"Ah, but suppose she does not awake. Should he put her out?"
"I—I don't know. He must not leave his door unlocked—he should—should even bar his windows."
We heard the Senator coming down the hallway and were silent. "Now what do you reckon that fool fellow wanted? Well, Sir, it beats anything. Told me that he had named a boy for me—said that it ought to be worth five dollars and a barrel of flour. Why, dog my cats—beg your pardon (bowing to Mrs. Estell). But I say, if it were to get out—no, keep your seat, I'll sit over here—get out that I am giving five dollars and a barrel of flour for each boy named for me, why, I'd be broke in six months. A long time ago a yellow-looking chap from the swamps came to tell me that he had given my name to as fine a boy as the country ever saw. I was a little easier flattered in those days than I am now, and it tickled me mightily; and what did I do but give the fellow a twenty-dollar gold piece. Well, Sir, about six months after that he went to a friend of mine, a candidate to fill an unexpired term of county clerk, and declared that he had just named a splendid specimen of a boy for him. And now what do you suppose we found out? The villain changed that boy's name every time a campaign came along. Yes, Sir, and he was about ten years old when he was given my name."
"By the way, there was something you wanted talk to me about," I said, to remind him that the hour was growing late. "Something on business, I understood you to say."
"Yes, but there's plenty of time. Let me see, now, what it was I had on my mind. Something I wanted to say about—well, Sir, it has escaped me."
"Then it couldn't have been very important," said Mrs. Estell.
"It couldn't, eh? Now that's where you are wrong. In this life we are prone to forget the most important things. My old grandfather used to forget his wife when she went visiting with him, and go on home without her. But come to consider more closely, it wasn't exactly a business matter I wanted to talk to you about, Belford. I wanted to tell you that day after to-morrow we'll go fox-hunting. I sent over to the plantation to have the hounds put in good condition, and they'll be ready for us. Ever ride after the hounds?"
"Only in a mimic chase—a bag of anis-seed."
"Oh, what nonsense! Do you know what ought to be done with a man that would get up such a disgrace on the greatest of all sport? Ought to be deprived of his citizenship, his vote; and I don't know of anything much worse than that. Now, you be here day after to-morrow morning, and I'll show you what it is to live like a white man."
He was so earnest and so set in his conviction that no work, however important, should be permitted to stand as a stumbling-block in the road leading to the field of this essential sport, that I yielded, but reluctantly, until Mrs. Estell dropped a word of persuasion, and then I could not have found the moral nerve to urge even the most courteous objection.