Fidelity was ever the first spring of Scipio's conduct. He adored
the Major with a canine devotion, and by an instinct almost canine he
found his way up to the earthwork and chose a position which
commanded the farthest prospect in the direction of Looe. From where
he sat the broad hedge dipped to a narrow valley, climbed the steep
slope opposite, and vanished, to reappear upon a second and farther
ridge two miles away. As yet he could discern no sign of the
returning heroes; but his ear caught the throb of a drum beaten afar
to the eastward.
Of the Major's two body-servants it might be said that the one spoke
seldom and the other never; and again that Cai, who spoke seldom,
was taciturn, while Scipio, who spoke never, was almost affable.
In truth, the negro's was the habitual silence of one who, loving his
fellows, spends all his unoccupied time in an inward brooding, a
continual haze of day-dreams.
Scipio's day-dreams were of a piece with his loyalty, a reflection in
some sort of his master's glory. He could never--he with his black
skin--be such a man; but he passionately desired to be honoured,
respected, though but posthumously. And the emblazoned board in the
church, appealing as it did to his negro sense of colour, had
suggested a way. It is not too much to say that a great part of
Scipio's time was lived by him in a future when, released from this
present livery, his spirit should take on a more gorgeous one, as
"Scipio Johnson, Esquire, late of this Parish," in scarlet twiddles
on a buff ground.
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