negro man went off on the errand, while we and the darkies resumed our
way to the overseer's quarters. Arrived there, I witnessed a scene that
words cannot picture.

Stretched at full length on the floor, his clothes torn to shreds, his
coarse carroty hair matted with blood, and his thin, ugly visage pale as
death, lay the overseer. Bending over him, wiping away the blood from
his face, and swathing a ghastly wound on his forehead, was the negress
Sue; while at his shackled feet, binding up his still bleeding legs,
knelt the octoroon woman!

"Is _she_ here?" I said, involuntarily, as I caught sight of the group.

"It's her nature," said the Colonel, with a pleasant smile; "if Moye
were the devil himself, she'd do him good if she could; another such
woman never lived."

And yet this woman, with all the instincts that make her sex
angel-ministers to man, lived in daily violation of the most sacred of
all laws--because she was a slave. Can Mr. Caleb Cushing or Charles
O'Conor tell us why the Almighty invented a system which forces his
creatures to break laws of His own making?

"Don't waste your time on him, Alice," said the Colonel, kindly; "he
isn't worth the rope that'll hang him."

"He was bleeding to death; unless he has care he'll die," said the
octoroon woman.

"Then let him die, d---- him," replied the Colonel, advancing to where
the overseer lay, and bending down to satisfy himself of his condition.

Meanwhile more than two hundred dusky forms crowded around and filled
every opening of the old building. Every conceivable emotion, except
pity, was depicted on their dark faces. The same individuals whose
cloudy visages a half hour before I had seen distended with a wild mirth
and careless jollity, that made me think them really the docile,
good-natured animals they are said to be, now glared on the prostrate
overseer with the infuriated rage of aroused beasts when springing on
their prey.

"You can't come the possum here. Get up, you ---- hound," said the
Colonel, rising and striking the bleeding man with his foot.

The fellow raised himself on one elbow and gazed around with a stupid,
vacant look. His eye wandered unsteadily for a moment from the Colonel
to the throng of cloudy faces in the doorway; then, his recent
experience flashing upon him, he shrieked out, clinging wildly to the
skirts of the octoroon woman, who was standing near, "Keep off them
cursed hounds--keep them off, I say--they'll kill me