e history of Blue Dave. He was brought to
the little village of Rockville in chains in a speculator's train,--the
train consisting of two Conestoga wagons and thirty or forty
forlorn-looking negroes. The speculator explained that he had manacled Blue
Dave because he was unmanageable; and he put him on the block to sell
him after making it perfectly clear to everybody that whoever bought
the negro would get a bad bargain. Nevertheless Blue Dave was a
magnificent specimen of manhood, straight as an arrow, as muscular as
Hercules, and with a countenance as open and as pleasant as one would
wish to see. He was bought by General Alfred Bledser, and put on his
River Place. He worked well for a few weeks, but got into trouble with
the overseer, and finally compromised matters by taking to the woods.
He seemed born for this particular business; for the track dogs failed
to find him, and all the arts and artifices employed for capturing and
reclaiming runaways failed in his case. It was a desperate sort of
freedom he enjoyed; but he seemed suited to it, and he made the most of
it.

As might be supposed, there was great commotion in the settlement, and
particularly at the Kendrick homestead, when it was known that Blue
Dave had been hiding among the gables of the Kendrick house. Mrs.
Kendrick and her daughter Kitty possessed their full share of what
Brother Roach would have called "spunk;" but there is a large and very
important corner of the human mind--particularly if it happens to be a
feminine mind--which devotes itself to superstition; and these gentle
ladies, while they stood in no terror of Blue Dave as a runaway negro
simply, were certainly awed by the spectral figure which had grown up
out of common report. The house negroes stood in mortal dread of Blue
Dave, and their dismay was not without its effect upon Mrs. Kendrick
and her daughter. Jenny, the house-girl, refused to sleep at the
quarters; and when Aunt Tabby, the cook, started for her cabin after
dark, she was accompanied by a number of little negroes bearing
lightwood torches. All the stories and legends that clustered around
Blue Dave's career were brought to the surface again; and, as we have
seen, the great majority of them were anything but reassuring.

II.

WHILE the commotion in the settlement and on the Kendrick Place was at
its height, an incident occurred that had a tendency to relieve Kitty
Kendrick's mind. Shortly after the funeral the spring rains