a _good_ man; I didn't mean you no harm,
boy."

"You ruined me, free nigger," repeated the huge slave, with a scowl,
partly of revenge and partly remorse. "You set up my conceit dat I could
box. I had never struck a chile till dat day; after dat I went aroun'
pickin' quarrels wid bigger niggers, an' low white men backed me to
fight. I was turned out o' my church; I turned my back on de Lord;
whiskey tuk hold o' me, Samson. De debbil has entered into Class-leader
Dave."

"Oh, brudder, wake up an' do better. Yer, I give you a dollar, an' want
to be your friend, Davy, boy."

"I'll git drink wid it," Dave muttered, going; and, as he passed out of
the stable-door he looked back at Samson fiercely, and exclaimed, "May
Satan burn your body as he will burn my soul. I hate you, man, long as
you live!"

Jimmy Phoebus remarked, a few moments afterwards, that Dave, dividing
a pint of spirits with a lean little mulatto boy, put a piece of money
in the boy's hands, who then rode rapidly out of the tavern-yard upon a
fleet Chincoteague pony.

At two o'clock they again set forward, the man Dave driving the carriage
and Jimmy Phoebus sitting beside him, while Samson easily kept
alongside upon his old roan mule, the road becoming more sandy as they
ascended the plateau between the Wicomico and Nanticoke, and the
carriage drawing hard.

"If it is too late to keep on beyond Vienna to-night," said Mrs. Custis,
"I will stop there with my friends, the Turpins, and start again, after
coffee, in the morning, and reach Cambridge for breakfast."

"I will turn off at Spring Hill," Samson spoke, "and I kin feed my mule
at sundown in Laurel an' go to sleep."

In an hour they came in sight of old Spring Hill church, a venerable
relic of the colonial Established Church, at the sources of a creek
called Rewastico; and before they crossed the creek the driver, Dave,
called "Ho, ho!" in such an unnecessarily loud voice that Mrs. Custis
reproved him sharply. Dave jumped down from the seat and appeared to be
examining some part of the breeching, though Samson assured him that it
was all right. As Dave finished his examination, he raised both hands
above his head twice, and stretched to the height of his figure as he
stood on the brow of a little hill.

"Missy Custis," he apologized, as he turned back, "I is tired mighty bad
dis a'ternoon. Dat stable keeps me up half de night."

"Liquor tires you more, David," Mrs. Custis spoke, sharply; "and