Captain Baynell, in the stress of an unusual embarrassment, rose and walked to one of the tall book-cases, affecting to examine the title of a long row of books, but the old servant was not sensitive; he resorted to the simple expedient of raising his voice to follow the guest in a detail that brought Captain Baynell back to his chair in unseemly haste, where a lower tone was practicable. "She could hev' married my Marster's son, Julius, an' him de flower ob de flock! But no! She jus' would marry dis yere Gwynn feller, whut nobody wanted her ter marry, an' eloped wid him--she did! An' shore 'nuff, dey do say he pulled her round de house by de hair ob her head, dough some 'lows he jus' bruk a chair ober her head!" The officer was a brave man, but now he was in the extremity of panic. What if some one were at the door on the point of entering?--the "widder 'oman" herself, for instance! "I don't need you any longer, Uncle Ephraim," he ventured to remonstrate. "I'm gwine, Cap'n, jus' as soon as I git through wid de ha'th," and Uncle Ephraim gave it a perfunctory whisk. He interpolated an explanation of his diligence. "I don't want Miss Leonora--dat's de widder 'oman--ter be remarkin' on it. Nobody kin do nuthin' ter suit her but Chaney, dis cook dey got, who belong ter Miss Leonora, an' befo' de War used ter be her waitin'-'oman. Chaney is all de estate Miss Leonora hes got lef,--an' ye know dat sort o' property ain't wurf much in dis happy day o' freedom. Miss Leonora wuz rich once in her own right. But she flung her marriage-settlements--dat dey had fixed to tie up her property so Gwynn couldn't sell it nor waste it--right inter de fiah! She declared she would marry a man whut she could trust wid her fortune! An'," the narrator concluded his story impressively, "when dat man died--his horse throwed him an' bruk his neck--I wondered dey didn't beat de drum fur joy, 'twuz sich a crownin' mercy! But he hed spent all her fortune 'fore he went!" The whisking wing was still; Uncle Ephraim's eyes dwelt on the fire with a glow of deep speculation. He lowered his voice mysteriously. "Dat man wuz de poorest stuff ter make an angel out'n ever you see! I dunno _whut's_ become of him." There was a stir outside, a footfall; and, as Captain Baynell sprang to his feet, feeling curiously guilty in receiving, however unwillingly, these revelations of the history of the family, Judge Roscoe entered, his welcome the more cordial and expressed because he noticed a certain constraint in his guest's manner, which he ascribed to the unintentional breach of decorum in the failure to properly receive him. "I had hoped my niece, Mrs. Gwynn, might have been here to save you a dull half hour, or perhaps my granddaughters--where are the ladies and Mrs. Gwynn, Ephraim?" he broke off to ask of "the double-faced Janus," scuttling out with his basket of chips and his turkey wing.