ibly that the niggers were _a_ getting thick.

"Godfree! but ain't they thick! I hope to be stabbed with a gridiron,"
said Phipps, "if there ain't more _niggers_--look at 'em--more niggers
than would patch and grade the infernal regions eleven miles! Guess I've
enough niggers for a spell," continued Phipps, "so I'll just pop in
here, and see how this feller sells his notions." And so Abner, having
reached Dock square, saunters into a gun, pistol, bowie, jack-knife,
dog-collar, shot-bag, and notion-shop in general. Unlucky step.

The stiff-dickied, frizzle-headed, polished and perfumed shop-keeper was
on hand, and particularly predisposed to sell the stranger something.
Just then a nigger passed the door, and looked in very sharply at
Phipps, and presently two more passed, then a fourth and fifth, all
_looking_ more or less pointedly at the manufacturer of wooden doin's,
and white-pine fixin's.

"That's a neat _collar_," says the shop-keeper, as Phipps, sort of
miscellaneously, placed his hand upon a brass-band, red-lined
dog-collar.

"Collar! don't call that a _collar_, do you?"

"I do, sir, a beautiful collar, sir."

"What for, _solgers_?" asks Phipps.

"Soldiers, no, dogs," says the shop-keeper, puckering his mouth as
though he had _sampled_ a lemon.

"_O!_" says Phipps, suddenly realizing the fact. "I ain't got no dogs;
bad stock; don't pay; tax 'em up where I live; wouldn't pay tax for
forty dogs." More niggers passed, repassed, and looked in at Phipps and
the storekeeper.

"I say, ain't the niggers got to be thick--infernal thick, in your town
lately?"

"Well, I don't know that they are," replied the shop-keeper; "getting
rather scarce, I think, since the Fugitive bill has been put in force
over the country, sir, but it does appear to me," said the shop-keeper,
twiging sundry and suspicious-looking col'ud gem'en passing by his
store, gaping in rather wistfully at the door, and peeping through the
sash of the windows--"it does appear to me, that a good many colored
persons are about this morning; yes, there is, why there goes more, more
yet; bless me, there's another, two, three, four, why a dozen has just
passed; they seem to look in here rather curiously, I wonder--only look;
what has stirred them up, I want to know!" the fluctuation of the
_Congo_ market completely attracted the handsome man's attention;
his surprise finally assumed the most tangible shape and complexion of
fear, for the niggers, one