"And slight, withal, may be the things that bring Back on the heart the weight which it would fling Aside forever; it may be a sound, A flower, the wind, the ocean, which shall wound,-- Striking the electric chain wherewith we're darkly bound." CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE, CAN. 4.

The sitting-room of Legree's establishment was a large, long room,with a wide, ample fireplace. It had once been hung with a showy andexpensive paper, which now hung mouldering, torn and discolored, fromthe damp walls. The place had that peculiar sickening, unwholesomesmell, compounded of mingled damp, dirt and decay, which one oftennotices in close old houses. The wall-paper was defaced, in spots, byslops of beer and wine; or garnished with chalk memorandums, and longsums footed up, as if somebody had been practising arithmetic there. Inthe fireplace stood a brazier full of burning charcoal; for, though theweather was not cold, the evenings always seemed damp and chilly in thatgreat room; and Legree, moreover, wanted a place to light his cigars,and heat his water for punch. The ruddy glare of the charcoal displayedthe confused and unpromising aspect of the room,--saddles, bridles,several sorts of harness, riding-whips, overcoats, and various articlesof clothing, scattered up and down the room in confused variety; and thedogs, of whom we have before spoken, had encamped themselves among them,to suit their own taste and convenience.

Legree was just mixing himself a tumbler of punch, pouring his hot waterfrom a cracked and broken-nosed pitcher, grumbling, as he did so,

"Plague on that Sambo, to kick up this yer row between me and the newhands! The fellow won't be fit to work for a week, now,--right in thepress of the season!"

"Yes, just like you," said a voice, behind his chair. It was the womanCassy, who had stolen upon his soliloquy.

"Hah! you she-devil! you've come back, have you?"

"Yes, I have," she said, coolly; "come to have my own way, too!"

"You lie, you jade! I'll be up to my word. Either behave yourself, orstay down to the quarters, and fare and work with the rest."

"I'd rather, ten thousand times," said the woman, "live in the dirtiesthole at the quarters, than be under your hoof!"

"But you _are_ under my hoof, for all that," said he, turning upon her,with a savage grin; "that's one comfort. So, sit down here on my knee,my dear, and hear to reason," said he, laying hold on her wrist.

"Simon Legree, take care!" said the woman, with a sharp flash of hereye, a glance so wild and insane in its light as to be almost appalling."You're afraid of me, Simon," she said, deliberately; "and you've reasonto be! But be careful, for I've got the devil in me!"

The last words she whispered in a hissing tone, close to his ear.

"Get out! I believe, to my soul, you have!" said Legree, pushing herfrom him, and looking uncomfortably at her. "After all, Cassy," he said,"why can't you be friends with me, as you used to?"

"Used to!" said she, bitterly. She stopped short,--a word of chokingfeelings, rising in her heart, kept her silent.

Cassy had always kept over Legree the kind of influence that a strong,impassioned woman can ever keep over the most brutal man; but, of late,she had grown more and more irritable and restless, under the hideousyoke of her servitude, and her irritability, at times, broke out intoraving insanity; and this liability made her a sort of object of dreadto Legree, who had that superstitious horror of insane persons which iscommon to coarse and uninstructed minds. When Legree brought Emmeline tothe house, all the smouldering embers of womanly feeling flashed up inthe worn heart of Cassy, and she took part with the girl; and a fiercequarrel ensued between her and Legree. Legree, in a fury, swore sheshould be put to field service, if she would not be peaceable. Cassy,with proud scorn, declared she _would_ go to the field. And she workedthere one day, as we have described, to show how perfectly she scornedthe threat.

Legree was secretly uneasy, all day; for Cassy had an influence over himfrom which he could not free himself. When she presented her basket atthe scales, he had hoped for some concession, and addressed her in asort of half conciliatory, half scornful tone; and she had answered withthe bitterest contempt.

The outrageous treatment of poor Tom had roused her still more; and shehad followed Legree to the house, with no particular intention, but toupbraid him for his brutality.

"I wish, Cassy," said Legree, "you'd behave yourself decently."

"_You_ talk about behaving decently! And what have you been doing?--you,who haven't even sense enough to keep from spoiling one of your besthands, right in the most pressing season, just for your devilishtemper!"

"I was a fool, it's a fact, to let any such brangle come up," saidLegree; "but, when the boy set up his will, he had to be broke in."

"I reckon you won't break _him_ in!"

"Won't I?" said Legree, rising, passionately. "I'd like to know if Iwon't? He'll be the first nigger that ever came it round me! I'll breakevery bone in his body, but he _shall_ give up!"

Just then the door opened, and Sambo entered. He came forward, bowing,and holding out something in a paper.

"What's that, you dog?" said Legree.

"It's a witch thing, Mas'r!"

"A what?"

"Something that niggers gets from witches. Keeps 'em from feelin' whenthey 's flogged. He had it tied round his neck, with a black string."

Legree, like most godless and cruel men, was superstitious. He took thepaper, and opened it uneasily.

There dropped out of it a silver dollar, and a long, shining curlof fair hair,--hair which, like a living thing, twined itself roundLegree's fingers.

"Damnation!" he screamed, in sudden passion, stamping on the floor, andpulling furiously at the hair, as if it burned him. "Where did this comefrom? Take it off!--burn it up!--burn it up!" he screamed, tearing itoff, and throwing it into the charcoal. "What did you bring it to mefor?"

Sambo stood, with his heavy mouth wide open, and aghast with wonder; andCassy, who was preparing to leave the apartment, stopped, and looked athim in perfect amazement.

"Don't you bring me any more of your devilish things!" said he, shakinghis fist at Sambo, who retreated hastily towards the door; and, pickingup the silver dollar, he sent it smashing through the window-pane, outinto the darkness.

Sambo was glad to make his escape. When he was gone, Legree seemed alittle ashamed of his fit of alarm. He sat doggedly down in his chair,and began sullenly sipping his tumbler of punch.

Cassy prepared herself for going out, unobserved by him; and slippedaway to minister to poor Tom, as we have already related.

And what was the matter with Legree? and what was there in a simplecurl of fair hair to appall that brutal man, familiar with every formof cruelty? To answer this, we must carry the reader backward in hishistory. Hard and reprobate as the godless man seemed now, there hadbeen a time when he had been rocked on the bosom of a mother,--cradledwith prayers and pious hymns,--his now seared brow bedewed with thewaters of holy baptism. In early childhood, a fair-haired woman had ledhim, at the sound of Sabbath bell, to worship and to pray. Far in NewEngland that mother had trained her only son, with long, unwearied love,and patient prayers. Born of a hard-tempered sire, on whom that gentlewoman had wasted a world of unvalued love, Legree had followed in thesteps of his father. Boisterous, unruly, and tyrannical, he despised allher counsel, and would none of her reproof; and, at an early age, brokefrom her, to seek his fortunes at sea. He never came home but once,after; and then, his mother, with the yearning of a heart that must lovesomething, and has nothing else to love, clung to him, and sought, withpassionate prayers and entreaties, to win him from a life of sin, to hissoul's eternal good.

That was Legree's day of grace; then good angels called him; then hewas almost persuaded, and mercy held him by the hand. His heart inlyrelented,--there was a conflict,--but sin got the victory, and heset all the force of his rough nature against the conviction of hisconscience. He drank and swore,--was wilder and more brutal than ever.And, one night, when his mother, in the last agony of her despair, kneltat his feet, he spurned her from him,--threw her senseless on the floor,and, with brutal curses, fled to his ship. The next Legree heard ofhis mother was, when, one night, as he was carousing among drunkencompanions, a letter was put into his hand. He opened it, and a lockof long, curling hair fell from it, and twined about his fingers. Theletter told him his mother was dead, and that, dying, she blest andforgave him.

There is a dread, unhallowed necromancy of evil, that turns thingssweetest and holiest to phantoms of horror and affright. That pale,loving mother,--her dying prayers, her forgiving love,--wrought in thatdemoniac heart of sin only as a damning sentence, bringing with it afearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation. Legree burned thehair, and burned the letter; and when he saw them hissing and cracklingin the flame, inly shuddered as he thought of everlasting fires. Hetried to drink, and revel, and swear away the memory; but often, inthe deep night, whose solemn stillness arraigns the bad soul in forcedcommunion with herself, he had seen that pale mother rising by hisbedside, and felt the soft twining of that hair around his fingers, tillthe cold sweat would roll down his face, and he would spring from hisbed in horror. Ye who have wondered to hear, in the same evangel, thatGod is love, and that God is a consuming fire, see ye not how, to thesoul resolved in evil, perfect love is the most fearful torture, theseal and sentence of the direst despair?

"Blast it!" said Legree to himself, as he sipped his liquor; "where didhe get that? If it didn't look just like--whoo! I thought I'd forgotthat. Curse me, if I think there's any such thing as forgettinganything, any how,--hang it! I'm lonesome! I mean to call Em. She hatesme--the monkey! I don't care,--I'll _make_ her come!"

Legree stepped out into a large entry, which went up stairs, by what hadformerly been a superb winding staircase; but the passage-way was dirtyand dreary, encumbered with boxes and unsightly litter. The stairs,uncarpeted, seemed winding up, in the gloom, to nobody knew where! Thepale moonlight streamed through a shattered fanlight over the door; theair was unwholesome and chilly, like that of a vault.

Legree stopped at the foot of the stairs, and heard a voice singing. Itseemed strange and ghostlike in that dreary old house, perhaps becauseof the already tremulous state of his nerves. Hark! what is it?

A wild, pathetic voice, chants a hymn common among the slaves:

"O there'll be mourning, mourning, mourning, O there'll be mourning, at the judgment-seat of Christ!"

"Blast the girl!" said Legree. "I'll choke her.--Em! Em!" he called,harshly; but only a mocking echo from the walls answered him. The sweetvoice still sung on:

"Parents and children there shall part! Parents and children there shall part! Shall part to meet no more!"

And clear and loud swelled through the empty halls the refrain,

"O there'll be mourning, mourning, mourning, O there'll be mourning, at the judgment-seat of Christ!"

Legree stopped. He would have been ashamed to tell of it, but largedrops of sweat stood on his forehead, his heart beat heavy and thickwith fear; he even thought he saw something white rising and glimmeringin the gloom before him, and shuddered to think what if the form of hisdead mother should suddenly appear to him.

"I know one thing," he said to himself, as he stumbled back in thesitting-room, and sat down; "I'll let that fellow alone, after this!What did I want of his cussed paper? I b'lieve I am bewitched, sureenough! I've been shivering and sweating, ever since! Where did he getthat hair? It couldn't have been _that!_ I burnt _that_ up, I know Idid! It would be a joke, if hair could rise from the dead!"

Ah, Legree! that golden tress _was_ charmed; each hair had in it a spellof terror and remorse for thee, and was used by a mightier power to bindthy cruel hands from inflicting uttermost evil on the helpless!

"I say," said Legree, stamping and whistling to the dogs, "wake up, someof you, and keep me company!" but the dogs only opened one eye at him,sleepily, and closed it again.

"I'll have Sambo and Quimbo up here, to sing and dance one of their helldances, and keep off these horrid notions," said Legree; and, puttingon his hat, he went on to the verandah, and blew a horn, with which hecommonly summoned his two sable drivers.

Legree was often wont, when in a gracious humor, to get these twoworthies into his sitting-room, and, after warming them up with whiskey,amuse himself by setting them to singing, dancing or fighting, as thehumor took him.

It was between one and two o'clock at night, as Cassy was returningfrom her ministrations to poor Tom, that she heard the sound of wildshrieking, whooping, halloing, and singing, from the sitting-room,mingled with the barking of dogs, and other symptoms of general uproar.

She came up on the verandah steps, and looked in. Legree and both thedrivers, in a state of furious intoxication, were singing, whooping,upsetting chairs, and making all manner of ludicrous and horrid grimacesat each other.

She rested her small, slender hand on the window-blind, and lookedfixedly at them;--there was a world of anguish, scorn, and fiercebitterness, in her black eyes, as she did so. "Would it be a sin to ridthe world of such a wretch?" she said to herself.

She turned hurriedly away, and, passing round to a back door, glided upstairs, and tapped at Emmeline's door.