Cornelius opened his mouth with great pretense of ignorance, but---- "Go back and drop that hat outside the door, sir!" The servant went. "Now, bring me that letter!" The bearer brought it and stood waiting while the Major held it under his lame arm and tore it open. Judge March wrote that he had found a way to dispense with Cornelius at once, but his main wish was to express the hope--having let a better opportunity slip--that President Garnet as the "person best fitted in all central Dixie to impart to Southern youth a purely Southern education," would reopen Rosemont at once, and to promise his son to the college as soon as he should be old enough. But for two things the Major might have felt soothed. One was a feeling that Cornelius had in some way made himself unpleasant to the Judge, and this grew to conviction as his nostrils caught the odor of strong drink. He handed the note to his wife. "Judge March is always complimentary. Read it to Jeff-Jack. Cornelius, I'll see you for a moment on the back gallery." His wife tried to catch his eye, but a voice within him commended him to his own self-command, and he passed down the hall, the mulatto following. Johanna, crouching and nodding against the wall, straightened up as he passed. His footfall sounded hope to the strained ear of the Judge's son in the kitchen. Virginia slipped away. In the veranda, under the moonlight, Garnet turned and said, in a voice almost friendly: "Cornelius." "Yass, sah." "Cornelius, why did you go off and hire yourself out, sir?" At the last word the small listener in the kitchen trembled. "Dass jess what I 'How to 'splain to you, sah." "It isn't necessary. Cornelius, you know that if ever one class of human beings owed a lifelong gratitude to another, you negroes owe it to your old masters, don't you? Stop! don't you dare to say no? Here you all are; never has one of you felt a pang of helpless hunger or lain one day with a neglected fever. Food, clothing, shelter, you've never suffered a day's doubt about them! No other laboring class ever were so free from the cares of life. Your fellow-servants have shown some gratitude; they've stayed with their mistress till I got home to arrange with them under these new conditions. But you--you! when I let you push on ahead and leave me sick and wounded and only half way home--your home and mine, Cornelius--with your promise to wait here till I could come and retain you on wages--you, in pure wantonness, must lift up your heels and prance away into your so-called new liberty. You're a fair sample of what's to come, Cornelius. You've spent your first wages for whiskey. Silence, you perfidious reptile!