es would fight for their freedom?"

"Fight, sar!" exclaimed the negro, straightening up his fine form, while
his usual good-natured look passed from his face, and gave way to an
expression that made him seem more like an incarnate devil than a human
being; "FIGHT, sar; gib dem de chance, and den see."

"Why are you discontented? You have been at the North, and you know the
blacks are as well off as the majority of the poor laboring men there."

"You says dat to _me_, Massa K----; you don't say it to de _Cunnel_. We
am _not_ so well off as de pore man at de Norf! You knows dat, sar. He
hab his wife and chil'ren, and his own home. What hab we, sar? No wife,
no chil'ren, no home; all am de white man's. Der yer tink we wouldn't
fight to be free?" and he pressed his teeth together, and there passed
again over his face the same look it wore the moment before.

"Come, come, Jim, this may be true of your race; but it don't apply to
yourself. Your master is kind and indulgent to _you_."

"He am kine to me, sar; he orter be," said the negro, the savage
expression coming again into his eyes. For a moment he hesitated; then,
taking a step toward me, he placed his face down to mine, and hissed out
these words, every syllable seeming to come from the very bottom of his
being. "I tell you he orter be, sar, FUR I AM HIS OWN FATHER'S SON!"

"His brother!" I exclaimed, springing to my feet, and looking at him in
blank amazement. "It can't be true!"

"It am true, sar--as true as there's a hell! His father had my
mother--when he got tired of her, he sold her Souf. _I war too young den
eben to know her!_"

"This is horrible--too horrible!" I said.

"It am slavery, sar! Shouldn't we be contented?" replied the negro with
a grim smile. Drawing, then, a large spring-knife from his pocket, he
waved it above his head, and added: "Ef I had de hull white race
dar--right dar under dat knife, don't yer tink I'd take all dar
lives--all at one blow--to be FREE!"

"And yet you refused to run away when the Abolitionists tempted you, at
the North. Why didn't you go then?"

"'Cause I had promised, massa."

"Promised the Colonel before you went?"

"No, sar; he neber axed me; but _I_ can't tell you no more. P'raps
Scipio will, ef you ax him."

"Oh! I see; you're in that league of which Scip is a leader. You'll get
into trouble, _sure_," I replied, in a quick, decided tone, which
startled him.

"You tole Scipio dat, sar, and what did _he_ te