'
'Is he cruel to them?'
'Yes, I reckon he is; but a nigger is like a dog,--you must flog him to
make him like you.'
'I judge your niggers haven't been flogged into liking Moye,' I replied.
'Why, have you heard any of them speak of him?'
'Yes; though, of course, I've made no effort to draw gossip from them. I
had to hear.'
'O yes; I know; there's no end to their gabble; niggers will talk. But
what have you heard?'
'That Moye is to blame in this affair of Sam, and that you don't know
the whole story.'
'What _is_ the whole story?' asked the Colonel, stopping short in the
road; 'tell me before I see Sam.'
I then told him what Jim had recounted to me. He heard me through
attentively, then laughingly exclaimed,--
'Is that all! Lord bless you; he didn't seduce her. There's no seducing
these women; with them it's a thing of course. It was Sam's d---- high
blood that made the trouble. His father was the proudest man in
Virginia, and Sam is as like him as a nigger can be like a white man.'
'No matter what the blood is, it seems to me such an injury justifies
revenge.'
'Pshaw, my good fellow, you don't know these people. I'll stake my
plantation against a glass of whisky there's not a virtuous woman with a
drop of black blood in her veins in all South Carolina.
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