The position suited Dick’s temperament and ambition thoroughly and he had no mind to let the outbreak of fever on the plantation rob him of it. When Arthur established himself at the quarantine camp, taking for his own a particularly small brush shelter, he presently found Dick in attendance, and seriously endeavoring to make himself useful. For the first time Arthur felt that the boy’s services were really of value to him. He was intelligent, quick-witted, and unusually accurate in the execution of orders. He could deliver a message precisely as it was given to him, and his “creative imagination” was kept well in hand when reporting to his master and when delivering his messages to others--particularly to those in attendance upon the sick. Arthur was busy night and day. He saw every patient frequently, and often he felt it necessary to remain all night by a bedside. In the early morning, before it was time for the field hands to go to their work in the crops, he inspected them at their new quarters, and each day, too, he rode over all the fields in which crop work was going on. In all his goings Dick was beside him, except when sent elsewhere with messages. In the camp he kept his master supplied with fuel and cooked his simple meals for him, at whatever hours of the night or day the master found time to give attention to his personal wants. In the meanwhile--after the worst of the epidemic was over--Dick made himself useful as an entertainer of the camp. Dick had developed capacities as a poet, and after the manner of Homer and other great masters of the poetic art, it was his custom to chant his verses to rudely fashioned melodies of his own manufacture. Unfortunately Dorothy, who took down Dick’s “Song Ballads,” as he called them, and preserved their text in enduring form, was wholly ignorant of music, as we know, and so the melodies of Dick are lost to us, as the melodies of Homer are. But in the one case as in the other, some at least of the poems remain to us. Like all great poets, Dick was accustomed to find his inspiration in the life about him. Thus the fever outbreak itself seems to have suggested the following: Nigga got de fevah, Nigga he most daid; Long come de Mahstah, Mahstah shake he haid. Mahstah he look sorry, Nigga fit to cry; Mahstah he say “Nebber min’, Git well by am by.” Mahstah po’ de medicine, Mix it in de cup, Nigga mos’ a chokin’ As he drinks it up. Nigga he git well agin Den he steal de chicken, Den de Mahstah kotches him An’ den he gits a lickin’.