e matter?" I said, looking back.

"Poor Pomp get all de 'mell ob de head dis end."

"All right," I said; "it won't hurt you."

"But um do 'tink horrid, Mass' George."

"We'll carry it the other way, side by side, as soon as we get out of
the trees," I said; and we went on a little further, when the boy
uttered a shout.

"What's the matter now?" I said.

"De fly, Mass' George."

"Never mind the flies," I said; "they will not hurt you."

"But dey do, Mass' George. Dey keep tink Pomp am de head, and sit on um
and bite lil bit out ob um arm and neck. Poor nigger hardly got a bit
ob clothes on."

"And a good job too, Pomp," I cried. "I wish I hadn't. Phew! It is
hot!"

After divers changes about, in which I got my fair share of the
nuisance, we reached the house, to find my father at home; and he,
Morgan, and Hannibal came on to meet our triumphant procession.

"Bravo, George!" said my father; "why, that's quite a patriarch. How
did you manage to kill him?"

"Mass' George shoot um, and Pomp cut um head off," cried the boy,
proudly.

"Yes," I said; "Pomp found him asleep, and fetched me. Morgan, I want
it on that stump."

"No, no, sir," said Morgan. "I'll get the hammer and a big spike-nail,
and drive it through the back of the skin into that big tree at the
bottom."

"Capital!" I cried.

"But it will be a nuisance," said my father.

"Oh no, sir. It's full in the hot sun, and the flies will clean it.
Before a week's out it will be dry."

Hannibal fetched the short ladder, and held the head, while Morgan drove
in the nail so that the great head with its propped open jaws hung there
grinning at the bottom of the garden; the skin soon shrinking away so
that the head hung as it were by a skin loop; and before a month was
past it was perfectly inoffensive, and had preserved in drying its
natural appearance in a wonderful way.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

Recollections of sunny days in the cotton-fields, with the men and women
cramming the white bursting pods into baskets as they laughed and
chattered together, and every now and then burst into some song or
chorus, their natural light-heartedness making them, if well treated,
forget the bonds from which they suffered. Of those many days in the
hot glow, where the men were busy with great chopping-knives cutting
down the tall, towering canes ready to be piled high in the mule-carts
and borne off to the crushing-mills.

For as time went on the vis