Library of Congress Subject Headings, 21st edition, 1998

Languages Used:

• English

LC Subject Headings:

• African Americans -- Alabama -- Fiction.
  
• Slaves -- Alabama -- Fiction.
  
• Slaves -- Alabama -- Sexual behavior -- Fiction.
  
• Slaveholders -- Alabama -- Sexual behavior -- Fiction.
  
• Slavery -- Alabama -- Fiction.
  
• Plantation life -- Alabama -- Fiction.
  

Revision History:

• 2003-08-22,
  Celine Noel and Wanda Gunther
  revised TEIHeader and created catalog record for the electronic edition.
  
  
• 2001-04-20,
  Natalia Smith, project manager,
  finished TEI-conformant encoding and final proofing.
  
  
• 2001-03-30,
  Lee Ann Morawski
  finished TEI/SGML encoding
  
  
• 2001-03-23,
  Apex Data Services, Inc.
  finished transcribing the text.
  
  

[Frontispiece Image]

[Title Page Image]

[Title Page Verso Image]

The Story of a Slave A realistic revelation of a social relation of slave times--
hitherto unwritten--from the pen of one who
has felt both the lash and the caress
of a mistress.

PUBLISHED FOR THE TRADE.

CONTENTS.

• PREFACE
• RETROSPECTION
• I YOUR MASTER WANTS A HOUSE-BOY 5
• II A HOUSE-BOY'S TEMPTATION 14
• III THE YOUNG MISTRESS RETURNS 30
• IV AN UNEXPECTED COMMAND 42
• V THE LASH OF THE MISTRESS 53
• VI THE ACCIDENT 68
• VII AWAKENING SENSIBILITIES 80
• VIII A SYMPATHETIC AUDITOR 92
• IX THE MOTH LINGERS 105
• X SUNSHINE AND SHADOW 122
• XI THE AFTERMATH OF ANGUISH 133
• XII WELCOME VISITORS 144
• XIII LOVE REIGNS SUPREME 156
• XIV DISQUIETING FEARS 168
• XV THE BITTERNESS OF DEATH 181
• XVI "IS A WOMAN'S HEART A SPONGE?" 193
• XVII THE CHASTENING ROD 205

PREFACE.

        Had it been possible in the discussion of the Negro Question in the ante-bellum days as well as since to have removed its agitation from the political arena into the more penetrating light of the Forum of Reason, in which the vital questions of civilization alone find just and final settlement, what bloodshed might have been averted and what acrimony and sectional hatred might never have been aroused to disturb the peace, the prosperity and tranquillity of our country? We are told that the Civil War was inevitable. Yet in this hour of dispassionate philosophy, it is clear to the unbiased student of Sociology that had the Negro Question--the institution of slavery--been more fully understood in its social as well as political bearing, the settlement of the question--one infinitely more just to all concerned and promotive of an infinitely higher political and social status, might have resulted from a peaceful abandonment of an institution wholly foreign to the American atmosphere and equally inimical to American progress--social and industrial. But it was not understood, and in failing to have been, lay the gravest consequences to the peace of the Nation.

        It is but just, however, that many of the distorted and in many instances wholly inaccurate and perverted views of slave life--painted in the moments of heated and acrimonious partisan debate--be corrected or wholly obliterated. To accomplish this, it is necessary to lift the dust-laden veil which has obscured the truer pictures,

and thereby give the reader who would look upon a faithful portrayal, a glimpse into a social condition possible only in the Old South under slavery, of which comparatively little has been told and less has been written.

        We say glimpse, because in the narrative which follows the autobiographer confines himself to a faithful accounting of the events which marked his own life in bondage, analyzing the problems which slavery presented, only in their relevancy to his own condition. Much that is not said, and more which cannot be written, is plainly to be read between the lines.

        As a penetralia of the old Southern home, it discloses to profane eyes the anomalous relation which the slave held in the household--a relation which hardly justifies retaining some of the pictures which have been burned into the imaginations of the people and the very pages of history by the inflamed partisan and misinformed philanthropist--pictures which invoked such righteous indignation for the "horrors" of the institution of slavery. Had the truer picture been taken at the time--the abolition of the system would have been demanded no less speedily--but its abandonment might have been accomplished at infinitely less cost to the Nation, the people of the South, and to the Negro himself.^*

        * It is not the purpose of the prefacer to show wherein Emancipation failed to solve the Negro Question--save so far as any other party or political expedient could have done--suffice it to point out the indisputable fact that the Negro Question confronts us today and particularly the people of the South with mein grave and portentous. Let the statesman and the student examine the labor situation of the South and then deny.

        But every transgression of nature's laws carries with it a swift and sure punishment, and who after comprehending the paradoxical position in which the master placed his bondman, but will regard the price paid by the former as in the very nature of retributive justice. What excuse can be offered for such a blind disregard of the very strongest law of nature?

        That the slaveholder regarded the Negro as a human species of a lower type than his own--from which status, despite, too, the oft-time preponderance of Caucasian blood, he was morally and physically unable to arise, much less aspire--was clearly shown in the vast liberties allowed the slaves in the household. That the bondman did on more than one occasion rise far above the status described by the master, should not be cause for wonder at this day, when both the political and social equalities of the races are better understood, if not generally conceded. And granting that a majority of the slaves were incapable of attaining to an intellectual equality with the masters what excuse can be offered for having imposed upon the bondman a condition which was the very essence of refined cruelty and torture? Did the slaveholder--the aristocratic master--pay the penalty for his egregious blunder? The traditions of the freedman will sufficiently answer.

        To those who have a correct knowledge of the familiarity which the Negro, now a freedman, enjoys today in the Southern household, "The Story of a Slave" will not come wholly as a revelation. Much as the slaveholder of former times and the present employer of Negro labor in the South, regard themselves immeasurably above the

blackman, they held and still hold the latter as an indispensable fixture in the household, in the field, and in the factory. The Negro having been accorded so useful and permanent a position in the domestic and industrial fabric of the South, is it any wonder that the social fabric should show upon its woof of white the unmistakable evidences of its ever-present warp--a cross of--black? To have expected otherwise would have been to ignore the most imperative, the most irresistible law of nature.

        In the North, where freedom, and particularly Negro freedom, has ever been preached as a gospel--where emancipation was considered essential to the preservation of the Union--the Negro himself has ever been held at arms-length socially, and freedman, though he has ever been, his social status has been one of prescribed limits, enforced by convention if not upheld by law. Therefore to a majority of the people of the North the position of the slave in the old Southern household will appear all the more anomalous, the ignorance of facts having resulted wholly from an inadequate and at best wholly superficial study of the race and labor question of the South.

        For this reason, coming even at this late day, "The Story of a Slave," will carry with it ample food for the serious reflections of the students of Sociology and open up an avenue of discussion which has been obstructed by political exegency and through which alone can come a pacific settlement of the social problem of the South.

        Dismissing entirely the importance of the philosophical deductions, which can be made from the pages which follow, and looking at the "Story of a Slave" purely as the memoirs of one whose youth and early manhood were

spent in the despised station of a bondman, first on the plantation and later in the household of his master in Alabama, the morals to be drawn, if such there be, must depend largely upon their authenticity as an autobiography. It is for this reason that it is desired to fully impress the reader as to their genuineness--without desiring or attempting to impose upon his credulity in the smallest measure. The thread of romance which runs throughout the narrative was not spun from the distaff of Fiction, but from that distaff of Fate, from which runs the ever-varying, never-ending thread of destiny, holding in its slender bond, joys for some and sorrows for us all. Is there need to explain why the identity of the autobiographer is withheld? Were the "Story of a Slave" an invention, or did it pursue less closely the events which in almost startling sequence rounded up his life in bondage, or laid less bare the lives of those intimately related there to, a pseudonym might have taken the place of the real name of the author. But why attempt to mislead investigation in one direction or invite speculation in another by such an apparent subterfuge? Could the real name be given, it would startle the reader hardly less sensibly than will the story. The eminence which he has since attained, the well-earned successes which have come to him in his life as a freedman, devoted to labors which would adorn the proudest manhood, would possibly be the strongest proofs which could be advanced to convince the most skeptical as to the truthfulness of the story, disclosing, as they would, a character and personality which would reconcile even the most intolerant "nigger-hater" to the startling, yet not unnatural denouement of the story.

        It is upon this one point, no doubt, that the veracity of the autobiographer will be assailed, but to those who may thrust aside as absurd or abhorrent the possibility of such a relation between mistress and slave (the common relation between master and his black bondwomen requiring no proof or defence here) to them we will say that hundreds of indisputable proofs can be quickly advanced to show that such relations were not only sustained in other instances, but that in many, nay, in a majority, they did not as in this, emanate from, or were they hallowed by, a mutual love, however justified they may have been by the wretchedly perverted social condition of which they were an inevitable consequence.

        While in the annals of slavery there is scarcely a mention of this condition, while in the volumes written and spoken in antagonism of the then existing system of slavery never a syllable was uttered, while the press itself with rare exceptions and with a consideration strangely in contrast with journalistic enterprise of this period, passed over the most flagrant instances, without comment, often dismissing with "A Taste of Hell for a Ravisher," what should have been called "Another Burnt Offering" on the altar of the Furies of Slavery, it was and should have been one of the strongest and most appealing reasons for the speedy abolition of the iniquitous system. And only one who has given this subject the serious consideration it deserves, and acquainted himself with the real facts and the social conditions which were inseparable from that institution, can appreciate the truth and motive of the "Story of a Slave."

THE PUBLISHERS.

THE STORY OF A SLAVE.

RETROSPECTION.

        It is now more than thirty years ago, counted by the lapse of days it seems but a little while, scarcely a decade; but measured by events, the mutations and astounding changes that have come in such marvelous rapidity, it may be counted a century.

        I was young then, in the full vigor of lusty manhood. I am really not so very old now, and still straight, and strong, and active, but not strong as I was then. Not so full of the bounding, melting, passionate vitality of life, not so buoyant with animal vivre. I feel the tempering hand of years.

        I was a slave then, a human chattel, but one degree above a horse, to be bought and sold, beaten and driven at the caprice of a master or the still more eccentric whim of a mistress. I am a freeman now, clad in the proudest political vesture that ever clothed a freeman, the panoply of American citizenship.

        But it is not for this that I care. Freedom and the franchise, with their magnificent political possibilities, have brought no pleasures to me. Their honors I have worn and could still command, but they are hardly worth the wearing, and still less the winning. Where ignorance, and prejudice, and superstition are the stepping-stones to distinction, it is no great merit to attain it.

        The golden days of my life, the bright joy of living,

the triumph of my manhood, the heavenly bliss of loving, came to me as a slave. One day, even the most insipid of that happy, happy epoch, is worth more to me than all the years I have lived since. I would not exchange its bitterest memories for all the honors men could pile upon me.

        It is not a half century since, and all these changes have come. She of whom I am going to write is dead now. Her sins--if sins they be--are with her Savior, and her secret is left alone with me. No human being, save us two, ever knew or ever suspected, not even those nearest to her, whom she has left behind.

        No breath of scandal, no taint of shame, no shadow of reproach ever clouded the cerulean purity of her name. With impunity to her memory, I could mount the house top and proclaim aloud the story of her heart's hidden secret; for no one would believe me, and in grateful reverence I bow my head and thank my God that it is so. Those who knew her and loved her, that gentlest, sweetest, and fairest of women, can proudly stand before the world and defy the accusation of an angel from the foot of the Great Throne itself, because in their hearts and in the eyes of all men and all women, she was pure as the spotless daughter of Jeptha was pure.

        Nor is it for me, who loved her so well, to defile her memory. Oh, no! Sooner than write one line that would identify her, I should wish my wrist to rot from its socket. But there is no danger. Her children, now grown and married, can read all that I write and never once dream that it is of their gentle mother I write. Her identity and her secret are alone with me, with me and my God, and no mortal may ever know of whom it is I speak.

        But why write at all? Why not let it rest with her in the silence of death? Why not still the aching throb of my heart, as I have hushed it all these years, and go down to my grave with its sweetest idyl unsung?

        Perhaps I should; only I cannot. My heart is so full of her, of her kindness, her beauty, her sweetness, that it is choking for utterance, and I must needs speak or it will burst.

                         Love scorns degrees; the low he lifteth high,
                         The high he draweth down to that fair plane
                         Whereon, in his divine equality,
                         Two loving hearts may meet, nor meet in vain.

--PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE.

THE STORY OF A SLAVE.

CHAPTER I.
YOUR MASTER WANTS A HOUSE-BOY.

        I was born a slave on one of the river plantations of my mother's master, General Jules Choteaux, an old soldier of the Empire, who, after the disastrous wreck of Waterloo, had sought safety to neck and fortune in the wilderness of Alabama.

        It was no unmeaning boast of my mother that she was no common negress. There was no Guinea blood in her veins, no ashy Congo, but pure, proud Senegambia. And more than that, she was of royal blood, daughter of a prince, and granddaughter of a king. Her father, "daddy T'sa," and mother, "mammy Zozu," were brother and sister, eldest and twin children of the King of Uamassa. Heirs to the throne, they were married while children, and would have succeeded to the kingdom had they not been captured by an invading host and sold into slavery before they were yet full grown. Happily, they were not separated during the long voyage across the seas, and more fortunate still, they were both bought, with a gang of others, by the old General and placed upon the same plantation, where, in due course of time, my mother was born.

        Inheriting something of her parent's princely dignity of

character and pride of caste, my mother grew up feeling an innate superiority to her black yoke-mates in slavery. Her parents had told her of her royal descent--for negroes are as tenacious of caste as other races--and taught her to despise the common negro, the plebian herd. Thus despising, she could not, when grown into lissom womanhood, consort with one of their number, and so, looking higher, she gave me for a father her young master, Jules, the eldest son of General Choteaux--for negress as she was, and black as the purest-blooded negro could be black, she was a remarkably attractive woman, whose good looks, graceful figure, voluptuous bust, cleanliness of dress, and queenly air, caught the vagrant fancy of the young master, not very dainty at best; and so, without thought for the issue, I was begot--conceived and born.

        I am thus particular, at the risk of being tedious, in giving the particulars of my lineage and birth, that the reader in judging my presumption, my longings, my desperate and seemingly sacrilegious love, may the more fully understand all its controlling influences. I wish them to see me as I was, to put themselves in my place, to stand as I stood, a mulatto slave, but still a man--a strong, robust man--with the blood of a savage race of kings mingling in my veins with the passionate blood of a high-spirited southerner, to feel as I felt, with the heart, the brain, the sensibilities, and the passions of a man.

        My father never saw me; he would not have acknowledged or even noticed me if he had. The day upon which I was born, he was killed in a duel at Bladenburg, a few miles beyond Washington. That same year, the old master, General Choteaux, was gathered to fathers fathers, and the

vast plantations, with the hundreds of negroes, passed into the possession of his only surviving heir, Gustave Choteaux, at once my uncle and my master.

        I remember, very pleasantly, my boyhood's days on the plantation. Slavish though they were, they were not hard. There were more negroes, stout, able-bodies men and women, than could be profitably employed at work, and save, at certain seasons, to herd the cattle in the canebrake, we youngsters had nothing to do but to eat, to drink, to trap birds, to fish, and to roam the woods for berries and nuts. The business of the old plantation consisted as much in raising negroes as it did in cotton or sugar, and like a lot of thoroughbred colts fattening for market the young negroes were allowed to frisk at will.

        My aristocratic mother took care to impress me with a due sense of my own superior birth. She told me of my royal descent through her, and of my father's claims to distinguished ancestry. My grandfather, her master, she told me, had been an officer under the Grande Napoleon, and his father was a peer of France.

        "Through me," she said, over and over again, "you have the blood of kings in your veins, and through your father you have the best blood of freemen. Now you must remember this, and let me catch you fooling with one of these corn-field niggers."

        Thus inspired and admonished, I fell into my mother's ways and grew up feeling in my own superiority a pitying contempt for the more ignorant and stotish of my fellow slaves. And then, a little later on, as I grew more intelligent, my mind began to reach out with a wondering yearning for knowledge. The wish to learn how to read

and write as I saw the overseer's children learning, took possession of me.

        I was handy with my knife and had fashioned me a pretty bow and set of arrows, with which to shoot birds, lizards and frogs. This toy excited the cupidity of Willie Gans, the son of the overseer, a lad of about my own age, and he proposed to buy it. I agreed to let him have it for one of his old spelling books, provided he would teach me as far as "baker," and the lessons were started then and there. This was one Friday afternoon, and by supper I had mastered the intricate mysteries of the alphabet and by Sunday evening I knew every little syllable and word to "baker."

        "And now, Willie," I supplemented, "I will give you my pet squirrel and a poke full of goobers if you will teach me all through the book."

        "I will do it" he said, and in a month's time, encourraged by the plaudits of my mother, and by unflagging interest and close application I was as perfect in orthography as it was possible for that good old spelling book to make me.

        This, the most difficult step surmounted, I found no further trouble in climbing into the temple of knowledge, the only drawback being the lack of books.

        My mother helped me over this trouble by placing a well-filled gourd of picayunes and dimes, the accumulated savings of her patient life, at my disposal, and through the friendly offices of Willie, I managed to get together quite a little shelf of simple but useful books, stretching in their range from Mother Goose's Melodies to a battered copy of Pope's Translation of Homer's Iliad.

        But time wore on and when I was about eighteen years old, I with a gang of other young fellows like myself, was put in the field to work. The task was light, however, and I did not mind it, I was young, well grown to my age, in fact a man in stature, active, lithe and strong, and happily had a ready knack and disposition for work. I could easily lead all others in anything we had to do. As I look back now, after all the changes that have come, and review my life and my work on that river plantation, cut off almost from all intercourse with the outside world, I do not find in it so much to condemn or deplore. We worked it is true, but not tiringly or unwillingly. We were hale, healthy and hearty. We had a sufficiency of palatable and wholesome food, good clothes to wear, shelter from the storm and fire from the frost, and so far as the article of living, the matter of animal existence, was concerned, we were as well to do as kings, and a deal more contented.

        I have since made the history of labor and the subjects of political and social economy a study, and slave though I once was, and with all the prejudices against the system, I do not hesitate to say, that in all my researches in books or travels, I have never been able to find a more contented, thrifty, prosperous, and happy community of laborers than that which flourished on the Cossetot plantation of Col. Gustave Choteaux, in Alabama.

        But this is digressive. Four years I worked in the fields on the plantation, growing in the meanwhile into stalwart manhood, when there came another great change in my life.

        It was in August when Colonel Choteaux, our master, with his wife, our mistress, came on a visit of inspection

to the plantation. It was the first in many years that the master had come and was the first within my memory that the mistress had ever been seen. Their coming was greeted something like the visit of a king with his consort to an outlying province would have been, with loyal grins of welcome, awkward bows of homage, and gaping wonder and, withal, much gladness.

        I remember my own sensations--comparatively well read as I then was--I stood in open-eyed wonder and speechless admiration of the splendor of the equipage, the elegance of the mistress' toilet, the fragrance of her presence, and the glitter and flash of her jewelry. It was a marvel and a revelation to me. Even Hance, the coachman, with his smooth hat, his fleckless coat, long buff gauntlets and shiny boots, was a surprise and a pleasure.

        For two days they stopped, lodging at the overseer's house, and the morning they were ready to start away a score of us young men, the likeliest of the lot, were ordered to dress ourselves in our best and march up to the yard for inspection.

        "Your master wants a house-boy, and you must all look your best and brightest," explained Mr. Gans, when he summoned us to go.

        Like recruits to be mustered in we were aligned in one rank before the piazza, and with hats off and eyes to the front we stood ready for inspection, each in tremulous suspense for the issue; for, be it known, that to be a house-boy, to live in the "big house," to wait upon the master and the mistress, was the acme of a negro's ambition. It was to him an office more exalted in dignity and honor than the office of queen's chamberlain. No wonder we

stood in breathless expectancy, while the master carelessly flashed his glance up and down the line.

        Thanks to my mother's tidy and cleanly habit, my Sunday suit was in the neatest trim, and it was with something nearly akin to pride that I took my place in line next to the head. I felt proud of my strength, proud of my stature, proud of my supple limbs, by well turned wrists and shapely hands. I was proud too--I may be pardoned for the vanity--of my head and face, with features regular, clear cut and almost classic. Baring the swarthy complexion and the too crispy curling hair, there was but little of the negro that showed in my physique. Could I have bleached my skin and straightened the crisp locks, I could have passed not only for a white man, but a strikingly handsome one at that. But alas! as if in grim mockery of my father's features, nature had given me my mother's ebony skin, only softening it enough to let the warm blood show through when called up into my face in a tide of passion or of anger.

        I watched my master--who, be it remembered, was my uncle also--and was struck with his pleasing appearance, handsome, good natured, easy, dainty. There was nothing in form or features to suggest the remotest suspicion of kinship between us--my mother always declaring that my father was the handsomer man of the two, and that they were antipodal in looks as well as in disposition, my master fair and effeminate, my father dark, rugged and manly.

        All this I recalled as I watched his glance and then I held my breath to catch his words as he spoke: "That fellow there in the middle! You, sir; what is your name?" he asked, pointing to a full blown, lazy-eyed negro who stood some distance below me.

        "Name's Handibal, sah."

        "Hannibal is it? How old are you?"

        "Do'an know, sah. I'ze grown, I s'pects."

        "Very well, I think you will do. What about him, Gans?"

        "He is good enough for a house nigger, only lazy. The strap though will keep him awake."

        "Very well, that will give employment to Joe and help to keep him awake. I will take Hannibal. What say you, Pauline?"

        "I don't like him. There," pointing to me, "is a much likelier boy. What is your name?"

        With a little triumph I placed my hands upon my breast and bowed as gracefully as I could.

        "My name is Paul."

        "A very good name! And how old are you?"

        "I am twenty-two years old."

        "Ah! and do you think you could wait upon me, rock my chair, swing my hammock, fan me to sleep, fetch my slippers and such things?"

        "I should be glad to serve you any way, as long as I live," I said a little impulsively, for I was carried away by the prospect.

        "Ah! that is nice. And what of him, Mr. Gans?"

        "Oh! he is an improvement on Ham. A little starchy and slightly stuck up, but a good larruping occasionally will keep him down; only to do him justice I must say that I never had to strike him a lick in my life. He is one of the best niggers on the place. It will be a pity to spoil such a good field hand by making a house-boy of him."

        "Is he a good field hand? Then he will make a better house servant. Gustave, we will take Paul."

        And thus it was decided that without any volition of my own, I was to be lifted out of the even tenor of my old life, and transplanted from the field to the garden, from the old cabin under the gnarled chestnut to the proud mansion among the elms.

        I looked at my mistress and thanked her with my most humble obeisance. She was a lovely lady, and though the mother of grown-up children, was yet fresh and fair with the traces of a once radiant beauty clinging lovingly to her still. I felt that it would be no drudgery to serve her, but a happiness, instead.

        "You need not to trouble about clothes," she said as she waived me away. "We will have new clothes made for you at home. Take nothing from here that you would not wish to have burned. You will have to strip when you get there and have your old clothes burned. We can not allow the smell of the plantation to invade the house."

        And with this I was dismissed to follow them on as soon as I could catch and saddle my mule.

CHAPTER II.
A HOUSE-BOY'S TEMPTATION.

        I had read in the rambling course of my studies of the beautiful homes of the rich; pictures of suburban villas and historic mansions had given me an idea of architectural beauty and splendor, but I had never conceived anything so really beautiful and grand as the home mansion of my master. It was large, roomy and elegant. A broad portico, columned with marble, running the entire length, shaded the front. To the right of the spacious entrance hall was the parlor; opening into this was the music room, and into this the picture gallery. To the left were the library, the gentlemen's smoking room and the billiard room. In an L running back from this was the cozy dining room. In a corresponding wing on the right was the family sitting room, opening into the master's office and through it into the mistress's boudoir and bed room. The upper floors of this wing, reached by a broad stair-way from the hall, was appropriated to the ladies' rooms, as the second story of the opposite wing was assigned to the gentlemen, a court in the center separating the two divisions. Still back of the dining room were the kitchen and pantries, over which were the servant's rooms. Altogether it was a magnificent place, palatial in the splendor of its appointments.

        It was sun-down when I arrived and reported to my master.

        "Oh, yes, you are the new boy! Here, Joe." Joe was the steward, or rather factotum of the household. "Here, Joe, is a boy I have brought from the plantation to take the place of Tom. He will wait upon the mistress and attend to the women. You had better stall him in the little cuddy upstairs at the end of the ladies' hall. He looks like a stout young buck and the girls will feel safer when they have such a burly young fellow to keep off the boogers. Take him around to the kitchen and give him his supper, and then shake him down in his cell until morning when your mistress will take him in hand."

        "Yes, sah. Yere, yo' nigger, dis way, foller me," said Joe, leading the way to the kitchen where a warm supper was ready for me.

        After supper and the interchange of courtesies with my new mates, Joe conducted me around to the east wing, up the stairway and through the ladies' hall to my little cell of a room, a box as it were against the outer wall at the end of the hall and overhanging the rear veranda below. It opened into the hall and seemed built for a sentry box from which to watch and guard the sanctity of the ladies' rooms which occupied the entire wing, opening on either side from the long broad hall. The room was bare of furniture but a roll of carpeting spread upon the floor made an excellent bed on which, bewildered by my strange and surprising surroundings, I vainly tried to sleep.

        Early in the morning, Joe came for me, the more I soon found, to show his authority than for anything else.

        "De fust thing yo' habs ter do ob a mornin' is ter trot down ter de wash-hole an' jump years ober head an' scrub

yerself," he explained leading the way, with the household gang, to the wash-house. After breakfast he conducted me back into the master's office for instructions.

        "Oh, here you are again; well, Joe, take him to his mistress. He is her dog. She will tell you what to do with him," pointing by a nod of the head to the mistress's room.

        Without the ceremony of knocking, Joe pushed me before him into the chamber of the mistress, where much to my confusion we found her sitting in the airiest kind of a morning dress, while her maid was combing her hair.

        And right here, as this is a history of the inner life, the penetralia of the old southern home, it may not be amiss to refer to one of its most peculiar, puzzling and paradoxical features. I mean the shameless, or not shameless, but rather unconscious, though immodest familiarity of the southern mistress with slave, male or female, boy or man.

        I know that they were modest, these southern mistresses. The slightest approach to a wilful indencency would cause their cheeks to burn scarlet and call down a swift and sure reprimand upon the indiscrete slave that exhibited it. But in their intercourse with their negro slaves they seemed to have no thought of propriety, no sense of shame, no idea of immorality. I remember the surprise, even shock, it gave me that morning when I stood in her chamber and looked upon that proud lady, more loosely draped than I had ever seen my own mother. But abashing as was the sight, my first experience, it was nothing, hardly a suggestion of imprudence, to what I was afterwards to see and at last learn to look upon with

indifferent familiarity. It may seem incredible to those who do not know, but I have been called into her bath-room to adjust the faucet or to temper the bath while she stood by as innocent of drapery, and I may say as unconscious of impropriety, as Mother Eve when she first stood before the wondering eye of Adam.

        And yet Madam Choteaux was not a lickerish, or even immodest woman. She would have screamed in confusion and blushed crimson had it been her own husband instead of me, the negro slave, who stood gaping upon her.

        The slaveholders, masters and mistresses, had been educated to regard their negroes as they regarded the furniture, or their cats and dogs, a species of domestic fixture, having eyes to see not, and ears to hear not, senses to feel and yet to feel not. My God! when I look back upon those times, and knowing the warm, passionate, almost bestial propensities of my race, and the terrible temptations which the then prevailing, unconscious indiscretions of the southern mistresses, in the exposure of their charms, daily put before their slaves, I shudder even now at the danger and can only wonder that there were not more outrages, with the inevitable hanging or burning, or emasculation following swiftly after.^*

        * The legal tribunals were not troubled with such offenses, but conventional usage, more swift and more inexorable, had prescribed the punishment according to the degree of the offense. Of these degrees there were three, rape, assault and fornication. The penalty for the first was burning at the stake, for the second hanging, and the third castration and sale to the "speculator," or negro trader, the master being both judge and executioner. Sometimes the value of the negro and the cupidity of the master, influenced the judgment, and not infrequently castration and sale took the place of death.

        It is for this, the removal of such a terrible temptation

from the weakness of my helpless fellow slaves, more than any emoluments freedom has brought them, that I thank my God for the abolition of a system that made such a social condition possible.

        Nor was this imprudent exposure of charms that should have been hidden, confined to the matron or mistress alone. The girls and young ladies were taught from babyhood to regard the negro boy or man as a stick or stone, a species of animated dummy with only feeling and sense enough to fetch and carry.

        The eunuchs in the eastern harem had no more liberty of association with the inmates of the seraglio than the southern negro slave had with the ladies of his master's house.

        Take my own case, for instance. I was a young man, healthy, strong and robust and full of animal spirits, a stranger in the house, and yet I was to be invested with the keys and midnight surveillance of every lady's chamber in the house. It was to be my duty, not absolutely, to disrobe and put them to bed, but to stand by if I wished and look on while the more deft-fingered maid performed the delicate service. And then, when all were tucked snugly away and ready for dreamland, it remained for me to see that the windows were secured, the fire well banked and all safe before I could go. And then, the first in the morning I had to go in and kindle the fire, to arrange the bath and to polish the dainty boots. This much I write, to further explain the bewildering, entrancing, treacherous, smoothness of the stream upon which, helpless as a cork drifting down Niagara, my destiny had been launched.

        * * * * * * * * * * *

        "Well, what is it, Joe?" asked my mistress without troubling herself to close the open plaquet through which two still plump and pinky breasts unwinkingly peered.

        "Yere's dis nigger wot yo' fotched from the corn-field. Marster tole me to fotch 'im ter yer an' ax yo' wot ter do wid 'im."

        "Oh yes, the new boy, Peter, I had forgotten."

        "Not 'Peter', but 'Paul,' if you please, ma'am," I respectfully corrected.

        "Oh, yes, so it is; well, Joe, the first thing is to have him properly dressed. Take him to the tailor and have an outfit at once, everything from his shoes to his hat. You seem to look neat; have you taste enough to know what is becoming to you or shall I write Mr. Murdough to select for you?" she asked, turning to me.

        "I should like best to please you and not myself," I answered.

        "Very well; Joe, tell Mr. Murdough to fit him up nicely, and have two other suits made for him. And, mind, when you come back, take him down to the wash-house and have him scrubbed. Make him scrub himself from the crown of his head to the sole of his feet. Burn up your old clothes, and then when you are properly dressed you can come to me and let me see if I can make anything out of you," and with a waive of her hand she dismissed us.

        At the gate Joe put on the air of a master.

        "Yo' go down ter de lot dar, an' tell Dick ter cotch my mare foh me, an' yo' cotch a mule foh yo'rself, an' lem me tell yo' boy yo's got ter step along a heap moah libely or fuss thing yo' knows I'll hab ter take a cowhide ter yo'. Yo' moves too slow ter suit me; mine, now,

wot I tells yo'; niggers has got ter stir der stumps when dey roosts 'bout me, I do'an like a nigger no how."

        I felt strongly tempted to resent this gratuitous insolence, but was not certain of the fellow's authority and power, and so hurried away to execute his order without cavil.

        The horses were soon ready and mounting we rode away in a trot, Joe asserting his dignity by springing a few paces ahead, while I a little doggedly jogged on behind.

        As soon, however, as we were well out of sight from the house the fellow's garrulous curiosity got the better of his dignity and nodding back for me to come up he commenced:

        "Now, Buck, I wants ter know who yo' is, an' whar yo' comes from; wot's yer marmmy's name, an' all 'bout yer?"

        I thought it well enough to conciliate his friendliness and answered with due respect that my name was "Paul" and that I came from the plantation.

        "Wot one ob de plantations, yo' signify?" he interrupted.

        "Oh, the master's plantation, of course."

        "But wot one, yo' fool yo'; do'an yo' knows dat we uns hab three plantations?"

        "No, I did not know it."

        "Well den, we has. Dar's de Muskerdine plantation, an' dar's de Magnowly place, an' dar's de Cossertot, wid ober a hundred niggers on each place, wid mules accordin'. Now, wot one am it yo' was fotched up on?"

        "I do not know the name, but suppose it must be the

Cossetot, as that is the name of the stream that runs through it."

        "Who's der boss oberseer?"

        "Mr. Gans."

        "Yuh, dat's de Cossertot. An' wot de debbil yo' specs ole mistus wants wid yo'; dar's ten boys a'ready in de house, an' dat's moah dan I kin keep strate."

        I could not enlighten him on that point, and he went on.

        "An' how yo' 'spects yo'll like it? Yo'll fine Miss Pauline a monstrus good mistus, 'cept w'en yo' makes her mad, an' den, phew, w'en yer jist git her dander up she's a pufect singe cat. I tell yo,' nigger, yo'll hab ter walk a chalked line w'en yo' steps 'bout her."

        I assured him it would be my greatest care to always please her, and then, still uneasily perplexed at our unceremonious intrusion upon the privacy of her chamber, I asked:

        "Don't you think it was too saucy in us to go into her room as we did this morning and catch her undressed. I am sorry we did it."

        "Shoo, boy, dats nuffin', yo'll soon get usen ter all dem kine o' tricks. De mistus do'an no moah kere fer yo' den she do fer de ole pussy cat. But mine, now, nigger, lem me tell yer, yo' mussen mine needer. Yo' haster keep yer fool eyes shet an' do'an yer see nuffin', an' zif yer do peep one eye on it, sorter sly like, des keep yer mouf shet an' hole yer tongue. Dem is things as mussent be talked 'bout, or fust thing yo' knows, yer'll des know nuffin'. Dat war des de matter wid Tom."

        "With Tom?" I asked.

        "Yuh; de nigger wot waited on de wimmin fokses afore Tom got too biggity like, an' went ter sniggerin' one day w'en de mistus slipped up on a bannaner peelin' on de porch an' happen ter hab er little axcerdent."

        "Accident?" I repeated.

        "Yuh, axcerdents will sometimes happen ter de quality folks as well's ter de buckra, an' so mistus's heels flewed up an' Tom seed sumfin', an' den stid o' shettin' his eyes like a nigger orter, de blame fool went ter sniggerin' like a baboon, an' de nex' day he war marched off ter town an' sole ter a specerlater, an' dats de lass we's seed ob him. White fokeses is mity kurus fokses enyhow, an' dey won't stan' fer a nigger ter notis nuffin', leas'wise zif dey do dey mussn't go ter grinnin' at 'em. White lady's tricks wosn't made fer niggers ter grin at. So now I puts yer on yer excusements soze yer kin mine wot's wot."

        "Yes, you are very kind and I shall remember," I answered, wondering if the fellow really meant it for a caution or was only playing on my natural credulity.

        "So yer do, an' fudder on arterawhile we most in general sometimes hab a monstrus heap ob company, young ladies an' young gemmens, all de quality nabers comin' ter take Chrismus, an' den yer'll see der sites as'll make yer mouf water. Fine young ladies des as fine as fiddles, an' as plump as pa'tridges an' as purty as hollyhocks, sly pussies, all on 'em; an' though dey'd be shamed like ter talk 'bout a kitten's whiskers afore de beaux, yo' des wait twill dey gits in dey rooms an' fix foh bed zif yo' wants ter see tomboy capers--raslin', turnin' summersets, skinnin' cats an' all udder kines ob projickin'. Yo'll hab ter wait on dey rooms, make fires, fasten winders, tote water

"Oh, Miss Jinny, please do--doan be too hahd on me."--Page 49.

an' black dey shoes, an' yo' can't keep from seein' 'em, fer dey won't mine yo' no moah dan dey'ill mine de fire-dogs. It's purty hahd on a pooh devil ob a nigger like yo' but yer'll des hab ter stan' it, speshally twill yer gits usened ter it."

        I thanked him for his friendly advice and we cantered along.

        It was some four miles to the village, a straggling county town, but our rapid pace soon brought us to it, Joe resuming his dignity and reasserting his precedence as we came in sight.

        Going directly to the tailor's shop, Joe presented me.

        "Yere's a coon Mistus Choteaux cotched in de Cossertot swamp, an' she tole me to fotch 'im ter yo' an' let yer see if he is wuff skinnin'."

        Mr. Murdough was a jolly Scotchman, half tipsy.

        "Ah, yes, a fine looking coon. Haul off your coat and turn around and let me see. By Hercules, what a splendid physique. You would do for a model. Hand me my tape, Randall; let me measure. Eh, mon, I will have to make you a coat, there is none in the shop broad enough in the shoulders for you," applying the measure as I turned for his inspection. "What all is it he wants, Joe?"

        "He wants eberything, from sorks to a hat; Mistus Choteaux ses ter rig 'im out an' out from tip to toe. She wants three suits as soon as yo' kin fix 'em."

        "Then he will have to come back to-morrow evening. I will have a suit by then; there is nothing in the shop to fit him now." And after a complete measurement, I was dismissed and we rode back home.

        "Here he are, Mistus," said Joe, ushering me into the mistress's little drawing-room.

        "But where are his clothes?"

        Mr. Murder haster make 'em--dar wan't none big enuff fer him. He ses send 'im back termorrer ebenin' an' git 'em."

        "Very well. Send him out to the stables and let him stay there until he gets them. I will have Sealy to make his shirts. Send Sealy to me."

        Sealy was the house-seamstress or superintendent of the sewing room, in which a half dozen smart negro girls were kept constantly busy with the family sewing.

        "You stand here until she comes," added my mistress, as I turned to follow Joe. "She will want to measure your collar."

        In a moment Sealy appeared, tape and scissors in hand.

        "Measure this boy for a dozen linen shirts, and have them made right away. Let me see; turn around. A Byron collar, with a little pink ribbon for a tie will suit him best. And, now, Buck, I want you to understand that you are to keep clean. The least fleck of dirt on your coat, shirt or collar, will be whipped off with the cowhide. I can't stand dirt around my house. You must strip and scrub yourself, thoroughly, every morning, the first thing you do, and change your underwear every day. You will have a dozen changes, and Winnie will see that they are properly laundried. Do you understand?"

        "Yes, ma'am, and will be glad to do it."

        "Very well; now you can go to the stables and stay there until your clothing is ready. When you have scrubbed and dressed you can come, and I will tell you what you have to do," and with this she dismissed me.

        Now this may sound trivial, but I give it to illustrate

the dainty fastidiousness, so far as cleanliness was concerned, of the old aristocratic mistresses. Nothing like dirt could be tolerated in the house or about the person. There was a large bath house down by the spring in which every negro on the place had a tub, or more properly, a vat, into which, rain or shine, hot or cold, he was required to plunge, head and ears, every morning of his life. Some of them would shrink from the plunge and especially on an icy, winter morning, and Joe had to occasionally use his whip to enforce the duty; but to me it was a luxury, healthy, sweet and exhilarating.

        I went to the stable where I remained immured with the hostler, in a species of punitive probation, until the following afternoon, when Joe came to tell me to mount my mule and tote into town after my clothes.

        Mr. Murdough had worked diligently and I found a suit ready, a handsome suit of blue, light summer cassimere, fitting to a nicety and setting off my naturally good figure to the best advantage. I was vain enough to be proud of and flattered by it.

        Many of the house negroes in the south were attired in livery, but not so ours. The good taste of the mistress had seen that our different physiques and colors required different styles of costume, and while our clothing was of the best, and even finest materials, each was required to wear that which best became him.

        With my outfit carefully wrapped I hurried back to report to Joe. Sealy had been equally expeditious and had an outfit of linen ready.

        Armed with a pan of soft soap and a bundle of corn cobs, which by the way make excellent flesh brushes, I was ordered

to follow Joe to the bath-house, where a vat was assigned me, as my own exclusive property, and in a few moments I was stripped and covered from head to heels with a stringing, lathery foam, Joe, whip in hand, standing by to see that the "scrubbing" was thoroughly done.

        Having completed my purification to Joe's critical satisfaction, and rubbing myself dry I was invested in my new attire. The old plantation clothes were gingerly bundled up and cast into the wash furnace to be burned, and with them I put away the old plantation life and like the butterfly, emerging from its shell, I became a new man. Even my old shoes were cast aside with my hat, of which I had once been so proud, and light congress gaiters, and a nobby Kossuth hat replaced them.

        I had a natural taste for the elegant in dress and deftly arranging my cuffs and collar, with its dainty little tie of pink ribbon, I stepped out, quite a dandy in my glory.

        "Yes, yo'll do fust-rate, an' ef yo' doan't mine, yo'll hab all de gals takin' arter yo' foh a sweetheart. Yo' must be keerful though, how yo' project wid dem or yo'll hab yo' mistus sendin' yo' an' dem off ter de plantation. Yo' has ter be mity sly, I tells yo', she watches dem gals like a hawk."

        "She needn't have any fear for me," I answered a little stiffly. "I wouldn't wipe my foot on any negro girl that ever lived."

        "Huh, whose yo', I'd like ter know. But nevah mine, yo' des wait till Miss Jinny comes back home wid Sally an' den we'll see."

        "And who is Miss Jenny?" I asked, curious to know something more about the family.

        "Why, yo' fool nigger, doan't yo' know she's de young mistus, ob cose, wots off ter school, away up norf whar she's ben foh moh'an a yeah."

        "And who is Sally?"

        "Sally is de yaller gal, wot waits on her. She's most white an' des as purty as new shoes. Yo' des wait till Miss Jinny fotches her back home an' den we'll see wot yo's got ter say 'bout wipin' yo' foot on a nigger. I'll 'low Mastah Victor will broke yo' fool head 'bout her yet; yo' mine if he doan."

        "And who is Master Victor?"

        "Dar yo' is agin. I 'clare yo's de biggest fool nigger I eber seen. Why, doan yo' know Mastah Victor is de young mastah? He's off ter school, too; up at de univarsity?"

        "And how many young masters are there?"

        "Wot, doan yo' knows?"

        "No, I know nothing of the family."

        "Well, well, wot a moke yo' iz, not ter know yo' own mastahs. Well dar's two ob em, Mars Louis wot is married an' libs in de city, an' Mastah Victor."

        "And how many young mistresses have we?"

        "Only one, Miss Jinny, an' she's a young lady most growed. She'll be home nex' yeah, an' 'ill fotch Sally."

        "But what has the young Master Victor got to do with Sally that he should break my head about her?"

        "Humph! Well yo' des wait an' see. But yondah is yo' mistus on de portico now, an' I'll fotch yo' to her." A moment later, "Heah, mam, heah's dis nigger. I made him scour hisse'f as clean as a picked chicken, an' his close is all right," presenting me to the lady, who surveyed

me from head to foot with a critical but approving eye, as I stood, hat in hand, before her.

        "Yes, you will do; a very fine looking fellow. You can go now, Joe. And you, 'Paul,' you say is your name?"

        "Yes, madam, 'Paul.'"

        "Very well, Paul, I like the name; but now I will tell you what you have to do. This side of the house is mine, that is, it is set apart to ladies. The parlor there, the music room and my drawing room, my boudoir and bedchamber, these you will have to look after--air them in the day and close the windows at night. Up stairs, on this side, is also appropriated exclusively to ladies, visiting friends, or the family. My daughter's room is up there, immediately over mine. These you will also have to look after,--airing them in the summer and making fires in the winter. You will sleep up there in the little chamber where you slept the other night. That is your room and you must keep it neat and clean. Dora will show you a bed-stead and bedding, which you will move in there to make yourself comfortable. She will also give you a wash-stand and a bureau with towels and drawers. You will have a comb and a brush and you must always keep yourself in a presentable condition. You will also have to wait upon me and your master. Wheel my chair for me, look after my bath, fan me if necessary, and rub my back when it aches. You will eat in the kitchen with the other negroes. And now you can go. I shall give you a day or two to get accustomed to your new surroundings and shall not require any service of you until then. Look about you in the meantime and learn all you can, and day after to-morrow come to me again for orders."

        With a very clear idea of what was to be expected of me and an honest desire to please my gracious mistress in all things I bowed myself off.

CHAPTER III.
THE YOUNG MISTRESS RETURNS.

        I have ever had the happy faculty of readily adapting myself to my surroundings. It was no task then for me to fall into the ways of my new life, and with the still happier disposition to make myself agreeable and useful to all with whom I came in contact, I soon won my way into the confidence of my master and mistress, and to the good-will of my fellow servants.

        My duties were light, in truth, they were hardly to be called duties at all, so pleasant were the services. Not a fourth of my time was required in the performance of my daily routine of work, leaving me free to devote the remainder to eager, zealous study.

        My master cared little for books, but for all that he had a valuable and extensive library, more for ostentation, perhaps, than for practical use. This, albeit surreptitiously, I invaded and placed under contribution, and drew upon its resources without stint. Ah, how I gloated upon its treasures, grappling even with its most erudite mysteries and compelling their secrets.

        As may be supposed, many of the works were in French, but with the aid of a French and English lexicon as a key, I soon unlocked their treasures, and ere the long, idle wintry nights were passed, and the spring had come again I could read them with almost as much ease and intelligent understanding as I could read my own mother tongue.

Having no definite plan in view, I cared little for the abstruse sciences, but works in lighter vein, poetry, fiction, history, biography and travels were sources of unfailing delight.

        No one knew of my studies. I do not know that they would have interfered if they had. Still, I thought it well to keep them in the dark. And it was not until June had come and master and mistress had gone north to witness the graduating honors of their daughter, and to bring her home, leaving the library in my absolute charge, that I threw off all reserve and boldly pursued my studies in the broad open day as well as in the secrecy of the night.

        The young mistress, Miss Virginia, was at the Patapsco Institute at or near Baltimore, and after the closing of the commencement exercises they expected to spend the summer north, alternating between the breezes and surf of Cape May and the mountain springs of Virginia.

        It was early in June when they went away and not until the first of October did they return, thus giving me quite four months of cumberless, uninterrupted study. I do not write of it boastingly, but I very much doubt if ever another student has made such use of his time or mastered so much that was useful to the understanding, as I did in that, the golden summer of my life. My powers of assimilation were unusually large and combined with a retentive faculty which in later life aided me in rapidly making up the lost ground of my youth and early manhood, my store of knowledge--practical information--was vastly augmented, more greatly than I, myself, could appreciate at that time.

        But the home-coming put a stop to all this. We had been expecting them for more than a week, and every day,

during the while Hance, the carriage driver, had driven to the landing at the river to meet them. It was a bright October afternoon when they came, in the soft aftermath of summer. Far down the long, elm-shaded avenue we saw the carriage, and knew by the flutter of scarlet ribbons by Hance from his seat on the box, that they were coming, and in glad expectancy the household ran to the "big gate" to meet and welcome them.

        Soon the carriage drew up and hardly waiting for it to stop, Sally, the maid, a pert mulatto girl, bounced down from her perch on the driver's box and opened the chorus of boisterous "how-dy's." Then Joe, with the gravity of his importance, opened the carriage door and let down the steps and the mistress, all smiles and gladness, stepped out. I felt a positive joy in seeing her kindly, smiling face again.

        And then, like a sudden burst of morning light, with the beautiful face of a Hebe, the form of a Venus and the grace of Diana, the young mistress appeared, the loveliest, fairest and sweetest vision that ever dazzled the sight and brain of mortal man.

        I have seen many beautiful women since that day. I love to look upon them because they are always a joy to behold. I have seen pictures, too, of lovely women, the famed beauties of royal courts; but never anywhere in the flesh, radiant with health and life, or glowing in life-like semblance on canvas of the masters, have I seen a woman so perfectly lovely, so ravishingly beautiful, so bewitchingly sweet and fair to look upon as she who had so unexpectedly burst at once upon my life and vision.

        For a moment she stood, stooping in the carriage door

and then, as if disdaining the puerile superfluity of the steps, she lightly sprang out tripping forward as lissom as a fawn and as blithe as a bird.

        And then came the affectionate greetings of the negroes. First her old nurse, Mammy Julia, gathered her in her arms as she sobbed her blessings; then her old duenna, Aunty Dilsey, then Sealy and the cook, and then younger girls, each kissing her hand and each receiving a smile and pleasant word of recognition in return. And then, after the women, the men with mouths grinning from ear to ear pressed forward to claim their smile and to shake the pretty hand. I alone stood back; it would have been a sacrilege for me to have grasped that dainty hand as those others grasped it, and feigning some neglected duty in the house I hurried away to avoid her notice.

        "She's des as purty as ebber, an' de sweetes' young mistus dat ebber war. I wants ter tote her, 'caze she's des too sweet ter walk upon de groun'," blubbered Aunt Dilsey, as she brushed by me on her way back to her dairy over which she queened it with a regal sway.

        It was easy to see that they all adored their lovely young mistress as much for her gentle sweetness as for her glorious beauty.

        The radiance of her presence affected me strangely, inexplicably, at that time. In the glamour which she cast upon me then she seemed an angel from heaven. Its spell has never fallen from me; it rests upon me now. Death may not deprive me of its ineffable influence. Yet I had deserted that presence almost in fear. An undefinable dread seemed to oppress me. Unconsciously I went upstairs and shut myself in my little room. I tried to think.

Out of a tangle of thoughts came a knowledge that I was standing on the eve of the greatest change in my life. I felt a premonition of its nearness--a shadow, as it were, of the yet to come cast before. For days the shadow lay uneasily upon me.

        But bye and bye, it grew bright again, and my spirit, naturally buoyant and light, was able to throw the disquieting shadow aside and I went about my work as blithely as ever. I saw the young mistress every day and though it lost nothing of its radiance I learned to look upon her surprising beauty with something like rational composure. In a blind, unmeaning way I worshiped her as one worships the angels. I could have kissed the very ground she walked upon, but would no more have dared the wish to touch her hand, or even the hem of her garments, than I would have thought to violate the sanctity of a vestal shrine.

        As yet she had not noticed me, not even with a look of inquiry, and not until a week had passed, when her mother called me into her presence to commend me to her service, did I catch the glance of her eye.

        "Virginia, my darling," said the mistress, "this is Paul, the new negro we brought from the plantation to take the place of Tom. Tom grew to be quite impudent and we had to send him away. I don't think we will have any such trouble with Paul, whom I have found to be quite a smart and handy fellow, not at all impudent or saucy. He waits upon me and will wait upon you. And you, Paul, this is your Miss Virginia. She complains that her fires are neglected. Come, you must not let that occur again. It is quite cool enough for fires now and

you must see to it that a bright, warm one is always in her room. Do you mind?"

        "Yes, ma'am."

        "And beside the fire, you must see to her windows. Every night when she goes to bed you must see that the windows are secure and the fire well banked. You must wait upon her just as you do me. Paul sleeps in the little cuddy at the end of the hall, Tom's old den, so if you want anything in the night make Sally call him."

        I tried to stammer my profession of a grateful service, but was somehow too confused to make myself understood, and the young mistress, evidently amused at my bashfulness, smilingly spoke:

        "Oh, yes, I am sure that you did not mean to neglect me, and now that you know your business I think we can get on nicely together."

        "You have a latch key to her room, so there will be no need of you disturbing her when you go in," continued her mother. "And now she wants you to move the piano from the window across to the wall, and you had as well make a fire in there now. Virginia may wish to play this evening."

        Glad of the happy privilege of serving her, I salamed myself out--cutting, I fear, a somewhat awkward figure--and went to move the piano and to kindle a glowing fire upon the broad open hearth.

        That evening while the family were at supper I softly stole to her room to kindle the fire there. I felt a reverential awe as I stepped across the threshold and stood in that sacred chamber, that seemed redolent of virgin sweetness and maiden purity. With a positive dread of being

caught I piled on the wood and kindled it and slunk out as stealthily as I had entered. After supper the family repaired to the music room. Pretending to inquire if the piano had been properly placed, but really to listen to the sweet gush of bird-like song that trilled from the silvery throat of the singer, I ventured to the door.

        "What is it you want?" asked the mistress, surprised at my presumptuous intrusion.

        "If you please, ma'am, I came to see if I had placed the piano right," I meekly stammered.

        "Yes, it is right, just where I wanted it," interposed the young mistress very graciously. "It is very well, and you can go."

        With a choking sense of my slavish degradation and the still more wretched taint of race, I crept away. Such music was not intended for such ears as mine.

        The next morning after I had made the fires in the rooms below, I again went up to make hers. With a trepidation as nervous as before, I softly opened the door and tiptoed in. She was sweetly sleeping, and on the little trundle bed at the foot of her own, Sally, her maid, lay sprawled out in somnolent oblivion.

        As softly as I could, I put down my burden of wood and opened the slumbering embers to kindle them into a blaze. I hardly dared to look around, but while waiting for the flames to ignite, I stole a glance over the room. It was not actually littered, but was recklessly tumbled with a confusion of mysterious and unmentionable feminine apparel. A skirt here, a corset there, and a little circular nest of snowy crinoline yonder, such a confusion as can only be accounted for by the supposition that the sleepy-eyed

maid had gone to bed first, leaving the easy-natured young mistress to disrobe herself. On the rug, close to where I knelt, was her dainty little boot. It was bold, almost madness, but I could not resist the wild impulse to take it to my breast and then to kiss the unconscious sole. Then I softly, tenderly put it down and giving the fire one more assuring poke, I arose and turned to creep from the room. My eyes unconsciously sought her couch and I had to pause a moment, holding my breath in a positive awe as I looked upon the slumbering beauty. One fair arm had escaped from the coverlet and was lying in a graceful sweep by her side; the other was resting across her breast. Her hair, unloosed from its coil, lay like a ripple of sunshine over her pillow; her rich ripe lips were parted just enough to reveal the pearly teeth within, while in gentle, but strong and healthy respiration, her snowy bosom rose and fell.

        I have seen her often since; in fancy I see her still, and every night of my solitary life she comes to me in my dreams, always beautiful, always lovely, but never so beautiful, never so sweet and inexpressibly fair as she appeared just as she lay before me that morning in the perfection of maidenly beauty and maidenly purity. Whispering a blessing upon her sweet life I tiptoed out again and softly closing the door, went down to my ungrateful work.

        All day long I thought of that beautiful picture, and with the thought would come an uneasy consciousness of unfaith, of treachery and meanness. I had no right to look upon such innocent loveliness, albeit, the glance I stole was one of reverential, almost holy adoration. There

was no guilt in the look, no unholy desire, and I would have cut my throat rather than to have wronged her with an impure thought. But I would not look again. No, no, though heaven itself should open to my vision I must close my eyes to its beauties. Negro slave, pariah that I was, such loveliness was not for me, and firm in this resolve I dropped my eyes the next morning as I went in to make the fire, and hurriedly striking the kindling I quickly stole from the room without a glance either to the right or to the left.

        But my overcaution confounded me, for in my haste to get away from the enchanting presence I did not sufficiently kindle the fire and instead of blazing up in grateful warmth it set up such an asthmatic sputtering as to call for a remedy, and I had scarcely finished the work of polishing my master's boots when Sally came with a lazy irritation to berate me for my dereliction.

        "Say, yo' niggah yo', Miss Jinny ses fer yo' ter come back an' fix her fire. Wot sort ob a moke is yo' ennyhow, ter run off like dat an' 'spect de fire ter kindle itse'f?"

        In dire dismay I ran to the wood-shed and gathering an armful of resinous splinters, I hurried back to make amends for my laches. Thinking that she was now up and dressed or at least awake I gave a warning knock at the door.

        "Come in," was the response.

        Boldly I entered when, heavens, what a sight! Diana stepping from her bath was never more glorious, as with her discarded night-robe at her feet she stood bare armed and bare kneed, with only the loosely falling folds of her chemise to drape her queenly form. Abashed at the unexpected

sight I drew back with a start and a gasp, when with the naive innocence of a child, she said:

        "Ah, it is you! you have come to kindle the fire, but you see it has concluded to burn of itself. You really needed not to come. However, a few splinters will not hurt it."

        "I am very sorry," I stammered as best I could as I stooped and applied the fuel, and then with averted eyes I turned to go.

        "Stay a moment. You have forgotten my boots, I shall expect you to keep them clean for me," she ordered, pointing with her foot to the boots.

        With a desperate dive I gathered them up and hurried out thoroughly shocked, but more angry with myself for my intrusion than with her for the naivete with which she received me.

        In order to give her maid sufficient time to complete her toilet I loitered over my work and then waited at her door a little while before knocking again.

        "Wot yer keep dat knockin' foh, why doan yo' come in," said Sally in disgust at my timidity, as she opened the door. "Yo' needn't be skeert, nobody's gwine ter bite yer."

        Thus assured I stepped in to receive a still more embarrassing shock, for there on a low ottoman near the hearth, directly facing me, with a little cloud of fleecy drapery in her lap, the young mistress sat drawing on her stockings.

        Without lowering her skirts or drooping her knees she looked me innocently in the face and with a smile of kindness she said, reaching out her hand for the boots:

        "Yes, you have brought my boots, they are really nice. I think I must pay you for them. Sally, look in my drawer and give him a dollar."

        "Oh, no, please not; I do not wish pay," I protested, drawing back.

        "Yes take it, heah 'tis," said Sally holding out the coin.

        "Yes, you can have it; take it," insisted the young mistress.

        "I--I had rather not," I stammered. "I do not need it. I had rather always serve you for nothing. I do not ask pay."

        "Den I'll hab it," said Sally closing her fingers upon it.

        "If the young mistress is willing," I said, unwilling to accept the humiliating gratuity.

        "Thankee, sir," cut in Sally, anxious to close the offer.

        "Ah, I see; sweet-hearts already," laughed the lady. "That is charming. But you must be on your guard against Sally. She's a great flirt and will jilt you sure. There is no telling the conquests she has made or the hearts she has broken," and fastening the jewelled clasp of her garter she gave the lapful of laces and flounces a deft little shake that tumbled them above her feet as she straightened down her knees. "Here, Sally, put them on for me, and you" nodding to me, "may go." Mentally thanking her for not requiring me to draw on and lace her boots for her, I backed out too sadly upset to think of closing the door after me.

        I went to my little cell and sat for a while, pondering in a sad perplexity. I wondered what to do, whether to try to blind my eyes to all that was beautiful and ravishing to see, to steel my senses against all that was intoxicating

and sweet, or to go at once honestly to my master and implore him for the love of Christ to send me away, either back to the old life on the plantation, or else to sell me to vilest "nigger-trader" in the land and let him ship me off to the swamps of the Mississippi. I could not decide and so went drifting on.

CHAPTER IV.
AN UNEXPECTED COMMAND.

        Drifting on; ah, helpless as a cockle-shell on the broad bosom of the Atlantic, I was drifting I knew not where. All that I could do was to shut my eyes, in a dumb endurance, and let the future take care of itself. I knew then as I know now, what it was that had come over me, what the shadow meant that had so mysteriously gathered around me. I loved Virginia Choteaux, my own cousin by blood, my queenly mistress by fate. Loved her madly, blindly, despairingly, but not sinfully, nor selfishly. I have never seen the moment since I first knew her that I would not have willingly died to have saved her. Ah, what folly, what a wild infatuation! But oh, how sweet, how thrilling, how exalting and ennobling!

        As electricity is said to be the soul of all nature, so is love the soul of human existence; and he who has not felt its vivifying power, its wild throbbings of hope and its despairing doubts, knows nothing of life, nothing of the essence, the spirit, the heavenly joy of living; and wretched as I then was, miserable, degraded, I yet had my flashes of joy, and my bitterest hell was at the same time my sweetest heaven.

        I went out from her presence that morning humbled and degraded, feeling the despised reality of my position as I had never felt it before. I was not only a negro slave, but a stot, less than a man, and hardly a beast. I knew

very well in my secret conscience, that it was not for a lack of maidenly modesty she so unblushingly exposed her person to my unforbidden sight. I well understood that it was no coquettish trick of froward maidenhood to reveal the hidden charms a Venus might well have been pardoned for wishing to display, that it was not to fire my blood and madden my brain she stood so naively before me with nothing but a gauzy tissue of lace to cover the snowy breasts which no man of mortal flesh and blood could have looked unmoved upon. I knew that it was not to tantalize a despairing desire she sat upon that low ottoman, unconsciously caressing with her jewelled fingers the pinky dimples in a knee that would have been a heaven to kiss. No, no, not for any of these, but for the want of a decent respect for me. Had she regarded me as anything better than a soulless brute, had she esteemed me as a man, endowed with the sense and feelings of a man, she would have screamed with affright and driven me with furious wrath from the room.

        But I was not a man, only an animated machine, a bloodless, soulless automaton to fetch and carry, with eyes to see not and nerves to feel not. This was my depised status--despicable, degraded, emasculated--and wretchedly did I realize it.

        And thus appreciating my utter insignificance I thought seriously of going to my master, and to beg him to send me away. I had actually started, when there came over my soul such a dark and desolate lonesomeness that, sick with my burden of gloomy despair, I had to stop. I could not conceive the possibility of living away from her, the light of my life, the sun of my soul. No, no, I could

not go, I would stay; like the poor silly moth ffluttering around the candle. I could not tear myself away. And what need of going, thus blindly, I reasoned. Why not stay and bask in the sunlight as long as I could, only taking care to keep myself at a distance. I should avoid her presence as much as possible, and never again permit myself to see aught of her charms that a man, a white man, her equal in caste, might not with chaste propriety look upon. And thus resolved and feeling strengthened by the honest resolution, I went about my daily work avoiding her presence and her room as much as I could do without a dereliction of duty, taking care that no more lapses in kindling her fire and polishing her boots might occur again. To this end I made her fire the first in the morning while she was still asleep, heaping high the wood and always seeing that it was thoroughly ignited before leaving it; and in the matter of boots, I arranged with Sally to leave them without at the door, compensating her for her trouble by keeping her own broad-bottomed, flat-toed balmorals cleansed and polished.

        And so the weeks sped on, silently slipping away and at length Christmas, with its rolicking holidays, came bringing with it a gay throng of visitors, young ladies and gentlemen, aristocratic friends and neighbors, until the house, large as it was, was full.

        Their coming brought additional work for me, and in keeping the dozen fires burning, polishing their boots and doing odd little services, I found nearly all my time occupied.

        It was a gay season and a vivacious party, and most enthusiastically did they enjoy it, abandoning themselves

to the fullest and finest measure of social pleasures--croquet, tennis, riding, walking and rambling through the woods in sunny weather and dancing, billiards, whist, readings, recitations and tableaux-vivants in-doors. It was one continued round of hilarious fun and frolick. But none of it was for me. The other slaves enjoyed it, something like the hounds enjoy the excitement of the chase, grinning in jolly delight at the universal hilarity. But I felt too keenly the degradation of my place and like a human machine, deaf and dumb and blind, I had to move through it all.

        There were fifteen young ladies, beautiful as so many houris, all under my care and sight. The privacy of their chambers had no secrets from me. They would dress and undress before me with naive impunity, standing in charming dishabille, or reclining in voluptuous ease, blabbing of their sweethearts, telling their piquant little stories and shrugging their pretty shoulders at the lubricious witticisms that would sometimes slip out from the more hoiden and unguarded lips while I would move about, in and out, as free to see and to hear as the sniggering maids who unloosed their zones and laced their boots for them.

        There was one chamber, however, that I always entered with reverential tread and eyes drooped, one fair presence sacred from my profane gaze, but as for the others, n'importe, I cared almost as little for them as they cared for me, and would scarcely pause to look twice upon a charm which would have held the breath of almost any other man. The great absorbing devotion that filled my soul left no room for anything else. Not an inconstant, nor incontinent thought ever came.

        Among the gayest of the young men, was my young master, Victor, home from the university to spend the Christmas holidays. He was a tall, handsome young fellow with the old Choteaux form and features. Had I not been so black or had anyone, even his father, suspected the consanguinity the resemblance between us would have been noticed, but as it was, the despised negro was nothing, while he, the young master, was a prince. I remember once for a moment, gritting my teeth over the seeming injustice, but it was only for a moment. My better sense could not locate the blame, and he, the young man, was really too good natured, too frank and buoyant, for me to harbor an envious resentment against. As his rooms were in the opposite wing of the house and my duties never carried me there, we saw but little of each other, only once or twice he noticed me and then it was with such a kindly smile that I could not choose but warm to him. He was a general favorite with the gentlemen and of course immensely popular with the young ladies. It was a little amusing to watch the pretty eyes they made at him. The pretty eyes, however, were harmless, or at least immaterial, for according to the old French custom, his parents had already arranged for a marriage with his pretty cousin, Isaura Noltrieb, and they only waited the completion of his studies to settle down to domestic felicity.

        There was one thing I noticed, not without a soupcon of disgust, and that was the jealous spitefulness of the mulatto girl, Sally, toward his betrothed. Then I recalled the warning Joe had given me the year before, and I laughed to think how little the warning was needed. No, no, let him, the proud young master, the man of sensibility

and refinement, the social prince, condescend to a liaison with such a creature if he choosed, but for me, negro, stot though I be, I held myself high above such a debauching connection.

        But time on pleasure wings flits by, far more rapidly than the sober-paced, sorrow-laden moments, and soon the holidays were over and gone. In little parties, like swallows taking their flight, the guests departed, and now the household sank back into its normal state of placid content. A month went by without any change in the old routine of humdrum life, except to my disgust, I found Sally trying her libidinous wiles upon me. As for the young mistress, she was the same--artless, gentle, kind--with always a smile for all who came anear. If she had ever noticed my studious avoidance of her presence in her chamber, she did not evince the fact by any change of manner. I could sometimes fancy, however, that she did feel it, whether consciously or not, as she never gave me the slightest cause to criticise her modesty. I was a little surprised, though, one morning in the early spring, as I was turning from the hearth after having kindled the fire, to hear her call.

        "Stay a minute, Paul, I wish to talk to you," she said in a tone of command.

        I turned an inquiring look, but the drapery of the bed was drawn well under her chin, and there was no impropriety in her position although she looked very fair and very sweet as she lay with her head slightly raised on her pillow.

        "Yes, miss," I answered, respectfully dropping my glance to my feet.

        "I wish to speak to you about Sally."

        "About Sally?" I interrupted, wonderingly.

        "Yes, I will tell you--you must not interrupt me when I am speaking. Sally, you know, belongs to me, and papa I am sure, will give you to me, too. Now, I think it best when girls get as Sally is, that they marry. I do not believe in this loose way you negroes have of living. I have noticed you and think Sally and you would make a good match. She has told me of her trouble and by marrying at once the trouble can be cured. She, like a good girl, is anxious to marry you and will, I am sure, be true to you, at least so far as any other negro is concerned. Sally is really a good girl and not bad looking. You two will make a fine-looking couple, and as long as I live I shall see that neither you nor your children, shall ever be sold away from one another. Now what say you?"

        I was too dumb with indignant contempt and disgust to answer and stood scowling.

        "Do you understand me?" she commanded with imperious emphasis.

        "Yes, Miss Virginia, I understand you only too well, and am sorry that I can not obey your wishes," I answered controlling my voice as well as I could.

        "I will make it a command," she interrupted a little hotly.

        "I hope not; oh, please do not."

        "Why?"

        "Because, glad, willing as I am to serve you always and to obey you in all things, I should have to refuse in this. I cannot marry this woman."

        "Why not?" flushing with anger at my presumption.

        "Because, slave though I be, I am not of her kind. I hold myself high above her and such as she."

        "Humph! you should have thought of that before. You owe it to her now to marry her, and undo the wrong you have done her, so far as marrying can undo such a naughty wrong."

        "I have done her no wrong. Before that God who made us both, and who will judge us both, I have never touched nor even thought of stooping to that woman," I said with a solemnity of voice and manner that touched her.

        "Go, send her to me, and when I have dressed you come, too. I must have you face to face."

        "I am ready to face high heaven itself," I boldly declared as I hurried out to find the girl.

        I had but little ways to go, but found her in the hall a poor, abject creature, shame-faced and guilty.

        "Your mistress wants you. You know what for. Make haste to dress her and then let me know; I will be here," I sternly ordered, taking my stand at the head of the stairs.

        In a surprisingly short time the door was opened and Sally called me to come.

        Drawing myself up to my proudest height, I went in. The young mistress was dressed and sitting in her rocker with the gravity and dignity of a queen. Sally was standing, with head bowed down, behind her.

        "Now, Sally, stand here before me, and look me straight in the face, while you tell me the truth," commanded the queen.

        The girl moved forward, but sinking on her knees and piteously holding up her hands, she cried:

        "Oh, Miss Jinny, please do--doan be too hahd on me

and sell me away, kase I didn't go ter do it. I 'clare ter gracious I couldn't help it. It warn't my fault an' I couldn't help myse'f."

        "You say it was this fellow's doing?" sternly interrupted the young mistress.

        "Yes'em, I did so, but--but it warn't. I--I'll tell yer de truff now, Miss Jinny, it warn't Paul; leastwise I didn't know it zif it war, but it war Marse--Marse Vic--Vic--Victor as made me," stammered the poor girl.

        "Victor! my brother?" with the crimson glow suffusing her cheek.

        "Yes, yes'em. Long time ago when we war chilluns togedder an' den when he comed back home dis las' time, an' I'll nevah do de like any moah. I'se willin 'ter marry Paul heah, an' ole mistus will nevah know."

        "No, hush up! Leave the room before I strike you."

        The girl almost crawled from the room.

        "And you, Paul, I am very sorry that I accused you so wrongfully. I must ask your pardon. I did not think it was such a really bad thing for you to do, but I am sorry that I wronged you at all. Here, you may kiss my hand, and then you can go."

        There is an inate gallantry in an honest adoration, and with all the chivalry of a knight, I dropped on my knee and respectfully raised the precious hand to my lips.

        "I don't think," she called after me as I opened the door, "that I need to tell you to say nothing of this affair."

        "Oh, no, miss; I could not think of such an indiscretion," I answered.

        "I am sorry for the poor girl. If you see her, tell her to come back. It is not for me to judge, nor to punish,"

she said, and I thought it a sweet humility as I went away to send the girl back.

        That afternoon I was summoned to the family sitting room. With a slight trepidation I presented myself.

        "What do you know about horses? Did you ever handle one?" asked the master.

        "Oh, yes, sir. I used to break all the colts on the plantation," I answered a little proudly.

        "Very well; do you think I could trust you to attend your young mistress on her rides, to groom her horse and see to her safety."

        "I hope so, sir."

        "Very good; we will try you. Her old groom, Louis, is getting too fond of his toddy--the rascal is tipsy half his time--and it is no longer safe to trust your Miss Virginia with him. You will have to look after her bridles and girths. She rides a spirited mare and you must never let her mount without seeing that everything is secure and properly adjusted. If you were to let her get hurt, I should hang you. Do you understand me?"

        "Yes, sir, and will take care that no harm shall come to her."

        "Yes; I think I can trust you. What say you Pauline?"

        "Oh, yes, certainly; she will be safe with Paul. I wanted to give him to her before Christmas, but she begged so hard for Louis that I let her keep him. It is the rascal's own fault, however, that he loses his place, and Virginia wants Paul," answered the mistress, and thus taking the matter altogether in her own hands, as she invariably did, she turned to me.

        "You, Paul, will be relieved from making the fires in the

evening. All your afternoons will be devoted to your Miss Virginia. You will take Louis' horse and will have to look after it and Dido. You must hold yourself always ready and absolutely at her service. So go, now, and tell Joe to give you Louis' horse and you go to Mr. Barclay's and fit yourself with a pair of top boots. That is all we wanted with you. Go!"

        And thus one more leaf in the book of my destiny was turned.

CHAPTER V.
THE LASH OF THE MISTRESS.

        The next day I entered upon my new service, that of groom to my young mistress. Perhaps it was the genial balm of the bright afternoon that tempted her to ride, or mayhap it was to test the capacity of her new groom. Be which it may, immediately after dinner I was ordered to fetch out the horses.

        Declining, with a silent shake of the head and a repellant wave of the hand, my awkward offer of help, she lightly sprang to the saddle and dashed away, leaving me to mount in haste and gallop on after. She rode a splendid animal, a thoroughbred mare, high strung and spirited, too spirited for an ordinary woman; but she was a magnificent rider, and with a cool head and steady nerve, always keeping her reins well in hand, she managed, without any great trouble, to control her. My own mount was a lumbering cob, better fitted for the plow than the saddle, but, by lifting his head with my bridle arm and a vigorous exercise of my heels, I contrived to keep in a helping distance of my charge.

        For more than a mile, through a stretch of sunny lane, she lead the way, without so much as a glance back at me, and then, as if in sudden thought for the laborious work of my floundering hack, she drew rein and allowed me to approach in regulation distance.

        In order to catch the sunshine, she turned her way

through the winding lanes, until she had traversed the entire plantation and then coming to a halt, she ordered me to dismount and let down the fence, making a way for a canter through the open fields back home.

        It was a spirited ride, fully ten miles, in and out, before we reached the door, just as the sun was going down.

        "Oh, I have had a delightful ride!" she cried to her mother, as she lightly sprang to the ground.

        "And how will Paul do for a groom?" asked the mistress.

        "Well enough, only he must have a better mount. That old hack cannot begin to keep up, and I had to hold Dido back all the way to keep from losing him."

        "Then let him try Selim. If he can manage to sit him, he will give Dido as much fun as she will want," said the master, and turning to me he added:

        "Do you hear, Paul, the next time you ride tell Joe to let you have Selim. The pampered dog needs handling anyhow. He is getting positively vicious. Do you think you can ride him?"

        I will be glad to try, sir."

        "Very well, you had as well begin with him in the morning. Take him out and try him. He is a perfect devil and will need breaking before you venture with your young mistress."

        Selim was a powerful young stallion, almost unbroken, and not only high spirited, but really vicious. It required a firm hand and a strong arm to conquer him, and I had to work hard all the forenoon before I could overmaster him.

        The afternoon was inviting again and the horses were ordered out. The master, in order to see Selim's performance, would ride with his daughter.

"No, no, carry her to my room--to my bed."--Page 76.

        Selim was still spiteful and I had to have a little fight with him at the stable before he would submit to the saddle, and then, when the master and young mistress had mounted and turned to go, he revolted again and refused to let me mount. I saw that it was a case of human determination against brute obstinacy, and determined to conquer him thoroughly, at once. First, I was to let him know that I was not afraid of him, and next, I was to make him afraid of me.

        This is the secret of horse taming. He was a powerful animal and desperate, and it was a fierce struggle between us. At length, by sheer force of my herculean strength, I succeeded in throwing him by a dexterous trip of his fore leg, and kneeling with my heavy weight upon his head held him down and gave his jaws such a pounding with my fist as to completely subdue him. With a piteous whinny, as if calling for quarter, he ceased his struggle and lay passive as a dog. Then I released my heavy weight from his head, and rising without touching the bridle, I bid him in a gentle tone to rise. As meekly as a lamb, he obeyed, and from that moment on I had not the slightest trouble with him.

        "Bravo! You did that well," said the master, as I mounted and gave him the spur.

        "Yes, that was really brave and grand," enthusiastically said the young mistress. "What a magnificent strength the fellow must have."

        "Yes. I don't believe there is another negro on the place that could have thrown him as you did," supplemented the master.

        "Perhaps not," I answered a little ungraciously.

        "But is it quite safe, do you think, to ride him? I am almost afraid to let you risk it," said the young lady.

        "There is no more danger," I replied, and thus assured, they rode on, I following at a respectful distance.

        And thus our rides began. The next day it rained and she could not venture out, but the following afternoon it was bright and sunny and she started early in order to make an extended excursion around the plantation and out into the woods beyond.

        On we swept, fully five miles away, she galloping ahead, I following at the same speed a few paces behind--sunshine and shadow--she every now and then breaking out into little snatches of song, I grimly silent, not a word being spoken between us. The fields were passed and we came to the woods, when she suddenly drew up, casting a questioning glance around as if in search of her bearings.

        "I believe it is over the next hill, a little way to the right," she said, more to herself than to me.

        "What is it you seek?" I ventured to ask.

        "The Ball Cave--quite a curiosity. Have you seen it?"

        "Oh, no, I have seen but little of the outdoors here," I answered.

        "Yes. Well, I am quite sure that it is over there," and urging her mare onward, with a little touch of the whip, she rode by a dim bridle path through the woods, over a little hill, until she found the place.

        It was, indeed, in a miniature way, quite a curiosity of nature. It was a deep, broad, and sandy bottomed gully or cave, washed out of the foot of the hill by the winter torrents, or, in plantation parlance, wet-weather branch.

        From a small beginning, a little break at first, a few

years before, it had by constant caving in of the sides and washing out of the bottom, widened and lengthened and deepened, until now it was a yawning chasm, some fifteen or twenty feet deep and as many feet wide at the neck.

        For a few moments the young mistress sat and looked it over, and then half in soliloquy, she said: "How rapidly it widens. I used to make Dido jump it before I went away to school. I wonder if you can jump it now, Dido? I believe I will let you try."

        I hardly thought her in earnest, but respectfully raising my hat, I ventured a protest.

        "That would be dangerous," I said.

        "And so much more exciting. Yes, Dido, you must carry me over," she said, fixing herself firmly in the saddle and drawing the mare back for a start.

        "Surely, you are not in earnest," I cried involuntarily starting forward.

        "Do you think I am an idle boaster?" she said sharply, resenting my presumptuousinterference.

        "No, no; but please do not attempt this. You overestimate the strength of your mare, as you underestimate the width of the chasm. Your mare could not possibly make the leap. It would be as much as I could do to make it myself."

        "You," with a pretty scorn, "you make it on Selim and Dido can't?"

        "No, Selim could not make it. It would be as much as his neck is worth to try it. I meant on my own feet."

        "Well, I will see. I shall make Dido jump first and then you shall follow. Get down and hitch your horse and

prepare to jump. I will teach you how to interfere with my pleasure. You forget your place, sir."

        In dismay at the foolish caprice, I dismounted and hitched Selim; but not to humor her whim.

        "Please, Miss Virginia, do not try it. It will be certain hurt, more probably death, for you to attempt it," I implored, standing before her mare.

        "Stand out of my way," she cried, angered at my determined opposition.

        "But you must not. It would be death to you, and I would be a murderer to permit it," I replied, reaching out my hand and grasping the bridle.

        "Let go my reins," she ordered, with crimson cheek and flashing eyes.

        I could not reply, but kept a firm hold on the snaffle.

        "I will ride you down," she almost hissed in her passion, and giving her mare a cut with her whip she urged her on me.

        The excited creature made a lunge forward, but with less strength than it took to conquer Selim, I threw her back on her haunches and held her with an iron grip.

        "Wretch! slave! dog of a negro! how dare you, dare you, dare you!" she fairly screamed, fiercely lashing me in the face with her whip, fairly raining the stinging blows upon me with each repeated vehement utterance.

        The cuts were severe, one even bringing the blood from my temple, but I felt not the sting, neither did I heed her wrathful words of contumely and scorn. Only closing my eyes to protect them from the lash, as each blow fell in lightening succession, I stood unmoved and immovable. I knew in her frantic rage that it would be a waste of

words to speak, and so like a statue of bronze, with muscles flexed, silent and almost motionless, I stood holding the mare back with vise-like grip.

        "I shall report this outrage to my father, and have Joe to flay you alive for this insolence," she said, as for lack of strength she suspended her blows.

        "Your father, when he knows, will not blame me for saving you from your folly. Oh, my mistress, do please, please stop one moment and think. It is not to displease you, to offend or to vex, that I do this, but it is for your own sake. It would be worse than folly, it would be madness for you to drive your mare to this leap. You would both go down to the bottom and be crushed. I cannot, I shall not allow you to do it," I answered, taking a reassertive grip on the bridle.

        "You still defy me?"

        "No, Miss Virginia, I do not defy you. In all things else I will obey you, even to making the jump myself, even to die myself and for you; but you, you must not be hurt. It is not to insolently brave you that I interfere, but you shall not attempt this danger. You may lash me as much as you please, and have Joe to whip me like a dog, but unless my arm withers, I shall stand here until dark and hold you back."

        It may have been the firmness of my tone, that subdued her wilful caprice, or it may have been the natural subsidence of a woman's sudden wrath that sobered her; one, or both, perhaps, but I felt a giving away of the strained hold on the reins and in a second more she was crying.

        I knew then that the danger was over, and gently patting the nose of her mare to quiet her restive excitement, I released my hold and stood back.

        "Oh, did I do that? I am so sorry!" she cried, and there was genuine contrition in her voice as she noticed the blood which in a little rill from my temple was trickling down my cheek and staining the whiteness of my collar and shirt front. "Oh, I have hurt you, please, please forgive me."

        I had not noticed it myself until then, as I had felt no smart of pain.

        "It is nothing," I assuringly answered, drawing my bandana to wipe it away.

        "But I am very, very sorry. Here, stand nearer and let me wipe it away, please," she cried, as impulsive in her pity as she had been frantic in wrath; and before I could draw back she was leaning forward and softly wiping my cheek with her snowy and daintily perfumed handkerchief. The soft, zephyr-like cambric greedily absorbed the little tide, and in an instant its snowy whiteness was changed to scarlet.