When he came upon us he stared for but one second, then came that black flash into his eyes, and out curved an arm, and the little maid was on her father’s shoulder, and he was questioning me with something of mistrust.  I was a gentleman born and bred, but my clothes sat but roughly and indifferently on me, partly through lack of oversight and partly from that rude tumble I had gotten.  Indeed, my breeches and my coat were something torn by it.  Then, too, I had doubtless a look of ghastliness and astonishment that might well have awaked suspicion, and Capt.  Geoffry Cavendish had never spoken with me in the short time since his return.  “Who may you be?” he asked, and his voice hesitated between hostility and friendliness, and my stepfather answered for me with a slight forward thrust of his shoulders which might have indicated shame, or impatience, or both. “’Tis Master Harry Maria Wingfield,” answered he; then in the same breath, “How came you here, sir?”

I answered, seeing no reason why I should not, though I felt my voice shake, being still unsteady with the pain, and told the truth, that I had come thither to see if, perchance, I could get a glimpse of some of the black folk.  At that Captain Cavendish laughed good-humouredly, being used to the excitement his black troop caused and amused at it, and called out merrily that I was about to be gratified, and indeed at that moment came running, with fat lunges, as it were, of tremulous speed, a great black woman in pursuit of the little maid, and heaved her high to her dark wave of bosom with hoarse chuckles and cooings of love and delight and white rollings of terrified eyes at her master if, perchance, he might be wroth at her carelessness.

He only laughed, and brushed his dark beard against the tender roses of the little maid as he gave her up, but my stepfather, who, though not ill-natured, often conceived the necessity of ill-nature, was not so easily satisfied.  He stood looking sternly at my white face and my weak yielding of body at the bend of the knees, and suddenly he caught me heavily by my bruised shoulder.  “What means all this, sirrah?” he cried out, but then I sank away before him, for the pain was greater than I could bear.

When I came to myself my waistcoat was off, and both men looking at my shoulder, which the horse’s hoof must have barely grazed, though no more, or I should have been in a worse plight.  Still the shoulder was a sorry sight enough, and the great black woman with the little fair baby in her arms stood aloof looking at it with ready tears, and the baby herself made round eyes like stars, though she knew not half what it meant.  I felt the hot red of shame go over me at my weakness at a little pain, after the first shock was over, and I presumably steeled to bear it like a man, and I struggled to my feet, pulling my waistcoat together and looking, I will venture, much like a sulky and ill-conditioned lad.