Bad Hugh

For years the old man and the boy had lived together alone in that great, lonely house, enjoying vastly the freedom from all restraint, the liberty of turning the parlors into

kennels if they chose, and converting the upper rooms into a hay-loft,

if they would. No white woman was ever seen upon the premises, unless

she came as a beggar, when some new gown, or surplice, or organ, or

chandelier, was needed for the pretty little church, lifting its modest

spire so unobtrusively among the forest trees, not very far from Spring

Bank. John Stanley didn't believe in churches; nor gowns, nor organs,

nor women, but he was proverbially liberal, and so the fair ones of

Glen's Creek neighborhood ventured into his den, finding it much

pleasanter to do so after the handsome, dark-haired boy came to live

with him; for about that frank, outspoken boy there was then something

very attractive to the little girls, while their mothers pitied him,

wondering why he had been permitted to come there, and watching for the

change in him, which was sure to ensue.

Not all at once did Hugh conform to the customs of his uncle's

household, and at first there often came over him a longing for

something different, a yearning for the refinements of his early home

among the Northern hills, and a wish to infuse into Chloe, the colored

housekeeper, some of his mother's neatness. But a few attempts at reform

had taught him how futile was the effort, Aunt Chloe always meeting him

with the argument: "'Taint no use, Mr. Hugh. A nigger's a nigger; and I spec' ef you're to

talk to me till you was hoarse 'bout your Yankee ways of scrubbin', and

sweepin', and moppin' with a broom, I shouldn't be an atomer

white-folksey than I is now. Besides Mas'r John, wouldn't bar no finery;

he's only happy when the truck is mighty nigh a foot thick, and his

things is lyin' round loose and handy."

To a certain extent this was true, for John Stanley would have felt

sadly out of place in any spot where, as Chloe said, "his things were

not lying round loose and handy," and as habit is everything, so Hugh

soon grew accustomed to his surroundings, and became as careless of his

external appearance as his uncle could desire. Only once had there come

to him an awakening--a faint conception of the happiness there might

arise from constant association with the pure and refined, such as his

uncle had labored to make him believe did not exist.

He was thinking of that incident now, and as he thought the veins upon his broad, white

forehead stood out round and full, while the hands clasped above the

head worked nervously together, and it was not strange that he did not

heed his mother when she spoke, for Hugh was far away from Spring Bank,

and the wild storm beating against its walls was to him like the sound

of the waves dashing against the vessel's side, just as they did years

ago on that night he remembered so well, shuddering as he heard again

the murderous hiss of the devouring flames, covering the fatal boat with

one sheet of fire, and driving into the water as a safer friend the

shrieking, frightened wretches who but an hour before had been so full

of life and hope, dancing gayly above the red-tongued demon stealthily

creeping upward from the hold below, where it had taken life. What a

fearful scene that was, and the veins grew larger on Hugh's brow while

his broad chest heaved with something like a stifled sob as he recalled

the little childish form to which he had clung so madly until the cruel

timber struck from him all consciousness, and he let that form go

down--down 'neath the treacherous waters of Lake Erie never to come up

again alive, for so his uncle told when, weeks after the occurrence, he

awoke from the delirious fever which ensued and listened to the

sickening detail.