Free The Four Pools Mystery by Jean Webster Page B

the entire neighborhood. We had arrived at a party a trifle late to find Polly as usual the center of a laughing group of young men, all clamoring for dances. They widened their circle to admit Rad in a way which tacitly acknowledged his prior claim. He inquired with his most deferential bow what dances she had saved for him. Polly replied in an off-hand manner that she was sorry but her card was already full. Rad shrugged nonchalantly, and sauntering toward the door, disappeared for the rest of the night. When he turned up at Four-Pools early in the morning, his horse, Uncle Jake informed me, looked as if it had been ridden by "de debbil hisself."
    With Radnor in this state, and the Colonel growing daily more irritable over the continued mystery of the bonds, it is not strange that matters between them were at a high state of tension. As I saw more of the Colonel's treatment of Rad, I came to realize that there was considerable excuse for Jefferson's wildness. While he was a kind man at heart, still he had an ungovernable temper, and an absolutely tyrannical desire to rule every one about him. His was the only free will allowed on the place. He attempted to treat Rad at twenty-two much as he had done at twelve. A few months before my arrival (I heard this later) he had even struck him, whereupon Radnor had turned on his heel and walked out of the house, and had only consented to come back two weeks later when he heard that the old man was ill. If two men ever needed a woman to manage them, these were the two. I think that if my aunt had lived, most of the trouble would have been avoided.
    Rad was not the only one, however, who felt the Colonel's irritation over the robbery. His treatment of the servants was harsh and even cruel. Everybody on the place went about in a half-cowed fashion. He treated Mose like a dog. Why the fellow stood it, I don't know. The Colonel seemed never to have learned that the old slave days were over and that he no longer owned the negroes body and soul. His government of the plantation was in the manner of a despot. Everybody--from his own son to the merest pickaninny--was at the mercy of his caprice. When he was in good humor, he was kindness itself to the darkies; when he was in bad humor, he vented his anger on whoever happened to be nearest.
    I shall never forget the feeling of indignation with which I first saw him strike a man. A strange negro was caught one morning in the neighborhood of the chicken coop, and was brought up to the house by two of the stable-men. My uncle, who was standing on the portico steps waiting for his horse, was in a particularly savage mood, as he had just come from an altercation with Radnor. The man said that he was hungry and asked for work. But the Colonel, almost without waiting to hear him speak, fell upon him in a fit of blind rage, slashing him half a dozen times over the head and shoulders with his heavy riding crop. The negro, who was a powerfully built fellow, instead of standing up and defending himself like a man, crouched on the ground with his arms over his head.
    "Please, Cunnel Gaylord," he whimpered, "le' me go! I ain't done nuffen. I ain't steal no chickens. For Gord's sake, doan whip me!"
    I sprang forward with an angry exclamation and grasped my uncle's arm. The fellow was on his feet instantly and off down the lane without once glancing back. The Colonel stood a moment looking from my indignant face to the man disappearing in the distance, and burst out laughing.
    "I reckon I won't be troubled with him any more," he remarked as he mounted and rode away, his good humor apparently quite restored.
    I confess that it took me some time to get over that scene. But the worst of it was that he treated his own servants in the same summary fashion. The thing that puzzled me most was the way in which they received it. Mose, being always at hand, was cuffed about more than any negro on the place, but as far as I could make out, it only seemed to increase his