not my friends, though they are yours. I'll go and look after Cudjo."
And bounding down into a hollow, he was quickly out of sight.

XXV.

_BLACK AND WHITE._

Penn attached his handkerchief to the end of the musket, and standing
upon the ledge, waved it over the bushes. Carl, recognizing him, was the
first to scramble up the height. The whole party followed, each sturdy
patriot wringing the schoolmaster's hand with hearty congratulations
when they learned what use he had made of the rebel musket.

"But the whole credit of the manoeuvre belongs not to me, but to the
negro Pomp!" And he related the story of his own rescue and theirs.

The patriots looked grave.

"Where is the fellow?" asked Stackridge.

"Being a fugitive slave, he feared lest he should find little favor in
the eyes of his master's neighbors," said Penn.

"That's where he was right!" said Deslow, with a bigoted and unforgiving
expression. "Nothing under the sun shall make me give encouragement to a
nigger's running away."

Two or three others nodded grim assent to this first principle of the
slaveholder's discipline. Penn was fired with exasperation and scorn,
and would have separated himself from these narrow-minded patriots on
the spot, had not Stackridge jumped up from the ground upon which he had
thrown himself, and, striking his gun barrel fiercely, exclaimed,--

"Now, that's what I call cursed foolishness, Deslow! and every man that
holds to that way of thinking had better go over to t'other side to
oncet! If we can't make up our minds to sacrifice our property, and,
what's more to some folks, our prejudices, in the cause we're fighting
for, we may as well stop before we stir a step further. I'm a
slaveholder, and always have been; but I swear, I can't say as I ever
felt it was such a divine institution as some try to make it out, and I
don't believe there's a man here that thinks in his heart that it's just
right. And as for the niggers running away, my private sentiment is,
that I don't blame 'em a mite. You or I, Deslow, would run in their
place; you know you would." And Stackridge wiped his brow savagely.

"And as for this particular case," said Captain Grudd, with a gleam of
light in his lean and swarthy countenance, "don't le's be blind to our
own interests; don't le's be downright fools. I've said from the first
that slavery and the rebellion was brother and sister,--they go
together; and I've made up my mind to stand by my