!" sobbed the poor old thing, her trembling limbs
hardly able to sustain the feeble frame. "What could yo' ole mammy do
'ginst all dem folks? Ef Mars' Henry couldn't make 'em let you 'lone,
what could a po' ole nigger do what ain't got no money, an' no sense,
an' no fren's? Lord! Lord! my blessed chile!" she sobbed, the tears
raining down her withered black cheeks, "ef mammy had a hundred nakes
she would put dat rope 'roun' 'em all to keep it off o' your'n."

That was true, poor soul! but could avail nothing, and the appointed
sentence was carried into execution. The soul of the boy returned to its
Creator and its Judge, and the old mother was taken to her cabin almost
as lifeless as the body that swung in the air half a mile away.

If the fact that they flocked to the place of execution cannot be
ascribed to any idiosyncrasy of the negro race, it was curious to see
how they were afterward overwhelmed with superstitious fear. We had no
more trouble about the melons and grapes. The negroes found another
route to the village market, and the little well-worn path became
overgrown with grass and ox-eyed daisies, like the rest of the old
field. Even after the body had been buried far off and the scaffold
removed, in broad daylight they shunned the place, but at dusk or after
dark neither bribery nor persuasion could have induced one of them to
go near it. Mr. Smith tried some of them.

"But what the d----l are you afraid of?" he asked impatiently.

"I dunno, sir," returned one of the men doggedly. "All I does know is, I
ain't gwine (no disrespek, sir). But when a man is took off dat
onnateral kind o' way, de sperrit is always hangin' 'roun', tryin' to
git back whar it come from."

"But Tony is buried a mile away."

"I can't help dat, sir. De sperrit were let out in de ole field, an'
maybe it don't know whar to find the pusson it 'longs to. Anyhow, ef it
come back dar lookin' for Tony, I gwine take good keer it don't find
_me_!"

An amusing eccentricity of feeling, certainly a very nice distinction,
was shown during slave times by a woman belonging to a friend of ours.
Some disturbance had taken place on the premises of a neighbor, Mr.
H----, who, being a severe old man, forthwith forbade that any negro
should again visit his place. This result was very dispiriting to Judy,
the slave above referred to, for she had a cousin belonging to Mr. H----
to whom she was in the habit of paying frequent visits, and for whom she