might relieve master’s necessities; and he had shared them with the flowing goodness of a simple heart.  In a malarious cell, how happy was he to make his bed on the cold plank beside his master’s cot, where he might watch over his declining spirit.  Kindness was his by nature,—­no cruel law could rob his heart of its treasure:  he would follow master to the grave, and lavish it upon the soil that covered him.

Having accompanied Franconia to the Rosebrook Villa, he will return to the prison and join Harry, alone watching over the dead.  The city clock strikes the hour of eleven as he leaves the outer gate, and turns into the broad road leading to the city.  The scene before him is vamped in still darkness; a murky light now and then sheds its glimmers across the broad road; and as he hurries onward, contemplating the sad spectacle presented in the prison, happy incidents of old plantation life mingle their associations with his thoughts.  He muses to himself, and then, as if bewildered, commences humming his favourite tune-"There’s a place for old mas’r yet, when all ’um dead and gone!” His soul is free from suspicion:  he fears not the savage guardsman’s coming; the pure kindliness of his heart is his shield.  How often has he scanned this same scene,—­paced this same road on his master’s errands!  How death has changed the circumstances of this his nightly errand!  Far away to the east, on his left, the broad landscape seems black and ominous; before him, the sleeping city spreads its panorama, broken and sombre, beneath heavy clouds; the fretted towers on the massive prison frown dimly through the mist to the right, from which a low marshy expanse dwindles into the dark horizon.  And ever and anon the forked lightning courses its way through the heavens, now tinging the sombre scene with mellow light, then closing it in deeper darkness.

Onward the old man wends his way.  If he be shut out from the prison, he will find shelter at Jane’s cabin near by, from whence he may reach the cell early next morning.  Presently the dull tramp of horses breaks upon his ear,—­the sound sharpening as they advance.  Through the dimming haze he sees two mounted guardsmen advancing:  the murmuring sound of their conversation floats onward through the air,—­their side arms rattle ominously.  Now their white cross belts are disclosed; their stalwart figures loom out.  Nearer and nearer they approach:  as the old man, trembling with fear, remembers he is without a pass, a gruff voice cries out, “Stop there!”

“A prowling nigger!” rejoins another, in a voice scarcely less hoarse.  The old man halts in the light of a lamp, as the right-hand guard rides up, and demands his pass.

“Whose nigger are you?” again demands the first voice.  “Your pass, or come with us!”

The old man has no pass; he will go to his master, dead in the county prison!

Guardsmen will hear neither falsehoods nor pleading.  He doesn’t know “whose nigger he is! he is a runaway without home or master,” says the left-hand guardsman, as he draws his baton from beneath his coat, and with savage grimace makes a threatening gesture.  Again he poises it over the old man’s head, as he, with hand uplifted, supplicates mercy.  “Nobody’s nigger, and without a pass!” he grumbles out, still motioning his baton.