’Wen de ole debil seed he hadn’t finished Jake, he war gwine to gib him anoder dig, but jus den I drap de gun on his cocoa-nut, and he neber trubble us no more.  ’Twar mons’rous hard work to git him out ob de swamp, ’cause he war jes like a dead man, and we had to tote him de hull way; but he’m dar now, massa (pointing to the old cabin), and de bracelets am on him.’

‘Where is Jake?’ asked the Colonel.

‘Dunno, massa, but reckon he’m to hum.’

‘One of you boys go and bring him to the cabin,’ said the Colonel.

A 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 can not 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.  Will Mr. Caleb Cushing or Charles O’Conner please tell us why the Almighty invented a system which forces his creatures to break the 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; he must have care or 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!—­they’ll kill me!’