Lyddon, a gaunt, brown, keen-eyed man, who had watched this backlog business with great interest for ten successive Christmases, studied it anew as a type of the singular and unpractical relations existing between the master and the slave. All of these relations were singular and unpractical, and were a perpetual puzzle to Lyddon. One of the strangest things to him was that the word slave was absolutely tabooed and all sorts of euphemisms were used, such as “the servants,” “the black people,” in order to avoid this uncomely word. Another typical puzzle was taking place on the side porch. There stood Hector, Colonel Tremaine’s body servant, and general factotum of Harrowby, engaged in his usual occupation of inciting the other negroes to work, while carefully abstaining therefrom himself. He was tall, and had by far the most imposing air and manner of any person at Harrowby. Having accompanied his master several times to the White Sulphur Springs, to say nothing of two trips to Richmond and one to Baltimore, where he saw a panorama of the city of New York; and most wonderful of all, having attended Colonel Tremaine through a campaign in the Mexican War, Hector held a position of undisputed superiority among all the negroes in five counties. He classified himself as a perfect man of the world, a profound expounder of the Gospels, an accomplished soldier, and military critic. As regards Hector’s heroic services during the Mexican War, he represented that he was always at General Scott’s right hand except when his presence was imperatively demanded by General Zachary Taylor. According to Hector’s further account he led the stormers at Chapultepec, supported Jefferson Davis when he made his celebrated stand at Buena Vista, and handed the sword of General Santa Anna to General Scott when the former surrendered. Colonel Tremaine, on the contrary, declared that Hector never got within five miles of the firing line during the Mexican War, and that whenever there was the remotest sign of an attack, Hector always took refuge under the nearest pile of camp furniture and had to be dragged out by the heels when the danger was overpast. He modeled his toilet upon Colonel Tremaine’s, whose cast-off wardrobe he inherited. The colonel claimed to be the last gentleman in Virginia who wore a ruffled shirt, and Hector shared this distinction. Great billows of cotton lace poured out of the breast of his blue coat, decorated with brass buttons, which was too short in the waist and too long in the tails for Hector, and for whom the colonel’s trousers were distinctly too small, and were kept from crawling up to his knees by straps under the heels of his boots.