"
"Oh! what did you do?" I cried, hot with
helpless pain and passion.
How the man's outraged heart sent the blood
flaming up into his face and deepened the tones
of his impetuous voice, as he stretched his arm
across the bed, saying, with a terribly expressive
gesture,--
"I half murdered him, an' to-night I'll finish."
"Yes, yes,--but go on now; what came next?"
He gave me a look that showed no white man could
have felt a deeper degradation in remembering and
confessing these last acts of brotherly
oppression.
"They whipped me till I couldn't stand, an'
then they sold me further South. Yer thought
I was a white man once;--look here!"
With a sudden wrench he tore the shirt from
neck to waist, and on his strong brown shoulders
showed me furrows deeply ploughed, wounds
which, though healed, were ghastlier to me than
any in that house. I could not speak to him, and,
with the pathetic dignity a great grief lends the
humblest sufferer, he ended his brief tragedy by
simply saying,--
"That's all.
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