ated. The
demand for negroes is so great, since the cotton-gin and the foreign
markets have made cotton a great staple, and the direct importation of
slaves from Africa has been stopped, that there is a great run for
border-state negroes, and free colored people seldom are righted when
they have been pulled across the line."

"They never are righted, Judge Custis! I'm ashamed of my native state.
Only a few years ago, when I was a boy, people around yer was a-freein'
of their niggers, and it was understood that slavery would a-die out,
an' everybody said, 'Let the evil thing go.' But niggers began to go up
high; they got to be wuth eight hunderd dollars whair they wasn't wuth
two hunderd; and all the politicians begun to say: 'Niggers is not fit
to be free. Niggers is the bulrush, or the bulwork, or bull-something of
our nation.' And then kidnapping of free niggers started, and the next
thing they'll kidnap free American citizens!"

"Tut! tut! James! it will never go that far."

"Won't it? What did Joe Johnson say to me last night before the
Washington Tavern? He said: 'I've sold whiter niggers than you, myself.
I kin run you to market an' git my price for you!'"

The bay sailor took off his hat.

"Look at me!" he continued; "by smoke! look on my brown skin and black
eyes an' coal black hair. Whair did they come from? They come from
Greece, whair Leonidas an' Marky Bozarris and all them fellers came
from: that's what my daddy said. He know'd better than me. I'm nothin'
but a pore Eastern Shore man sailing my little vessel, but I'm a
free-born man, and I tell you, Judge, it's a dangerous time when nothing
but his shade of color protects a free man."

"James Phoebus," the Judge said, gravely, "I hope you believe me when
I say that I think all these things outrages, and they grow out of the
greater outrage of slavery itself. We are being governed by new states,
hatched in the Southwest from the alligator eggs of old slavery, that
had grown into political and moral disrepute with us in Maryland and
Virginia."

"There's no nigger in me," Phoebus said, putting on his hat, "but I
have taken these hints about my looking like a nigger to heart, and I'll
take a nigger's part when he is imposed on, as if he was some of the
body and blood of my Lord Jesus. Now you hear it!"

"And brave enough you are to mean it, my honest fellow. So do my errand,
and good-morning, James."

CHAPTER XVI.

BELL-CROWN MAN.

As the