Aderhold stopped and watched also. “Have you an Indian here,” he asked the boy. “I have never seen one.”
The youth nodded. “He sleeps in the corner back of the curtain. You pay twopence to see him—” He grinned, and looked at the children. “But it’s before hours, and if so be you won’t tell master on me—”
“We won’t, master, we won’t!” chorused the children.
The boy took down the last board, showing a concave much like a den with a black curtain at the back. He whistled and the curtain stirred. “We got him,” said the boy, “from two Spaniards who got him from a ship from Florida. They trained him. They had a bear, too, that we bought, but the bear died.” He whistled again. The curtain parted and the Indian came forth and sat upon a stool planted in the middle of the den.
It was evident that he had been “trained.” Almost naked, gaunt, dull and hopeless, he sat with a lack-lustre eye. The boy whistled again and he spoke, a guttural and lifeless string of words. The children gathered close, flushed and excited. But Aderhold’s brows drew upward and together and he turned a little sick. He was a physician; he was used to seeing wretchedness, but it had not deadened him. Every now and then the wave of human misery came and went over him, high as space, ineffably dreary, unutterably hopeless.... He stood and looked at the Indian for a few moments, then, facing from the booth, walked away with a rapid and disturbed step which gradually became slower and halted. He turned and went back. “Has he eaten this morning? You don’t give him much to eat?”
“Times are hard,” said the boy.
Aderhold took the smaller bundle from his stick, unwrapped it and with his knife cut from the loaf a third of its mass. “May I give him this?”
The boy stared. “If you choose, master.”
The physician entered the booth, went up to the Indian and placed the bread upon his knee. “Woe are we,” he said, “that can give no efficient help!”
The savage and the European looked each other in the eyes. For a moment something hawk-like, eagle-like, came back and glanced through the pupils of the red man, then it sank and fled. His eyes grew dull again, though he made a guttural sound and his hand closed upon the bread. The physician stood a moment longer. He had strongly the sacred wonder and curiosity, the mother of knowledge, and he had truly been interested to behold an Indian. Now he beheld one—but the iron showed more than the soul. “I am sorry for thee, my brother,” Aderhold said softly.