Will was evidently to my way of thinking, for he gazed steadily at the child, and that strange look of deep sadness came over his face like I had noticed before in the hospital at Norfolk. Then he turned and walked slowly away, with his eyes cast upon the ground in front of him. Rose, who always looks after the people, then came out of the house and went straight toward the slave woman. She was evidently much upset at her carelessness in exposing the child so long to the weather, for she bent tenderly over it and kissed it, and then sent the woman away.
Ten minutes later, while I was walking through the grounds, attending to some necessary repairs, I saw the woman again, sitting now on the low stone fence that separated mine from the now deserted Harrison plantation. I walked up to her and reproved her sharply for keeping a year old child out so long in such cold weather.
"What is its name?" I asked.
"Marse Berk Harrison," she answered.
"Let me see him," I said, and I took hold of the child's arm to see if he was good and fat. It was a common practice to name slave children after the families to whom they belonged. Then I pinched the child's fat cheeks and a lot of black stuff, like burnt cork, came off on my hand, showing a white skin beneath it.
"Is he white?" I asked in astonishment.
"Oh, yes, Marse Judkins, he's white, but we keeps him black, 'cause I has to take him so much with me to the quarters at the Hall."
"Who is his mother?"
"'Deed I don't know, Marse Judkins. Poor Miss Jude Berry over to the forks, I believe, but she's daid now this year gone—no two, last month—but her folks give him to me to raise, 'cause I lives at his uncles, an' they tole me to keep him black till he able to shift for hisself."