"I'll have the drover and his horses here before noon to-morrow, and I shall know something about the horses by that time, too, for I'll come back in company with them, and I'll keep my eyes open."
No sooner was Baillie comfortably stretched upon a lounge in his hotel room, than Sam presented himself.
"Mas' Baillie," the negro boy broke in, without waiting for his master to ask how he came to be there, "Mas' Baillie, you's a-gwine to be one o' de officers now, jes' as you ought to ha' been fust off. Now you'll need Sam wid you, won't you?"
"I'll need somebody, I suppose," the young man answered, with a laugh at Sam's enthusiasm, "but if I take you along where I am going, you'll stand a mighty good chance of getting a bullet-hole through you, or having your black head knocked off your shoulders by a shell. Have you thought of that?"
"Co'se I'se thought o' dat, an' I ain't de leas' bit afeard nuther. I'se a Pegram nigga from Warlock, I is, an' a Pegram nigga from Warlock ain't got no more business to be afeared o' bullets when his duty brings 'em in his way, dan a white folks Pegram hisself is. Ef ye'll jes' take Sam along of you, you sha'n't never have no 'casion to be shamed o' yer servant."
"Very well, Sam," answered the master; "now go back to Warlock, and tell your mammy you're going to the war. By the way, you may have that old velveteen and corduroy hunting suit of mine to wear. Get it from the closet in the chamber, and tell your mammy to shorten the trousers legs by seven or eight inches."
Sam was fairly dancing for joy, and as he mounted his mule for the homeward journey, he began to sing a dismal ditty which he had composed as an expression of his feelings at the time of his master's first departure from Warlock to serve as a soldier. Unhappily only a fragment of the song remains to us. It began:
"Dey ain't no sun in de mawning,
Dey ain't no moon shine in de night,
'Case the war's done come an' de mahstah's done gone,
Fer to git hisse'f killed in de fight.
"Oh, Moses!
Holy Moses!
Can't you come back 'cross de ribber?
Can't you let Gabrel blow his horn?"
What lines were to follow, and what words rhymed with "ribber" and "horn," we are not permitted to know. For at this point, Sam, whose self-education included a considerable proficiency in profanity, broke off his singing, reined in his mule, and said: