They welcome the spirits, although it has already made them soulless.  The negro listens to a dialogue of singular import to himself; his eyes glistened with interest, as one by one they sported over the ignorance enforced upon the weak.  One by one they threw their slouch hats upon the floor, drew closer in conclave, forming a grotesque picture of fiendish faces.  “Now, gentlemen,” Graspum deigns to say, after a moment’s pause, motioning to the decanter, “pass it along round when ye gets a turn about.”  He fills his glass and drinks, as if drink were a necessary accompaniment of the project before them.  “This case of Marston’s is a regular plumper; there’s a spec to be made in that stock of stuff; and them bright bits of his own-they look like him-’ll make right smart fancy.  Ther’ developing just in the right sort of way to be valuable for market.”

“There’s movin’ o’ the shrewdest kind to be done there, Graspum!  Where’s the dockerment what ’ll make ’um property, eh?” interrupted Nimrod, twisting the hair with which his face is covered into fantastic points.

“Oh, my good fellows, public opinion’s the dockerment; with the bright side of public opinion!  Public opinion whispers about Clotilda:  it says she looks so much like that niece of Marston’s, that you couldn’t tell them apart.  And they are like two pins, gentlemen; but then one’s property and t’other’s anything but property.  One will bring something substantial in the market:  I wouldn’t say much about the other.  But there’s pride in the whole family, and where it’s got into the niggers it’s worth a few extra dollars.  The Marstons and Roveros don’t think much of we dealers when they don’t want our money; but when they do we are cousins of the right stripe.  However, these ere little aristocratic notions don’t mount to much; they are bin generous blood-mixers, and now they may wince over it-”

Graspum is interrupted again.  Bengal has been analysing his logic, and rises to dispute the logic of his arguments.  He is ready to stake his political faith, and all his common sense-of which he never fails to boast-that mixing the blood of the two races destroys the purity of the nigger, spiles the gauge of the market, detracts from real plantation property, and will just upset the growin’ of young niggers.  He is sure he knows just as much about the thing as anybody else, has never missed his guess, although folks say he aint no way clever at selection; and, rubbing his eyes after adjusting the long black hair that hangs down over his shoulders, he folds his arms with an independent air, and waits the rejoinder.

The dingy room breathes thick of deleterious fumes; a gloom hangs over their meditations, deep and treacherous:  it excites fear, not of the men, but of the horrors of their trade.  A dim light hangs suspended from the ceiling:  even the sickly shade contrasts strangely with their black purpose.