and George, Walford, and the lad Tom, with
an old negro who possessed a slight smattering of English, were
installed into a small, but fairly comfortable, wooden hut, thatched
with sugar-cane-leaves. Here the clothing which they had been wearing
when purchased was taken from them, and they were supplied instead with
short drawers and jumpers of blue dungaree; a plentiful meal of ground
maize with a little salt was served out to them, and they were left for
the remainder of the day to recover themselves and prepare for the
labours which awaited them on the morrow.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

A DASH FOR FREEDOM.

To find one's self sold into slavery must be a thoroughly unpleasant
experience; yet when George Leicester that night found himself actually
a slave, the tenant of a slave-cabin, and with slaves only for his
future companions and associates, he felt by no means discouraged.
There was no oppressive feeling of despair weighing down his heart and
crushing his spirit into utter hopelessness; on the contrary, he had the
feeling as if a great load of care and anxiety had been lifted from off
his heart; he now knew the worst of what was to befall him; he fully
recognised that the life before him was to be one of unrequited hardship
at least, and, it might be, also of suffering and bitter tyranny; but he
braced himself to meet it all, whatever it might be, with unflinching
fortitude, sustained by the steadfast, inextinguishable hope of eventual
escape.

This hope indeed of eventual escape rose high within his breast, now
that he had actually arrived upon the spot from which it must be made.
The estate of which he was now one of the chattels was that of a tobacco
and sugar planter. Of its extent he could at present form no opinion;
but he saw that it was of considerable size, the whole of the cultivated
ground within sight being the property of his owner. It was situated
upon a tolerably level plain, with a road running through it, from the
main road along which they had recently travelled, up to the planter's
house, a wide straggling stone structure, with a thatched roof and a
verandah all round, occupying the summit of a slight eminence nearly in
the middle of the estate. Behind the house, at a distance of some
twenty yards, stood another building, which George rightly guessed to be
the stables; the slave-huts, of which there were thirty-four, were
built, at a distance of about a quarter of a mile from the house, on