What she had heard was that this rebel-convict had been discovered to be a physician.  The thing had come to the ears of Governor Steed, who suffered damnably from the gout, and Governor Steed had borrowed the fellow from his purchaser.  Whether by skill or good fortune, Peter Blood had afforded the Governor that relief which his excellency had failed to obtain from the ministrations of either of the two physicians practising in Bridgetown.  Then the Governor’s lady had desired him to attend her for the megrims.  Mr. Blood had found her suffering from nothing worse than peevishness — the result of a natural petulance aggravated by the dulness of life in Barbados to a lady of her social aspirations.  But he had prescribed for her none the less, and she had conceived herself the better for his prescription.  After that the fame of him had gone through Bridgetown, and Colonel Bishop had found that there was more profit to be made out of this new slave by leaving him to pursue his profession than by setting him to work on the plantations, for which purpose he had been originally acquired.

“It is yourself, madam, I have to thank for my comparatively easy and clean condition,” said Mr. Blood, “and I am glad to take this opportunity of doing so.”

The gratitude was in his words rather than in his tone.  Was he mocking, she wondered, and looked at him with the searching frankness that another might have found disconcerting.  He took the glance for a question, and answered it.

“If some other planter had bought me,” he explained, “it is odds that the facts of my shining abilities might never have been brought to light, and I should be hewing and hoeing at this moment like the poor wretches who were landed with me.”

“And why do you thank me for that?  It was my uncle who bought you.”

“But he would not have done so had you not urged him.  I perceived your interest.  At the time I resented it.”

“You resented it?” There was a challenge in her boyish voice.

“I have had no lack of experiences of this mortal life; but to be bought and sold was a new one, and I was hardly in the mood to love my purchaser.”

“If I urged you upon my uncle, sir, it was that I commiserated you.”  There was a slight severity in her tone, as if to reprove the mixture of mockery and flippancy in which he seemed to be speaking.

She proceeded to explain herself.  “My uncle may appear to you a hard man.  No doubt he is.  They are all hard men, these planters.  It is the life, I suppose.  But there are others here who are worse.  There is Mr. Crabston, for instance, up at Speightstown.  He was there on the mole, waiting to buy my uncle’s leavings, and if you had fallen into his hands ...  A dreadful man.  That is why.”

He was a little bewildered.

“This interest in a stranger ...” he began.  Then changed the direction of his probe.  “But there were others as deserving of commiseration.”