She made one poor attempt, but her husband was nearer doing her an unkindness than ever he had been before; he made a slow sign for silence--with his fist; and every mouth was stopped.
At midnight following, there came, on the breeze that blew from the mansion, a sound of running here and there, of wailing and sobbing--another Bridegroom was coming, and the Spaniard, with much such a lamp in hand as most of us shall be found with, neither burning brightly nor wholly gone out, went forth to meet Him.
"Bras-Coupe," said Palmyre, next evening, speaking low in his mangled ear, "the master is dead; he is just buried.

As he was dying, Bras-Coupe, he asked that you would forgive him." The maimed man looked steadfastly at his wife.

He had not spoken since the lash struck him, and he spoke not now; but in those large, clear eyes, where his remaining strength seemed to have taken refuge as in a citadel, the old fierceness flared up for a moment, and then, like an expiring beacon, went out.
"Is your mistress well enough by this time to venture here ?" whispered the overseer to Palmyre.

"Let her come.

Tell her not to fear, but to bring the babe--in her own arms, tell her--quickly!" The lady came, her infant boy in her arms, knelt down beside the bed of sweet grass and set the child within the hollow of the African's arm.
Bras-Coupe turned his gaze upon it; it smiled, its mother's smile, and put its hand upon the runaway's face, and the first tears of Bras-Coupe's life, the dying testimony of his humanity, gushed from his eyes and rolled down his cheek upon the infant's hand.