Sir William Winslow's face grew as pale as death, and then flushed again, as he saw the man's cool, clear, dark eye fixed upon it. For an instant he did not reply; but then he said, "I remember, my nose bled several times in the spring. It does not matter; leave it as it is." The man folded it up, and laid it on a chair; and the next morning, before they set off for town, his master himself began upon the subject of wages. Benini was very moderate in his views; but before the conversation was ended his wages were nearly doubled. Sir William Winslow seated himself in his carriage, with the comfortable feeling, that the man who had such wages would be a fool to deprive himself of such a master; but he recollected that he had played the fool too--at least he thought so. "I ought to have told the whole story at once," he said to himself. "The man insulted me, and I struck him with the first thing at hand--harder than I intended; but after all it was but a scuffle. If I had had the presence of mind to state the facts at once, the inquest must have brought it in _chance medley_." He forgot that juries sometimes inquire into motives too, and might have asked whether the insult Mr. Roberts offered was not the telling of too dangerous a truth. With the servant silenced, however, by an annuity for secrecy, he thought the only grounds even for a suspicion buried in oblivion; but nevertheless there came across him a vague conviction, that he was for life a bondman to his own valet. It was but the beginning of unpleasant sensations; but that was enough. Man is a strange animal; but there is an inherent love of freedom in his heart which is often the source of very high and noble actions--sometimes of actions the reverse of high and noble. The lightest chain upon the once free limb, how it galls and presses! but what is the shackle of steel upon the body, to the chain upon the mind? To find the spirit a serf, the thoughts manacled! that is to be a slave indeed. No custom can lighten the load of those fetters, no habit render them less corroding, nought can harden us to their endurance. On the contrary, every hour, every minute that we bear them, the burden grows more oppressive; and Sir William Winslow felt it, as his carriage rolled on, and he groaned in bitterness of spirit. CHAPTER XXXVII.