does!  Ef a nigger wants ter git down on his marrow-bones, an’ eat dirt, an’ call ’em ‘marster,’ he’s a good nigger, dere’s room fer him.  But I ain’ no w’ite folks’ nigger, I ain’.  I don’ call no man ‘marster.’  I don’ wan’ nothin’ but w’at I wo’k fer, but I wants all er dat.  I never moles’s no w’ite man, ’less ‘n he moles’s me fus’.  But w’en de ole ‘oman dies, doctuh, an’ I gits a good chance at dat w’ite man,—­dere ain’ no use talkin’, suh!—­dere’s gwine ter be a mix-up, an’ a fune’al, er two fune’als—­er may be mo’, ef anybody is keerliss enough to git in de way.”

“Josh,” said the doctor, laying a cool hand on the other’s brow, “you ’re feverish, and don’t know what you’re talking about.  I shouldn’t let my mind dwell on such things, and you must keep quiet until this arm is well, or you may never be able to hit any one with it again.”

Miller determined that when Josh got better he would talk to him seriously and dissuade him from this dangerous design.  He had not asked the name of Josh’s enemy, but the look of murderous hate which the dust-begrimed tramp of the railway journey had cast at Captain George McBane rendered any such question superfluous.  McBane was probably deserving of any evil fate which might befall him; but such a revenge would do no good, would right no wrong; while every such crime, committed by a colored man, would be imputed to the race, which was already staggering under a load of obloquy because, in the eyes of a prejudiced and undiscriminating public, it must answer as a whole for the offenses of each separate individual.  To die in defense of the right was heroic.  To kill another for revenge was pitifully human and weak:  “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” saith the Lord.

XIII

THE CAKEWALK

Old Mr. Delamere’s servant, Sandy Campbell, was in deep trouble.

A party of Northern visitors had been staying for several days at the St. James Hotel.  The gentlemen of the party were concerned in a projected cotton mill, while the ladies were much interested in the study of social conditions, and especially in the negro problem.  As soon as their desire for information became known, they were taken courteously under the wing of prominent citizens and their wives, who gave them, at elaborate luncheons, the Southern white man’s views of the negro, sighing sentimentally over the disappearance of the good old negro of before the war, and gravely deploring the degeneracy of his descendants.  They enlarged upon the amount of money the Southern whites had spent for the education of the negro, and shook their heads over the inadequate results accruing from this unexampled generosity.  It was sad, they said, to witness this spectacle of a dying race, unable to withstand the competition of a superior type.  The severe reprisals taken by white people for certain crimes committed by negroes were of course