"Why should you stay here? You have no wife nor child; why not go where the black man is respected and useful?"
"I'se 'spected and useful har, massa. I hab no wife nor child, and dat make me feel, I s'pose, like as ef all de brack people war my chil'ren."
"But they are not your children; and you can be of no service to them. At the North you might learn, and put your talents to some use."
"Sar," he replied, a singular enthusiasm lighting up his face, "de Lord, dat make me what I ar, put me har, and I must stay. Sometimes when tings look bery brack, and I feel a'most 'scouraged, I goes to Him, and I say, 'Lord, I's ob no use, take me 'way; let me get fru wid dis; let me no more see de suffrin' and 'pression ob de pore cullud race;' den He say to me, just so plain as I say it to you, 'Keep up good courage, Scipio, de time will come;'[C] and now, bless de Lord, de time am coming!"
"What time is coming, Scipio?"
He gave me a quick, suspicious glance, but his face in a moment resumed its usual expression, as he replied: "I'se sure, massa, dat I could trust you. I feel you am my friend, but I can't say no more."
"You need not, Scip—I can guess. What you have said is safe with me. But let me counsel you—wait for the white man. Do not let your freedom come in blood!"
"It will come, massa, as de Lord will. When He war freed de earth shook, and de vail ob de temple war rent in twain!"
We said no more, but rode on in silence; the darky absorbed in his own reflections, I musing over the black volcano, whose muffled echoes I then heard "away down South in Dixie."
We had ridden on for about an hour, when an opening in the trees disclosed a by-path, leading to a plantation. Following it for a short distance, we came upon a small clearing, in the midst of which, flanked by a ragged corn and potato patch, squatted a dilapidated, unpainted wooden building, a sort of "half-way house" between a hut and a shanty. In its door-way, seated on a chair which wanted one leg and a back, was a suit of linsey-woolsey, adorned by enormous metal buttons, and surmounted by a queer-looking headpiece that might have passed for either a hat or an umbrella. I was at a loss to determine whether the object were a human being or a scarecrow, when, at the sound of our approach, the umbrella-like article lifted, and a pair of sunken eyes, a nose, and an enormous beard, disclosed themselves. Addressing myself to the singular figure, I inquired how far we were from our destination, and the most direct route to it.