For several months Peek retained his place under Braxton. But even overseers, whip in hand, cannot frighten off Death. Braxton disappeared through the common portal. His successor, Hawks, had a theory that the true mode of managing niggers was to overawe them by extreme severity at the start, and then taper off into clemency. He had been lord of the lash a week or two, when he was asked by Mr. Barnwell how he got along with Peek.
“Capitally!” replied Hawks. “I took care to put him through his paces at our first meeting,—took the starch right out of him. He’d score his own mother now if I told him to. He’s a thorough nigger—is Peek. A nigger must fear a white man before he can like him. Peek would go through fire and water for me now. He has behaved so well, I have given him a pass to visit his sister at Carter’s.”
“I never knew before that Peek had a sister,” said Barnwell.
Peek did not come back from that visit.
CHAPTER VII.
AN UNCONSCIOUS HEIRESS.
“She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, ‘She is near, she is near’;
And the white rose weeps, ‘She is late’;
The larkspur listens, ‘I hear, I hear’;