k.

Three stout negro men, divested of all clothing excepting a pair of
coarse gray trowsers and a red shirt--it was a raw, cold, wintry
day--and with cotton bandannas bound about their heads, were "tending
the still." The foreman stood on a raised platform level with its top,
but as we approached very quietly seated himself on a turpentine barrel
which a moment before he had rolled over the mouth of the boiler.
Another negro was below, feeding the fire with "light wood," and a third
was tending the trough by which the liquid rosin found its way into the
semicircle of rough barrels intended for its reception.

"Hello, Junius, what in creation are you doing there?" asked the
Colonel, as we approached, of the negro on the turpentine barrel.

"Holein' her down, Cunnel; de ole ting got a mine to blow up dis
mornin'; I'se got dis barrl up har to hole her down."

"Why, you everlasting nigger, if the top leaks you'll be blown to
eternity in half a second."

"Reckon not, massa; be barrl and me kin hole her. We'll take de risk."

"Perhaps _you_ will," said the Colonel, laughing, "but I wont. Nigger
property isn't of much account, but you're too good a darky, June, to be
sent to the devil for a charge of turpentine."

"Tank you, massa, but you dun kno' dis ole ting like I do. You cudn't
blow her up nohow; I'se tried her afore dis way."

"Don't you do it again; now mind; if you do I'll make a white man of
you." (This I suppose referred to a process of flaying with a whip;
though the whip is generally thought to _redden_, not _whiten_, the
negro.)

The black did not seem at all alarmed, for he showed his ivories in a
broad grin as he replied, "Jess as you say, massa; you'se de boss in dis
shanty."

Directing the fire to be raked out, and the still to stand unused until
it was repaired, the Colonel turned his horse to go, when he observed
that the third negro was shoeless, and his feet chapped and swollen with
the cold. "Jake," he said, "where are your shoes?"

"Wored out, massa."

"Worn out! Why haven't you been to me?"

"'Cause, massa, I know'd you'd jaw; you tole me I wears 'em out mighty
fass."

"Well, you do, that's a fact; but go to Madam and get a pair; and you,
June, you've been a decent nigger, you can ask for a dress for Rosy. How
is little June?"

"Mighty pore, massa; de ma'am war dar lass night and dis mornin', and
she reckun he'm gwine to gwo, sartain."

"Sorry to hear that," said the Colonel. "I'll