Only an instant did the auctioneer wait, and then his decisive, “Gone!” made Hugh the owner of Uncle Sam, who crouching down before him, blessed him with tears and prayers.
“I knows you’re good,” he said; “I knows it by yer face; and mebby, when the rheumatics gits out of my ole legs I kin work for mas’r a heap. Does you live fur from here?”
“Three miles or more,” Hugh replied, bidding the negro follow him.
The snow was melting, but out upon the turnpike it was still so deep that Hugh had many misgivings as to the old man’s ability to walk, but Sam, intent on proving that he was smarter than he seemed, declared himself perfectly competent to go with “Mars’r” to the world’s end, if necessary.
“It’s mighty cold, though,” he said, as he emerged into the open air, and the chilly wind penetrated the thin rags which covered him. “It’s mighty cold, and my knees is all a shakin’, but I’ll git over it bimeby.”
It was not in Hugh’s nature to see the old man shiver so, and taking off his own thick shawl he wrapped it round the negro’s shoulders, saying to the bystanders,
“My blood is warmer than his.”
Another cheer from the crowd, another, “God bless you, mas’r,” and the strange pair started on their homeward tour, Hugh riding very slowly, and accommodating Rocket’s steps to the hobbling old man, who wheezed and puffed, and sweat with the wondrous efforts he made, and at last when only a mile was gone, gave out entirely, and pitched headlong into the snow.
“It’s my dumb knees. They allus was crooked and shaky,” he gasped, becoming more and more entangled in the shawl, which he was not accustomed to wearing.
“Look here, Sam,” and Hugh laughed heartily at the negro’s forlorn appearance, as, regaining his feet, he assumed a most deprecating attitude, asking pardon for tumbling down, and charging it all to his shaky knees. “Look here, there’s no other way, except for you to ride and me to walk. Rocket won’t carry double,” and ere Sam could remonstrate, Hugh had dismounted and placed him in the saddle.