n the low bed was spread a patch-work counter-pane.
Against the side of the room opposite the door stood an antique,
brass-handled bureau, and an old-fashioned table, covered with a faded
woollen cloth, occupied the centre of the apartment. In the corner near
the fire was a curiously-contrived sideboard, made of narrow strips of
yellow pine, tongued and grooved together, and oiled so as to bring out
the beautiful grain of the wood. On it were several broken and cracked
glasses, and an array of irregular crockery. The rocking chair, in which
the old negress passed the most of her time, was of mahogany, wadded and
covered with chintz, and the arm-seat I occupied, though old and patched
in many places, had evidently moved in good society.

The mistress of this second-hand furniture establishment was arrayed in
a mass of cast-off finery, whose gay colors were in striking contrast
with her jet-black skin and bent, decrepit form. Her gown, which was
very short, was of flaming red and yellow worsted stuff, and the
enormous turban that graced her head and hid all but a few tufts of her
frizzled, "pepper-and-salt" locks, was evidently a contribution from the
family stock of worn-out pillow-cases. She was very aged--upward of
seventy--and so thin that, had she not been endowed with speech and
motion, she might have passed for a bundle of whalebone thrown into
human shape, and covered with a coating of gutta-percha. It was evident
she had been a valued house-servant, whose few remaining years were
being soothed and solaced by the kind and indulgent care of a grateful
master.

Scip, I soon saw, was a favorite with the old negress, and the marked
respect he showed me quickly dispelled the angry feeling my doubts of
"Massa Davy" had excited, and opened her heart and her mouth at the same
moment. She was terribly garrulous; her tongue, as soon as it got under
way, ran on as if propelled by machinery and acquainted with the secret
of perpetual motion; but she was an interesting study. The
single-hearted attachment she showed for her master and his family gave
me a new insight into the practical working of "the peculiar
institution," and convinced me that even slavery, in some of its
aspects, is not so black as it is painted.

When we were seated, I said to Scip, "What induced you to lay hands on
the Colonel? It is death, you know, if he enforces the law."

"I knows dat, massa; I knows dat; but I had to do it. Dat Moye am de ole
deb