"Let me go, you black scoundrel," shrieked the Colonel, wild with rage.
"When he'm out ob reach, you'd kill him," replied the negro, as cool as if he was doing an ordinary thing.
"I'll kill you, you black—hound, if you don't let me go," again screamed the Colonel, struggling violently in the negro's grasp, and literally foaming at the mouth.
"I shan't lef you gwo, Cunnel, till you 'gree not to do dat."
The Colonel was a stout, athletic man, in the very prime of life, and his rage gave him more than his ordinary strength, but Scip held him as I might have held a child.
"Here, Jim," shouted the Colonel to his body-servant, who just then emerged from among the trees, "'rouse the plantation—shoot this d— nigger."
"Dar aint one on 'em wud touch him, massa. He'd send me to de debble wid one fist."
"You ungrateful dog," groaned his master. "Mr. K——, will you stand by and see me handcuffed by a miserable slave?"
"The black means well, my friend; he has saved you from murder. Say he is safe, and I'll answer for his being away in an hour."
The Colonel made one more ineffectual attempt to free himself from the vice-like grip of the negro, then relaxing his efforts, and, gathering his broken breath, he said, "You're safe now, but if you're found within ten miles of my plantation by sunrise, by—you're a dead man."