’I tell you, Alice, I can not—­must not do it.  If I overlook this, the discipline of the plantation is at an end.’

‘Do what you please with him when you return,’ replied the lady, ’but do not chain him up, and leave me, at such a time, alone.  You know Jim is the only one I can depend on.’

’Well, have your own way.  You know, my darling, I would not cause you a moment’s uneasiness, but I must follow up this d——­d Moye.’

I was seated where I could hear, though I could not see the speakers, but it was evident from the tone of the last remark, that an action accompanied it quite as tender as the words.  Being unwilling to overhear more of a private conversation, I rose and approached them.

‘Ah! my dear fellow,’ said the Colonel, on perceiving me, ’are you stirring so early?  I was about to send to your room to ask if you’ll go with me up the country.  My d——­d overseer has got away, and I must follow him at once.’

‘I’ll go with pleasure,’ I replied.  ’Which way do you think Moye has gone?’

’The shortest cut to the railroad, probably; but old Caesar will track him.’

A servant then announced breakfast—­an early one having been prepared.  We hurried through the meal with all speed, and the other preparations being soon over, were in twenty minutes in our saddles, and ready for the journey.  The mulatto coachman, with a third horse, was at the door, ready to accompany us, and as we mounted, the Colonel said to him: 

‘Go and call Sam, the driver.’

The darky soon returned with the heavy, ugly-visaged black who had been whipped, by Madam P——­’s order, the day before.

‘Sam,’ said his master, ’I shall be gone some days, and I leave the field-work in your hands.  Let me have a good account of you when I return.’

‘Yas, massa, you shill dat,’ replied the negro.

’Put Jule—­Sam’s Jule—­into the field, and see that she does full tasks,’ continued the Colonel.

’Hain’t she wanted ‘mong de nusses, massa?’

‘Put some one else there—­give her field-work; she needs it.’

I will here explain that on large plantations the young children of the field-women are left with them only at night, being herded together during the day in a separate cabin, in charge of nurses.  These nurses are feeble, sickly women, or recent mothers; and the fact of Jule’s being employed in that capacity was evidence that she was unfit for out-door labor.

Madam P——­, who was waiting on the piazza to see us off, seemed about to remonstrate against this arrangement, but she hesitated a moment, and in that moment we had bidden her ‘Good-by,’ and galloped away.

We were soon at the cabin of the negro-hunter, and the coachman dismounting, called him out.

‘Hurry up, hurry up,’ said the Colonel, as Sandy appeared, ’we haven’t a moment to spare.’

‘Jest so, jest so, Cunnel; I’ll jine ye in a jiffin,’ replied he of the reddish extremities.