o could write, and who was sick and dying from the
pick-handle beating, said he would carry Tom Dixon's arm; also, he said
he must die anyway, and that it mattered nothing if he died a little
sooner. So five slaves stole from the slave pen that night after the
guards had made their last rounds. One of the slaves was the man who
could write. They lay in the brush by the roadside until late in the
morning, when the old farm slave came driving to town with the precious
fruit for the master. What of the farm slave being old and rheumatic,
and of the slave who could write being stiff and injured from his
beating, they moved their bodies about when they walked, very much in
the same fashion. The slave who could write put on the other's clothes,
pulled the broad-brimmed hat over his eyes, climbed upon the seat of the
wagon, and drove on to town. The old farm slave was kept tied all day
in the bushes until evening, when the others loosed him and went back to
the slave pen to take their punishment for having broken bounds.

In the meantime, Roger Vanderwater lay waiting for the berries in his
wonderful bedroom--such wonders and such comforts were there that they
would have blinded the eyes of you and me who have never seen such
things. The slave who could write said afterward that it was like
a glimpse of Paradise! And why not? The labour and the lives of ten
thousand slaves had gone to the making of that bedchamber, while they
themselves slept in vile lairs like wild beasts. The slave who could
write brought in the berries on a silver tray or platter--you see, Roger
Vanderwater wanted to speak with him in person about the berries.

The slave who could write tottered his dying body across the wonderful
room and knelt by the couch of Vanderwater, holding out before him the
tray. Large green leaves covered the top of the tray, and these the
body-servant alongside whisked away so that Vanderwater could see.
And Roger Vanderwater, propped upon his elbow, saw. He saw the fresh,
wonderful fruit lying there like precious jewels, and in the midst of it
the arm of Tom Dixon as it had been torn from his body, well washed,
of course, my brothers, and very white against the blood-red fruit. And
also he saw, clutched in the stiff, dead fingers, the petition of his
slaves who toiled in Hell's Bottom.

"Take and read," said the slave who could write. And even as the master
took the petition, the body-servant, who till then had been motionless