The man spoke again, this time very gravely. I had to listen with all my attention to hear him, for they had now passed the place where I sat. “Sally, don’t do anything foolish,” said he. “Jim isn’t a fool, and he knows how to repay services like yours, though he may be a trifle harsh sometimes. Why, he might have thrown you over with the rest when--” I could hear no more; they had gone too far. I waited till their voices had died away, and then dashed from my perch, through the plantation and the hall, up to my room, as fast as I could, locked the door, and sat down appalled. What a terrible tragedy in the servants’ hall we were likely to have if things went on like this! If Mrs. Rayner had been only a woman, not a statue, I would have confessed all to her; but, as she was, it would do no good. It was not the sort of thing I could tell Mr. Rayner, and there was no way of letting him know without telling him. There was nothing for it but to hope that little Jane would be wise and leave off provoking Sarah, and that Providence would bring Sarah herself to a better mind. But what a dreadful woman to have in the house! And why had the stranger spoken of Tom Parkes as “Jim”? CHAPTER VI. The next morning I woke up with that strange feeling of oppression which is caused by something unpleasant heard the night before. I soon remembered what it was, and tried to shake off the recollection of the talk in the plantation and of Sarah’s vindictive tones. I looked at her searchingly as she came in demurely to prayers with the cook and poor little Jane, and I could not help thinking that Tom Parkes, or “Jim” as the stranger had called him--but then a man of such a desperate character as they had described him to be would have a dozen _aliases_--might be excused in preferring the simple little kitchen-maid Jane to that forbidding-looking shrew. But perhaps, when he first made love to her, she was young and comparatively fair; and, if so, he ought not to desert her just because she had grown thin and hard-looking in doing the wicked things he made her do. What were those wicked things? I wondered. I had seen Tom Parkes, a strongly-made thick-set young man, two or three times, and he had seemed to me to have a stolid but rather good-humored expression; I should have thought him to be more stupid than wicked, and certainly not the sort of man to rule with a rod of iron the formidable Sarah.