countenance, and looked him over out of her dark, bold eyes:

"Joe, this is a nigger, by God!"

Johnson and the captain also examined him carefully, and, uttering an
oath, the former kicked the prostrate man with his heavy boot.

"I popped this bloke last night," he said, "and thought the scold's cure
had him. He's a sea-crab playin' the setter fur niggers. He sang beef to
me in Princess Anne. I told him thar he'd pass for a nigger, Patty, and
we'll sell him fur one to Georgey!"

"All's fish that comes to our net, Joe," the woman chuckled; "he'll sell
high, too."

"That white man," spoke the voice of Samson, within the pen, his chains
rattling, "has hunderds of friends a-lookin' fur him, an' you'll ketch
it if you don't let him off."

"What latitat chants there?" Joe Johnson demanded of Patty Cannon.

"That's my nigger, Joe," the woman answered.

"Fetch him to the light."

The captain propped Samson up, and Joe Johnson glared into his face, and
then struck him down with the handle of his heavy whip.

"Patty," he growled, "that nigger's scienced; he's the champion scrapper
of Somerset. He knocked me down, and I marked him fur it; and now, by
God! I'm a-goin' to burn him alive on Twiford's island."

He swore an oath, half blasphemous, half blackguard, and the captain
murmured, with a lisp:

"The white man is the only _witness_. Make sure of him!"

Irons were produced, and the captain speedily fastened Phoebus's hands
in a clevis, and hobbled his feet, and placed him, without brutality, in
the pen, and, further, chained him there to a ring in the joist below.
As the door was closed and bolted, a voice from the darkness of the pen
cried out:

"Aunt Patty, let me out: I saved the captain's life; I took the white
man's knife. I'll serve you faithfully if you only let me go."

"He blowed the gab," said Joe Johnson, "but it won't serve him."

"Zeke," cried the woman, "it's no use. You go to Georgey with the next
gang--you an' the white nigger thar."

The man threw himself upon the floor and moaned and prayed, as the
lamplight disappeared and the hatchway slid echoingly over the stairs,
and the lower bolts were drawn. As he lay there in horror and amid
contempt, a voice arrested his ears near by, singing, with musical and
easy spirit, so low that it seemed a hymn, from the roads and fields far
down beneath:

"Deep-en de woun' dy hands have made
In dis weak, helpless soul."

The man listened with aw