We rode on till we came to the inevitable opening in the trees, and were soon at the door of what I saw, by the light which came through the crevices in the logs, was a one-story shanty, about twenty feet square. "Will you let us come in out of de rain?" asked Scip of a wretched-looking, half-clad, dirt-bedraggled woman, who thrust her head from the doorway.
"Who ar ye?" was the reply.
"Only massa and me, and de hoss, and we'm half dead wid de cold," replied Scip; "can we cum in out ob de rain?"
"Wal, strangers," replied the woman, eyeing us as closely as the darkness would permit, "you'll find mighty poor fixins har, but I reckon ye can come in."
[C] The Southern blacks, like all ignorant people, are intensely fanatical on religious subjects. The most trifling occurrences have to their minds a hidden significance, and they believe the Lord speaks to them in signs and dreams, and in almost every event of nature. This superstition, which has been handed down from their savage ancestry, has absolute sway over them, and one readily sees what immense power it would give to some leading, adroit mind, that knew how to use it. By means of it they might be led to the most desperate deeds, fully believing all the while that they were "led ob de Lord."
CHAPTER IV.
POOR WHITES.
Entering the house, we saw, by the light of a blazing pile of pine-knots, which roared and crackled on the hearth, that it contained only a single apartment. In front of the fire-place, which occupied the better half of one side of this room, the floor was of the bare earth, littered over with pine chips, dead cinders, live coals, broken pots, and a lazy spaniel dog. Opposite to this, at the other end of the room, were two low beds, which looked as if they had been "slept in forever, and never made up." Against the wall, between the beds and the fire-place, stood a small pine table, and on it was a large wooden bowl, from whose mouth protruded the handles of several unwashed pewter spoons. On the right of the fire was a razeed rocking-chair, evidently the peculiar property of the mistress of the mansion, and three blocks of pine log, sawn off smoothly, and made to serve for seats. Over against these towered a high-backed settle, something like that on which
"sot Huldy all alone,
When Zeke peeked thru the winder;"