or white
people's company, he stooped down behind the fence until they were out of
his way.
Roxy was feeling fine. She said:
"Whah was you, child? Warn't you in it?"
"In what?"
"In de duel."
"Duel? Has there been a duel?"
"Co'se dey has. De ole Jedge has be'n havin' a duel wid one o' dem
twins."
"Great Scott!" Then he added to himself: "That's what made him remake
the will; he thought he might get killed, and it softened him toward me.
And that's what he and Howard were so busy about. . . . Oh dear, if the
twin had only killed him, I should be out of my--"
"What is you mumblin' 'bout, Chambers? Whah was you? Didn't you know dey
was gwine to be a duel?"
"No, I didn't. The old man tried to get me to fight one with Count
Luigi, but he didn't succeed, so I reckon he concluded to patch up the
family honor himself."
He laughed at the idea, and went rambling on with a detailed account of
his talk with the judge, and how shocked and ashamed the judge was to
find that he had a coward in his family. He glanced up at last, and got
a shock himself. Roxana's bosom was heaving with suppressed passion, and
she was glowering down upon him with measureless contempt written in her
face.
"En you refuse' to fight a man dat kicked you, 'stid o' jumpin' at de
chance! En you ain't got no mo' feelin' den to come en tell me, dat
fetched sich a po' lowdown ornery rabbit into de worl'! Pah! it make me
sick! It's de nigger in you, dat's what it is. Thirty-one parts o' you
is white, en on'y one part nigger, en dat po' little one part is yo'
_soul_. 'Tain't wuth savin'; 'tain't wuth totin' out on a shovel en
throwin' en de gutter. You has disgraced yo' birth. What would yo' pa
think o' you? It's enough to make him turn in his grave."
The last three sentences stung Tom into a fury, and he said to himself
that if his father were only alive and in reach of assassination his
mother would soon find that he had a very clear notion of the size of his
indebtedness to that man, and was willing to pay it up in full, and would
do it too, even at risk of his life; but he kept this thought to himself;
that was safest in his mother's present state.
"Whatever has come o' yo' Essex blood? Dat's what I can't understan'.
En it ain't on'y jist Essex blood dat's in you, not by a long
sight--'deed it ain't! My great-great-great-gran'father en yo'
great-great-great-great-gran'father was Ole Cap'n John Smith, de highest
blood dat Ole Virginny ever turned out, en _his_ great-great-gran'mother,
or