“And what we all for do here, when you leff? ’speck ebbery ting be dull, wuss nor ditch-water.  No more fun—­no more shuffle-foot.  Old maussa no like de fiddle, and nebber hab party and jollication like udder people.  Don’t tink I can stay here, Mass Ra’ph, after you gone; ’spose, you no ’jection, I go ’long wid you?  You leff me, I take to de swamp, sure as a gun.”

“No, Caesar, you are not mine; you belong to your young mistress.  You must stay and wait upon her.”

“Ha!” was the quick response of the black, with a significant smirk upon his lip, and with a cunning emphasis; “enty I see; wha’ for I hab eye ef I no see wid em?  I ’speck young misses hab no ’jection for go too—­eh, Mass Ra’ph! all you hab for do is for ax em!”

The eye of the youth danced with a playful light, as if a new thought, and not a disagreeable one, had suddenly broken in upon his brain; but the expression lasted but for an instant He overruled all the hopes and wishes of the sturdy black, who, at length, with a manner the most desponding, proceeded to the performance of the required duty.  A few moments sufficed, and with a single look to the window of his mistress, which spoke unseen volumes of love, leaving an explanatory letter for the perusal of father and daughter, though addressed only to the latter—­he gave the rough hand of his sable friend a cordial pressure, and was soon hidden from sight by the thickly-spreading foliage of the long avenue.  The reader has been already apprized that the youth, whose escape in a preceding chapter we have already narrated, and Ralph Colleton, are one and the same person.

He had set forth, as we have seen, under the excitation of feelings strictly natural; but which, subtracting from the strong common sense belonging to his character, had led him prematurely into an adventure, having no distinct purposes, and promising largely of difficulty.  What were his thoughts of the future, what his designs, we are not prepared to say.  His character was of a firm and independent kind; and the probability is, that, looking to the profession of the law, in the study of which noble science his mind had been for some time occupied, he had contemplated its future practice in those portions of Tennessee in which his father had been known, and where he himself had passed some very pleasant years of his own life.  With economy, a moderate talent, and habits of industry, he was well aware that, in those regions, the means of life are with little difficulty attainable by those who are worthy and will adventure.  Let us now return to the wayfarer, whom we have left in that wildest region of the then little-settled state of Georgia—­doubly wild as forming the debatable land between the savage and the civilized—­partaking of the ferocity of the one and the skill, cunning, and cupidity of the other.

CHAPTER V.

MARK FORRESTER—­THE GOLD VILLAGE.