"Possibly not, sir; possibly not," returned the colonel, hastily.
"I know the new ideas are prohibitive, and some other blank thing,
but you're safe here from your constituents, and by gad, sir, I
shan't force you to take it! It's MY custom, Hathaway--an old one--
played out, perhaps, like all the others, but a custom
nevertheless, and I'm only surprised that George, who knows it,
should have forgotten it."

"Fack is, Marse Harry," said George, with feverish apology, "it bin
gone 'scaped my mind dis mo'nin' in de prerogation ob business, but
I'm goin' now, shuah!" and he disappeared.

"A good boy, sir, but beginning to be contaminated. Brought him
here from Nashville over ten years ago. Eight years ago they
proved to him that he was no longer a slave, and made him d--d
unhappy until I promised him it should make no difference to him
and he could stay. I had to send for his wife and child--of
course, a dead loss of eighteen hundred dollars when they set foot
in the State--but I'm blanked if he isn't just as miserable with
them here, for he has to take two hours in the morning and three in
the afternoon every day to be with 'em. I tried to get him to take
his family to the mines and make his fortune, like those fellows
they call bankers and operators and stockbrokers nowadays; or to go
to Oregon where they'll make him some kind of a mayor or sheriff--
but he won't. He collects my rents on some little property I have
left, and pays my bills, sir, and, if this blank civilization would
only leave him alone, he'd be a good enough boy."

Paul couldn't help thinking that the rents George collected were
somewhat inconsistent with those he was evidently mending when he