"That was bold in you!"
"Bold?" The negro smiled. "What will you say then when I tell you I have been in Bythewood's house, since I left him? I wanted my medicine-case, and the bullet-moulds that belong with the rifle. I entered his room, where he was asleep. I stood for a long time and looked at him by the moonlight. It was well for him he didn't wake!" said Pomp, with a dancing light in his eye. "He did not; he slept well! Having got what I wanted, I came away; but I had changed knives with him, and left mine sticking in the bedstead over his head, so that he might know I had been there, and not accuse any one else of the theft."
"The sight of that knife must have given him a shudder, when he woke, and saw who had been there, and remembered his wrongs towards you!" said Penn.
"Well it might!" said Pomp. "Come here, Cudjo."
Cudjo had just entered the cave, bringing some partridges which he had caught in traps.
"It's allus 'Cudjo! Cudjo do dis! Cudjo do dat!' What ye want o' Cudjo?"
Pomp paid no heed to the ill-natured response, but said calmly, addressing Penn,—
"I have told you my reasons for escaping out of slavery: now I will show you Cudjo's."
The back of the deformed was stripped bare. Penn uttered a groan of horror at the sight.
"Dem's what ye call lickins!" said Cudjo, with a hideous grin over his shoulder. "Dat ar am de oberseer's work."