ndeed paced Colonel
Washington, his hands behind his back, his head bowed down, a grave
sorrow on his handsome face. The negro servants were crowded at the
palings, and looking over. The officers under the porch had wakened
up also, as their host remarked. Captain Waring was walking, almost
steadily, under the balcony formed by the sloping porch and roof of the
wooden house; and Captain Grace was lolling over the railing, with eyes
which stared very much, though perhaps they did not see very clearly.
Benson's was a famous rendezvous for cock-fights, horse-matches, boxing,
and wrestling-matches, such as brought the Virginian country-folks
together. There had been many brawls at Benson's, and men who came
thither sound and sober, had gone thence with ribs broken and eyes
gouged out. And squires, and farmers, and negroes, all participated in
the sport.

There, then, stalked the tall young Colonel, plunged in dismal
meditation. There was no way out of his scrape, but the usual cruel one,
which the laws of honour and the practice of the country ordered. Goaded
into fury by the impertinence of a boy, he had used insulting words. The
young man had asked for reparation. He was shocked to think that George
Warrington's jealousy and revenge should have rankled in the young
fellow so long but the wrong had been the Colonel's, and he was bound to
pay the forfeit.

A great hallooing and shouting, such as negroes use, who love noise at
all times, and especially delight to yell and scream when galloping on
horseback, was now heard at a distance, and all the heads, woolly and
powdered, were turned in the direction of this outcry. It came from the
road over which our travellers had themselves passed three hours before,
and presently the clattering of a horse's hoofs was heard, and now Mr.
Sady made his appearance on his foaming horse, and actually fired a
pistol off in the midst of a prodigious uproar from his woolly brethren.
Then he fired another pistol off, to which noises Sady's horse, which
had carried Harry Warrington on many a hunt, was perfectly accustomed;
and now he was in the courtyard, surrounded by a score of his bawling
comrades, and was descending amidst fluttering fowls and turkeys,
kicking horses and shrieking frantic pigs; and brother-negroes crowded
round him, to whom he instantly began to talk and chatter.

"Sady, sir, come here!" roars out Master Harry.

"Sady, come here! Confound you!" shouts Master George. (Ag