With the remains of the money his mistress had left him he bought a little cottage—or, that is, this money partly paid for it, and he thought that with his good health and good trade he could soon finish up the payment and own his own home.
It wuz a pretty cottage, but fallen into disorder and ruinous looks, through poor tenants; but his skilful hands and his labor of love soon made it over into a perfect gem of a cottage.
And there he and his pretty young wife Hester had spent two most happy years, when Col. Seybert come into the neighborhood to live, and his roamin’ fancy soon singled out Hester for a victim.
She had been lady’s maid in a wealthy, refined family, and her ladylike manners and pretty ways wuz as attractive as her face. She loved her husband, and wuz constant to him with all the fidelity of a lovin’ woman’s heart, and Col. Seybert she detested with all the force of her nature; but Col. Seybert wuz not one to give way to such a slight obstacle as a lawful husband.
He thought if Felix wuz out of the way the course of his untrue love would run comparatively smooth. Why, it seemed to him to be the height of absurdity that a “nigger” should stand in the way of his wishes.
Why, it wuz aginst all the traditions of his race and the entire Southern Aristocracy that so slight things as a husband’s honor and wife’s loyalty should dare oppose the lawless passions of a white gentleman.
Of course, so reasoned Col. Seybert; the war had made a difference in terms and enactments, but that wuz about all. The white race wuz still unconquered in their passion and their arrogance, and the black race wuz still under their feet; he could testify to the truth of this by his own lawless life full of deeds of unbridled license and cruelty.
So, wantin’ Victor out of the way, and bein’ exceedingly wroth aginst him, it wuz easy to persuade certain ignorant poor whites, and the dispensers of what they called law, that Felix wuz altogether too successful for a nigger.
He owned a horse, too, an almost capital offence in some parts of the South.
He had worked overhours to buy this pet animal for Hester’s use as well as his own. Many a hundred hard hours’ labor, when he wuz already tired out, had he given for the purchase money of this little animal.