"He did. He said he had an inclination for the girl himself; that in his life before he had never experienced the repulse of a slave; he meant to possess her, and he would. David might choose another wife or mistress, whichsoever might best suit his inclination; there were in the plantation ten _capusses_ or _métisses_ as pretty as Cecily. David talked of his love,--love so long and tenderly shared, and the planter shrugged his shoulders; David urged, but it was all in vain. The creole had the cool impudence to tell him that it was a bad 'example' to see a master concede to a slave, and that he would not set that 'example' to satisfy a caprice of David's! He entreated,--supplicated, and his master lost his temper. David, blushing to humiliate himself further, spake in a firm tone of his services and disinterestedness,--that he had been contented with a very slender salary. Mr. Willis was desperately enraged, and, telling him he was a contumacious slave, threatened him with the chain. David replied with a few bitter and violent words; and, two hours afterwards, bound to a stake, his skin was torn with the lash, whilst they bore Cecily to the harem of the planter in his sight." "The conduct of the planter was brutal and horrible; it was adding absurdity to cruelty, for he must after that have required the man's services." "Precisely so; for that very day the very fury into which he had worked himself, joined to the drunkenness in which the brute indulged every evening, brought on an inflammatory attack of the most dangerous description, the symptoms of which appeared with the rapidity peculiar to such affections. The planter was carried to his bed in a state of the highest fever. He sent off an express for a doctor, but he could not reach his abode in less than six and thirty hours." "Really, this attack seems providential. The desperate condition of the man was quite deserved by him." "The malady made fearful strides. David only could save the colonist, but Willis, distrustful, as all evil-doers are, imagined that the black would revenge himself by administering poison; for, after having scourged him with a rod, he had thrown him into prison. At last, horrified at the progress of his illness, broken down by bodily anguish, and thinking that, as death also stared him in the face, he had one chance left in trusting to the generosity of his slave, after many distrusting doubts, Willis ordered David to be unchained." "And David saved the planter?" "For five days and five nights he watched and tended him as if he had been his father, counteracting the disease, step by step, with great skill and perfect knowledge, until, at last, he succeeded in defeating it, to the extreme surprise of the doctor who had been sent for, and who did not arrive until the second day." "And, when restored to health at last, the colonist--"