The bay sailor took off his hat.
"Look at me!" he continued; "by smoke! look on my brown skin and black eyes an' coal black hair. Whair did they come from? They come from Greece, whair Leonidas an' Marky Bozarris and all them fellers came from: that's what my daddy said. He know'd better than me. I'm nothin' but a pore Eastern Shore man sailing my little vessel, but I'm a free-born man, and I tell you, Judge, it's a dangerous time when nothing but his shade of color protects a free man."
"James Phœbus," the Judge said, gravely, "I hope you believe me when I say that I think all these things outrages, and they grow out of the greater outrage of slavery itself. We are being governed by new states, hatched in the Southwest from the alligator eggs of old slavery, that had grown into political and moral disrepute with us in Maryland and Virginia."
"There's no nigger in me," Phœbus said, putting on his hat, "but I have taken these hints about my looking like a nigger to heart, and I'll take a nigger's part when he is imposed on, as if he was some of the body and blood of my Lord Jesus. Now you hear it!"
"And brave enough you are to mean it, my honest fellow. So do my errand, and good-morning, James."
Chapter XVI.
BELL-CROWN MAN.
As the Judge and Phœbus had turned the corner of the bank Samson Hat appeared, driving down Princess Anne's broad main street a young white girl.
"There's the nigger that set my peep in limbo," muttered the negro dealer, "but even he shall go past to-day. This accursed town is packed agin me."