m; it warn't much, but we was true to one
another till Marster Ned come home a year after an' made hell fer both
of us. He sent my old mother to be used up in his rice swamp in Georgy;
he found me with my pretty Lucy, an' though young Miss cried, an' I
prayed to him on my knees, an' Lucy run away, he wouldn't have no
mercy; he brought her back, an'--took her, Ma'am."

"Oh! what did you do?" I cried, hot with helpless pain and passion.

How the man's outraged heart sent the blood flaming up into his face
and deepened the tones of his impetuous voice, as he stretched his arm
across the bed, saying, with a terribly expressive gesture,--

"I half murdered him, an' to-night I'll finish."

"Yes, yes,--but go on now; what came next?"

He gave me a look that showed no white man could have felt a deeper
degradation in remembering and confessing these last acts of brotherly
oppression.

"They whipped me till I couldn't stand, an' then they sold me further
South. Yer thought I was a white man once;--look here!"

With a sudden wrench he tore the shirt from neck to waist, and on his
strong brown shoulders showed me furrows deeply ploughed, wounds which,
though healed, were ghastlier to me than any in that house. I could
not speak to him, and, with the pathetic dignity a great grief lends
the humblest sufferer, he ended his brief tragedy by simply saying,--

"That's all. Ma'am. I've never seen her since, an' now I never shall
in this world,--maybe not in t' other."

"But, Robert, why think her dead? The captain was wandering when he
said those sad things; perhaps he will retract them when he is sane.
Don't despair; don't give up yet."

"No, Ma'am, I guess he's right; she was too proud to bear that long.
It's like her to kill herself. I told her to, if there was no other
way; an' she always minded me, Lucy did. My poor girl! Oh, it warn't
right! No, by God, it warn't!"

As the memory of this bitter wrong, this double bereavement, burned in
his sore heart, the devil that lurks in every strong man's blood leaped
up; he put his hand upon his brother's throat, and, watching the white
face before him, muttered low between his teeth,--

"I'm lettin' him go too easy; there's no pain in this; we a'n't even
yet. I wish he knew me. Marster Ned! it's Bob; where's Lucy?"

From the captain's lips there came a long faint sigh, and nothing but a
flutter of the eyelids showed that he still lived. A strange stillness
filled the