"Yes, sir, and I understand that he is coming back down here to prove to the negroes that we are cheating them out of their earnings." The Major tossed a cigar to Tom, lighted one, and had begun to talk with a rhetorical and sententious balancing of periods--which, to his mind, full of the oratory of Prentiss, was the essence of impressiveness--when a negro woman entered the room. And hereupon he changed the subject. When bedtime came the old gentleman stood on a rug in front of a large fire-place, meditatively winding his watch. His wife sat on a straight-back chair, glancing over the harmless advertisements in a religious newspaper. In the parlor they had spent an agreeable evening, with music and with never an allusion to an unpleasant subject, but there was something finer than an allusion, and it had passed from husband to wife and back again--a look at each other and a glance toward Louise. But they had laughed at the girl's imitation of a cakewalk, and yet in the minds of the father and the mother was the low echo of a hollow cough. Affectionately she had kissed them good night, and had started off down the hall in mimicry of a negro belle's walk, but they had heard her door shut with a quick slam as if she were at last impelled to be truthful with herself, to close herself in with her own meditations. The Major hung his watch on a nail above the mantel-piece. From a far-off nook of the sprawling old house came the pling-plang of the boy's banjo. "Margaret?" "Yes, dear." "What did you say to her?" She began to fold the newspaper. "I didn't say anything. She wouldn't permit me." "What do you think?" "That she will do as she pleases." "Consoling, by the--consoling, I must say. But I tell you she won't. I will shame her out of it." CHAPTER VI.