The worrisome afternoon finally ended, leaving the harassed man free to seek consolation from his jug.  Mr. Baron relapsed into his quiet yet bitter mental protest.  “Ole miss” maintained inexorable discipline over the yard and house slaves, keeping all busy in removing every stain and trace of the hospital.  She governed by fear also, but it was the fear which a resolute, indomitable will produces in weaker natures.

Mrs. Waldo already felt uncomfortable.  There was no lack of outward courtesy, but the two women had so little in common that there was almost a total absence of sympathy between them.  The guests through the fortune of war resolved therefore to depart in a day or two, making the journey home by easy stages.  Mrs. Whately was both polite and cordial, but she also felt that the family should be alone as soon as possible, that they were facing problems which could better be solved without witnesses.  It was her hope now to nurse her charge back to health, and, by the utmost exercise of tact, gain such an ascendency over the girl as to win her completely.  Granting that the matron’s effort was part of a scheme, it was one prompted by deep affection, a yearning to call her niece daughter and to provide for the idolized son just the kind of wife believed to be essential to his welfare.  Much pondering on the matter led her to believe that even if the tidings of Scoville’s death had been the cause of the final prostrating shock, it was but the slight blow required to strike down one already feeble and tottering to her fall.  “He probably made a strong, but necessarily a passing impression on the dear child’s mind,” she reasoned.  “When she gets well she will think of him only as she does of the other Union soldiers who so interested her.”

The object of this solicitude was docile and quiet, taking what was given her, but evidently exhausted beyond the power of thought or voluntary action.

The night passed apparently without incident, but it was a busy one for Chunk.  He again summoned Jute and his other confederates to a tryst in the grove to impress them with his plans.  It was part of his scheme to permit a few nights to pass quietly so that disturbances would not be associated with him, he being supposed far away.  In the depths of the adjacent forest he had found safe shelter for himself and horse, and here, like a beast in its lair, he slept by day.  The darkness was as light to him about the familiar plantation, and he prowled around at night unmolested.

During this second meeting he attempted little more than to argue his dusky associates out of their innate fear of spooks and to urge upon them patience in submitting to Perkins’s rule a little longer.  “I des tells you,” he declared, “dey ain’ no spooks fer us!  Dere’s spooks on’y fer dem w’at kills folks on de sly-like.  If ole Perkins come rarin’ en tarin’ wid his gun en dawg, I des kill ’im ez I wud a rattler en he kyant bodder me no mo’; but ef I steal