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“I’m not like to forget that, Ma’am, when I’ve been thinkin’ of it all this week. I knew him when they fetched him in, an’ would ‘a’ done it long ‘fore this, but I wanted to ask where Lucy was; he knows,–he told to-night,–an’ now he’s done for.”

“Who is Lucy?” I asked hurriedly, intent on keeping his mind busy with any thought but murder.

With one of the swift transitions of a mixed temperament like this, at my question Robert’s deep eyes filled, the clenched hands were spread before his face, and all I heard were the broken words,–

“My wife,–he took her–“

In that instant every thought of fear was swallowed up in burning indignation for the wrong, and a perfect passion of pity for the desperate man so tempted to avenge an injury for which there seemed no redress but this. He was no longer slave or contraband, no drop of black blood marred him in my sight, but an infinite compassion yearned to save, to help, to comfort him. Words seemed so powerless I offered none, only put my hand on his poor head, wounded, homeless, bowed down with grief for which I had no cure, and softly smoothed the long neglected hair, pitifully wondering the while where was the wife who must have loved this tender-hearted man so well.

The captain moaned again, and faintly whispered, “Air!” but I never stirred. God forgive me! just then I hated him as only a woman thinking of a sister woman’s wrong could hate. Robert looked up; his eyes were dry again, his mouth grim. I saw that, said, “Tell me more,” and he did,–for sympathy is a gift the poorest may give, the proudest stoop to receive.

“Yer see, Ma’am, his father,–I might say ours, if I warn’t ashamed of both of ’em,–his father died two years ago, an’ left us all to Marster Ned,–that’s him here, eighteen then. He always hated me, I looked so like old Marster: he don’t–only the light skin an’ hair. Old Marster was kind to all of us, me ‘specially, an’ bought Lucy off the next plantation down there in South Car’lina, when he found I liked her. I married her, all I could, Ma’am; 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.”