"And, pronouncing it so emphatically, you of course use the word gentleman in the sense it had when it had a sense. You bear in mind what the gentleman was pledged to, when to be called one was still a distinction. 'To eschew sloth,' 'to detest all pride and haughtiness,'--these were among his obligations: doubtless they are of those most strictly observed in your community. He was required 'to be true and just in word and dealing'; 'to be of an open and liberal mind.' You find these conditions fulfilled in Rasey, your leading man." "Our leading man?" "Certainly, your leading man. Whose lead did you follow, when you joined in worrying Charles Shaler out of your community of gentlemen?" Westlake shrank. He was conscious that he had been going down hill ever since Shaler left the neighborhood. The hold that Rasey took of him then the crafty old man has never let go. When Westlake's plantation came into his possession by the death of his father, he undertook to carry it on himself, and has been supposed to do so ever since. It was carried on well from the time that Senator was old enough to take charge; but with his disappearance disappeared all the credit and all the comfort his good management had secured to his master. Westlake needed some one to lean on, and Rasey was ready to take advantage of this necessity. His ascendancy was not established all at once. It is only during the last year that it has been perfected. In the beginning, he gave just a touch of advice and withdrew; showed himself again at discreet intervals, gradually shortened; but, all the time, was casting about his victim the singly almost impalpable threads of his deadly thraldom, until they had formed a coil which forbade even an effort after freedom. Westlake had put no overseer between himself and his people; but he had, without well knowing how it came about, set a very hard one over both. He found the indulgences on his plantation diminished, the tasks more rigidly enforced, the holidays fewer. The punishments, which were before sometimes capriciously severe, but more often threatened and remitted, he was now expected to carry out with the inflexibility of fate. He has found himself reduced to plotting with his servants against himself,--to aiding them in breaking or evading his own laws; reduced--worst humiliation of all--to ordering, under the sharp eye and sharp voice of his officious neighbor, the infliction of chastisement for neglect which he himself had authorized or connived at.