then you took it away.”

“Well, you’ll have it again as soon as I have done with it.  I say, what do you think of this book? is it true do you think?”

“Oh! it is true—­I’d take my oath of that.”

“Why how do you know?”

“Because it reads like true.”

“That is no rule, ye fool.”

“Well, sir, what do you think?”

This question staggered Hawes for a moment.  However he assumed an oracular look, and replied, “I think some of it is true and some isn’t.”

“Do you think it is true about their knocking down blackee in one lot, and his wife in another, and sending ’em a thousand miles apart?”

“Oh, that is true enough!  I daresay.”

“And running them down with bloodhounds?”

“Why not; they look upon the poor devils as beasts.  If you tell a Yankee a nigger is a man he thinks you are poking fun at him.”

“It is a cursed shame!”

“Of course it is! but I’ll tell you what I can’t swallow in this book.  Hem! did you ever fall in with any Yankees?”

“One or two, sir.”

“Were they green at all?”

“That they weren’t.  They were rather foxy, I should say.”

“Rather.  Why one of them would weather upon any three Englishmen that ever were born.  Now here is a book that as good as tells me it is a Yankee custom to disable their beasts of burden.  Gammon! they can’t afford to do it.  I believe,” continued this candid personage (who had never been in any of the States), “they are the cruelest set on the face of the earth, but then they are the ’cutest (that is their own word), and they are a precious sight too ’cute to disable the beast that carries the grist to the mill.”

“Doesn’t seem likely—­now you put it to me.”

“Have a glass of grog, Fry.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“And there is the paper.  Run your eye over it and don’t speak to me for ten minutes, for I must see how Tom gets on under this bloody-minded heathen.”

Fry read the paper; but although he moistened it with a glass of grog, he could not help casting envious glances from his folio at Mr. Hawes’s duodecimo.

Fibs mixed with truth charm us more than truth mixed with fibs.

Presently an oath escaped from Mr. Hawes.

“Sir!”

“Nothing, it is only this infernal—­humph!”

Presently another expletive.  “I’ll tell you what it is, Fry, if somebody doesn’t knock this thundering Legree on the head, I’ll put the book on the fire.”

“Well, but if it isn’t true, sir?”