been drinking a good deal of
liquor, perhaps there was a gleam of something softer than the feeling
of a friendly elder in the way John then spoke of Melanctha. There had
been a good deal of drinking and John certainly that very morning had
felt strongly Melanctha's power as a woman. James Herbert was always
a fierce, suspicious, serious negro, and drinking never made him feel
more open. He looked very black and evil as he sat and listened while
John grew more and more admiring as he talked half to himself, half to
the father, of the virtues and the sweetness of Melanctha.

Suddenly between them there came a moment filled full with strong
black curses, and then sharp razors flashed in the black hands, that
held them flung backward in the negro fashion, and then for some
minutes there was fierce slashing.

John was a decent, pleasant, good natured, light brown negro, but he
knew how to use a razor to do bloody slashing.

When the two men were pulled apart by the other negroes who were in
the room drinking, John had not been much wounded but James Herbert
had gotten one good strong cut that went from-his right shoulder down
across the front of his whole body. Razor fighting does not wound very
deeply, but it makes a cut that looks most nasty, for it is so very
bloody.

Herbert was held by the other negroes until he was cleaned and
plastered, and then he was put to bed to sleep off his drink and
fighting.

The next day he came to where his wife and daughter lived and he was
furious.

"Where's that Melanctha, of yours?" he said to his wife, when he saw
her. "If she is to the Bishops' stables now with that yellow John, I
swear I kill her. A nice way she is going for a decent daughter. Why
don't you see to that girl better you, ain't you her mother!"

Melanctha Herbert had always been old in all her ways and she knew
very early how to use her power as a woman, and yet Melanctha with all
her inborn intense wisdom was really very ignorant of evil. Melanctha
had not yet come to understand what they meant, the things she so
often heard around her, and which were just beginning to stir strongly
in her.

Now when her father began fiercely to assail her, she did not really
know what it was that he was so furious to force from her. In every
way that he could think of in his anger, he tried to make her say
a thing she did not really know. She held out and never answered
anything he asked her, for Melanctha had a breakneck c