"Pennsylvanee!" cried the man, with a stare; "I reckon we're fifty miles south of Mason's and Dixon's, and fast enough in old Virginnee."
"Virginia!" said I, seized with dismay. Before I could add any thing farther, one of my captors, jumping from the front of the cart, where he had been riding with the other, clapped to the door of the box, swearing at me for an old fool, who could not keep myself out of mischief.
"Hillo, stranger!" I heard the horseman cry to my jailer, "what white man's that you've got locked up thaw?"
"Oh, darn it," was the answer, "it's an old fellow of the north, jist as mad as the dickens."
"Friend!" cried I from my prison, seized with a sudden hope of escape, "the man tells thee a fib. If thee is an honest man and a lover of the law, I charge thee to give me help; for these men are villains, who have dragged me from my home contrary to law, and now have me fastened up by the legs."
"I say, strange-aw! by hooky!" cried the horseman, in very emphatic tones, addressing himself to my captor, as I saw through a crack, while his companion rode up to his assistance, "what's the meaning of all this he-aw? What aw you doing, toting a white man off in this style, like a wild baw?"
What a "wild baw" was I could not conveniently comprehend; but I saw that I had lighted on a friend, who had the power to deliver me from thraldom.
"My name," said I, "is Zachariah Longstraw, and I can reward thee for thy trouble."
"You hear him!" said my jailer, with all imaginable coolness. "Well now, darn it, if I must tell, it is Zachariah Longstraw, the famous Zachariah Longstraw. You understand!" And here he nodded and winked at the questioner with great significancy; but, as it appeared, all in vain.
"Never heard of the man in my life," said my friend, "and I've followed niggur-driving ever since I could hold a two-year-old bo' pig."