tall, full-blooded negro, with a stern and savage countenance; the
marks on his face showed that he was from one of the barbarous tribes
in Africa, and claimed that country as his native land. His only
covering was a girdle around his loins, made of skins of wild beasts
which he had killed. His only token of authority among those that he
led was a pair of epaulettes, made of the tail of a fox, and tied to
his shoulder by a cord. Brought from the coast of Africa, when only
fifteen years of age, to the island of Cuba, he was smuggled from
thence into Virginia. He had been two years in the swamps, and
considered it his future home. He had met a negro woman, who was also a
runaway, and, after the fashion of his native land, had gone through
the process of oiling her, as the marriage ceremony. They had built a
cave on a rising mound in the swamp, and this was their home. This
man's name was Picquilo. His only weapon was a sword made from a scythe
which he had stolen from a neighboring plantation. His dress, his
character, his manners, and his mode of fighting were all in keeping
with the early training he had received in the land of his birth. He
moved about with the activity of a cat, and neither the thickness of
the trees nor the depth of the water could stop him. His was a bold,
turbulent spirit; and, from motives of revenge, he imbrued his hands in
the blood of all the whites he could meet. Hunger, thirst, and loss of
sleep, he seemed made to endure, as if by peculiarity of constitution.
His air was fierce, his step oblique, his look sanguinary.

Such was the character of one of the negroes in the Southampton
Insurrection. All negroes were arrested who were found beyond their
master's threshold, and all white strangers were looked upon with
suspicion.

Such was the position in which Isabella found affairs when she returned
to Virginia in search of her child. Had not the slave-owners been
watchful of strangers, owing to the outbreak, the fugitive could not
have escaped the vigilance of the police; for advertisements announcing
her escape, and offering a large reward for her arrest, had been
received in the city previous to her arrival, and officers were
therefore on the lookout for her.

It was on the third day after her arrival in Richmond, as the quadroon
was seated in her room at the hotel, still in the disguise of a
gentleman, that two of the city officers entered the apartment and
informed her that they were autho