"Are you not afraid that we shall sell you?"
"No, boss, I isn't. The overseer said you would sell us off to Cuba, to work in the sugar-mill, but we didn't believe him."
Among the servants was a bright mulatto girl, who was dancing, singing, and manifesting her joy in violent demonstration.
"What makes you so happy?" I asked.
"Because you Yankees have come. I can go home now."
"Is not this your home?"
"No. I come from Williamsport in Maryland."
"When did you come from there?"
"Last year. Master sold me. I spect my brother is 'long with the army. He ran away last year. Master was afraid that I should run away, and he sold me."
The negroes came from all the surrounding plantations. Old men with venerable beards, horny hands, crippled with hard work and harder usage; aged women, toothless, almost blind, steadying their steps with sticks; little negro boys, driving a team of skeleton steers,—mere bones and tendons covered with hide,—or wall-eyed horses, spavined, foundered, and lame, attached to rickety carts and wagons, piled with beds, tables, chairs, pots and kettles, hens, turkeys, ducks, women with infants in their arms, and a sable cloud of children trotting by their side.