All came of that unhappy Christmas I have told you of. If Westlake could only have been silent, the simple plot devised by Senator would have worked perfectly. All the neighborhood would have respected a secret that was its own. But Westlake could not be silent; he was too uneasy. It was not long before the culprit's escape and his master's part in it were more than surmised. In view of the effect of such a transaction on the servile imagination, Westlake's weakness was ignored by common consent; but it was not the less incumbent upon him to reinstate himself in opinion on the first opportunity. The opportunity was offered by the storm then brewing against Shaler. Westlake's sufferings are, happily for him, intermittent. Rasey is away from the neighborhood one month out of every three, looking after the estates of yet more unlucky vassals,--his through debt, and not from simple weakness. During these intervals, Westlake takes his ease with his people, as thoughtless as they of consequences no more within his ability to avert than theirs. He has lately had an unusual respite. Rasey has been confined to the house by an illness,--the first of his life. I do not know how far Dr. Borrow is aware of Westlake's humiliations; and Westlake, I think, does not know. When he was able to speak again, he sheltered himself under a question. "Do you know Rasey?" "He is owner of the plantation which lies south of yours and Shaler's, larger than both together." "His plantation;--but do you know _him_?" "Root and branch. But who does not know him, that knows anybody here? In the next generation his history may be lost in his fortune, but it is extant yet. His father was overseer on a Georgia plantation, from which he sucked the marrow: his employer's grandchildren are crackers and clay-eaters; his are--of your community." "Not exactly." "Strike out all who do not yet belong to it, and all who have ceased to have a full claim to belong to it, and what have you left?" "Do you know old Rasey personally? Have you ever seen him?" "I have seen him." "Lately? I hear that a great change has come over him. He has lost his elder son." "You might say his only one. He turned the other out of doors years ago, and has had no word of him since. The old man has a daughter; but her husband has challenged him to shoot at sight. He has lost his partner and heir, and, in the course of Nature, cannot himself hold on many years longer. If a way could be found of taking property over to the other side, he might be consoled. The old Gauls used to manage it: they made loans on condition of repayment in the other world; but I doubt whether Rasey's faith is of force to let him find comfort in such a transaction.