“O Lawd! O Lawd!” moaned the driver. “Den we uns won’t nebber be free. Dem rebels won’t luf us go.”
“That’s what I think, so you had better dig out while you have the chance. You are bound to have your freedom some day, and you might as well take it now. Don’t go off like thieves in the night, but come up here boldly and shake hands with me as you would if you were going back to the home plantation. And when you get sick of the Yankees and their ways, come back, and I will treat you as well as I ever did. Bob, you had better go for one. You don’t earn your salt here.”
This was all Rodney had to say regarding the Emancipation Proclamation, but it was more than his darkies bargained for. While they were glad to know that they were free men and women, they were not glad to see Rodney so perfectly willing to let them go. He didn’t care a snap whether they went or stayed, and that made them all the more anxious to stay where they were sure of getting plenty to eat and clothes to wear. Bob and one other worthless negro took Rodney at his word, and left the plantation that very afternoon, but they did not go to the house to bid him good-by. They packed their bundles in secret, and slipped away “like thieves in the night”; but, before they had been gone two hours, Lambert marched them back to the bars at the muzzle of his rifle.
CHAPTER VI.
THE MAN HE WANTED TO SEE.
“What in the world did you bring those useless fellows back here for?” was the way in which Rodney Gray welcomed Lambert when he marched the two negroes up to the porch where he was sitting. “I was in hopes I had seen the last of them.”
“Why, dog-gone it, they’re yourn, an’ I jest want to see if what they have been tellin’ me is the truth,” said Lambert in a surprised tone. “I found ’em pikin’ along the highway with them packs onto their backs an’ no passes into their pockets——”
“Don’t need no passes no mo’,” interrupted Bob in a surly voice. “I am jes as free as you be, Mistah Lambert.”
“Jest listen at the nigger’s imperdence!” cried Lambert, astonished and angry because Rodney did not at once take Bob to task for his freedom of speech. “This is what comes of havin’ so many Yankees prowlin’ about the country.”
“That’s about the size of it. Bob is as free as you or I, and here is the paper that says so,” declared Rodney, taking a printed copy of the proclamation from his pocket.
“Who writ that there paper, an’ where did you get it?”