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“Judy, remember my mother.”

“Do you think your mother, if she is alive, would like to think of your standing over that old wretch while he was whipped and whipped and washed with salt water, maybe? If your mother has lived, she has been kept alive just by thinking what a good boy you were; and she says to herself, ‘My Sanford wouldn’t hurt anything. If he was run off to the plantations, he has grown to be the best man in all the country.’ Do you think she’d like to have you turn a kind of public whipper or hangman for her sake?”

Browne looked at his wife in surprise. Her eyes flashed as she spoke, and the little womanly body, whose highest flight had seemed to end in a London frock and petticoat, had suddenly become something much more than he had fancied possible to her. She had taken the first place, and he felt himself overshadowed. He looked up at her with a sort of reverence, but he held stubbornly to a purpose that had been ossifying for twenty years.

“That’s all well enough for a woman, Judy. But you know that any other man would do just what I am going to do, under the same circumstances. I don’t like to do what you don’t want me to do, but I sha’n’t let old Lewis off. I reckon he’ll find my hand hard on him as long as he holds out. Any other man would do just the same, Judy.”

Judith Browne stood still and looked at her husband in silence. Then she spoke in a repressed voice:

“Sanford Browne, what do you talk to me that way for? Any other man might worry this old wretch out of his life, but you won’t do it. What did I marry you for? Why did I leave my father’s house to take you, a poor redemptioner just out of your time? It was because you weren’t like other men. I knew you were kind and good-hearted when other men were cruel and unfeeling. From that day to this you have never made me sorry that I left home and turned my father against me. But if you do this thing you have in mind to a poor old wretch that can’t help himself, then you won’t be Sanford Browne any more. You’ll have that old man’s blood on your hands, and Judy will never get over being sorry that she left her friends to go with you.” The woman’s voice had broken as she spoke these last words, and now she broke down completely, and sobbed a little.

“What shall I do, Judy?” said her husband softly. “God knows, if I keep him in sight I shall kill him some day.”

“Sell him. Sell him right off. There’s Captain Perkins coming up the bank now.”

“You sell him, Judy. Perkins has things you want. I give Lewis to you. Make any trade you please.” Then, as his wife moved away, he followed her, and said in a smothered voice: “Sell him quick, Judy. Don’t stand on the price. Get him out of sight before I kill him.”

Judith went out to meet the peddling captain, who was now strolling toward the house in hope of an invitation to supper, knowing that Mrs. Browne’s biscuit and fried chicken were better than the salt pork and hoecake cooked by the boy on the sloop. The wind had fallen, and the water view was growing dim in the gloaming. Judith explained to the peddler that the convict her husband had bought proved to be an old enemy of his. She stammered a little in her endeavor not to betray the real reasons for selling him, and Perkins, who was proud of his own penetration, inferred that Browne was afraid of his life if he should keep the new servant. He saw in this an unexpected chance for profit. When Mrs. Browne offered to sell him if Perkins would take him to the eastern shore or some other place away off, he said that servants wuz a thing he didn’t deal in–a leetle dangerous at sea where the crew wuz so small as his. Hard to sell an old fellow; the planters wanted young men. But he wanted to accommodate, you know, an’ seein’ as how Mis’ Braown had been a good customer, he would do what he could. He would have to make a run over to the eastern shore perticular to sell this man. Folks on the eastern shore didn’t buy much. Hadn’t sold ’em a hat, for instance. They all wore white cotton caps, men an’ women; an’ they made the caps themselves out of cotton of their own raisin’. But, as he wuz a-sayin’, Mis’ Braown had been a good customer, an’ he wanted to accommodate. But he’d have to put the price low enough so as he wouldn’t be poorer by the trade. Thus he faced about on his disjunctive conjunction, now this way, now that, until he had time to consider what was the very lowest figure he could offer as a basis for his higgling. He couldn’t offer much, but he would give a price which he named in pieces of eight, stipulating that he should pay it in goods. He saw in this a chance for elastic profits in both directions.