"His plantation;—but do you know him?"
"Root and branch. But who does not know him, that knows anybody here? In the next generation his history may be lost in his fortune, but it is extant yet. His father was overseer on a Georgia plantation, from which he sucked the marrow: his employer's grandchildren are crackers and clay-eaters; his are—of your community."
"Not exactly."
"Strike out all who do not yet belong to it, and all who have ceased to have a full claim to belong to it, and what have you left?"
"Do you know old Rasey personally? Have you ever seen him?"
"I have seen him."
"Lately? I hear that a great change has come over him. He has lost his elder son."
"You might say his only one. He turned the other out of doors years ago, and has had no word of him since. The old man has a daughter; but her husband has challenged him to shoot at sight. He has lost his partner and heir, and, in the course of Nature, cannot himself hold on many years longer. If a way could be found of taking property over to the other side, he might be consoled. The old Gauls used to manage it: they made loans on condition of repayment in the other world; but I doubt whether Rasey's faith is of force to let him find comfort in such a transaction.
"I had to see him about a matter of business which had been intrusted to me. I went there the day I left you. If I had known how it was with him, I should have tried to find a deputy. It is an awful sight, a man who never had compassion needing it, a man who never felt sympathy claiming and repelling it in one.