“It never is too late to do good; my word for it, friend Marston, good is always worth its services.  I am young and may serve you yet; rise above trouble, never let trifles trouble a man like you.  The world seems wagging pleasantly for you; everybody on the plantation is happy; Lorenzo has gone into the world to distinguish himself; grief should never lay its scalpel in your feelings.  Remember the motto-peace, pleasantry, and plenty; they are things which should always dispel the foreshadowing of unhappiness,” says Maxwell, jocularly, taking a chair at Marston’s request, and seating himself by the table.

Marston declares such consolation to be refreshing, but too easily conceived to effect his purpose.  The ripest fruits of vice often produce the best moral reflections:  he feels convinced of this truth; but here the consequences are entailed upon others.  The degradation is sunk too deep for recovery by him,—­his reflections are only a burden to him.  The principle that moves him to atone is crushed by the very perplexity of the law that compels him to do wrong.  “There’s what goads me,” he says:  “it is the system, the forced condition making one man merchandise, and giving another power to continue him as such.”  He arises from the table, his face flushed with excitement, and in silence paces the room to and fro for several minutes.  Every now and then he watches at the window,—­looks out towards the river, and again at the pine-woods forming a belt in the background, as if he expected some one from that direction.  The serene scene without, calm and beautiful, contrasting with the perplexity that surrounded him within, brought the reality of the change which must soon take place in his affairs more vividly to his mind.

“Your feelings have been stimulated and modified by education; they are keenly sensitive to right,—­to justice between man and man.  Those are the beautiful results of early instruction.  New England education!  It founds a principle for doing good; it needs no contingencies to rouse it to action.  You can view slavery with the unprejudiced eye of a philosopher.  Listen to what I am about to say:  but a few months have passed since I thought myself a man of affluence, and now nothing but the inroads of penury are upon me.  The cholera (that scourge of a southern plantation) is again sweeping the district:  I cannot expect to escape it, and I am in the hands of a greater scourge than the cholera,—­a slow death-broker.  He will take from you that which the cholera would not deign to touch:  he has no more conscience than a cotton-press,” says Marston, reclining back in his chair, and calling the negro waiter.

The word conscience fell upon Maxwell’s ear with strange effect.  He had esteemed Marston according to his habits-not a good test when society is so remiss of its duties:  he could not reconcile the touch of conscience in such a person, nor could he realise the impulse through which some sudden event was working a moral regeneration in his mind.  There was something he struggled to keep from notice.  The season had been unpropitious, bad crops had resulted; the cholera made its appearance, swept off many of the best negroes, spread consternation, nearly suspended discipline and labour.  One by one his negroes fell victims to its ravages, until it became imperatively necessary to remove the remainder to the pine-woods.