ts of "lightwood," unwashed cooking utensils, two or three cheap
stools, a pine settee--made from the rough log and hewn smooth on the
upper side--a full-grown bloodhound, two younger canines, and nine
half-clad juveniles of the flax-head species. Over against the
fire-place three low beds afforded sleeping accommodation to nearly a
dozen human beings (of assorted sizes, and dove-tailed together with
heads and feet alternating), and in the opposite corner a lower couch,
whose finer furnishings told plainly it was the peculiar property of the
"wee ones" of the family--a mother's tenderness for her youngest thus
cropping out even in the midst of filth and degradation--furnished
quarters for an unwashed, uncombed, unclothed, saffron-hued little
fellow about fifteen months old, and--the dog "Lady." She was of a dark
hazel color--a cross between a pointer and a bloodhound--and one of the
most beautiful creatures I ever saw. Her neck and breast were bound
about with a coarse cotton cloth, saturated with blood, and emitting a
strong odor of bad whiskey; and her whole appearance showed the
desperate nature of the encounter with the overseer.

The nine young democrats who were lolling about the room in various
attitudes, rose as we entered, and with a familiar but rather
deferential "How-dy'ge," to the Colonel, huddled around and stared at me
with open mouths and distended eyes, as if I were some strange being,
dropped from another sphere. The two eldest were of the male gender, as
was shown by their clothes--cast-off suits of the inevitable
reddish-gray, much too large, and out at the elbows and the knees--but
the sex of the others I was at a loss to determine, for they wore only a
single robe, reaching, like their mother's, from the neck to the knees.
Not one of the occupants of the cabin boasted a pair of stockings, but
the father and mother did enjoy the luxury of shoes--coarse, stout
brogans, untanned, and of the color of the legs which they encased.

"Well, Sandy, how is 'Lady?'" asked the Colonel, as he stepped to the
bed of the wounded dog.

"Reckon she's a goner, Cunnel; the d---- Yankee orter swing fur it."

This intimation that the overseer was a countryman of mine, took me by
surprise, nothing I had observed in his speech or manners having
indicated it, but I consoled myself with the reflection that Connecticut
had reared him--as she makes wooden hams and nutmegs--expressly for the
Southern market.

"He _shall_