"You says dat to me, Massa K——; you don't say it to de Cunnel. We am not so well off as de pore man at de Norf! You knows dat, sar. He hab his wife and chil'ren, and his own home. What hab we, sar? No wife, no chil'ren, no home; all am de white man's. Der yer tink we wouldn't fight to be free?" and he pressed his teeth together, and there passed again over his face the same look it wore the moment before.
"Come, come, Jim, this may be true of your race; but it don't apply to yourself. Your master is kind and indulgent to you."
"He am kine to me, sar; he orter be," said the negro, the savage expression coming again into his eyes. For a moment he hesitated; then, taking a step toward me, he placed his face down to mine, and hissed out these words, every syllable seeming to come from the very bottom of his being. "I tell you he orter be, sar, fur I am his own father's son!"
"His brother!" I exclaimed, springing to my feet, and looking at him in blank amazement. "It can't be true!"
"It am true, sar—as true as there's a hell! His father had my mother—when he got tired of her, he sold her Souf. I war too young den eben to know her!"
"This is horrible—too horrible!" I said.
"It am slavery, sar! Shouldn't we be contented?" replied the negro with a grim smile. Drawing, then, a large spring-knife from his pocket, he waved it above his head, and added: "Ef I had de hull white race dar—right dar under dat knife, don't yer tink I'd take all dar lives—all at one blow—to be free!"
"And yet you refused to run away when the Abolitionists tempted you, at the North. Why didn't you go then?"
"'Cause I had promised, massa."
"Promised the Colonel before you went?"