"Howdy, Uncle Moses?" Mr. Izzard replied. He was a tall, pale, well-born, well-bred, well-educated man, as kind a man as ever held his fellowmen in slavery, and as sure that he was justified in doing so by the laws of both God and man as the German emperor was that he ruled a subject people by divine right. "No, we won't light down. We just came to say howdy. Are you getting on all right? If you want anything, come up to the big house and ask for it."
He smiled and the overseer scowled upon the old negro as he stammered a few words of thanks. Suddenly the overseer asked:
"Have you seen anything of Mr. Pinckney's Morris, Mose?"
"No, sah, Mista Johnsing, sah, I ain't seen hide nor har ob Morris. Has dat fool nigger runned away?"
Johnson looked at him sharply.
"If I thought you knew already he had run away," said he, "I'd"—he cracked his whip in the air to show what he would have done.
Moses and Towser cowered. But Mr. Izzard told Johnson to stop frightening "the best darkey on the place" and they rode away. Mose dropped upon his one chair and was just about to give fervent thanks for the escape from detection, when Johnson, who had turned a short distance away and had galloped back, flung himself off his horse at the door and strode into the dusky hut.
"I b'lieve you know something about that Morris," he roared at the shrinking old negro. "You looked guilty. Tell me what you know or I'll thrash you within an inch of your black life." He cracked his dreaded whip again.
"I dun know nothin' 'bout him, Mista Johnsing," Moses pleaded.
Alas, at that moment, smoke and soot proved too much for the overtried nostrils of Tom. He sneezed with the vigor of a sneeze long held back. His "at-choo! at-choo!" sounded down the chimney like a chorus of bassoons. Johnson was across the room in a bound. He knelt upon the hearth, groped up the chimney, caught the boy by the ankle and pulled him down. The soot had made a negro of Tom. The overseer was sure he had caught the fleeing Morris.