im by the throat and the first thing he knew his
eyes were popping out between their fuzzy lids. I choked him until I
thought he must be dead, and then, with a swing, I threw him far over
the fence into the woods. We listened and heard him scrambling in the
dried leaves and then he was still. The cabin was built of poles and was
old. Many a rain had beaten against the "chinking" and we had no trouble
in finding openings through which we could plainly see all that went
forward within. Just as I looked in I heard the twang of a banjo, and I
saw the old negro sitting on the edge of a bed, picking the instrument,
while two white men were patting a break-down and two others were trying
to dance. At the fire-place a negro woman was frying meat and baking a
hoe-cake.

"Generman," said the negro, twanging his strings and measuring his
words to suit his tune, "don't want right now to be so pertinence--be so
pertinence; but, yes, I'd like to know, hi, hi, hi, yes, like to know
whut you gwine gimme fur dis yere, yes, whut you gwine gimme fur all dis
yere?"

The patting ceased instantly, and the two men danced not another
shuffle, and one of them, Scott, I afterward learned, cried out: "What,
you old scoundrel, air you dunnin' us already?"

"Oh, naw, sah, skuze me," said the old negro, "I ain't doin' dat, fur I
dun tole you dat I didn' want ter be pertinence, but dar's some things,
you know, dat er pusson would like ter un'erstan', an' whut I gwine git
fur all dis yere is one o' 'em. I has gib you licker an' I has gib you
music, an' wife, dar, is cookin' supper fur you, an' it ain' no mo' den
reason dat I'd wanter know whut we gwine git fur it."

"Well, we'll pay you all right enough," replied Scott Aimes. "You've
always treated us white, and you are about the only man in this
neighborhood that has."

"I thankee, sah," the negro rejoined; "yas, I thankee, sah, fur I jest
wanted ter be satisfied in my mine, an' I tell you dat when er pusson is
troubled in his mine he's outen fix sho nuff. Hurry up dar, Tildy, wid
you snack, fur deze genermen is a-haungry."

"I hope she won't get it ready any too soon," I whispered to Alf, and
he, with his face close to mine, replied: "You can trust an old negro
woman for that. It won't take Parker very long to ride over to the
General's house, and they can pick up father on the way back."

"Won't your mother and--and Guinea be frightened?"

"Not much. They've seen the old man go out on the