The captain moaned again, and faintly whispered,
"Air!" but I never stirred. God forgive me!
just then I hated him as only a woman thinking
of a sister woman's wrong could hate. Robert
looked up; his eyes were dry again, his mouth
grim. I saw that, said, "Tell me more," and he
did,--for sympathy is a gift the poorest may give,
the proudest stoop to receive.
"Yer see, Ma'am, his father,--I might say
ours, if I warn't ashamed of both of 'em,--his
father died two years ago, an' left us all to
Marster Ned,--that's him here, eighteen then. He
always hated me, I looked so like old Marster: he
don't--only the light skin an' hair. Old Marster
was kind to all of us, me 'specially, an' bought
Lucy off the next plantation down there in South
Car'lina, when he found I liked her. I married
her, all I could, Ma'am; it warn't much, but we
was true to one another till Marster Ned come
home a year after an' made hell fer both of us.
He sent my old mother to be used up in his
rice swamp in Georgy; he found me with my pretty
Lucy, an' though young Miss cried, an' I prayed
to him on my knees, an' Lucy run away, he
wouldn't have no mercy; he brought her back,
an'--took her, Ma'am.
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