I think you are a boy, to be ruined again every time you love me, you
blush so modestly. Where is that pot of color you paint your cheeks with
even before _me_, whose blushes none can recollect? Why do you love me?"
"_O dios!_" said Van Dorn; "I love thee for these spells of splendor,
dark night and noonday passion, the alternations of earth and hell that
eclipse heaven altogether. I love to see thee fear, though fearing
nothing here, because I see nothing that you fear beyond the grave. You
hate this boy?"
"I hate him worse than wrinkles. Let him not come to me a child
to-morrow; let him see ghosts long as he lives."
"How are the prisoners, Patty?"
"Why, the white nigger, dovey, is sick to-day; blood-loss and blisters
have give him fever. My nigger, that I tied--ha! ha! a good job for
Patty Cannon, at her age!--says t'other's a pore coaster named Jimmy
Phoebus."
"Joe must be ready for a quick departure," the Captain exclaimed, "when
we come back from Dover: it is a bold undertaking, and the whole of the
little state will be aroused like a black snake uncoiling in one's
pocket."
The woman pointed from her shoulder towards the inner room, and spoke
even lower than before:
"Van Dorn, I have a customer."
"For negroes?"
"No, for Huldy. He shall have her."
* * * * *
As Levin Dennis stood at the cross-roads without, he saw a strange man
ploughing in the farm so recently deserted by his hostess for the gayer
cross-roads.
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