The supper bell was now ringing and I hastened into the house to take my place behind Young Master's chair. He had many a time commanded me to leave off this useless act of servitude, but such a favoritism would have inflamed Old Miss against me, so I insisted upon a continuance of the office. Old Master and Old Miss were Hard-Shell Baptists and at supper there was present an old and honored exponent of that faith, Elija Brooks. He visited us often, but Bob and I had a stronger cause than this to call him to mind. Once we had taken his rubber overshoes and made a town-ball of them and had been severely whipped for our enterprise. The old gentleman refused to erase this, our act of meanness, from his mind, and whenever he looked at me I felt that my soul was surely lost. Upon this visit he was in higher spirits. Out in his neighborhood, we were soon informed, a man discovered to be an abolitionist had been tarred and feathered, an example of God's avenging wrath; and the old man's mouth appeared to water with the delicious recollection of the sight. "They came to my house," he said as he passed his plate for a Shanghai rooster's breast, "and asked my opinion in case the fellow was found guilty. I took down the good book and sought instruction, and I think that I modified his punishment when I recommended tar and feathers. Ah, Brother Guilford, the ways of the devil are many and sly; we must keep a constant lookout for him." "He is never idle a moment," said Old Miss with a sigh. Old Master didn't say much. He wasn't a very strong believer in the devil, and but for his negroes and his blue-grass land, he had surely been turned out of the church for saying, in the midst of a God-loving assembly upon his own veranda, "the devil be damned!" "What had the man done?" Mr. Clem asked, and I saw his face harden. "Why, sir," returned Mr. Brooks, "he had openly set our institutions at defiance and proclaimed abolition. He said that no Christian could own human flesh and blood." "Had he been in the community very long?" Mr. Clem asked. "Several years," the preacher answered. "And there comes in a strange part of the affair," he continued. "He had lived among us for that length of time and had never been known to steal anything or to commit any sort of depredation." "Marvelous," Mr. Clem cried, setting his cup violently upon the table. "Hadn't stolen anything! Why, sir, I expected you to tell me that he had murdered women and children." The unsuspecting preacher was deeply moved by the earnestness of Mr. Clem, but Old Master slily shook his head as a warning not to go too far, and Old Miss cleared her throat. "It is a thousand wonders," Mr. Brooks went on, "that he had not committed murder; and now it comes to mind that certain little pilferings throughout our neighborhood may justly be laid to him." "No doubt of it," Mr. Clem cried. "It is at least a well-founded suspicion," said the preacher.