he geldings were
bought in Holland, with charges for breaking in, shipment, insurance,
freight, and risk of diseases, to have their flesh melted from their ribs
like a cook's candle?"

"Ere no'tin' done in all 'e island, but a color' man do him! He do a
mischief, and he do all a work, too! I won'er what color Masser t'ink war'
Captain Kidd?"

"Black or white, he was a rank rogue; and you see the end he came to. I
warrant you, now, that water-thief began his iniquities by riding the
neighbors' horses, at night. His fate should be a warning to every negro
in the colony. The imps of darkness! The English have no such scarcity of
rogues at home, that they could not spare us the pirate to hang up on one
of the islands, as a scarecrow to the blacks of Manhattan."

"Well, I t'ink 'e sight do a white man some good, too;" returned Euclid,
who had all the pertinacity of a spoiled Dutch negro, singularly blended
with affection for him in whose service he had been born. "I hear ebbery
body say, 'er'e war' but two color man in he ship, and 'em bot' war'
Guinea-born."

"A modest tongue, thou midnight scamperer! look to my geldings--Here--here
are two Dutch florins, three stivers, and a Spanish pistareen for thee;
one of the florins is for thy old mother, and with the others thou canst
lighten thy heart in the Paus merrymakings--if I hear that either of thy
rascally cousins, or the English Diomede, has put a leg across beast of
mine, it will be the worse for all Africa! Famine and skeletons! here
have I been seven years trying to fatten the nags, and they still look
more like weasels than a pair of solid geldings."

The close of this speech was rather muttered in the distance, and by way
of soliloquy, than actually administered to the namesake of the great
mathematician. The air of the negro had been a little equivocal, during
the parting admonition. There was an evident struggle, in his mind,
between an innate love of disobedience, and a secret dread of his master's
means of information. So long as the latter continued in sight, the black
watched his form in doubt; and when it had turned a corner, he stood at
gaze, for a moment, with a negro on a neighboring stoop; then both shook
their heads significantly, laughed aloud, and retired. That night, the
confidential servant attended to the interests of his absent master, with
a fidelity and care which proved he felt his own existence identified with
that of a man who claimed so clo