Bad Hugh | Page 3

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.
"Lost, my boy, lost with many others," was what his uncle had said.
He heard the words as plainly now as when they first were spoken,
remembering how his uncle's voice had faltered, and how the thought
had flashed upon his mind that John Stanley's heart was not as hard
toward womenkind as people had supposed. "Lost"--there was a world
of meaning in that word to Hugh more than any one had ever guessed,
and, though it was but a child he lost, yet in the quiet night, when all
else around Spring Bank was locked in sleep, he often lay thinking of
that child and of what he might perhaps have been had she been spared
to him. He was thinking of her now, and as he thought visions of a
sweet, pale face, shadowed with curls of golden hair, came up before
his mind, and he saw again the look of bewildered surprise and pain
which shone in the soft, blue eyes and illumined every feature when in
an unguarded moment he gave vent to the half infidel principles he had

learned from his uncle. Her creed was different from his, and she
explained it to him so earnestly, so tearfully, that he had said to her at
last he did but jest to hear what she would say, and, though she seemed
satisfied, he felt there was a shadow between them--a shadow which
was not swept away, even after he promised to read the little Bible she
gave him and see for himself whether he or she were right. He had that
Bible now hidden away where no curious eye could find it, and
carefully folded between