Now, however, an important number of persons veered—­in wonder if not in absolute sympathy.  That the woman should watch and nurse the black fellow, apparently with perfect single-heartedness, was not to be squared with any known laws of human association.  “Nursing a nigger in her own house with her own hands,” was the fashion of describing this untoward spectacle.  It was like taking a sick horse into your house, and making play that it was human.  The already puzzled town was further mystified, and it is probable that Miss Caroline fell a little in public esteem.  Her course was not thought to be edifying.  She could have sent Clem to the county poor farm, where he would have been seen to, after a fashion good enough for one of his color, by the proper authorities.

My own bewilderment was at first hardly less than the town’s.  Had Miss Caroline suddenly changed her manner toward Clem, showing regret, however belated, for her previous abuse of him, I should have understood.  That would have been a simple case of awakened sensibility.  But she continued to disparage him to his face and to me.  She was venomous—­scurrilous in her abuse.  Yet only with the greatest difficulty could I persuade her to let me share the watch that must be kept over him.  She called him an infamous black wretch, in tones befitting her words, but I could not get her to leave him even so long as her own health demanded.

There came nights, however, as the disease ran its course, when she had to give up from sheer lack of force.  Then she permitted me to watch, though even at these times she often broke from sleep to come and be assured that the worthless black hound had not changed for the worse.

One dim, early morning, when she thought I had gone, after my night’s watch, I returned softly to the half-opened door with a forgotten injunction about the medicines.  All night Clem had babbled languidly of many things, of “a hunded thousan’ hatchin’ aigs,” and “a thousan’ brillion dollahs,” of “Mahstah Jere” and “Little Miss,” of a visiting Cousin Peavey whom he had been obliged to “whup” for his repeated misdemeanors; and darkly and often had he whispered, so low I could scarcely hear it, of an enemy that was entering the room with a fell design. “Tha’ he is—­he go’n’ a’ sprinkle snake-dust in mah boots—­tha’ he is—­watch out!”

He still maundered weakly as I reached the door, but it was not this that detained me at its threshold.  It was Miss Caroline, who had actually knelt at his side.  At first I thought she wept over one of his blue-black hands, which she clung eagerly to with both her own.  Then I saw that there seemed to be no tears—­yet silently, almost impassively, she gave me a sense of hopeless grief that I thought no outburst of weeping could have done.

I wondered wildly then if her fashion of speech for Clem might not mask some real affection for him.  But this was unsatisfying.  On the spot I gave up all wondering forever about Miss Caroline.  I have ever since constrained myself to accept her without question, even in situations of difficulty.  There is so much vain knowledge.