ooring, and was scrupulously neat
and clean. The logs were stripped of bark, and whitewashed. A bright,
cheerful fire was blazing on the hearth, and an air of rude comfort
pervaded the whole interior. On a low bed in the farther corner of the
room lay the sick child. He was a boy of about twelve years, and
evidently in the last stages of consumption. By his side, bending over
him as if to catch his almost inaudible words, sat a tidy,
youthful-looking colored woman, his mother, and the wife of the negro we
had met at the 'still.' Playing on the floor, was a younger child,
perhaps five years old, but while the faces of the mother and the sick
lad were of the hue of charcoal, _his_ skin, by a process well
understood at the South, had been bleached to a bright yellow.

The woman took no notice of our entrance, but the little fellow ran to
the Colonel and caught hold of the skirts of his coat in a free-and-easy
way, saying, 'Ole massa, you got suffin' for Dickey?'

'No, you little nig,' replied the Colonel, patting his woolly head as I
might have done a white child's, 'Dickey isn't a good boy.'

'Yas, I is,' said the little darky; 'you'se ugly ole massa, to gib
nuffin' to Dickey.'

Aroused by the Colonel's voice, the woman turned towards us. Her eyes
were swollen and her face bore traces of deep emotion.

'Oh massa!' she said, 'de chile am dyin'! It'm all along ob his workin'
in de swamp,--no _man_ orter work dar, let alone a chile like dis.'

'Do you think he is dying, Rosey?' asked the Colonel, approaching the
bedside.

'Shore, massa, he'm gwine fass. Look at 'em.'

The boy had dwindled to a skeleton, and the skin lay on his face in
crimpled folds, like a mask of black crape. His eyes were fixed, and he
was evidently going.

'Don't you know massa, my boy?' said the Colonel, taking his hand
tenderly in his.

The child's lips slightly moved, but I could hear no sound. The Colonel
put his ear down to him for a moment, then, turning to me, said,--

'He _is_ dying. Will you be so good as to step to the house and ask
Madam P---- here, and please tell Jim to go for Junius and the old man.'

I returned in a short while with the lady, but found the boy's father
and 'the old man'--the darky preacher of the plantation--there before
us. The preacher was a venerable old negro, much bowed by years, and
with thin wool as white as snow. When we entered he was bending over the
dying boy, but shortly turning to my host, said,-