Each of the two, considered alone, is fairly comprehensible.  But taken together, there is something between them which must always baffle me—­something which I cannot believe to have been at all typical of the relation between owner and slave, else many of the facts noted by our discerning and impartial investigators were either imperfectly observed or unintelligently reported.

Up to a certain point my own studies of this slave-holder aligned perfectly with the information which we of the North had been at such pains to gather.  And I tried to hold Miss Caroline blameless, remembering that she had been long schooled to the inhumanity of it.

I resolved, nevertheless, to take Clem under my own roof—­there was a small unused room almost directly under it—­the moment Miss Caroline’s impatience with him should move her to the extremes foretold by her abusive fashion of speech.  I would not see even a negro turned out in the coldest of winters for no better reason than that he was sick and useless, though I planned to intervene delicately, so as not to affront my neighbor.  For my heart was still hers, despite this hardness, for which I saw that she must not be blamed.

As I had feared, Clem’s cough became more obtrusive, and with this Miss Caroline’s irritation deepened toward him.  She declared that his trifling, no-account nature made him all but impossible.

Then one morning—­one to be distinguished by its cold even among many unusual mornings—­there was no Clem to light my fires and to scent my snug dining room with unparalleled coffee.  This brought it definitely home to me that the situation had become grave.  I dressed with what speed I could and hurried to Miss Caroline’s door.  The time had come when I should probably have to do something.

My neighbor met me and said that Clem had meanly decided to remain in bed for the day.  I searched her face for some sign of consideration as she said this, but I was disappointed.  She seemed to feel only a fierce disgust for his foolishness.

“But you may go up and look at the black good-for-nothing if you like,” she said, grudgingly enough I thought.

I climbed the brief flight of stairs.  I knew that Clem had not refused to get up without reasons that seemed sufficient to him.  In a narrow bed in one of the doll-house rooms he lay coughing.

“So you can’t get up this morning?” I asked.

“Yes, seh, Mahstah Majah, Ah was a-gittin’ up, but Ah was fohced to cough raght smahtly an’ Miss Cahline she yehs it an’ she awdeh me back to baid, seh.  Then Ah calls out to huh that Ah ain’t go’n’ a’ have no sech foolishness in this yeh place, an’ so she stahts to come up, which fohces me to retiah huhiedly.  Then she stands theh at th’ head of th’ staihs an’ she faulted me—­yes, seh—­she threaten me, Mahstah Majah, an’ she tek mah clothes away, an’ so on an’ so fothe.  Then Ah huhd huh a’ mekin’ th’ fiah an’ then she brung this yeh cawfee an’ she done mek it that foolish that Ah can’t tech it.  Yes, seh, she plumb ruined that theh cawfee, that’s what she done!”