The nine young democrats who were lolling about the room in various attitudes rose as we entered, and with a familiar but rather deferential ‘Howdy’ge,’ to the Colonel, huddled around and stared at me with open mouths and distended eyes, as if I were a strange being dropped from some other sphere.  The two eldest were of the male gender, as was shown by their clothes—­cast-off suits of the inevitable reddish-gray—­much too large, and out at the elbows and the knees; but the sex of the others I was at a loss to determine, for they wore only a single robe, reaching, like their mother’s, from the neck to the knees.  Not one of the occupants of the cabin boasted a pair of stockings, but the father and mother did enjoy the luxury of shoes—­coarse, stout brogans, untanned, and of the color of the legs which they encased.

‘Well, Sandy, how is Lady?’ asked the Colonel, as he stepped to the bed of the wounded dog.

‘Reckon she’s a goner, Cunnel; the d——­d Yankee orter swing fur it.’

This intimation that the overseer was a ‘countryman’ of mine, took me by surprise, nothing I had observed in his speech or manners having indicated it, but I consoled myself with the reflection that Connecticut had reared him—­as she makes wooden hams and nutmegs—­expressly for the Southern market.’

‘He shall swing for it, by ——.  But are you sure the dog will die?’

’Not shore, Cunnel, but she can’t stand, and the blood will run.  I reckon a hun’red and fifty ar done for thar, sartin.’

’D——­ the money—­I’ll make that right.  Go to the house and get some ointment from Madam—­she can save her—­go at once,’ said my host.

‘I will, Cunnel,’ replied the dirt-eater, taking his broad-brim from the wooden peg where it was reposing, and leisurely leaving the cabin.  Making our way over the piles of rubbish and crowds of children that cumbered the apartment, the Colonel and I then returned to the carriage.

‘Dogs must be rare in this region,’ I remarked, as we resumed our seats.

’Yes, well-trained bloodhounds are scarce every where.  That dog is well worth a hundred and fifty dollars.’

‘The business of nigger-catching, then, is brisk, just now?’

‘No, not more brisk than usual.  We always have more or less runaways.’

‘Do most of them take to the swamps?’

’Yes, nine out of ten do, though now and then one gets off on a trading-vessel.  It is almost impossible for a strange nigger to make his way by land from here to the free States.’

’Then why do you Carolinians make such an outcry about the violation of the Fugitive Slave Law?’

’For the same reason that dogs quarrel over a naked bone.  We should be unhappy if we couldn’t growl at the Yankees,’ replied the Colonel, laughing heartily.

’We, you say; you mean by that, the hundred and eighty thousand nabobs who own five sixths of your slaves?’[4]