"'Tain't none o' my business," said the teamster coolly. "It's his nigger; I reckon he's a right to do as he pleases."
"I don't reckon nothin' o' the kind," said the Deacon indignantly. "I won't stand and see it done."
"Better not mix in," admonished the teamster. "Them air Southerners is pretty savage folks, and don't like any meddlin' twixt them and their niggers. What's a nigger, anyway?"
"Amounts to about as much as a white-livered teamster," said the Deacon hotly. "I'm goin' to mix in. I'll not see any man murdered while I'm around. Say, you," to the white man; "what are you goin' ter do with that man?"
"Mind yer own bizniss," replied the white man, after a casual glance at the Deacon, and seeing that he did not wear a uniform. "Keep yer mouth shet if ye know when y're well off."
"O, massa, save me! save me!" said the negro, jumping up and running toward the Deacon, who had slipped down from the fodder, and was standing in the road.
"All right, Sambo; don't be scared. He sha'n't kill you while I'm around," said the Deacon.
"I tell ye agin to mind yer own bizniss and keep yer mouth shet," said the white man savagely. "Who air ye, anyway? One o' them sblinkin' nigger-stealin' Abolitionists, comin' down here to rob us Southerners of our property?"
He followed this with a torrent of profane denunciation of the "whole Abolition crew."
"Look here, Mister," said the Deacon calmly, reaching back into the wagon and drawing out a musket, "I'm a member o' the church and a peaceable man. But I don't 'low no man to call me names, and I object to swearin' of all kinds. I want to argy this question with you, quietly, as between man and man."