d a chance to take him fust; if He don't, I
shall."

"Oh, no! remember, he is your brother."

An unwise speech; I felt it as it passed my lips, for a black frown
gathered on Robert's face, and his strong hands closed with an ugly
sort of grip. But he did not touch the poor soul gasping there before
him, and seemed content to let the slow suffocation of that stifling
room end his frail life.

"I'm not like to forget that, Ma'am, when I've been thinkin' of it all
this week. I knew him when they fetched him in, an' would 'a' done it
long 'fore this, but I wanted to ask where Lucy was; he knows,--he told
to-night,--an' now he's done for."

"Who is Lucy?" I asked hurriedly, intent on keeping his mind busy with
any thought but murder.

With one of the swift transitions of a mixed temperament like this, at
my question Robert's deep eyes filled, the clenched hands were spread
before his face, and all I heard were the broken words,--

"My wife,--he took her--"

In that instant every thought of fear was swallowed up in burning
indignation for the wrong, and a perfect passion of pity for the
desperate man so tempted to avenge an injury for which there seemed no
redress but this. He was no longer slave or contraband, no drop of
black blood marred him in my sight, but an infinite compassion yearned
to save, to help, to comfort him. Words seemed so powerless I offered
none, only put my hand on his poor head, wounded, homeless, bowed down
with grief for which I had no cure, and softly smoothed the long
neglected hair, pitifully wondering the while where was the wife who
must have loved this tender-hearted man so well.

The captain moaned again, and faintly whispered, "Air!" but I never
stirred. God forgive me! just then I hated him as only a woman
thinking of a sister woman's wrong could hate. Robert looked up; his
eyes were dry again, his mouth grim. I saw that, said, "Tell me more,"
and he did,--for sympathy is a gift the poorest may give, the proudest
stoop to receive.

"Yer see, Ma'am, his father,--I might say ours, if I warn't ashamed of
both of 'em,--his father died two years ago, an' left us all to Marster
Ned,--that's him here, eighteen then. He always hated me, I looked so
like old Marster: he don't--only the light skin an' hair. Old Marster
was kind to all of us, me 'specially, an' bought Lucy off the next
plantation down there in South Car'lina, when he found I liked her. I
married her, all I could, Ma'a