’They are mine, but they are working now for themselves.  I let such as will, work on Sunday.  I furnish the “raw material,” and pay them for what they do, as I would a white man.’

’Would’nt it be better to make them go to hear the old preacher; could’nt they learn something from him?’

’Not much; Old Pomp never read anything but the Bible, and he don’t understand that; besides, they can’t be taught.  You can’t make “a whistle out of a pig’s tail;” you can’t make a nigger into a white man.’

Just here the carriage stopped suddenly, and we looked out to see the cause.  The road by which we had come was a mere opening through the pines; no fences separated it from the wooded land, and being seldom traveled, the track was scarcely visible.  In many places it widened to a hundred feet, but in others tall trees had grown up on its opposite sides, and there was scarcely width enough for a single carriage to pass along.  In one of these narrow passages, just before us, a queer-looking vehicle had upset, and scattered its contents in the road.  We had no alternative but to wait till it got out of the way; and we all alighted to reconnoitre.

The vehicle was a little larger than an ordinary hand-cart, and was mounted on wheels that had probably served their time on a Boston dray before commencing their travels in Secessiondom.  Its box of pine boarding and its shafts of rough oak poles were evidently of Southern home manufacture.  Attached to it by a rope harness, with a primitive bridle of decidedly original construction, was—­not a horse, nor a mule, nor even an alligator, but a ‘three-year-old heifer.’

The wooden linch-pin of the cart had given way, and the weight of a half-dozen barrels of turpentine had thrown the box off its balance, and rolled the contents about in all directions.

The appearance of the proprietor of this nondescript vehicle was in keeping with the establishment.  His coat, which was much too short in the waist and much too long in the skirts, was of the common reddish gray linsey, and his nether garments, of the same material, stopped just below the knees.  From there downwards, he wore only the covering that is said to have been the fashion in Paradise before Adam took to fig-leaves.  His hat had a rim broader than a political platform, and his skin a color half way between that of tobacco-juice and a tallow candle.

‘Wal, Cunnul, how dy’ge?’ said the stranger, as we stepped from the carriage.

‘Very well, Ned; how are you?’

‘Purty wal, Cunnul; had the nagur lately, right smart, but’m gittin’ ‘roun.’

‘You’re in a bad fix here, I see.  Can’t Jim help you?’

‘Wal, p’raps he moight.  Jim, how dy’ge?’

‘Sort o’ smart, ole feller.  But come, stir yerseff; we want ter gwo ‘long,’ replied Jim, with a manifest lack of courtesy that showed he regarded the white man as altogether too ‘trashy’ to be treated with much ceremony.