"Aunt Hominy ain't spoke sence dat Quaker man killed little Phillis."

"Jimmy," solemnly whispered Samson, "Aunt Hominy's lost her mind."

"Yes," spoke up the dejected and elegant mulatto prisoner, "she's become an idiot. They sometimes take it that way."

Phoebus bent his face close down to the poor old creature's, sitting there in her checkered turban and silver earrings, clean and tidy as servants of the olden time, and he studied her vacant countenance, her tenantless eyes, her lips moving without connection or relevance, and felt that cruelty had inflicted its last miraculous injury - whipped out her mind from its venerable residence, and left her body yet to suffer the pains of life without the understanding of them.

"Oh, shame! shame!" cried the sailor, tears finally falling from his eyes, "to deceive and steal this pore, believin' intelleck! To rob the cook of the little tin cup full o' brains she uses to git food fur bad an' fur good folks! Why, the devils in Pangymonum wouldn't treat that a way the kind heart that briled fur 'em."

"De long man said he was Quaker man," exclaimed Vince, the larger boy, "an' he come to take Hominy to de free country. Hominy was sold, she said, an' must go. De long man had a boat - Mars Dennis's boat - an' in de night little Phillis woke up an' cried. Nobody couldn't stop her. De long man picked little Phillis up by de leg an' mashed her skull in agin de flo'. Aunt Hominy ain't never spoke no mo'."

"Did you hear the long man speak after that, Vince?"

"Yes, mars'r. I heerd de long man tell Mars Dennis dat if he didn't steer de boat an' shet his mouf, he'd shoot him. I heerd de pistol go off, but Mars Dennis wasn't killed, fur I saw him steerin' afterwards."

"Thank God!" spoke the sailor, kissing the child. "Ellenory's boy was innocent, by smoke! That nigger-trader shot me an' threatened Levin's life if he listened to me hailing of him. The noise I heard was the murder of the baby, whose cries betrayed the coming of the vessel. Samson, thar's been treachery ever sence we left Salisbury, an' that nigger Dave's a part of it."

"He said he hated me caze I larned him to box. Maybe my fightin's been my punishment, Jimmy, but I never struck a man a foul blow."

"And what was your hokey-pokey?" the pungy captain cried to the man who had been making so much religious din. "Did they sell you fur never knowin' whar to stop a good thing?"

The man hoarsely explained, himself interested by the disclosures and fraternity around him:

"I was slave to a local preacher in Delaware, an' de sexton of de church. It was ole Barrett's chapel, up yer between Dover an' Murderkill - de church whar Bishop Coke an' Francis Asbury fust met on de pulpit stairs. My marster an' me was boff members of it, but he loved money bad, an' I was to be free when I got to be twenty-five years ole, accordin' to de will of his Quaker fader, dat left me to him. Las' Sunday night dey had a long class-meetin' dar, an' when nobody was leff in de church but my marster an' me, he says to me, 'Rodney, le's you an' me have one more prayer togedder befo' you put out dat las' lamp. You pray, Rodney!' I knelt an' prayed for marster after I must leave him to be free next year, an', while I was prayin' loud, people crept in de church an' tied me, and marster was gone."