Evening star., 1924-10-22
Continued from Yesterdays STAR

Peter Blood alone. escaping these
excessive sufferings, remained out
wardly unchanged, whilst inwardly
the only change in him was d daily
deeper hatred of his kind, a daily deeper
longing to escape from this place where
man defiled so foully the lovely work
of his Creator 1t was a longing too
vague to amount to a hope. Hope
here was inadmissible. And yet he
did not yield to despair. He sat a
mask of laughter on his Saturnine
countenance and went his way, treat
ing the sick to the profit Of Colonel
Bishop, and encroaching further and
further upon the preserves of the two
other men of medicine in Bridgetown.
Immune from the degrading pun
ishments and privations of his fell
low-convicts, he was enabled to keep
his Self-respect, and was treated
without harshness even by the soul
less planter to whom he had been
sold He owed it all to gout and
megrims. He had won the esteem of
Governor Steed, and-what is even
more important-of Governor Steed's
lady, whom he shamelessly and Gym
ically f1attered and humored.
Occasionally he saw Miss Bishop,
and they seldom met but that she
paused to hold him in conversation
for some moments. evincing her in
terest in him. Himself, he was never
disposed to linger He was not, he
told himself, to be deceived by her
delicate exterior. her sapling grace,
her easy, boyish ways and pleasant.
boyish voice. In all his life-and ii
had been very varied-he had never
met a man whom he accounted more
beaStly than her uncle, and he could
not dissociate her from the man. She
was his niece of his own blood, and
some of the vices of il, some of the
remorselesS cruelty of the wealthy
planter. must, he argued, inhabit that
pleasant body of hers He argued
this very often to himself, as il an
swering and convincing some instinct
that pleaded otherwise, and, arguing
1t. he vaoided her when it was possi-
BILE. and was frigidly civil when 1t
was not.
Justifiable as his reasoning was,
plausible as ii may seem, yet he
would have done better to have trust
ed the instinct that was in conflict
with 1t. Though the same blood ran
in her veins as in those of Colonel
Bishop, yet hers was free of the vices
that tainted her uncle's, for these
vices were not natural to that blood:
they were, in his case. acquired. Her
father. Tom Bishop-that same Colo
mel Bishops brother had been
<lnQly, Cn1ValrOuS, gentle SOUL VINO,
broken hearted by the early death
of young wife, had abandoned the
Old World and sought an anodyne for
his grief in the New. He had come
out to the Antilles, bringing with him
his little daughter, then five years of
age. and had given himself up to the
life of a planter. He had prospered
from the first. as men sometimes will
who care nothing for prosperity.
Prospering, he had bethought him of
his younger brother, soldier at
home. reputed somewhat wild. He
had advised him to come out to Bar
bados; and the advice, which at an
other season William Bishop might
have Scorned, reached him at a mo-
ment when his wildness was begin
ming to bear such fruit that a change
OF climate was desirable. William
came. and was admitted by his gen
erous brother to a partnership in the
prosperous plantation. Some six
years later, when Arabella was fff-
teen, her father died, leaving her in
her uncle's guardianship. 1t was per-
haps his one mistake. But the good
ness of his own nature colored his
views of other men; moreover, him.
self, he had conducted the education
of his daughter, giving her an inde-
pendence of character upon which
perhaps he counted unduly. AS things
were, there was little love between
uncle and niece. But she was dutiful
to him, and he was circumspect in his
behaviour before her. All his life,