SLAVE.

Throughout all these days where has Clancy been? Dead, and come to life
again? Or, but half killed and recovered? Where the while hidden? And
why? Questions that in quick succession occur to Simeon Woodley meeting
him by his mother's grave.

Not all put then or there; but afterwards on the hunter's own hearth, as
the two sit before the blazing logs, by whose light Clancy has read the
letter so cheering him.

Then Woodley asks them, and impatiently awaits the answers.

The reader may be asking the same questions, and in like manner
expecting reply.

He shall have it, as Woodley, not in a word or at once, but in a series
of incidents, for the narration of which it is necessary to return upon
time; as also to introduce a personage hitherto known but by repute--the
fugitive slave, Jupiter.

"Jupe" is of the colour called "light mulatto," closely approximating to
that of newly tanned leather. His features are naturally of a pleasing
expression; only now and then showing fierce, when he reflects on a
terrible flogging, and general ill treatment experienced, at the hands
of the cruel master from whom he has absconded.

He is still but a young fellow, with face beardless; only two darkish
streaks of down along the upper lip. But the absence of virile sign
upon his cheeks has full compensation in a thick shock covering his
crown, where the hair of Shem struggles for supremacy with the wool of
Ham, and so successfully, as to result in a profusion of curls of which
Apollo might be proud. The god of Beauty need not want a better form or
face; nor he of Strength a set of sinews tougher, or limbs more tersely
knit. Young though he may be, Jupe has performed feats of Herculean
strength, requiring courage as well. No wonder at his having won Jule!

A free fearless spirit he: somewhat wild, though not heart-wicked; a
good deal given to nocturnal excursions to neighbouring plantations;
hence the infliction of the lash, which has finally caused his
absconding from that of Ephraim Darke.

A merry jovial fellow he has been--would be still--but for the cloud of
danger that hangs over him; dark as the den in which he has found a
hiding-place. This is in the very heart and centre of the cypress
swamp, as also in the heart and hollow of a cypress tree. No dead log,
but a living growing trunk, which stands on a little eyot, not
immediately surrounded by water, but marsh and mud. There is water
beyond, on every sid