Why, it wuz aginst all the traditions of his race and the entire Southern Aristocracy that so slight things as a husband’s honor and wife’s loyalty should dare oppose the lawless passions of a white gentleman. Of course, so reasoned Col. Seybert; the war had made a difference in terms and enactments, but that wuz about all. The white race wuz still unconquered in their passion and their arrogance, and the black race wuz still under their feet; he could testify to the truth of this by his own lawless life full of deeds of unbridled license and cruelty. So, wantin’ Victor out of the way, and bein’ exceedingly wroth aginst him, it wuz easy to persuade certain ignorant poor whites, and the dispensers of what they called law, that Felix wuz altogether too successful for a nigger. He owned a horse, too, an almost capital offence in some parts of the South. He had worked overhours to buy this pet animal for Hester’s use as well as his own. Many a hundred hard hours’ labor, when he wuz already tired out, had he given for the purchase money of this little animal. It wuz a pretty, cream-colored creeter, so gentle that it would come up to the palin’ and eat little bits that Hester would carry out to it after every meal, with little Ned toddlin’ along by her side; and it wuz one of the baby boy’s choicest rewards for good behavior to be lifted up by the side of the kind-faced creeter and pat the glossy skin with his little fat hands. This horse seemed to Felix and Hester to be endowed with an almost human intelligence, and come next to little Ned, their only child, in their hearts. And Hester had herself taken in work and helped to pay for the plain buggy in which she rode out with her boy, and carried Felix to and from his work when he wuz employed some distance from his home. But no matter how honestly he had earned this added comfort, no matter how hard they had both worked for it and how they enjoyed it— “It wuz puttin’ on too much damned style for a nigger!” This wuz Col. Seybert’s decree, echoed by many a low, brutal, envious mind about him, encased in black and white bodies. And one mornin’, when Hester went out in the bright May sunshine to carry Posy its mornin’ bit of food from the breakfast-table, with little Ned followin’ behind with his bit of sugar for it, the pretty creeter had jest enough strength to drag itself up to its mistress and fix its pitiful eyes on her in helpless appeal, and dropped dead at her feet. They found the remains of a poisoned cake in the pasture, and on the fence wuz pinned a placard bearin’ the inscription— “No damned niggers can ride wile wit foaks wak afut—so good buy an’ take warnin’.” [Illustration: “LOW, BRUTAL, ENVIOUS MIND” ] They did not try to keep a horse after this. Felix took his long mornin’ and evenin’ walks with a sore, indignant heart that dragged down his tired limbs still more.