“But they used to whisper that he would gamble a lot.  We used to see a whole lot of men come up to the house sumptimes and stay up most of the night.  Sumptimes they would stay three or four days.  And once in a while after one of these big doings Mistuh Smith would look worried, and we wouldn’t get no meat and vary little of anything else for a long time.  He would be crabby and beat us for any little thing.  He used to tell my papa that he wouldn’t have a d—–­ cent until he made some crops.”

A few years before he left to enter the war the slave owner came into possession of a store near his plantation.  This store was in Greensboro.  Either because the business paid or because of another of his economic ‘bad spells’, ownership of his plantation passed to a man named Kimball and most of the slaves, with the exception of Bill Austin and one or two women—­either transferred with the plantation or sold.  Bill was kept to do errands and general work around the store.

Bill learned much about the operation of the store, with the result that when Mr. Smith left with the Southern Army he left his wife and Bill to continue its operation.  By this time there used to be frequent stories whispered among the slaves in the neighborhood—­and who came with their masters into the country store—­of how this or that slave ran away, and with the white man-power of the section engaged in war, remained at large for long periods or escaped altogether.

These stories always interested Austin, with the result that one morning he was absent when Mrs. Smith opened the store.  He remained away ’eight or nine days, I guess’, before a friend of the Smiths found him near Macon and threatened that he would ‘half kill him’ if he didn’t return immediately.

Either the threat—­or the fact that in Macon there were no readily available foodstuffs to be eaten all day as in the store—­caused Austin to return.  He was roundly berated by his mistress, but finally forgiven by the worried woman who needed his help around the store more than she needed the contrite promises and effusive declarations that he would ‘behave alright for the rest of his life.’

And he did behave; for several whole months.  But by this tine he was ’a great big boy’, and he had caught sight of a young woman who took his fancy on his trip to Macon.  She was free herself; her father had bought her freedom with that of her mother a few years before, and did odd jobs for the white people in the city for a livelihood.  Bill had thoughts of going back to Macon, marrying her, and bringing her back ’to work for Missus with me.’  He asked permission to go, and was refused on the grounds that his help was too badly needed at the store.  Shortly afterward he had again disappeared.

‘Missus’, however, knew too much of his plans by this time, and it was no difficult task to have him apprehended in Macon.  Bill may not have had such great objections to the apprehension, either, he says, because by this time he had learned that the young woman in Macon had no slightest intention to give up her freedom to join him at Greensboro.