"Well, Missus," replied Aun' Sheba, with the graven-image expression that she often assumed before Mrs. Hunter, "I'se know'd of homes dat hab become wuss dan bake-shops. Neber in my bawn days hab I heerd on an active, prosp'rous baker starbin'. Jes' you try dis cooky right fum de stove an' see ef it doan melt in you'se mouf." And so Aun' Sheba stopped Mrs. Hunter's lamentations and clinched her argument. CHAPTER XVI HONEST FOES Captain Bodine's errand was characteristic of the man. He had accepted his cousin's hospitality and sympathy most gratefully, and his quick apprehension had gathered from some of her words that she was bent on moving her little segment of "heaven and earth," to secure him employment. While perfectly ready to receive any gracious benefactions from heaven, where he justly believed that the good old lady's power centred chiefly, he shrank from her terrestrial efforts in his behalf, knowing that they must be made with very few exceptions among those who were straitened and burdened already. He did not want a "place made" for him and to feel that other Southern men were practicing a severer self-denial in order to do so. With a grim, set look on his face as if he were going into battle, he halted downtown to the counting-room of one of the wealthiest merchants and shippers in the City. He knew this man only by reputation, and his friends would regard an application for employment to Mr. Houghton, as extraordinary as it certainly would be futile in their belief. Mr. Houghton was quite as bitter against the South in general and Charleston in particular as Mrs. Hunter in her enmity of all that savored of the North; and, as human nature goes, they both had much reason, or rather cause, for their sentiments. The experiences of many of that day were not conducive to calm historical estimates or to "the charity that suffereth long and is kind." Mr. Houghton was a New England man, and hated slavery almost as intensely as it deserved to be hated. The trouble with him had been that he did not separate the "peculiar institution" widely enough from the men who had been taught by their fathers, mothers and ministers to believe in it. He made no allowances for his Southern fellow-citizens, as many of them would make none for him. With him, it was "Slave-driver"; with them, "Abolitionist"; yet he revered and they revered the great-hearted planter of Mount Vernon. When the war came at last to teach its terrible, yet essential lessons, Mr. Houghton's eldest son was among the first to exercise the courage of the convictions which had always been instilled into his mind. The grim New Englander saw him depart with eyes that, although tearless, were full of agony, also of hatred of all that threatened to cost him so much. His worst fears were fulfilled, for his son was drowned in a night attack on Fort Sumter, and, in his father's morbid fancy, still lay in the mud and ooze at the bottom of Charleston harbor.