thought it best to gratify his curiosity at once. He was silent a
moment; then he said, "Looking at the old sugar house from there?" That
was too preposterous, and I answered with more voice, and perhaps with a
touch of impatience, "No, no; I am trying to see a bird in that
pine-tree." He was silent again. Then he gathered up the reins. "I'm so
deaf I can't hear you," he said, and drove on. "Good-by," I remarked, in
a needless undertone; "you're a good man, I've no doubt, but deaf people
shouldn't be inquisitive at long range."

The advice was sound enough, in itself considered; properly understood,
it might be held to contain, or at least to suggest, one of the
profoundest, and at the same time one of the most practical, truths of
all devout philosophy; but the testiness of its tone was little to my
credit. He _was_ a good man,--and the village doctor,--and more than
once afterward put me under obligation. One of his best appreciated
favors was unintended and indirect. I was driving with him through the
hammock, and we passed a bit of swamp. "There are some pretty flowers,"
he exclaimed; "I think I must get them." At the word he jumped out of
the gig, bade me do the same, hitched his horse, a half-broken stallion,
to a sapling, and plunged into the thicket. I strolled elsewhere; and by
and by he came back, a bunch of common blue iris in one hand, and his
shoes and stockings in the other. "They are very pretty," he explained
(he spoke of the flowers), "and it is early for them." After that I had
no doubt of his goodness, and in case of need would certainly have
called him rather than his younger rival at the opposite end of the
village.

When I tired of chasing the grackle, or the shrike had driven him away
(I do not remember now how the matter ended), I started again toward the
old sugar mill. Presently a lone cabin came into sight. The grass-grown