“I consider such a law a very wise provision,” replied the merchant.  “It is necessary to prevent the inferior race from being put on an equality with their superiors.  The negroes were made to be servants, sir. You may be an advocate for amalgamation, but I am not.”

“I would simply ask you to observe that the law you so much approve is not a preventive of amalgamation.  Mr. Fitzgerald married the daughter of the quadroon.  The only effect of the law was to deprive her of a legal right to his support and protection, and to prevent her son from receiving any share of his father’s property.  By another Southern law, that ‘the child shall follow the condition of the mother,’ her son became a slave.”

“Well, sir, what interest do you suppose I can take in all this?” interrupted the merchant.  “It’s nothing to me, sir.  The South is competent to make her own laws.”

Mr. King begged his attention a little longer.  He then proceeded to tell how Mr. Fitzgerald had treated the octoroon, at the time of his marriage with Miss Bell; that he had subsequently sold her to a very base man, in payment of a debt; that she, terrified and bewildered by the prospect of such a fate, had, in a moment of frantic revenge, changed her babe for his daughter’s; and that consequently the Gerald he had been educating as his grandson was in fact the son of the octoroon, and born a slave.

“Really, sir,” said Mr. Bell, with a satirical smile, “that story might sell for something to a writer of sensation novels; but I should hardly have expected to hear it from a sensible gentleman like yourself.  Pray, on whose testimony do you expect me to believe such an improbable fiction?”

“On that of the mother herself,” replied Mr. King.

With a very contemptuous curl of his lip, Mr. Bell answered:  “And you really suppose, do you, that I can be induced to disinherit my grandson on the testimony of a colored woman?  Not I, sir.  Thank God, I am not infected with this negro mania.”

“But you have not asked who the woman is,” rejoined Mr. King; “and without knowing that, you cannot judge candidly of the value of her testimony.”

“I don’t ask, because I don’t care,” replied the merchant.  “The negroes are a lying set, sir; and I am no Abolitionist, that I should go about retailing their lies.”

Mr. King looked at him an instant, and then answered, very calmly:  “The mother of that babe, whose word you treat so contemptuously, is Mrs. King, my beloved and honored wife.”

The old merchant was startled from his propriety; and, forgetful of the gout in his feet, he sprung from his chair, exclaiming, “The Devil!”