y talked.
A gigantic fellow, with a gladiator's muscles. Stronger than that Yankee
captain, he thought,--than either of them: better breathed,--drawing the
air into his brawny chest. "A man and a brother." Did the fool think he
didn't know that before? He had a contempt for Dave and his like. Lamar
would have told you Dave's words were true, but despised the man as a
crude, unlicked bigot. Ben did the same, with no words for the idea. The
negro instinct in him recognized gentle blood by any of its signs,--the
transparent animal life, the reticent eye, the mastered voice: he
had better men than Lamar at home to learn it from. It is a trait of
serfdom, the keen eye to measure the inherent rights of a man to be
master. A negro or a Catholic Irishman does not need "Sartor Resartus"
to help him to see through any clothes. Ben leaned, half-asleep, against
the wall, some old thoughts creeping out of their hiding-places through
the torpor, like rats to the sunshine: the boatman's slang had been hot
and true enough to rouse them in his brain.

"So, Ben," said his master, as he passed once, "your friend has been
persuading you to exchange the cotton-fields at Cedar Creek for New-York
alleys, eh?"

"Ki!" laughed Ben, "white darkey. Mind ole dad, Mars' John, as took off
in der swamp? Um asked dat Linkinite ef him saw dad up Norf. Guess him's
free now. Ki! ole dad!"

"The swamp was the place for him," said Lamar. "I remember."

"Dunno," said the negro, surlily: "him's dad, af'er all: tink him's free
now,"--and mumbled down into a monotonous drone about

"Oh yo, bredern, is yer gwine ober Jordern?"

Half-asleep, they thought,--but with dull questionings at work in his
brain, some queer notions about freedom, of that unknown North, mostly
mixed with his remembrance of his father, a vicious old negro, that in
Pennsylvania would have worked out his salvation in the under cell of
the penitentiary, but in Georgia, whipped into heroism, had betaken
himself into the swamp, and never returned. Tradition among the Lamar
slaves said he had got off to Ohio, of which they had as clear an idea
as most of us have of heaven. At any rate, old Kite became a mystery, to
be mentioned with awe at fish-bakes and barbecues. He was this uncouth
wretch's father,--do you understand? The flabby-faced boy, flogged in
the cotton-field for whining after his dad, or hiding away part of his
flitch and molasses for months in hopes the old man would come bac