Page:Captain of the Polestar.djvu/57

 Rh woman. Not stay long on Massa Murray's plantation."

"You may live a long time yet, Martha," I answered. "You know I am a doctor. If you feel ill let me know about it, and I will try to cure you."

"No wish to live—wish to die. I'm gwine to join the heavenly host." Here she relapsed into one of those half-heathenish rhapsodies in which negroes indulge. "But, massa, me have one thing must leave behind me when I go. No able to take it with me across the Jordan.  That one thing very precious, more precious and more holy than all thing else in the world.  Me, a poor old black woman, have this because my people, very great people, 'spose they was back in the old country.  But you cannot understand this same as black folk could.  My fader give it me, and his fader give it him, but now who shall I give it to?  Poor Martha hab no child, no relation, nobody.  All round I see black man very bad man.  Black woman very stupid woman.  Nobody worthy of the stone.  And so I say, Here is Massa Jephson who write books and fight for coloured folk—he must be good man, and he shall have it though he is white man, and nebber can know what it mean or where it came from." Here the old woman fumbled in the chamois leather bag and pulled out a flattish black stone with a hole through the middle of it. "Here, take it," she said, pressing it into my hand; "take it. No harm nebber come from anything good.  Keep it safe—nebber lose it!" and with a warning gesture the old crone hobbled away in