“I wouldn’t have trusted him,” remarked the overseer.
“I did trust him, sir; or, rather, I didn’t think anything about it. I wanted to stop his leg from bleeding.”
“Was he in a hurry to be off after you had fixed him up?”
“He looked uneasy, as if afraid that somebody else might come before he could get away.”
“Perhaps he expected you to take up your gun and order him to march for his old quarters?”
“I don’t know how that was,” said Ralph; “but the gun lay all the while where he could have taken it up if he would.”
“What did you say to him?”
“I told him he was free. And it almost made me cry to see how grateful he appeared for what I had done. I hope he has some good place to stay in.”
“No danger,” said the overseer; “he has a good enough place for this climate, and lives on the fat of the land, besides. I think some of my negroes could go straight to him within the next two hours, but they won’t tell.”
“And do they never run away, too?” asked Ralph.