It was the mother of the black boy who lived in this cabin outside of the town. She had also been a slave until the Spanish family, giving up its plantation, moved into the city, sold the younger and stronger of their human properties, and set free the elderly and rheumatic, taking with them only a couple of servants and the boy, who went with his mother's consent, for she knew he would be cared for, and she could see him often, the relation between slave and owner, being more commonly affectionate than otherwise. At its best, slavery is morally benumbing to the enslaved, destructive of the finer feelings, and when the old woman learned of her son's death,--and such a death--she did not go mad, as his playfellow had done. She lamented loudly, she said many prayers, she accepted condolences with seeming gratitude, but the tears had ceased to flow ere many weeks, and she was seen to smile when her old mistress, whose affliction was indeed the heavier, had called on her in her cabin, no doubt feeling as much in need of her servant's sympathy as the servant felt of the creature comforts she took to her. Yet deep in Maumee Nina's nature a change had taken place. She did not know it herself for many months. Her loss had not affected her conduct or appearance greatly, yet her heart had hardened under it and she began to look upon the world with a different eye. She cared less for her friends, and went to church less often,--a suspicious circumstance, for when a negro failed to go to mass, and kept away from confession, it was surely because he had something mischievous to confess. The rumor got about that Maumee Nina had become an Obeah woman,--a voodoo worker, a witch. It is not unlikely that the accusation inspired her to live down to it. Not only were witches held in respect and fear, but she might be able, through evil arts, to plague the race that had worked her husband to death in the mines, and now had killed her only son. She kept still more at home, brooding, planning, yielding farther and farther to the evil suggestions that her repute as a voodoo priestess offered to her, yet keeping one place in her heart even warmer than before,--the place filled by her daughter, Juanita. This girl of fifteen or sixteen was not black, like her mother. She was a handsome mulatto. In a country where relations are so easily established without marriage, and where marriage is so difficult and has so little force, the fatherhood of many children is in doubt. If Juanita knew her father's name she was not known to him. It mattered little. The old woman intended to bring her up as a lady,--that is, to qualify her for a place as waiting-maid in the house of some good family; so she made many sacrifices on her account, clothing her vividly, requiring less work of her than she should have done, and even, it was said, paying money to have reading taught to her, and that was an accomplishment, indeed.