ery near losing her life
because of a lazy, trifling negro!"

"I should think you would discharge him, sir," suggested Tryon.

"What would be the use?" rejoined the doctor. "All negroes are alike,
except that now and then there's a pretty woman along the border-line.
Take this patient of mine, for instance,--I'll call on her after
dinner, her case is not serious,--thirty years ago she would have made
any man turn his head to look at her. You know who I mean, don't you,
judge?"

"Yes. I think so," said the judge promptly. "I've transacted a little
business for her now and then."

"I don't know whether you've seen the daughter or not--I'm sure you
haven't for the past year or so, for she's been away. But she's in
town now, and, by Jove, the girl is really beautiful. And I'm a judge
of beauty. Do you remember my wife thirty years ago, judge?"

"She was a very handsome woman, Ed," replied the other judicially. "If
I had been twenty years younger, I should have cut you out."

"You mean you would have tried. But as I was saying, this girl is a
beauty; I reckon we might guess where she got some of it, eh, Judge?
Human nature is human nature, but it's a d--d shame that a man should
beget a child like that and leave it to live the life open for a negro.
If she had been born white, the young fellows would be tumbling over
one another to get her. Her mother would have to look after her pretty
closely as things are, if she stayed here; but she disappeared
mysteriously a year or two ago, and has been at the North, I'm told,
passing for white. She'll probably marry a Yankee; he won't know any
better, and it will serve him right--she's only too white for them.
She has a very striking figure, something on the Greek order, stately
and slow-moving. She has the manners of a lady, too--a beautiful
woman, if she is a nigger!"

"I quite agree with you, Ed," remarked the judge dryly, "that the
mother had better look closely after the daughter."

"Ah, no, judge," replied the other, with a flattered smile, "my
admiration for beauty is purely abstract. Twenty-five years ago, when
I was younger"--

"When you were young," corrected the judge.

"When you and I were younger," continued the doctor
ingeniously,--"twenty-five years ago, I could not have answered for
myself. But I would advise the girl to stay at the North, if she can.
She's certainly out of place around here."

Tryon found the subject a little tiresome, and the