light shifts. His daughter has the same, though her eyes are blue.
Moreover, through having been in the royal navy before he got a
wound which incapacitated him from further service, and was indeed
in time the cause of his death, he had acquired a swift suppleness
of silent movement, which his daughter has inherited also.

When he came upon us he stared for but one second, then came that
black flash into his eyes, and out curved an arm, and the little
maid was on her father's shoulder, and he was questioning me with
something of mistrust. I was a gentleman born and bred, but my
clothes sat but roughly and indifferently on me, partly through lack
of oversight and partly from that rude tumble I had gotten. Indeed,
my breeches and my coat were something torn by it. Then, too, I had
doubtless a look of ghastliness and astonishment that might well
have awaked suspicion, and Capt. Geoffry Cavendish had never spoken
with me in the short time since his return. "Who may you be?" he
asked, and his voice hesitated between hostility and friendliness,
and my stepfather answered for me with a slight forward thrust of
his shoulders which might have indicated shame, or impatience, or
both. "'Tis Master Harry Maria Wingfield," answered he; then in the
same breath, "How came you here, sir?"

I answered, seeing no reason why I should not, though I felt my
voice shake, being still unsteady with the pain, and told the truth,
that I had come thither to see if, perchance, I could get a glimpse
of some of the black folk. At that Captain Cavendish laughed
good-humouredly, being used to the excitement his black troop caused
and amused at it, and called out merrily that I was about to be
gratified, and indeed at that moment came running, with fat lunges,
as it were, of tremulous speed, a great black woman in pursuit of