It was but for a moment. Then he drew up his
soldierly figure and said coldly, "I am sorry that you are here on what
cannot be a very agreeable errand."
"Oh!" said Woodburn cheerfully, "I came to get my old servant, Caesar. It
seems to have been a fool's errand. He has slipped away. I suppose that
Grey as usual talked too freely. But how the deuce does it concern you? I
see that it does."
Penhallow laughed. "He was my barber."
"And mine," said Woodburn. "If you have missed him, Jim, for a few days,
I have missed him for three years and more." Then both men laughed
heartily at their inequality of loss.
"I cannot understand why this fellow ran away. He was a man I trusted and
indulged to such an extent that my wife says I spoiled him. She says he
owned me quite as much as I owned him--a darned ungrateful cuss! I came
here pretty cross when I got George's letter, and now I hear of an amount
of hostile feeling which rather surprised me."
"That you are surprised, Will, surprises me," said Penhallow. "The
Fugitive-Slave Act will always meet with opposition at the North. It
seems made to create irritation even among people who really are not
actively hostile to slavery. If it became necessary to enforce it, I
believe that I would obey it, because it is the law--but it is making
endless trouble.
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