Page:Duty and Inclination. Volume 3.pdf/268

266 the first aspect of this affair having cleared away, I will do as you would have me, and be proudly indebted to my Robert,—to my old trustworthy servant,—for this great accession of fortune to myself and family; but with this provision, that you allow a handsome settlement to be made out of it for yourself."

"Even the fourth part, Massa, would be more dan me would know what to do wit."

"Think you, noble friend, I could enjoy it under the consciousness that you had left yourself destitute for my sake!"

"Instead of making conditions wit Master, me wished to feel myself obliged to him for wat he might tink proper to pension me off wit upon its becoming his own. Me know wery well Massa, and how he would be glad to provide for Robert."

"Yes! that I will make a handsome provision for you, my confiding Robert, since you magnanimously entrust me with the charge of doing so, even, strange as it may appear, out of your own property. Give me the pen; I will sign, if it was with the view only of transmitting to posterity this deed of my Robert's—that it may be known to the honour of your race, the dark-coloured African, that a negro, once the servant of a master, himself a servant of royalty, owed to his fidelity and attachment a re-establishment of fortune; that it was through him, his former valet, earned by the labour and sweat of his brow, that he acquired