“Have confidence, my good fellow,” the stranger speaks, with a smile; “my mission is love and peace.”  He places a chair beside a small table in the centre of the room; bids the negro sit down, which he does with some hesitation.  The room is small; it contains a table, bureau, washstand, bed, and four chairs, which, together with a few small prints hanging from the dingy walls, and a square piece of carpet in the centre of the room, constitute its furniture.  “You know Marston’s plantation-know it as it was when Marston resided thereon, do you?” enquires the stranger, seating himself beside the negro, who evidently is not used to this sort of familiarity.

“Know ’um well, dat I does,” answers the negro, quickly, as if the question had recalled scenes of the past.

“And you know the people, too, I suppose?”

“Da’h people!” ejaculates the negro, with a rhapsody of enthusiasm; “reckon I does.”

“Will you recount them.”

The negro, commencing with old master, recounts the names of Miss Franconia, Clotilda, Ellen, Aunt Rachel, old Daddy Bob, and Harry.

“It is enough,” says the stranger, “they are all familiar names.”

“Did you know my good old master?” interrupts the negro, suddenly, as if detecting some familiar feature in the stranger’s countenance.

“No,” he replies, measuredly; “but his name has sounded in my ears a thousand times.  Tell me where are the children, Annette and Nicholas? and where may I find Franconia?”

The negro shakes his head, and remains silent for a few minutes.  At length he raises his hand, and in a half-whisper says, “Gone, gone, gone; sold and scattered, good mas’r.  Habn’t see dem child dis many a day:  reckon da’h done gone down south.”  He hesitates suddenly, as if calling something to memory; and then, placing his left hand on the stranger’s right arm, as he rubs his left across his forehead, stammers out-"Mas’r, mas’r, I reckon dis child do know somefin ’bout Miss Frankone.  Anyhow, mas’r (ye knows I’se nigger do’h, and don’t keep up ’quaintance a’ter mas’r sell um), can put ye straight ’bout Missus Rosebrook’s house, and reckon how dat lady can put ye straight on Miss Frankone’s where’bout.”  It is what the stranger wants.  He has heard of Mrs. Rosebrook before; she will give him the information he seeks; so, turning again to the negro, he tells him that, for a few days at least, he shall require his presence at the same hour in the evening:  tonight he must conduct him to Mrs. Rosebrook’s sequestered villa.

The watch-tower bell of the guard-house sounds forth nine o’clock.  The soldier-like sentinel, pacing with loaded musket, and armed with sharpest steel, cries out in hoarse accents, “All’s well!” The bell is summoning all negroes to their habitations:  our guide, Bill, informs the stranger that he must have a “pass” from a white man before he can venture into the street.  “Mas’r may write ’um,” he says, knowing that it matters but little from whom