had said. Still some of the white
people were secretly watching Mr. Black, the slave hunter, as he had
been before suspected of killing runaway slaves in the woods.

The master of the murdered negro was still ignorant of his death; he was
in hopes that his slave would return. But finding that his slave did not
return as expected, the master became uneasy, and offered a reward to
any one who could give a clue of his negro. In the meantime, he
discharged the overseer who had been the cause of his slave running
away; and he also kept the overseer's salary of four hundred dollars,
which was the annual pay for overseering his plantation.

Mr. Black's house was in Richland county, and as he was the last who had
hunted runaway slaves in Barnwell county before the murder, suspicion
rested on him. Still no one said anything to him, but he was very
closely watched by men of his own county, whose interest was not in the
hatefulness of the crime committed, but rather in the reward offered by
the master to any who could give information of his runaway slave.

Sometime after the case had occurred, another white man of Richland
county became quite a friend to Mr. Black, the slave hunter; this
apparent friendship soon led Mr. Black to tell the secret, which
speedily brought him to trial. While he and his pretended friend were on
a drinking spree, in the midst of the merriment,--of course the
conversation was how to control negroes, as that was the principal
topic of the poor white men South, in the days of slavery.

In the conversation, this friend spoke of several plans which he said,
if properly carried out, "would keep a nigger in his place." After the
friend had said so much to Mr. Black, the slave hunter, the latter felt
that he could tell his secret without endangering himself, so he
answered: "The way to show a nigger that would resist a white man, his
place, is to put him among the missing. Not long since, I went to
Barnwell county to hunt a runaway nigger, and my dogs struck trail of
another instead of the one I wanted to capture. After quite a long chase
my dogs ran him down, and before I reached him he killed several of
them, and gave me a hard fight when I got to him. Motley and I were
together; I shot him down, and Motley and I cut him up and gave the
pieces to the remainder of my dogs; that is the way I put a nigger in
his place."

After the secret had been revealed, Mr. Black's friend excused himself,
and the former