fear my nerves if I'm once in the right; it's living with you, and seeing
you do wrong, and hearing you talk wickedly, that makes me tremble."

"Bother!" said the captain, "you need not crow over me. Stand up, Will;
there now, look at us two in the glass! Why, I look ten years younger
than you do, in spite of all my troubles. I dress like a gentleman, as I
am; I have money in my pocket; I put money in yours; without me you'd
starve. Look you, you carried over a little fortune to Australia--you
married--you farmed--you lived honestly, and yet that d---d shilly-shally
disposition of yours, 'ticed into one speculation to-day, and scared out
of another to-morrow, ruined you!"

"Jerry! Jerry!" cried William, writhing; "don't--don't."

"But it's all true, and I wants to cure you of preaching. And then, when
you were nearly run out, instead of putting a bold face on it, and
setting your shoulder to the wheel, you gives it up--you sells what you
have--you bolts over, wife and all, to Boston, because some one tells you
you can do better in America--you are out of the way when a search is
made for you--years ago when you could have benefited yourself and your
master's family without any danger to you or me--nobody can find you;
'cause why, you could not bear that your old friends in England, or in
the colony either, should know that you were turned a slave-driver in
Kentucky. You kick up a mutiny among the niggers by moaning over them,
instead of keeping 'em to it--you get kicked out yourself--your wife begs
you to go back to Australia, where her relations will do something for
you--you work your passage out, looking as ragged as a colt from grass--
wife's uncle don't like ragged nephews-in-law--wife dies broken-hearted
--and you might be breaking stones on the roads with the convicts, if I,
myself a convict, had not taken compassion on you. Don't cry, Will, it