The Under Dog

by Francis Hopkinson Smith

"Well, it got out around the village, and that night the other two runaways—the man and wife—they were hiding in the town—gave themselves up, and one of our neighbors bought them both and set them to work on a plantation next to ours, and the driver went away happy.

"I was a little fellow then, running around barefooted, but I remember meeting Aleck just as if it were yesterday. He was holding the horse while my father and the overseer stood talking on one side. They were planning his work and where he should sleep. I crept up to look at him. I had heard he was coming and that he was a runaway slave. I thought his back would be bloody and all cut to pieces, and that he'd have chains on him, and I was disappointed because I couldn't see his skin through his shirt and because his hands were free. I must have gotten too near the mare, for before I knew it he had lifted me out of danger.

"'What's your name?' I asked.

"'Aleck,' he said; 'an' what's your name, young marster?'

"'Sammy,' I said.

"That's the way it began between us, and it's kept on ever since. I call him 'Aleck,' and he calls me 'Sammy'—never anything else, even today."

"He calls you 'Sammy'!" I said, in astonishment. The familiarity was new to me between master and slave.

"Yes, always. There isn't another person in the world now that calls me 'Sammy,'" he answered, with a tremor in his voice.

My travelling-companion stopped for a moment, cleared his throat, drew a silver match-safe from his pocket, relighted his cigar, and continued.

"The overseer put Aleck to ploughing the old orchard that lay between the quarters and the house. I sneaked out to watch him as a curious child would, still intent on seeing his wounds. Soon as Aleck saw me, he got a board and nailed it on the plough close to the handle for a seat, and tied up the old horse's tail so it wouldn't switch in my face, and put me on it, and I never left that plough till sundown. My father asked Aleck where he had learned that trick, and Aleck told him he used to take his little brother that way before he died.