retty gal, dat I don't want to be a-losin' of it,
mind, I tell you, 'sept to my wife when she'll hab me."

Samson watched the quadroon's delicate, high-bred features, her skin
almost paler than her young mistress's, her figure like the clove's
after a hard winter--the more active that a little meagre--her head
small, and its tresses soft as the crow blackbird's plumage, and the
loyalty that lay in her large eyes, like strong passion, for her
mistress, was turned to pride, and nearly scorn, when they listened to
him.

"A slave, Miss Vesty says"--Virgie spoke with almost fierceness--"is not
one that's owned, half as much as one that sells himself--to hard drink,
or to selfishness, or to fear. You're not a free man, Samson, if you're
afraid, and are like these low slave negroes who dare nothing if they
can only get a little low pleasure. All that can make a black man white,
in my eyes, is a white man's enterprise."

Vesta felt, as she often had done, the capable soul of her servant, and
did not resent her spirit as unbecoming a slave, but rather felt
responsive chords in her own nature, as if, indeed, Virgie was the more
imperious of the two. Coming now into full womanhood, her race elements
finding their composition, her character unrestrained by any one in
Teackle Hall, Virgie was her young mistress's shield-bearer, like David
to the princely Jonathan.

"Why, Virgie," Samson answered, with humility, "I never meant not to go,
lady gal, after marster's wife asked me, I only wanted you to beg me
hard, an' mebbe I'd git a kiss befo' I started."

"Wait till you come back, and see if you do your errand well," Virgie
spoke again. "I shall not kiss you now."

"I will," cried little Roxy, to the amusement of them all, giving Samson
a hearty smack from her little pouting mouth; "and now you've got it,
think it's Virgie's kiss, and get your breakfast and start!"

As they went to their abodes to make ready, Jimmy Phoebus found Jack
Wonnell playing marbles with the boys at the court-house corner.

"Jack," he said, "I'm a-going to find Levin an' that nigger trader. I
may git in a peck of trouble up yonder on the Nanticoke. Tell all the
pungy men whair I'm a-goin', an' what fur."

"Can't I do somethin' fur you, Jimmy? Can't I give you one o' my
bell-crowns; thair's a-plenty of 'em left."

"Take my advice, Jack, an' tie a stone to all them hats and sink' em in
the Manokin. Ole Meshach's hat has made more hokey-pokey than the