Samson crawled forward, and also called her name kindly:
"Aunt Hominy, Miss Vesty's sent fur you. Dis yer is Jimmy Phoebus."
The little boy Ned now spoke up:
"Aunt Hominy ain't spoke sence dat Quaker man killed little Phillis."
"Jimmy," solemnly whispered Samson, "Aunt Hominy's lost her mind."
"Yes," spoke up the dejected and elegant mulatto prisoner, "she's become
an idiot. They sometimes take it that way."
Phoebus bent his face close down to the poor old creature's, sitting
there in her checkered turban and silver earrings, clean and tidy as
servants of the olden time, and he studied her vacant countenance, her
tenantless eyes, her lips moving without connection or relevance, and
felt that cruelty had inflicted its last miraculous injury--whipped out
her mind from its venerable residence, and left her body yet to suffer
the pains of life without the understanding of them.
"Oh, shame! shame!" cried the sailor, tears finally falling from his
eyes, "to deceive and steal this pore, believin' intelleck! To rob the
cook of the little tin cup full o' brains she uses to git food fur bad
an' fur good folks! Why, the devils in Pangymonum wouldn't treat that a
way the kind heart that briled fur 'em."
"De long man said he was Quaker man," exclaimed Vince, the larger boy,
"an' he come to take Hominy to de free country. Hominy was sold, she
said, an' must go. De long man had a boat--Mars Dennis's boat--an' in de
night little Phillis woke up an' cried.
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