you from my mistress. You're servant to Mr. Dyck Calhoun--ain't that
it?' And I nodded, and he smiled again--a smile that'd cost money
annywhere else than in Jamaica. He smiled again, and give a slow hitch
to his breeches as though they was fallin' down. Why, sir, he's the
longest bit of man you ever saw, with a pointed beard, and a nose that's
as long as a midshipman's tongue-dry, lean, and elastic. He's quick and
slow all at once. His small eyes twinkle like stars beatin' up against
bad weather, and his skin's the colour of Scots grass in the dead of
summer-yaller, he'd call it if he called it anything, and yaller was what
he called the look of the sky above the hills. Queer way of talk he has,
that man, as queer as--"

"I understand, Michael. But what else? How did you come to talk about
the affairs of Mrs. and Miss Llyn? He didn't just spit it out, did he?"

"Sure, not so quick and free as spittin', y'r honour; but when he'd
sorted me out, as it were, he said Miss Llyn had come out here to take
charge of Salem; her own estate in Virginia bein' in such good runnin'
order, and her mind bein' active. Word had come of the trouble with the
manager here, and one of the provost-marshal's deputies had written
accounts of the flogging and ill-treatment of slaves, and that's why
she come--to put things right at Salem!"

"To put things wrong in Jamaica, Michael, that's why she's come. To
loose the ball of confusion and free the flood of tragedy--that's why
she's come! Man, Michael, you know her history--who she was and what
happened to her father. Well, do you think there's no tragedy in her
coming here? I killed her father, they say, Michael. I was punished for
it. I came here to be free of all those things--lifted out and away from
them all. I longed to forget the past, which is only shame and torture;