III.
THE SECRET CELLAR.
No sooner did the lad feel himself safe from pursuit, than he made his way out of the woods again, and ran with all speed to Mr. Stackridge's house.
To his dismay he learned that that stanch Unionist was absent from home.
"Is he in the willage?" said the breathless Carl.
"I reckon he is," said the farmer's wife; adding in a whisper,—for she guessed the nature of Carl's business,—"inquire for him down to barber Jim's." And she told him what to say to the barber.
Barber Jim was a colored man, who had demonstrated the ability of the African to take care of himself, by purchasing first his own freedom of his mistress, buying his wife and children afterwards, and then accumulating a property as much more valuable than all Silas Ropes and his poor white minions possessed, as his mind was superior to their combined intelligence.
Jim had accomplished this by uniting with industrious habits a natural shrewdness, which enabled him to make the most of his labor and of his means. He owned the most flourishing barber-shop in the place, and kept in connection with it (I am sorry to say) a bar, at which he dealt out to his customers some very bad liquors at very good prices. Had Jim been a white man, he would not, of course, have stooped to make money by any such low business as rum-selling—O, no! but being only a "nigger," what else could you expect of him?
Well, on this very evening Jim's place began to be thronged almost before it was dark. A few came in to be shaved, while many more passed through the shop into the little bar-room beyond. What was curious, some went in who appeared never to come out again; Mr. Stackridge among the number.