his hand:

"Sam, you wasn't 'lowin' to leave along o' this here foolishness?"

"That's just what I was 'lowin' to do, sir."

"Don't you be a dern fool, Sam!" and Saul followed up this judicious
exhortation with such cogent reasons that poor Sleeny was glad to be
persuaded that his chance was not over yet, and that he would much
better stay where he was.

"How'll _she_ like it?"

"Oh! it won't make a mite o' difference to her," said the old man
airily, and poor Sam felt in his despondent heart that it would not.

He remained and became like the least of her servants. She valued his
attachment much as a planter valued the affection of his slaves,
knowing they would work the better for it. He did all her errands;
fetched and carried for her; took her to church on evenings when she
did not care to stay at home. One of the few amusements Saul Matchin
indulged in was that of attending spiritualist lectures and seances,
whenever a noted medium visited the place. Saul had been an unbeliever
in his youth, and this grotesque superstition had rushed in at the
first opportunity to fill the vacuum of faith in his mind. He had never
succeeded, however, in thoroughly indoctrinating his daughter. She
regarded her father's religion with the same contempt she bestowed upon
the other vulgar and narrow circumstances of her lot in life, and so
had preferred her mother's sober Presbyterianism to the new and raw
creed of her sire. But one evening, when she was goaded by more than