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Show 256 UNCLE TOM'S CABIN: OR, shaft had struck home; and, from that hour, with the most exquisite address, she never ceased to continue the train of influences she had begun. In a knot-hole of the garret, that had opened, sho had inserted the neck of an old bottlo, in such a manner that when there was the least wind, most doleful and lugubrious willing sounds proceeded from it, which, in a high wind, increased to a perfect shriek, such as to credulous and superstitious ears might easily seem to bo that of horror and despair. '.Chose sounds wero, from time to limo, heard by the servants, and revived in full force the memory of the old ghost legend. A superstitious creeping horror seemed to fill the house ; and though no one dared to breathe it to Legree, he found himself encompassed by it, as by an atmosphere. No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man. The Christian is composed by the belief of a wise, all-ruling Father, whose presence fills the void unknown with light and order; but to the ·man who bas dethroned God, the spirit-land is, indeed, in tho words of the Hebrew poet, "a land of darkness and the shadow of death," without any order, where tho light is as darkness. Life and death to him arc haunted grounds, filled with goblin forms of vague nnd shadowy dread. Legree bad had the slumbering moral element in him roused by his encounters with Tom,- roused, only to be resisted by the determiu.tc force of evil ; but still there was a thrill and commotion of the dark, inner world, produced by every word, or prayer, or hymn, that reacted in superstitious dread. 'rho influence of Cassy over him was of a strange and sin· gular kind. He was her olvner, her tyrant and tormentor. LIFE AMONG TilE LOWLY. 257 She was, as he knew, wholly, anu without any possibility of help or redress, in his hands; and yet so it is, that the most brutal man cannot live in constant association with a strong female influence, and not be greatly controlled by it. When he first bought her, she was, as she had said, a woman delicately bred; and then he crushed her, without scruple, boneath the foot of his brutality. But, as time, and debasing influences, and despair, hardened womanhood within her, and waked the fires of fiercer passions, she had become in a measure his mistress, and he alternately tyrannized over and dreaded her. 'rhis influence had become more harassing and decided, since partial insanity had given a strange, weird, unsettled cast to all her words and language. A night or two after this, Legree was sitting in the old sitting-room, by the side of a flickering wood fire, that threw uncertain glances round the room. It was a stormy, windy night, such as raises whole squadrons of nondescript noises in rickety old houses. Windows were rattling, shutters flapping, the wind carousing, rumbling, and tumbling down the chimney, and, every once in a while, puffing out smoke and ashes, as if a legion of spirits were coming after them. Legree bad been casting up accounts and rending newspapers for some hours, while Cassy sat in the corner, su1Icnly looking into the fire. Legree laid down his paper, and seeing an old book I ying on the table, which he had noticed Cassy reading, the first part of the evening, took it up, and began to turn it over. It was one of those collections of stories of bloody murders, ghostly legends, and supernatural visitations, which, coarsely got up and illustrated, have a strange fascination for one who once begins to read them. Legree poohed and pishcd, but read, turning page after VOL. II. 22* |