s; laurel and jasmine appeared
beyond the bubbling surface of long, green morass, where life of some
kind seemed to turn over comfortably in the rising warmth, like sleepers
in bed.

Suddenly the man took Virgie up and carried her through a stream of
running water, brown with the tannin matter of the swamp.

"We is in Delaware," he said, soon after, as they reached a camp of
shingle sawyers, all deserted, and lighted by the fire, the golden chips
strewn around, and the sawdust, like Indian meal, that suggested good,
warm pone at Teackle Hall to Virgie.

She put her feet, soaked with swamp water, at a burning log to warm, and
hardly saw a mocasson snake glide round the fire and stop, as if to dart
at her, and glide away; for Virgie's mind was attributing this kindly
fire to the presence of Freedom.

"Oh, I should like to lie here and go to sleep," she said, languidly; "I
am so tired."

The man Hudson, wringing wet with the journey's difficulties, threw his
arms around her and drew her to his damp yet fiery breast.

"We will sleep here, then," he breathed into her lips; "I love you!"

The incoherence of everything yielded to these sudden words, and on the
young maid's startled nature came a reality she had not understood: her
guide was drunken with passion.

She struggled in his arms with all her might, but was as a switch in a
maniac's hands.

"I stole my ole woman's pass fur you," the infatuated ruffian sighed;
"you said you would love the man who got you one, Virgie. You is mine!"

A suffocating sense and heat, more than animal nature, seemed to enclose
them. The girl struggled free, her lithe figure exerted with all her
dying strength to preserve her modesty.

"Hudson," she cried, "I will tell your wife! God forgive you for
insulting a poor, sick, helpless girl in this wild swamp!"

"My wife is dead to me, Virgie. You is the only wife I has now. Here we
shall sleep and forgit my children and my little home that was enough
fur me, gal, till your beauty come and tuk me from it."

"Stop!" the girl called, with her face blanched even in her fever,
though not with fear, as her white blood rose proudly. "If you do not
keep away, I will throw myself in that deep pool and drown. I would
rather die than cheat your good wife as you have done."

"Nothing is yer," the negro said, "but you, an' me, an' Love. I would
not let you drown. You are too beautiful. We will get to the free states
together and live for each