Why, who would look after his interests as he always had—who would keep his affairs from goin’ to ruin durin’ his long sprees? Where could be found another servant with his absolute honesty, and intelligence, and care for his interests? Why, as he thought of it, all the old slaveholdin’ instinct of compellin’ his inferiors, the hereditary impulse to rule or ruin rose in him, and his face grew red with wrath, and he vowed agin, with a still more sonorous oath, “That Victor should not go,” and he added, with a true slave-driver’s emphasis, “_not alive_.” His overseer and kindred spirit, Nick Burley, hated Victor; for, added to the hated knowledge that Victor wuz his superior in every way, wuz the belief that he had befriended Felix. At all events, Victor and Felix wuz close friends always, and Burley hated Felix worse if possible than he did Victor. But to Victor and Genieve all these shadows lay fur away on the horizon almost unseen, and anyway almost forgotten in the clear sunshine of their happiness. For true love will make sunshine everywhere. [Illustration: “A LITTLE TUMBLE-DOWN COTTAGE.”] CHAPTER VI. ABOUT half a mile from Belle Fanchon, on the road that led to Eden Centre, stood a little tumble-down cottage where an old colored woman lived with her granddaughter and grandson. Cleopatra, shortened into Aunt Clo’, wuz picturesque-lookin’ even in her rags. She wuz taller by far than common wimmen, with a portly figure, that did not show any marks of privation, although it wuz difficult to tell what the family lived on, for it wuz the exception instead of the rule to see any one of ’em employed in any useful labor. Once in a great while Aunt Clo’ would go out for a day’s work washin’ or cleanin’ house, or any other work she could perform. At such times, although she professed to have great “misery” in her back, her arms, her legs, and, in fact, “all her bones,” yet she did a good day’s work, but with groanings scarcely to be uttered. She always seemed serenely gracious in receivin’ anything that Maggie gave her, evidently considerin’ it wuz only her due. But although her day’s works wuz exceedingly unfrequent, and her granddaughter Rosy and the boy Abe wuz hardly ever seen to perform any labor, yet they showed no signs of starvation, certainly. As a reason for this state of things the neighbors’ hen-roosts and corn-fields might have given evidence. [Illustration: CLEOPATRA.] Rosy, the young granddaughter, wuz utterly without morals of any savin’ kind. She wuz rather pretty for a full-blooded African. A empty-headed, gigglin’, utterly depraved study in black. Not one of the family could read or write, or hardly tell the time of day. Two large dogs formed part of their household, and they seemingly possessed more intelligence than either of the human residents.