"'She is my sister, Doctor.
They have had their shameful rights, these Nobles, in the modesty and virtue of our sisters, many years, but we have had good girls among us.
I know it, and have heard my father say so.
She was a good girl.
She was betrothed to a good young man, too: a tenant of his.
We were all tenants of his-that man's who stands there.
The other is his brother, the worst of a bad race.'
"It was with the greatest difficulty that the boy gathered bodily force to speak; but, his spirit spoke with a dreadful emphasis.
"'We were so robbed by that man who stands there, as all we common dogs are by those superior Beings-taxed by him without mercy, obliged to work for him without pay, obliged to grind our corn at his mill, obliged to feed scores of his tame birds on our wretched crops, and forbidden for our lives to keep a single tame bird of our own, pillaged and plundered to that degree that when we chanced to have a bit of meat, we ate it in fear, with the door barred and the shutters closed, that his people should not see it and take it from us-I say, we were so robbed, and hunted, and were made so poor, that our father told us it was a dreadful thing to bring a child into the world, and that what we should most pray for, was, that our women might be barren and our miserable race die out!'
"I had never before seen the sense of being oppressed, bursting forth like a fire. I had supposed that it must be latent in the people somewhere; but, I had never seen it break out, until I saw it in the dying boy.