"You've learned me somethin' this very hour, honey," said Adam kindly, "for I didn't know before sure enough there was this sort o' lettah; but you degogerate now, honey, for if it's hangin', it can't be work in chains, an' if they can't prove I can read other sort o' lettah, it's mighty powerful sure they can't prove I can read these. The debble himself can't prove that."
Durgan had sealing-wax with which he fastened his samples of mica for the post. He put the blank pages back in the envelopes and fastened them with his own seal. Telling Adam to explain only that the flaps had come open in wet, he dismissed him. He sat watching the negress sternly, and she grew less confident.
"Us pore slave niggers don't know nothin', Marse Neil, suh."
"How old are you?" He spoke as beginning a judicial inquiry.
"Us pore slave niggers don't know how old we is. I's gettin' an old woman—I's powerful old. I wus crawlin' out an' aroun' 'fore the 'mancipation. Ole Marse Durgan, he jest naturally licked me hisself one day when I crawled 'fore his hoss in the quarters. That's what my mammy told me. We's all Durgans—Adam's folks an' mine."
"You are no Durgan nigger. I know you. We bought you and your mother out of bad hands." Durgan spoke roughly, but in himself he said: "Alas, who was responsible for this creature, sly and soulless? Not herself or those of her race!"
"Have you seen letters with no writing on them before?"
"Why should a pore nigger know anythin' 'bout such lettahs? If you'll tell me how God A'mighty made the first nigger, I'll tell you as well why these ladies gets lettahs stuffed like that, an' no sooner—an' that's gospel truth, Marse Neil, suh. I's got nothin' to do with white folks' lettahs."
He was sure now that she knew no more than what she had just seen, and had drawn no inference.