"One day, a few weeks after I took to the mountains, I was watching for an animal which I heard rustling the foliage of a tree that grows up out of a chasm. I held my gun ready to fire, when I perceived that my animal was something human. It climbed the tree, ran out on one of the branches, leaped, like a squirrel, to some bushes that grew in the wall of the chasm, and soon pulled itself up to the top. Then I saw that it was a man—and a black man. He came towards the spot where I was concealed, sauntering along, chewing now and then a leaf, and muttering to himself; appearing as happy as a savage in his native woods, and perfectly unconscious of being observed. Suddenly I rose up, levelling my gun. He uttered a yell of terror, and started to cast himself again into the chasm. But with a threat I prevented him, and he threw himself at my feet, begging me to grant him his life, and not to take him back to his master.
"'Who is your master?' said I.
"'Job Coombs was my master,' said he, 'but I left him.'
"'You are Cudjo, then!' said I,—for I had heard of him. He ran away from a tolerably good master on account of unmercifully cruel treatment from the overseer. But as he had been frightfully cut up the night before he disappeared, it was generally believed he had crawled into a hole in the rocks somewhere, and died, and been eaten by buzzards. But it seems that he had been concealed and cured by an old slave on the plantation named Pete."
"Coombs's Pete!" exclaimed Penn.
"You have good cause to remember the name!" said Pomp. "As soon as Cudjo was well enough to tramp, he took to the mountains. It was a couple of years afterwards that I met him. We soon came to an understanding, and he conducted me to his cave. Here he lived. He has always kept up a communication with some of his friends—especially with old Pete, who often brings us provisions to a certain place, and supplies us with ammunition. We give him game and skins, which he disposes of when he can, generally to such men as Pepperill. He was going to Pepperill's house, after meeting Cudjo, that night when the patrolmen discovered and whipped him. That led to Pepperill's punishment, and that led to your being here."
"Does old Pete visit you since?"
"No, but he has sent us a message, and I have seen Pepperill."
"Not here!"
"Nobody ever comes here, sir. We have a place where we meet our friends; and as for Pepperill, I went to his house."