"You is wuss den crazy, Ben Perkins; and I'll tell ye de trute, if ye get as mad as fire at me for it. 'Tain't noways likely my missus would eber 'ave taken up wid ye, if Philip Moore had neber seen her. She's a lady, born and bred; she came of a high family--and it was in her blood. She wouldn't neber have taken up wid you. She liked you, and we all liked you; but she wouldn't a married you. You'd no business to 'spect she would. It's you is all de wrong. Den when a young man what is suitable to her comes along, and can't no more help fallin' in love wid her sweet face den you can, when he loves her, and wants to marry her, and she loves him, as she naturally would, you get wicked and ugly, and want to kill him. Fie, man! you _don't_ love her! Ef you did, you couldn't neber break her heart, killing her husband as is to be. What would you gain by it? 'Stid of likin' and pityin' you, she'd shudder to hear your name, and she'd wilt away and die, and you'd be her murderer, well as his. For shame! call dat love? Why, ef you _really_ loved her, you'd try to make her happy, and seein' you couldn't hab her, you'd be glad she got de man she like bes'. You is a bad fellow, Ben Perkins, and you jus' show how lucky it is Miss Alice didn't take up wid you." "_She_ thinks I'm so bad, too, doesn't she?--oh, yes, of course she must; she must hate me, and wish me dead. I know it, but I couldn't help it. Oh, Pallas, tell her not to think too hard of me. I was never well brought up. I'd only my wild passions to guide me. I've done wrong only because my heart was so set upon her. Yet I've struggled against temptation--I've tried to wish she could be happy without me. Tell her, when I was on the river alone with Philip Moore, I might have put him out of the way, but for her sake I wouldn't do it. Often and often as we sat together in that little boat, alone on the water, the devil in my heart set me on to strangle him and throw him overboard, I don't know why I didn't do it, 'ceptin' it seemed as if Alice's eyes was lookin' at me and wouldn't let me do it. One night he was asleep, his head on his arm, and I was bending over him--my hand was on his throat, when _she_ took hold of me and held me back. I seen her as plain as I see you now. She had on a long, white dress, and her hair was streamin' down her shoulders, and her feet was bare. She looked at me _so_--I couldn't stand it; and I made up my mind never to lay hands on that person again. And I felt so much more like a man, I could look her straight in the face agin, when I got back. But I told lies, and tried to get in her good graces. Do you think that was so very bad, under the circumstances, Aunt Pallas? I never meant to do nuthin' worse; but when I seen all my plans knocked in the head, and that person meeting her agin and making up, and she lookin' so like an angel, and so proud and happy, and all of 'em casting scornful eyes on me, the devil broke out