ne career by standing in with this Colonel French. I hear his son
was killed to-day. You can tell him I say it's a judgment on him; for
I hold him responsible for my son's condition. He came down here and
tried to demoralise the labour market. He put false notions in the
niggers' heads. Then he got to meddling with my business, trying to
get away a nigger whose time I had bought. He insulted my agent
Turner, and came all the way down to Sycamore and tried to bully me
into letting the nigger loose, and of course I wouldn't be bullied.
Afterwards, when I offered to let the nigger go, the colonel wouldn't
have it so. I shall always believe he bribed one of my men to get the
nigger off, and then turned him loose to run amuck among the white
people and shoot my boy and my overseer. It was a low-down
performance, and unworthy of a gentleman. No really white man would
treat another white man so. You can tell him I say it's a judgment
that's fallen on him to-day, and that it's not the last one, and that
he'll be sorrier yet that he didn't stay where he was, with his
nigger-lovin' notions, instead of comin' back down here to make
trouble for people that have grown up with the State and made it what
it is."

Caxton, of course, did not deliver the message. To do so would have
been worse taste than Fetters had displayed in sending it. Having got
the best of the encounter, Caxton had no objection to letting his
defeated antagonist discharge his venom against the absent colonel,
who would never know of it, and who was already breasting the waves of
a sorrow so deep and so strong as almost to overwhelm him. For he had
loved the boy; all his hopes had centred around this beautiful man
child, who had promised so much that was good. His own future had been
planned with reference to him. Now he was dead, and the bereaved
father gave way to his grief.

_Thirty-four_

The funeral took place next day, from the Episcopal Church, in which
communion the little boy had been baptised, and of which old Peter had
always been an humble member, faithfully appearing every Sunday
morning in his seat in the gallery, long after the rest of his people
had deserted it for churches of their own. On this occasion Peter had,
for the first time, a place on the main floor, a little to one side of
the altar, in front of which, banked with flowers, stood the white
velvet casket which contained all that was mortal of little Phil. The
same beautiful ser