"I'll go with pleasure," I replied. "Which way do you think Moye has gone?"
"The shortest cut to the railroad, probably; but old Cæsar will track him."
A servant then announced breakfast—an early one having been prepared. We hurried through the meal with all speed, and the other preparations being soon over, were in twenty minutes in our saddles, and ready for the journey. The mulatto coachman, with a third horse, was at the door, ready to accompany us. As we mounted, the Colonel said to him:
"Go and call Sam, the driver."
The darky soon returned with the heavy, ugly-visaged black who had been whipped, by Madam P——'s order, the day before.
"Sam," said his master, "I shall be gone some days, and I leave the field-work in your hands. Let me have a good account of you when I return."
"Yas, massa, you shill dat," replied the negro.
"Put Jule—Sam's Jule—into the woods, and see that she does full tasks," continued the Colonel.
"Haint she wanted 'mong de nusses, massa?"
"Put some one else there—give her field-work; she needs it."