had the look
of one who never had been cowed by abuse or worn with oppressive labor.
He sat on his bed doing nothing; no book, no pipe, no pen or paper
anywhere appeared, yet anything less indolent or listless than his
attitude and expression I never saw. Erect he sat with a hand on
either knee, and eyes fixed on the bare wall opposite, so rapt in some
absorbing thought as to be unconscious of my presence, though the door
stood wide open and my movements were by no means noiseless. His face
was half averted, but I instantly approved the Doctor's taste, for the
profile which I saw possessed all the attributes of comeliness
belonging to his mixed race. He was more quadroon than mulatto, with
Saxon features, Spanish complexion darkened by exposure, color in lips
and cheek, waving hair, and an eye full of the passionate melancholy
which in such men always seems to utter a mute protest against the
broken law that doomed them at their birth. What could he be thinking
of? The sick boy cursed and raved, I rustled to and fro, steps passed
the door, bells rang, and the steady rumble of army-wagons came up from
the street, still he never stirred. I had seen colored people in what
they call "the black sulks," when, for days, they neither smiled nor
spoke, and scarcely ate. But this was something more than that; for
the man was not dully brooding over some small grievance,--he seemed to
see an all-absorbing fact or fancy recorded on the wall, which was a
blank to me. I wondered if it were some deep wrong or sorrow, kept
alive by memory and impotent regret; if he mourned for the dead master
to whom he had been faithful to the end; or if the liberty now his were
robbed of half its sweetness by the knowledge that some one near and
dear to him still languished in the hell from which he had escaped. My
heart quite warmed to him at that idea; I wanted to know and comfort
him; and, following the impulse of the moment, I went in and touched
him on the shoulder.

In an instant the man vanished and the slave appeared. Freedom was too
new a boon to have wrought its blessed changes yet, and as he started
up, with his hand at his temple and an obsequious "Yes, Ma'am," any
romance that had gathered round him fled away, leaving the saddest of
all sad facts in living guise before me. Not only did the manhood seem
to die out of him, but the comeliness that first attracted me; for, as
he turned, I saw the ghastly wound that had laid open che