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.''And are they all as well educated as yourself?''They ain't got no well educated field slave, Mr Hilton.It is all depending on what you train for.I did be a field slave, one time.Man, I did be a driver.But then they see how's I got brains like them, and they sell me too good.Now, I am a clerk, so I got for be educated.''I see.And are you happy, to be educated?'At last the big man's head turned.'Slave can be happy, Mr Hilton?''Ah.No, I suppose it is difficult.Yet there is not much trouble in Jamaica, I have been told.' 'Trouble, sir?''Well, when you think of what has happened in St Domingue'Them boys had more cause, maybe,' Merriman said thoughtfully.'And there weren't no government, that time, what with the revolution in France.Jamaica got plenty government.And anyway, where would they go? The Cockpit Country ain't no good now.''The Cockpit Country?''Well, sir, Mr Hilton, is a bad place in the north, all hill and ravine and bog and river.And is where all the runaway slaves did go, oh, since the Spaniards held Jamaica.So they become a nation, like, and the white folk call them Maroons.And they fighting, fighting, with the white folk all them years, but they getting push back, and back.And you know what, when they know what is happening in St Domingue, they start fighting again.That is only fifteen years gone.But they get beat again, and they sign treaty with the Governor.He ain't going trouble them no more, providing there ain't no murder up there, and they ain't going trouble the white folk no more.And they going send back any runaways what join them.That is the thing.' He urged his mule a little faster, came to the top of a rise, and pointed.'Hilltop, Mr Hilton.'And as if he had given a magic signal, the moon, enormous and round and yellow, and so low it might have been a lantern held by a giant, topped the mountains to send cold yellow light across the valley beneath them.Less a valley, Dick thought, than a large amphitheatre, almost oval in shape, mainly an endless series of canefields, but cleared in the centre, perhaps three miles away; there the moonlight showed up the sloping roofs and white walls of a little town, dominated by its chapel, silent in the darkness; farther off he could make out the bulk of the boiling house, also suggestive of a church because of its enormous chimney pointing skywards — and was it not a church, he thought, the religion of an entire economy—and then the equally orderly rows of logies in the slave village.He swung his gaze round, Mama's descriptions returning to him, and found the stables and the kitchens and the slight, man-made rise on which stood the Great House, four-square and two-storied, the white-painted verandahs shimmering in the half light, the rest of the house in darkness save for a slight glow from one of the downstairs rooms.Hilltop! The name, given to a protected valley, somehow epitomized all the Hilton philosophy.Or was it the Hilton arrogance?'I can ask, sir?' Merriman suggested.'Anything you like.''Is what it is feeling like, Mr Hilton, sir, to own all this?'Dick glanced at the man.'Feel like.It is terrifying, if you really want to know, Joshua.Come on.'He kicked his horse, sent it galloping down the slope, dust flying from its heels.Up the beaten earth road he raced, the tall cane stalks waving gently beside him, hooves setting up an echo.Past the white village, where a dog commenced to bark, and was soon joined by another, and up the slope to the house, head spinning now, breath panting to match that of his horse, aware only of a consuming excitement, which made him feel almost sick, bubbling up from his belly.'Hold there.'He dragged on his rein, and the horse gasped to a halt before the steps of the