"Do you often visit that tavern?" inquired Seraphin.
"Not six times in a year," answered Holt. "Sometimes of a Sunday I drink half a glass of wine, that's all. I am poor, and have to be saving. I would not have gone to the tavern to-day but that I wanted to get rid of my feelings of misery."
"I overheard your story," rejoined Seraphin. "Shund's treatment of you was inhuman. He behaved towards you like a trickish devil."
"That he did! And I am ruined together with my family," replied the poor man dejectedly.
"Take my advice, and never abuse Shund. You know how respectable he has suddenly got to be, how many influential friends he has. You can easily perceive that one cannot say anything unfavorable of such a man without great risk, no matter were it true ten times over."
"I am not given to disputing," replied Holt. "But it stirred the bile within me to hear him extolled, and it broke out. Oh! I have learned to suffer in silence. I haven't time to think of other matters. After God, my business and my family were my only care. I attended to my occupation faithfully and quietly as long as I had any to attend to, but now I haven't any to take care of. O God! it is hard. It will bring me to the grave."
"You are a land cultivator?"
"Yes, sir."
"Shund intends to have you sold out?"
"Yes; immediately after the election he intends to complete my ruin."