to come back two weeks later
when he heard that the old man was ill. If two men ever needed a woman
to manage them, these were the two. I think that if my aunt had lived,
most of the trouble would have been avoided.

Rad was not the only one, however, who felt the Colonel's irritation
over the robbery. His treatment of the servants was harsh and even
cruel. Everybody on the place went about in a half-cowed fashion. He
treated Mose like a dog. Why the fellow stood it, I don't know. The
Colonel seemed never to have learned that the old slave days were over
and that he no longer owned the negroes body and soul. His government of
the plantation was in the manner of a despot. Everybody--from his own
son to the merest pickaninny--was at the mercy of his caprice. When he
was in good humor, he was kindness itself to the darkies; when he was in
bad humor, he vented his anger on whoever happened to be nearest.

I shall never forget the feeling of indignation with which I first saw
him strike a man. A strange negro was caught one morning in the
neighborhood of the chicken coop, and was brought up to the house by two
of the stable-men. My uncle, who was standing on the portico steps
waiting for his horse, was in a particularly savage mood, as he had just
come from an altercation with Radnor. The man said that he was hungry
and asked for work. But the Colonel, almost without waiting to hear him
speak, fell upon him in a fit of blind rage, slashing him half a dozen
times over the head and shoulders with his heavy riding crop. The negro,
who was a powerfully built fellow, instead of standing up and defending
himself like a man, crouched on the ground with his arms over his head.

"Please, Cunnel Gaylord," he whimpered, "le' me go! I ain't done nuffen.
I ain't steal no chickens. For Gord's sake, doan whip me!"

I sprang forward with an angry exclamation and grasped my uncle's arm.
The fellow was on his feet instantly and off down the lane without once
glancing back. The Colonel stood a moment looking from my indignant face
to the man disappearing in the distance, and burst out laughing.

"I reckon I won't be troubled with _him_ any more," he remarked as he
mounted and rode away, his good humor apparently quite restored.

I confess that it took me some time to get over that scene. But the
worst of it was that he treated his own servants in the same summary
fashion. The thing that puzzled me most was the way in which they
received