ed,--

'Is that all! Lord bless you; he didn't seduce her. There's no seducing
these women; with them it's a thing of course. It was Sam's d---- high
blood that made the trouble. His father was the proudest man in
Virginia, and Sam is as like him as a nigger can be like a white man.'

'No matter what the blood is, it seems to me such an injury justifies
revenge.'

'Pshaw, my good fellow, you don't know these people. I'll stake my
plantation against a glass of whisky there's not a virtuous woman with a
drop of black blood in her veins in all South Carolina. They prefer the
white men; their husbands know it, and take it as a matter of course.'

We had here reached the negro cabin. It was one of the more remote of
the collection, and stood deep in the woods, an enormous pine growing up
directly beside the doorway. In all respects it was like the other huts
on the plantation. A bright fire lit up its interior, and through the
crevices in the logs we saw, as we approached, a scene that made us
pause involuntarily, when within a few rods of the house. The mulatto
man, whose clothes were torn and smeared with swamp mud, stood near the
fire. On a small pine table near him lay a large carving-knife, which
glittered in the blaze, as if recently sharpened. His wife was seated on
the side of the low bed at his back, weeping. She was two or three
shades lighter than the man, and had the peculiar brown, kinky hair,
straight, flat nose, and speckled, gray eyes which mark the metif.
Tottling on the floor at the feet of the man, and caressing his knees,
was a child of perhaps two years.

As we neared the house, we heard the voice of the Overseer issuing from
the doorway on the other side of the pine-tree.

'Come out, ye black rascal.'

'Come in, you wite hound, ef you dar,' responded the negro, laying his
hand on the carving-knife.

'Come out, I till ye; I sha'n't ax ye agin.'

'I'll hab nuffin' to do wid you. G'way and send your massa har,' replied
the mulatto man, turning his face away with a lordly, contemptuous
gesture, that spoke him a true descendant of Pocahontas. This movement
exposed his left side to the doorway, outside of which, hidden from us
by the tree, stood the Overseer.

'Come away, Moye,' said the Colonel, advancing with me toward the door;
'_I'll_ speak to him.'

Before all of the words had escaped the Colonel's lips, a streak of fire
flashed from where the Overseer stood, and took the direction of the
n