"Well, well, I don't suppose the farm'll go begging. There are plenty of people that would be glad enough to have me give it to them. I expect it will have to go to Cousin Josiah after all; but father couldn't abide him. It's a great pity I wasn't a boy, then I could have married and had children to take it." A sudden flush covered Hetty's face as she said this, and with a shamefaced, impatient twist of her expressive features, she ran in hastily and laid the whip above the canes. The only thing which broke in on the even tenor of this summer at Gunn's was Caesar's experiencing religion in a great revival at the Methodist church. Caesar had been under conviction again and again; but, as old Nan said pathetically to her minister, there didn't seem to be "nothin' to ketch hold by in Caesar." By the time his emotions had worked up to the proper climax for a successful result, he was "done tired out," and would "jest give right up" and "let go," and "there he was as bad's ever, if not wuss." Poor old Nan was a very ardent and sincere Christian, spite of her infirmities of temper, and she would wrestle in prayer with and for her husband till her black cheeks shone under streams of tears. She wrestled all the harder because the ungodly Caesar would sometimes turn upon her, and in the most sarcastic and ungenerous way ask if he didn't keep his temper better "without religion than she did with it:" upon which Nan would groan and travail in spirit, and beseech the Lord not to "go an' let her be a stumbler-block in Caesar's way." The Squire's death had produced a great impression on Caesar: from that day he had been, Nan declared, "quite a changed pusson;" and the impression deepened until three months later, in the course of a great midnight meeting in the Methodist church, Caesar Gunn suddenly announced that he had "got religion." The one habit which it was hardest for Caesar to give up, in his new character, was the habit of swearing. Profanity had never been strongly discountenanced at "Gunn's." The old Squire and the young Squire had both been in the habit of swearing, on occasion, as roundly as troopers! and black Caesar was not going to be behind his masters, not he. So he, too, in spite of old Nan's protestations and entreaties, had become a confirmed swearer. It had really grown into so fixed a habit that the words meant nothing: it was no more than a trick of physical contortion of which a man may be utterly unconscious. How to break himself of this was Caesar's difficulty. "Yer see, Nan!" he said, "I dunno when it's a comin': the fust I know, it's said and done, an' what am I goin' to do 'bout it then, 'll yer tell me?" At last, Caesar hit on a compromise which seemed to him a singularly happy one. To avoid saying "damn" was manifestly impossible: the word slipped out perpetually without giving him warning; as soon as he heard it, however, his righteous soul remorsefully followed up the syllable by,--