For years the old man and the boy had lived together alone in that great, lonely house, enjoying vastly the freedom from all restraint, the liberty of turning the parlors into
kennels if they chose, and converting the upper rooms into a hay-loft,
if they would. No white woman was ever seen upon the premises, unless
she came as a beggar, when some new gown, or surplice, or organ, or
chandelier, was needed for the pretty little church, lifting its modest
spire so unobtrusively among the forest trees, not very far from Spring
Bank. John Stanley didn't believe in churches; nor gowns, nor organs,
nor women, but he was proverbially liberal, and so the fair ones of
Glen's Creek neighborhood ventured into his den, finding it much
pleasanter to do so after the handsome, dark-haired boy came to live
with him; for about that frank, outspoken boy there was then something
very attractive to the little girls, while their mothers pitied him,
wondering why he had been permitted to come there, and watching for the
change in him, which was sure to ensue.
Not all at once did Hugh conform to the customs of his uncle's
household, and at first there often came over him a longing for
something different, a yearning for the refinements of his early home
among the Northern hills, and a wish to infuse into Chloe, the colored
housekeeper, some of his mother's neatness. But a few attempts at reform
had taught him how futile was the effort, Aunt Chloe always meeting him
with the argument: "'Taint no use, Mr. Hugh. A nigger's a nigger; and I spec' ef you're to
talk to me till you was hoarse 'bout your Yankee ways of scrubbin', and
sweepin', and moppin' with a broom, I shouldn't be an atomer
white-folksey than I is now. Besides Mas'r John, wouldn't bar no finery;
he's only happy when the truck is mighty nigh a foot thick, and his
things is lyin' round loose and handy."
To a certain extent this was true, for John Stanley would have felt
sadly out of place in any spot where, as Chloe said, "his things were
not lying round loose and handy," and as habit is everything, so Hugh
soon grew accustomed to his surroundings, and became as careless of his
external appearance as his uncle could desire. Only once had there come
to him an awakening--a faint conception of the happiness there might
arise from constant association with the pure and refined, such as his
uncle had labored to make him believe did not exist.
He was thinking of that incident now, and as he thought the veins upon his broad, white
forehead stood out round and full, while the hands clasped above the
head worked nervously together, and it was not strange that he did not
heed his mother when she spoke, for Hugh was far away from Spring Bank,
and the wild storm beating against its walls was to him like the sound
of the waves dashing against the vessel's side, just as they did years
ago on that night he remembered so well, shuddering as he heard again
the murderous hiss of the devouring flames, covering the fatal boat with
one sheet of fire, and driving into the water as a safer friend the
shrieking, frightened wretches who but an hour before had been so full
of life and hope, dancing gayly above the red-tongued demon stealthily
creeping upward from the hold below, where it had taken life. What a
fearful scene that was, and the veins grew larger on Hugh's brow while
his broad chest heaved with something like a stifled sob as he recalled
the little childish form to which he had clung so madly until the cruel
timber struck from him all consciousness, and he let that form go
down--down 'neath the treacherous waters of Lake Erie never to come up
again alive, for so his uncle told when, weeks after the occurrence, he
awoke from the delirious fever which ensued and listened to the
sickening detail.