for the
grinding of the mill, I fancy."

Lamar did not smile. It was womanish in the man, when the life of great
nations hung in doubt before them, to go back so constantly to little
Floy sitting in the lap of her old black maumer. But he did it,--with
the quick thought that to-night he must escape, that death lay in delay.

While Dorr talked, Lamar glanced significantly at Ben. The negro was not
slow to understand,--with a broad grin, touching his pocket, from which
projected the dull end of a hand-saw. I wonder what sudden pain made the
negro rise just then, and come close to his master, touching him with a
strange affection and remorse in his tired face, as though he had done
him some deadly wrong.

"What is it, old fellow?" said Lamar, in his boyish way. "Homesick, eh?
There's a little girl in Georgia that will be glad to see you and your
master, and take precious good care of us when she gets us safe again.
That's true, Ben!" laying his hand kindly on the man's shoulder, while
his eyes went wandering off to the hills lying South.

"Yes, Mars'," said Ben, in a low voice, suddenly bringing a
blacking-brush, and beginning to polish his master's shoes,--thinking,
while he did it, of how often Mars' John had interfered with the
overseers to save him from a flogging,--(Lamar, in his lazy way,
was kind to his slaves,)--thinking of little Mist' Floy with an odd
tenderness and awe, as a gorilla might of a white dove: trying to think
thus,--the simple, kindly nature of the negro struggling madly with
something beneath, new and horrible. He understood enough of the talk of
the white men to know that there was no help for him,--none. Always a
slave. Neither you nor I can ever know what those words meant to him.
The pale purple mist where the North lay was never to be passed. His
dull eyes turned to it constantly,--with a strange look, such as the
lost women might have turned to the door, when Jesus shut it: they
forever outside. There was a way to help himself? The stubby black
fingers holding the brush grew cold and clammy,--noting withal, the poor
wretch in his slavish way, that his master's clothes were finer than the
Northern captain's, his hands whiter, and proud that it was so,--holding
Lamar's foot daintily, trying to see himself in the shoe, smoothing down
the trousers with a boorish, affectionate touch,--with the same fierce
whisper in his ear, Would the shoes ever be cleaned again? would the
foot move to-morrow?