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On my return home after a more agreeable wander over the Flats than I had dared to anticipate upon first setting off, and as I was passing through the garden, I saw a man at work beside the path I was coming down. Hearing my steps, he turned sharply and looked at me from under his beetling brow. What a disagreeable look it was!—like that of a savage wild animal meditating a spring at me. Never before, I thought, had it fallen in my way to meet with a human being of so repellant an appearance as this man had, both in face and form. He evidently possessed great muscular strength, judging from his short, broad form and large head, which latter, as he took off his cap to wipe his forehead with a very unrefreshing-looking red handkerchief, displayed a thick growth of matted black hair, wiry and curling. I must confess that as I thought of the loneliness of the garden and my possession of a beautiful gold watch and chain—the latter worn conspicuously in front of my dress, and which were the gifts of my kind uncle and aunt on my last birth-day—I felt very uncomfortable at having to bring so tempting a prize closely within his reach. Encouraging myself with the reflection that not only was his occupation a harmless one, but that he must have received some sort of recommendation to induce Rathfelder to engage him as a servant, I came slowly up to him as with a concluding scratch of his head, which he gave in a savage kind of way, he thrust his handkerchief into his pocket and replaced his cap. From very nervousness—a feeling akin, I afterward thought, to that which, with so strange and irresistible a power, draws the poor bird into the jaws of the rattlesnake—I stopped and wished him good-morning as pleasantly as I could, to which civil greeting he merely vouchsafed a grunt.
"I suppose you are Mr. Rathfelder's gardener?" I suggested, wishing to further propitiate him.
"I s'pose I be—leastways, he thinks so," he answered in a compound tone of fierceness and sulkiness.
"Well, but are you not?" I repeated, puzzled by so doubtful a reply, and still less reassured by his words and manner.
"I don't mean to be so long, that's sartin." He seemed determined to avoid giving me a straightforward answer, and as I stood perplexed and casting about in my mind what next to do or say, he added abruptly, "John Rathfelder don't pay me wages enough, that's the fact; and if he won't, I shall cut, that's all."
"I have always understood that Mr. Rathfelder is a generous, liberal master," I objected, in some surprise. "Surely there is some mistake. Did you engage with himself or through another?"
"There's no mistake about it," he rejoined, roughly. "I'll tell 'ee what it is," he added, speaking with fast-increasing fierceness, for the unlucky subject was one which evidently excited very bitter feelings, "it don't follow that what be liberal to some be so to all. He might be liberal enough to them 'ere stoopid black critters, but if he thinks Joe Blurdon will put up wi' the like he'll find himself in the wrong box, that's all."
"What country do you belong to?" I asked, feeling more and more uncomfortable as I detected his wild, glittering eyes, which boldly stared at me, frequently fastening themselves with, I thought, a hungry, rapacious look upon my gold chain, which he no doubt supposed to be attached to a valuable watch within my belt.