In an instant the man vanished and the slave appeared.  Freedom was too new a boon to have wrought its blessed changes yet, and as he started up, with his hand at his temple and an obsequious “Yes, Ma’am,” any romance that had gathered round him fled away, leaving the saddest of all sad facts in living guise before me.  Not only did the manhood seem to die out of him, but the comeliness that first attracted me; for, as he turned, I saw the ghastly wound that had laid open cheek and forehead.  Being partly healed, it was no longer bandaged, but held together with strips of that transparent plaster which I never see without a shiver and swift recollections of the scenes with which it is associated in my mind.  Part of his black hair had been shorn away, and one eye was nearly closed; pain so distorted, and the cruel sabre-cut so marred that portion of his face, that, when I saw it, I felt as if a fine medal had been suddenly reversed, showing me a far more striking type of human suffering and wrong than Michel Angelo’s bronze prisoner.  By one of those inexplicable processes that often teach us how little we understand ourselves, my purpose was suddenly changed, and though I went in to offer comfort as a friend, I merely gave an order as a mistress.

“Will you open these windows? this man needs more air.”

He obeyed at once, and, as he slowly urged up the unruly sash, the handsome profile was again turned toward me, and again I was possessed by my first impression so strongly that I involuntarily said,—­

“Thank you, Sir.”

Perhaps it was fancy, but I thought that in the look of mingled surprise and something like reproach which he gave me there was also a trace of grateful pleasure.  But he said, in that tone of spiritless humility these poor souls learn so soon,—­

“I a’n’t a white man, Ma’am, I’m a contraband.”

“Yes, I know it; but a contraband is a free man, and I heartily congratulate you.”

He liked that; his face shone, he squared his shoulders, lifted his head, and looked me full in the eye with a brisk—­

“Thank ye, Ma’am; anything more to do fer yer?”

“Doctor Franck thought you would help me with this man, as there are many patients and few nurses or attendants.  Have you had the fever?”

“No, Ma’am.”

“They should have thought of that when they put him here; wounds and fevers should not be together.  I’ll try to get you moved.”

He laughed a sudden laugh,—­if he had been a white man, I should have called it scornful; as he was a few shades darker than myself, I suppose it must be considered an insolent, or at least an unmannerly one.

“It don’t matter, Ma’am.  I’d rather be up here with the fever than down with those niggers; and there a’n’t no other place fer me.”

Poor fellow! that was true.  No ward in all the hospital would take him in to lie side by side with the most miserable white wreck there.  Like the bat in AEsop’s fable, he belonged to neither race; and the pride of one, the helplessness of the other, kept him hovering alone in the twilight a great sin has brought to overshadow the whole land.