Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/263

 may know a bit more of its intricacies than does Little Arcady at large, but not enough to permit that certain thrill of superior discernment which I have so often been able to enjoy in Slocum County.

Each of the two, considered alone, is fairly comprehensible. But taken together, there is something between them which must always baffle me—something which I cannot believe to have been at all typical of the relation between owner and slave, else many of the facts noted by our discerning and impartial investigators were either imperfectly observed or unintelligently reported.

Up to a certain point my own studies of this slave holder aligned perfectly with the information which we of the North had been at such pains to gather. And I tried to hold Miss Caroline blameless, remembering that she had been long schooled to the inhumanity of it.

I resolved, nevertheless, to take Clem under my own roof—there was a small unused room almost directly under it—the moment Miss Caroline's impatience with him should move her to the extremes foretold by her abusive fashion of speech. I would not see even a negro turned out in the coldest of winters for no better reason than that he was sick and useless, though I planned to intervene delicately, so as not to affront my neighbor. For my heart was still hers, despite this hardness, for which I saw that she must not be blamed.

As I had feared, Clem's cough became more ob-