‘Well, I don’t mind strikin’ a trade,’ says Tom:  ’but you see my nag’s worth a little risin’ a thousand dollars.’

‘I don’t doubt that, stranger,’ says I:  ’but ye’h sees this ’ar piece of property o’ mine is worth more ’an twelve hundred.  You don’t come across such a looking chap every day.  There’s a spec. in him, in any market down south,’ says I; and I puts my hands on the nigger and makes him show out, just as if Tom and me was striking for a trade.  So Tom examines him, as if he was green in nigger business, and he and me strangers just come from t’other side of moon shadows.

‘Well, now,’ says Tom, ’it’s mighty likely property, and seeing it’s you, jist name a trade.’

’Put down the nag and two hundred dollars, and I’ll sign the bill of sale, for a swap.’  And Tom plants down the dimes, and takes the nigger.  When Tom gets him to Savannah, he plunks him into jail, and keeps him locked up in a cell until he is ready to start south.  I promises the nigger half of the spiles; but I slips an X

Ten dollars. into his hand, and promises him the rest when he gets back-when he does!  And ye see how Tom just tryced him up to the cross and put thirty-nine to his bare skin when he talked about being free, in Savannah; and gagged him when he got his Ingin up.  Warn’t that doing the thing up slick, fellers?” exclaimed Romescos, chuckling over the sport.

“It warn’t nothing else.  That’s what I calls catching a nigger in his own trap,” said one.  “That’s sarvin’ him right; I go for sellin’ all niggers and Ingins,” said another.  “Free niggers have no souls, and are impediments to personal rights in a free country,” said a third.

“Ye’h see, there’s such an infernal lot of loose corners about our business, that it takes a feller what has got a big head to do all the things smooth, in a legal way; and it’s so profitable all round that it kind o’ tempts a feller, once in a while, to do things he don’t feel just right in; but then a glass of old monongahela brings ye’h all straight in yer feelins again, a’ter a few minutes,” said Romescos.

“It’s an amusing business; a man’s got to have nerve and maxim, if he wants to make a fortune at it.  But-now, gentlemen, we’ll take another round,” said Graspum, stopping short.  “Anthony, tell us how you work it when you want to run a free nigger down Maryland way.”

“There ain’t no trouble about that,” replied Romescos, quickly.  “You see,” he continued, squinting his eye, and holding his glass between his face and the light.  “Shut out all hope first, and then prime legal gentlemen along the road, and yer sartin to make safe business.  I has chaps what keeps their eye on all the free bits, and makes good fellers with ’em; niggers think they’r the right stripe friends; and then they gives ’em jobs once in a while, and tobacco, and whiskey.  So when I gets all fixed for a run, some on ’m gets the nigger into a sly spot, and then we pounces upon him like a hawk on a chicken-gags him, and screws him up in the chains, head and feet,—­boxes him up, too, and drives him like lightning until I meets Tilman at the cross-roads; and then I just has a document