, if they want a race."

Talking in this strain, to keep up his rider's spirits, he brought him,
not without sweat and toil, to the hut. A kick on the door with the
beggar's foot, which he used for the purpose, caused it to be opened by
a woolly-headed urchin; and in he staggered.

Little woolly-head clapped his hands and screamed.

"Oh, crackie, pappy! here comes Bill with the Devil on his back!"

Sensation in the hut. There was an old negro woman in the corner, on one
side of the stove, knitting; and a very old negro man in the opposite
corner, napping; and a middle-aged man, with spectacles on his ebony
nose, reading slowly aloud from an ancient grease-covered book opened
before him on the old pine table; and a middle-aged woman patching a
jacket; and a girl washing dishes, which another girl was wiping:
representatives of four generations: and they all quitted their
occupations at once, to see what sort of a devil Bill had brought home.

"Why, William! who have you got there, William?" said he of the
spectacles, with mild wonder,--removing those clerkly aids of vision,
and laying them across the book.

"A chair!" panted Bill. "Now ease him down, if you
please,--careful,--and I'll--recite the circumstances,"--puffing, but
polite to the last.

Helpless and gasping, Fessenden's was unfastened, and slipped down the
African's back upon a seat placed to receive him. He still clung to the
umbrella, which he endeavored to keep spread over him, while he stared
around with stupid amazement at the dim room and the array of black
faces.

And now the excited urchin began to caper and sing:--

"'Went down to river, couldn't get across;
Jumped upon a nigger's back, thought it was a hoss!'

"Oh, crackie, Bill!"

"Father," said William, with wounded dignity,--for he was something of a
gentleman in his way,--"I wish you'd discipline that child, or else give
me permission to chuck him."

"Joseph!" said the father, with a stern shake of his big black head at
the boy, "here's a stranger in the house! Walk straight, Joseph!"

Which solemn injunction Joseph obeyed in a highly offensive manner, by
strutting off in imitation of William's dandified air.

By this time the aged negro in the corner had become fully roused to the
consciousness of a guest in the house. He came forward with slow,
shuffling step. He was almost blind. He was exceedingly deaf. He was
withered and wrinkled in the last degree. His countenance was o