do a
thing, do it. Them's the words that's inscribed on my banner, as the
felleh says; only I, Sam, aint got much banner. And if I sort o' use
about this low country a little while for my health, as it were, and
nibble around sort o' _pro bono p[=u]blico_ takin' notes, why you aint
a-carin', is you? For wherefore shouldest thou?" He put on a yet more
ludicrous look, and spread his hand off at one side, working his
outstretched fingers.

"Yes," responded Mary, with severe gravity; "I must care. You did finish
at Holly Springs. I was to find the rest of the way as best I could.
That was the understanding. Go away!" She made a commanding gesture,
though she wore a pleading look. He looked grave; but his habitual
grimace stole through his gravity and invited her smile. But she
remained fixed. He gathered the rein and straightened up in the saddle.

"Yes," she insisted, answering his inquiring attitude; "go! I shall be
grateful to you as long as I live. It wasn't because I mistrusted you that
I refused your aid at Camp Moore or at----that other place on this side. I
don't mistrust you. But don't you see--you must see--it's your duty to
see--that this staying and--and--foll--following--is--is--wrong." She
stood, holding her skirt in one hand, and Alice's hand in the other, not
upright, but in a slightly shrinking attitude, and as she added once more,
"Go! I implore you--go!" her eyes filled.

"I will; I'll go," said the man, with a soft chuckle intended for
self-abasement. "I go, thou goest, he goes. 'I'll skedaddle,' as the
felleh says. And yit it do seem to me sorter like,--if my moral sense is
worthy of any consideration, which is doubtful, may be,--seems to me
like it's sort o' jumpin' the bounty for you to go and go back on an
arrangement that's been all fixed up nice and tight, and when it's on'y
jess to sort o' 'jump into the wagon' that's to call for you to-morrow,
sun-up, drove by a nigger boy, and ride a few mile' to a house on the
bayou, and wait there till a man comes with a nice little schooner, and
take you on bode and sail off, and 'good-by, Sally,' and me never in
sight from fust to last, 'and no questions axed.'"

"I don't reject the arrangement," replied Mary, with tearful
pleasantness. "If you'll do as I say, I'll do as you say; and that will
be final proof to you that I believe you're"--she fell back a step,
laughingly--"'the clean sand!'" She thought the man would have
perpetrated some small antic; b