"You are an impertinent fellow! But I overlook that. There is some difference, I should judge, between you and me, and I certainly ought never to have consented to your taking that girl." "It is too late to say that now, sir!" said Valentine, with a sigh so heavy that Mr. Waring inquired, quickly: "So you repent it, do you?" "No; God Almighty knows I do not!" replied Valentine, with sorrowful earnestness; adding, "but, oh, sir, I am losing precious time. I came here to ask you for a permit to go to town and see my wife." "A permit! A permit to go to town, and to visit a woman ill with the very pestilence we are all doing our best to guard against? A permit to go there, and take the fever just as sure as you go, and bring back and spread the contagion among hundreds, whom we are all doing our best to guard from the pestilence! Impossible, Valentine! I wonder you could be so unreasonable as to ask it!" "Unreasonable that I should want to go and see my suffering wife?" "Yes--under the circumstances. Yes, I am sorry for her, Valentine, and sorry for you, though I cannot say that your manner is very respectful. Still, I am very sorry for you; and if it were possible for me to do anything for your relief, I would do it--as it is, I regret that I can do nothing." "Oh, sir! Master Oswald, you could let me go to town," pleaded Valentine. "At the imminent hazard of your own life, and the all but certainty of bringing the pestilence upon this plantation." "All do not get the fever who are exposed to its influence; neither do they always spread contagion into the healthy places they chance to visit," reasoned the young man. "The risk is too great," replied the master, curtly. "Would you think it too great if your own wife were the one concerned, sir?" argued Valentine. "Be more respectful, sirrah! There is some difference, I should say!" retorted the master, angrily. "Yes, there is a difference!" cried Valentine; "and when I see anything to respect----" Suddenly he stopped. Swift as lightning came the thought that if he refrained from provoking his master now and came to him an hour hence, when he should be in a better humor, the prayer that he now denied he might then grant. Controlling his rising indignation, he bowed, turned abruptly, and went off. "Impudent rascal! he was just about to say something that I should have had to knock him down for; and then he thought better of it, and stopped--it's well he did! Poor fellow, I am sorry for him, too; but it is all his own fault! If he were not so presumptuous, he would not feel so badly. That is the very deuce of it; for that prevents him from seeing that there is a difference." Such were the reflections of Mr. Waring as he continued to pace up and down the front piazza.