daily order of action and thought which he believed to be his right
to enforce upon his household. Every one chafed under his inexorable
system except his wife. She had married when young, had grown up
into it, and supplemented it with a system of her own which took the
form of a scrupulous and periodical attention to all little details
of housekeeping. There was a constant friction, therefore, between
the careless, indolent natures of the slaves and the precise,
exacting requirements of both master and mistress. Miss Lou, as she
was generally called on the plantation, had grown up into this
routine as a flower blooms in a stiff old garden, and no amount of
repression, admonition and exhortation, not even in her younger days
of punishment, could quench her spirit or benumb her mind. She
submitted, she yielded, with varying degrees of grace or reluctance.
As she increased in years, her thoughts, as we have seen, were
verging more and more on the border of rebellion. But the habit of
obedience and submission still had its influence. Moreover, there
had been no strong motive and little opportunity for independent
action. Hoping not even for tolerance, much less for sympathy, she
kept her thoughts to herself, except as she occasionally relieved
her mind to her old mammy, Aun' Jinkey.

She came into the dining-room hastily at last, but the expression of
her face was impassive and inscrutable. She was received in solemn
silence, broken at first only by the long formal grace which Mr.
Baron never omitted and never varied. In her rebellious mood the
girl thought, "What a queer God it would be if he were pleased with
this old cut-and-dried form of words! All the time uncle's saying
them he is thinking how he'll show me his displeasure."

Mr. Baron evidently concluded that his best method at first would be