There was a note of entreaty in her voice, but Beelzebub’s eyes stared as though they would leap out of his head.

He writhed away from her into the straw.  “Go ’way, missis!” he hissed at her, with lips drawn back in terror.  “Go ’way, or Boss’ll come and beat Beelzebub!”

He spoke the white man’s language; it was the only one he knew, but there was something curiously unfamiliar, something almost bestial in the way he spat his words.

Again Sybil was conscious of a wild desire to escape before sheer horror paralysed her limbs, but she fought and conquered the impulse.

“Boss won’t beat you any more,” she said.  “And I want you to be a good boy and drink this before I go.  I brought it myself, because I knew you would take it to please me.  You will, won’t you, Beelzebub?”

But Beelzebub was not to be easily persuaded.  He cried and moaned and writhed at every word she spoke.  But Sybil had mastered herself, and she was very patient.  She coaxed him as though he had been in truth the sick dog to which Curtis had likened him.  And at last, by sheer persistence, she managed to insert the spoon between his chattering teeth.

He let her feed him then, lying passive, still whimpering between every gulp, while she talked soothingly, scarcely knowing what she said in the resolute effort to keep her ever-recurring horror at bay.  When the bowl was empty she rose.

“Perhaps you will go to sleep now,” she said kindly.  “Suppose you try!”

He stared up at her from his lair with rolling, uneasy eyes.  Suddenly he pointed to her bandaged arm.

“Boss did that!” he croaked.

She turned to close the door again, feeling the blood rise in her face.

“Boss didn’t mean to,” she answered with as much steadiness as she could muster.  “And he didn’t mean to hurt you so badly, either, Beelzebub.  He was sorry afterwards.”

She saw his teeth gleam in the twilight like the bared fangs of a wolf, and knew that he grinned in derision of this statement.  She picked up her bowl and turned to go.  At the same instant he spoke in a piercing whisper out of the darkness.

“Boss kill a white man once, missis!”

She stood still, rooted to the spot.  “Beelzebub!”

He shrank away, whimpering.

“No, no!  Boss’ll kill poor Beelzebub!  Missis won’t tell Boss?”

To her horror his hand shot out and fastened upon her skirt.  But she could not have moved in any case.  She stood staring down at him, cold—­cold to the very heart with foreboding.

“No,” she said at last, and it was as if she stood apart and listened to another woman, very calm and collected, speaking on her behalf.  “I will never tell him, Beelzebub.  You will be quite safe with me.  So tell me what you mean!  Don’t be afraid!  Speak plainly!  When did Boss kill a white man?”

There must have been something of compulsion in her manner, for, albeit quaveringly and with obvious terror, the negro answered her.