e as impossible to me
as to you. She is a natural lady, and worthy of all respect--a
beautiful girl, with no outward sign that she is not wholly white--yet
she has the blood of your race in her veins, and is legally a slave."

"Lordy, an she nebber know'd it till just now?"

"No; I can only wonder at her meeting the truth as she does. Perhaps I
had better tell you the story--it is very brief. She is the
illegitimate daughter of a son of the late Judge Beaucaire, and a slave
mother known as Delia, a quadroon woman. The boy disappeared years
ago, before she was born, and is probably dead, and she has been
brought up, and educated exactly as if she was the Judge's own child.
She has never known otherwise, until those men came to the house the
other night."

"An'--an' de ol' Jedge, he nebber done set her free?"

"No; nor the mother. I do not know why, only that it is a fact."

"An' now she done b'long ter dis yere Massa Kirby?"

"Yes, he won all the Beaucaire property, including the slaves, in a
poker game on the river, the night Beaucaire died."

"Ah done heered all 'bout dat, sah. An' yer nebber know'd dis yere
girl afore et all?"

"No, I never even saw her. I chanced to hear the story, and went to
the house to warn them, as no one else would. I was too late, and no
other course was left but to help her escape. That is the whole of it."

He asked several other questions, but at last appeared satisfied, and
after that we discussed the guard duty of the day, both agreeing it
would not be safe for us to permit any possible pursuit to pass by us
up the river unseen. Sam professed himself as unwearied by the night's
work, and willing to stand the first watch; and my eyes followed his
movements as he scrambled across the intervening ravine, and
disappeared within a fringe of woods bordering the shore of the river.
Shortly after I lay down in the tree shade, and must have fallen asleep
almost immediately. I do not know what aroused me, but I immediately
sat upright, startled and instantly awake, the first object confronting
me being Sam on the crest of the opposite ridge, eagerly beckoning me
to join him. The moment he was assured of my coming, and without so
much as uttering a word of explanation, he vanished again into the
shadow of the woods.

I crossed the ravine with reckless haste, clambering up the opposite
bank, and sixty feet beyond suddenly came into full view of the broad
expanse of water. Sca