In front of the fire which roared and crackled in the cavernous chimney, “Mam’ Dyce” rocked slowly, enjoying her clay pipe, and meditatively gazing up at an engraved portrait of “Our First President,” suspended on the wall.  It was appropriately framed in black, and where the cord that held it was twined around a hook, a bow and streamers of very brown and rusty crape fluttered, when a draught entered the apartment.

Obese in form, and glossy black in complexion, “Mam’ Dyce” retained in old age the scrupulous neatness which had characterized her youth, when promoted to the post of seamstress and ladies’ maid, she had ruled the servants’ realm at “Elm Bluff” with a sway as autocratic as that of Catherine over the Muscovites.  Her black calico dress, donned as mourning for her master, was relieved by a white apron tied about the ample waist; a snowy handkerchief was crossed over the vast bosom, and a checked white and black turban skilfully wound in intricate folds around her gray head, terminated in a peculiar knot, which was the pride of her toilet.  A beautiful spotted pointer dog with ears like brown satin, was lying asleep near the fire, but suddenly he lifted his head, rose, stretched himself and went to the door.  A moment later it opened, and the whilom major-domo, Abednego, came in; put his stick in one corner, hung his hat on a wooden peg, and approached the fireplace.

“Well, ole man; you know I tole you so.”

“You wimmen would ruther say that, than eat pound cake.  Supposin’ you did tell me, what’s the upshot?”

“That gimlet-eyed weasel is snuffing round you and me; but we won’t turn out to be spring chickens, ready picked.”

“Which is to signify that Miss Angerline smells a mouse?  Don’t talk parables, Dyce.  What’s she done now?”

“She is hankering after that hankchiff.  ’Pears to me, if she only went on four legs ’sted of two, she would sell high for a bloodhound.”

“Great Nebuckadanzer!  How did she find out?”

“Don’t ax me; ax the witches what she has in cahoot.  I always tole you, she had the eyes of a cunjor, and she has sarched it out.  Says she saw you when you found it; which ain’t true.  Eavesdrapping is her trade; she was fotch up on it, and her ears fit a key-hole, like a bung plugs a barrel.  She has eavesdrapped that hankchiff chat of our’n somehow.  Wuss than that, Bedney, she sot thar this evening and faced me down, that I was hiding something else; that I picked up something on the floor and hid it in my bosom, after the crowner’s inquess.  Sez I:  ’Well, Miss Angerline, you had better sarch me and be done with it, if you are the judge, and the jury, and the crowner, and the law, and have got the job to run this case.’  Sez she, a-squinting them venomous eyes of her’n, till they looked like knitting needles red hot:  ’I leave the sarching to be done by the cunstable—­when you are ’rested and handcuffed for ’betting of murder.’  Then my dander riz.  Sez I, ’Crack your whip and go ahead!  You know how, seeing you is the offspring of a Yankee overseer, what my marster, Gin’l Darrington, had ’rested for beating one of our wimen, on our ‘Bend’ plantation.  You and your pa is as much alike, as two shrivelled cow peas out’en one pod.  Fetch your cunstable, and help yourselves.’”