IN THE SHADOW
eaten, …. except the little things which I have found in the swamp … in the woods. Yes, I would like to eat! I am very hungry, … but not so much as at first. Poor Dessalines is hungry!" He began to sob, and the great emaciated frame of his body was shaken.
"Come," said Virginia. "This will not do, Count Dessalines. You must have courage; come now to the house with me." She paused, startled at his sudden expression of terror.
"No, no, no! They would see me! They would kill me!"
"Nonsense," said Virginia sharply. She thought that his suffering, his famine, had made him light-headed. "Who wishes to kill you?"
"The men on horseback; they have shot at me many times. Look there!" He stepped to the girl's side and pointed across the rice fields to where, half a mile away, the main dike skirted the edge of the Caw Caw Swamp. "Do you see that single tree? follow this canal; it is where it stops. That is the only place within a mile where a man can leave the swamp; where the rattoons spring far enough apart to make it possible to shove a bateau between. The water is deeper than one's head. There are other places like that and there is a man with a rifle watching for me at each. Perhaps you can see that black speck; that is a man!" His intelligence seemed to return; to take strength in the protecting atmosphere of Virginia.
"But—but why do they wish to kill you?" she asked.
"They think that I am another man; I will tell you the whole story." He began to mumble the words again; Virginia with difficulty followed his speech. "After I
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