"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." "No, Ma'am, I guess he's right; she was too proud to bear that long. It's like her to kill herself. I told her to, if there was no other way; an' she always minded me, Lucy did. My poor girl! Oh, it warn't right! No, by God, it warn't!" As the memory of this bitter wrong, this double bereavement, burned in his sore heart, the devil that lurks in every strong man's blood leaped up; he put his hand upon his brother's throat, and, watching the white face before him, muttered low between his teeth,-- "I'm lettin' him go too easy; there's no pain in this; we a'n't even yet. I wish he knew me. Marster Ned! it's Bob; where's Lucy?"