This evening after John and Herbert had drunk awhile together, the good John began to tell the father what a fine girl he had for a daughter.  Perhaps the good John had been drinking a good deal of liquor, perhaps there was a gleam of something softer than the feeling of a friendly elder in the way John then spoke of Melanctha.  There had been a good deal of drinking and John certainly that very morning had felt strongly Melanctha’s power as a woman.  James Herbert was always a fierce, suspicious, serious negro, and drinking never made him feel more open.  He looked very black and evil as he sat and listened while John grew more and more admiring as he talked half to himself, half to the father, of the virtues and the sweetness of Melanctha.

Suddenly between them there came a moment filled full with strong black curses, and then sharp razors flashed in the black hands, that held them flung backward in the negro fashion, and then for some minutes there was fierce slashing.

John was a decent, pleasant, good natured, light brown negro, but he knew how to use a razor to do bloody slashing.

When the two men were pulled apart by the other negroes who were in the room drinking, John had not been much wounded but James Herbert had gotten one good strong cut that went from-his right shoulder down across the front of his whole body.  Razor fighting does not wound very deeply, but it makes a cut that looks most nasty, for it is so very bloody.

Herbert was held by the other negroes until he was cleaned and plastered, and then he was put to bed to sleep off his drink and fighting.

The next day he came to where his wife and daughter lived and he was furious.

“Where’s that Melanctha, of yours?” he said to his wife, when he saw her.  “If she is to the Bishops’ stables now with that yellow John, I swear I kill her.  A nice way she is going for a decent daughter.  Why don’t you see to that girl better you, ain’t you her mother!”

Melanctha Herbert had always been old in all her ways and she knew very early how to use her power as a woman, and yet Melanctha with all her inborn intense wisdom was really very ignorant of evil.  Melanctha had not yet come to understand what they meant, the things she so often heard around her, and which were just beginning to stir strongly in her.

Now when her father began fiercely to assail her, she did not really know what it was that he was so furious to force from her.  In every way that he could think of in his anger, he tried to make her say a thing she did not really know.  She held out and never answered anything he asked her, for Melanctha had a breakneck courage and she just then badly hated her black father.

When the excitement was all over, Melanctha began to know her power, the power she had so often felt stirring within her and which she now knew she could use to make her stronger.

James Herbert did not win this fight with his daughter.  After awhile he forgot it as he soon forgot John and the cut of his sharp razor.  Melanctha almost forgot to hate her father, in her strong interest in the power she now knew she had within her.