" answered Jim, grinning at his repartee.

"Well, Jim," said the schoolmaster, relaxing into a smile, "you have the
best of it this time; but you know quite well what I mean. You can take
the axe; but bring it back to-night. And you must see about getting a
new one immediately; there is something to begin with.--Now, Esther,
what is it? Your boy sick? Probably it is because you let him drink the
water out of that swampy pool. I warned you."

"Yes, sah," said the woman impassively.

She was a slow, dull-witted creature, who had executed her tasks
marvelously well in the planter's family, never varying by a hair's
breadth either in time or method during long years. Freed, she was lost
at once; if she had not been swept along by her companions, she would
have sat down dumbly by the wayside, and died. The schoolmaster offered
supper to both of his guests. Jim took a seat at the table at once,
nothing loath, and ate and drank, talking all the time with occasional
flashes of wit, and an unconscious suggestion of ferocity in the way he
hacked and tore the meat with his clasp-knife and his strong white
teeth. Esther stood; nothing could induce her to sit in the master's
presence. She ate and drank quietly, and dropped a courtesy whenever he
spoke to her, not from any especial respect or gratitude, however, but
from habit. "I may possibly teach the man something," thought the
schoolmaster; "but what a terrible creature to turn loose in the world,
with power in his hand! Hundreds of these men will die, nay, must die
violent deaths before their people can learn what freedom means, and
what it does not mean. As for the woman, it is hopeless; she can not
learn. But her child can. In truth, our hope is in the children."

And then he threw away every atom of the food, washed his dishes, made
up the fire, and went back to the beginning again and cooked a second
supper. For he still shrank from personal contact with the other race. A
Southerner would have found it impossible to comprehend the fortitude it
required for the New-Englander to go through his daily rounds among
them. He did his best; but it was duty, not liking. Supper over, he went
to the schoolhouse again: in the evenings he taught the old people. It
was an odd sight to note them as they followed the letters with a big,
crooked forefinger, slowly spelling out words of three letters. They
spelled with their whole bodies, stooping over the books which lay
before them until