The door of Harry’s room opens, and the three enter together.  “Had a good breakfast, old feller, hain’t ye?” says Nimrod, approaching with hand extended, and patting him on the head with a child’s playfulness.  “I kind o’ likes the looks on ye” (a congratulatory smile curls over his countenance), “old feller; and means to do the square thing in the way o’ gettin’ on ye a good Boss.  Put on the Lazarus, and no nigger tricks on the road.  I’m sorry to leave ye on the excursion, but here’s the gentleman what’ll see ye through,—­will put ye through to old Mississip just as safe as if ye were a nugget of gold.”  Nimrod introduces Harry to a short gentleman with a bald head, and very smooth, red face.  His dress is of brown homespun, a garb which would seem peculiar to those who do the villainy of the peculiar institution.  The gentleman has a pair of handcuffs in his left hand, with which he will make his pious merchandise safe.  Stepping forward, he places the forefinger of his right hand on the preacher’s forehead, and reads him a lesson which he must get firm into his thinking shell.  It is this.  “Now, at this very time, yer any kind of a nigger; but a’ter this ar’ ye got to be a Tennessee nigger, raised in a pious Tennessee family.  And yer name is Peter-Peter-Peter!-don’t forget the Peter:  yer a parson, and ought t’ keep the old apostle what preached in the marketplace in yer noddle.  Peter, ye see, is a pious name, and Harry isn’t; so ye must think Peter and sink Harry.”

“What do I want to change my name for?  Old master give me that name long time ago!”

“None o’ yer business; niggers ain’t t’ know the philosophy of such things.  No nigger tricks, now!” interrupts Bengal, quickly, drawing his face into savage contortions.  At this the gentleman in whose charge he will proceed steps forward and places the manacles on Harry’s hands with the coolness and indifference of one executing the commonest branch of his profession.  Thus packed and baled for export, he is hurried from the house into a two-horse waggon, and driven off at full speed.  Bengal watches the waggon as it rolls down the highway and is lost in the distance.  He laughs heartily, thinks how safe he has got the preacher, and how much hard cash he will bring.  God speed the slave on his journey downward, we might add.

It will be needless for us to trace them through the many incidents of their journey; our purpose will be served when we state that his new guardian landed him safely at the plantation of Major Wiley, on the Tallahatchee River, Mississippi, on the evening of the fourth day after their departure, having made a portion of their passage on the steamer Ohio.  By some process unknown to Harry he finds himself duly ingratiated among the major’s field hands, as nothing more than plain Peter.  He is far from the high-road, far from his friends, without any prospect of communicating with his old master.  The major, in his way, seems a well-disposed sort of man, inclined