But the convicted sinner interrupted, with a superior smile: "I've no inquiries to offer, Mr. Tombs. I know the plan of salvation, sir, perfectly! We're all totally depraved, and would be damned on Adam's account if we wa'n't, for we've lost communion with God and are liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself, and the pains of hell forever; but God out of his mere good pleasure having elected some to everlasting life, the rest of us--O I know it like a-b-c! Mother taught it to me before I could read. Yes, I must, with grief and hatred of my sin, turn from it unto God--certainly--because God, having first treated the innocent as if he were guilty, is willing now to treat the guilty as if he were innocent, which is all right because of God's sovereignty over us, his propriety in us, and the zeal he hath for his own worship--O---- "But, Mr. Tombs, what's the use, sir? Some things I can repent of, but some I can't. I'm expecting a letter to-day tha'll almost certainly be a favorable answer to an extensive proposition I've made for opening up my whole tract of land. Now, I've just been told by one of my squatters that if I bring settlers up there he'll kill 'em; and I know and you know he speaks for all of them. Well, d' you s'pose I won't kill him the minute he lifts a hand to try it?" The speaker's eyes widened pleasantly. He resumed: "There's another man down here. He's set his worm-eaten heart on something--perfect right to do it. I've no right to say he sha'n't. But I do. I'm just _honing_ to see him to tell him that if he values his health he'll drop that scheme at the close of the year, which closes to-day." "O John, is that what yo' father--I don't evm say yo' pious mother--taught you to be?" "No, sir; my father begged me to be like my mother. And I tried, sir, I tried hard! No use; I had to quit. Strange part is I've got along better ever since. But now, s'pose I should repent these things. 'Twouldn't do any good, sir. For, let me tell you, Mr. Tombs, underneath them all there's another matter--you can't guess it--please don't try or ask anybody else--a matter that I can't repent, and wouldn't if I could! Well, good-day, sir, I'm sure I reciprocate your----" "Come to the meeting, my brotheh. You love yo' motheh. Do it to please her." "I don't know; I'll see," replied John, with no intention of seeing, but reflecting with amused self-censure that if anything he did should visibly please his mother, such a result would be, at any rate, unique. XXXIX. SAME AFTERNOON Suez had never seen so busy a winter. Never before in the same number of weeks had so much cotton been hauled into town or shipped from it. Goods had never been so cheap, gross sales so large, or Blackland darkeys and Sandstone crackers so flush.