"What do you know about the money or the bag?" asked Squire Saunders.
"I know all about it, your honor," replied the witness, with a radiant smile.
"Who put them in the locker, where they were found?"
"I did, your honor."
"That nigger's been bribed to say that," interposed Dock, savagely.
"Who do you call a nigger?" demanded Mr. Cæsar Augustus Ebénier, stepping briskly up to Dock, with his fists doubled up for use. "I never was convicted of crime and sent to the state prison."
"Order!" called the justice.
Dock was the more disturbed of the two; but the constable quieted him, while Mr. Watson patched up the wounded dignity of the cabin steward, who was doubtless a much better man than Dock. He had formerly been the body servant of a French gentleman in Louisiana, and he could read and write, and spoke French fluently. He wrote his name "C. Augustus Ebénier," and he insisted that his surname should be pronounced A-ba-ne-a. He was a person of no little importance in his own estimation, and had a southern negro's contempt for mean whites, of whom Dock Vincent seemed to be the meanest specimen he had yet seen.
MR. C. AUGUSTUS EBÉNIER IS WRATHY.—Page 112.