_will_ heer from me ag'in.' Wid dat de driber come up, and he tole him he guessed he wouldn't buy me dat day; and den he went away. "Vina said dis mornin' she 'lowed to go up to yo' house to do some washin' for de missus; an' yer can ax her, sah, an' she'll tell yer dat all I'se been a-sayin' is de libbin' truf." The judge hardly needed any confirmation--Abram's story was too straightforward and naif to have been coined--but, telling him to call at his house toward evening, and that he would have the necessary papers there, and make them out if satisfied as to the eligibility of the parties for such a contract, he dismissed the aspirant for marital honors. As the judge entered the shaded coolness of his library after a distracting day spent in the discussion of a complicated will-case, the refreshing atmosphere of refinement and quiet and home exercised so powerful an influence over his tired nerves that he straightway forgot all professional and other cares, and stretching himself in his favorite lazy-chair, was soon fast asleep. As he drifted back to a semi-conscious state he became aware of voices conversing on the back veranda, which shaded one of the library windows. The voices were those of his wife and the girl Vina, and the words which he first clearly comprehended were-- "I tell yer what, Miss' Fairdealer, dar ain't no niggerism about ole Fader Abram." As Father Abram approached the nearest to a pure-blooded Congo African of any negro that he knew, the judge rubbed his forehead in the gentle stimulating way which he always employed when he wished to convince himself that he had heard aright and to assure some sophomorical young lawyer that he had not been asleep at all, but had caught every word of his long-winded statement of the case. The judge's ideas came back to him with their usual easy flow, and before the next sentence was enunciated he had made a mental summing-up of the case and given judgment for the plaintiff. "I mean," continued Vina, "dat Fader Abe's got de whitest soul ebber yer see: he couldn't do a mean ting, no matter how much money de debbil 'greed to pay him for't. Fus' time I ebber see him war down in Lousianny. My ole marster had sole me away from my husband an' from John Brown: she war a little ting den, only six mo'ths, an' oughtn't to have been weaned, but I don't s'pose he cared whether she libbed or died, and de slabe-driber wouldn't take her--" "How _did_ you," interrupted Mrs. Judge Fairdealer with the curiosity of a true woman, "ever give your little girl such an unsuitable name as _John_ Brown?"