“This man was fine to look at, prepossessing and engaging.  He looked like a driver, a man of his word too.  And one day when he was standing on the street here he was approached by a stranger who began to get him into conversation.  You see, we don’t have slavery here as a regular thing.  The negroes are sort o’ apprenticed—­free but apprenticed.  But under pretty severe laws, have to be registered, can’t testify, and so forth.  This state is part of the Northwest Territory which was made free by the old Confederate States in 1787; but we actually had an election here eleven years ago to make it slave.  And the people voted it free.  Anyhow we have negroes here; and the people are from Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and the Carolinas where they do have slavery, and we’re all beginnin’ to be scared over the agitation.  Now this stranger was a Southerner and any one could see he was; but of course didn’t look different from some of our own people.  So this stranger began to talk to this man and ask him if he was married, and he wasn’t; and asked him if he would like to make some money, which of course he did.

“And finally the stranger said that he had a daughter that he would like to introduce, and asked this man to come with him a mile or so, and if he liked the girl he would pay him to marry her.  They started off and found the girl.  She was a mulatto or octoroon as they say, and as pretty as a red wagon.  You see the stranger was pure white and from New Orleans; but the mother of the girl was a slave and they say kind of coffee colored.  And the upshot of it was that the stranger offered this man $2500 to marry the octoroon.  What he wanted to do was to place her well.  He didn’t want her to run the chance of ever being a slave, as she might be in the South.  He was her father and he naturally had a father’s feeling for her, even if she was an octoroon.  And this stranger said that he had been around town and the country for some days looking at prospective husbands and making some inquiry, and that he had found no one to equal this man.  The man liked the octoroon, the octoroon liked the man.  And they struck a bargain.  The man got his $2500; he married the girl on the spot.  The stranger disappeared, and was never seen or heard of again.  It all happened right there.  The man bought land, he got rich.  He was one of the best men I ever knew, and one of my best friends.  The octoroon died in childbirth, leaving a daughter still living and in this town.  The man died recently.  His name was James Miles.  He was your father.  And Zoe is your half-sister, and wants to share in the estate, and that’s why I sent for you.”

The flies began a louder buzzing at the window.  The heat had increased.  I looked through the open door and saw a man fall over, whether from heat or cholera I could not tell.  I was by now weary and faint.  I said:  “I do not know what to say now.  If we can agree, I mean if we are allowed to agree, Zoe and I will have no trouble.  I am getting faint.  And I shall come again.”  With that I arose and walked weakly from the room.