'Yes, I reckon he is; but a nigger is like a dog,—you must flog him to make him like you.'
'I judge your niggers haven't been flogged into liking Moye,' I replied.
'Why, have you heard any of them speak of him?'
'Yes; though, of course, I've made no effort to draw gossip from them. I had to hear.'
'O yes; I know; there's no end to their gabble; niggers will talk. But what have you heard?'
'That Moye is to blame in this affair of Sam, and that you don't know the whole story.'
'What is the whole story?' asked the Colonel, stopping short in the road; 'tell me before I see Sam.'
I then told him what Jim had recounted to me. He heard me through attentively, then laughingly exclaimed,—
'Is that all! Lord bless you; he didn't seduce her. There's no seducing these women; with them it's a thing of course. It was Sam's d—— high blood that made the trouble. His father was the proudest man in Virginia, and Sam is as like him as a nigger can be like a white man.'
'No matter what the blood is, it seems to me such an injury justifies revenge.'