"Kotched, massa; I'se got de padlocks on him."
"Kotched," echoed half a dozen darkies, who stood near enough to hear; "Ole Moye is kotched," ran through the crowd, till the music ceased, and a shout went up from two hundred black throats that made the old trees tremble.
"Now gib him de lashes, Massa Davy," cried the old nurse. "Gib him what he gabe pore Sam; but mine dat you keeps widin de law."
"Never fear, Aunty," said the Colonel; "I'll give him ——."
How the Colonel kept his word will be told in another chapter.
[E] Instances are frequent where Southern gentlemen form these left-handed connections, and rear two sets of differently colored children; but it is not often that the two families occupy the same domicil. The only other case within my personal knowledge was that of the well-known President of the Bank of St. M——, at Columbus, Ga. That gentleman, whose note ranked in Wall Street, when the writer was acquainted with that locality, as "A No. 1," lived for fifteen years with two "wives" under one roof. One, an accomplished white woman, and the mother of several children—did the honors of his table, and moved with him in "the best society;" the other—a beautiful quadroon, also the mother of several children—filled the humbler office of nurse to her own and the other's offspring.
[F] Among the things of which slavery has deprived the black is a name. A slave has no family designation. It may be for that reason that a high-sounding appellation is usually selected for the single one he is allowed to appropriate.