"But, it is you, Yes!" he cried, using the Haitian idiom with its perpetual recurrence of "Yes" and "No," and went on, "and where is Monsieur your father?"
"I don't know," answered Stuart, speaking in English, which he knew Leon understood, though he did not speak it. "I have missed him."
"But where, and but how?" queried Leon, suddenly greatly excited. "Was he already going up to the Citadel?"
Stuart's face flushed with reflected excitement, but his eyes held the negro's steadily. Leon knew more than the boy had expected he would know.
"No," he replied, "I don't think so. I shall have to go."
"It is impossible, impossible, Yes!" cried Leon, throwing up his hands in protest. "I told Monsieur your father that it was impossible for him. And for you----"
Stuart felt a sinking at the pit of his stomach, for he was no braver than most boys. But the twist of his determination held him up.
"Leon," he said, trying to keep his voice steady, though he felt it sounded a little choked, "isn't there the juice of some root which will turn the skin brown, nearly black?"
"You would make yourself a black man?" he continued.
"If my father told you to get some, you would get it," he declared peremptorily.
This was a shrewd guess, for, as a matter of fact, there were a number of reasons why Leon should do what Mr. Garfield told him. The negro, who had no means of finding how much or how little the boy knew, shrugged his shoulders hugely, and, with a word of comment, left the house, carrying a lantern. He was back in half an hour with a handful of small plants, having long fibrous roots. These he cut off, placed in a pot, covering them with water, and set the pot on the stove over a slow fire.
"It will not come off the skin as easily as it goes on, No!" he warned.
"Time enough to think about that when I want to take it off," came the boy's reply.
The decoction ready, Leon rubbed it in thoroughly into Stuart's skin. It prickled and smarted a good deal at first, but this feeling of discomfort soon passed away.
Leon permitted himself a grim pleasantry.
This positive assertion was as reassuring in one way as it was disquieting in another. Stuart did not want to remain colored for an indefinite period of time. In his heart of hearts he began to wonder if he had not acted a little more hastily, and that if he had asked for Leon's advice instead of ordering him around, he might have found some milder stain. But it was too late to repent or retract now. His skin was a rich coffee brown from head to foot, and his dark eyes and black hair did not give his disguise the lie.