and lead to your sincere repentance for
them." And therewith he passed from Senor Alvaros' sight--to be seen by
him no more.

That same night, when the white people had all retired to rest in the
great casa, Mama Faquita stole away down to the negro quarters and,
going from hut to hut, roused their occupants and summoned them to a
great palaver in the open space which the huts surrounded, and in which
the children were wont to play. The scene was a weirdly picturesque
one, for, prior to rousing the negroes, Mama had kindled a great fire in
the centre of the open space; and in front of this, in a great
semicircle, the negroes congregated, squatting on their heels and
rolling their eyeballs in the flickering light of the flames, while Mama
addressed them. They were all free, but had all been slaves not so very
many years before: many of them were born Africans, with their savage
instincts still practically as strong within them as they had ever been;
while in the case of the rest, although their association with white men
from their birth had rendered them more amenable in some respects than
were the more recent importations, the tenacity with which they had
adhered to their fetish-worship, with all its secret and horribly
revolting customs, tended to keep them still utterly savage at heart,
and only too ready to lend a willing ear to any suggestion which offered
them an excuse to indulge their inherent lust for cruelty. Moreover,
the African black who has been a slave is a singular combination of good
and evil: on the one hand, he is capable of affection and devotion, to
an extraordinary degree, toward those who have treated him well; while,
on the other, he is equally capable of the most ferocious and implacable
hatred of those who have injured him or those he loves; also, he is
extraordinarily impressionable. Mama Faquita, being herself a full-
blooded negress, was of course perfectly well aware of these
peculiarities in the nature of her audience; and she played upon them as
a skilled musician does upon a sensitively responsive instrument. She
dwelt eloquently and at length upon the invariable kindness with which
they had one and all been treated by the _amo_ and his family, and
especially by the young Senorita, whom some of them at least were able
to remember as a little, toddling baby, and whom they all had loved as
passionately as though she had been their own; and as she spoke thus the
tears of grief stream