His erstwhile bright alertness was all departed.

His face was growing vacuous, his eyes were dull and lack-lustre, and he moved in a cringing, furtive manner, like an over-beaten dog.

He had survived the ill-nourishment, the excessive work on the sugar plantation under a pitiless sun, the lashes of the overseer's whip when his labours flagged, and the deadly, unrelieved animal life to which he was condemned.

But the price he was paying for survival was the usual price.

He was in danger of becoming no better than an animal, of sinking to the level of the negroes who sometimes toiled beside him.