BY W. GILMORE SIMMS.
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(Concluded from page 91.)
CHAPTER VIII.
It was with feelings of a tumultuous satisfaction that Mat Dunbar found himself in possession of this new prize. He at once conceived a new sense of his power, and prepared to avail himself of all his advantages. But we must suffer our friend Brough to become the narrator of this portion of our history. Anxious about events, Coulter persuaded the old African, nothing loth, to set forth on a scouting expedition to the farmstead. Following his former footsteps, which had been hitherto planted in security, the negro made his way, an hour before daylight, toward the cabin in which Mimy, and her companion Lizzy, a young girl of sixteen, were housed. They, too, had been compelled to change their abodes under the tory usurpation; and now occupied an ancient tenement of logs, which in its time had gone through a curious history. It had first been a hog-pen, next a hunter’s lodge; had stabled horses, and had been made a temporary fortress during Indian warfare. It was ample in its dimensions—made of heavy cypresses; but the clay which had filled its interstices had fallen out; of the chimney nothing remained but the fire-place; and one end of the cabin, from the decay of two or more of its logs, had taken such on inclination downward, as to leave the security which it offered of exceedingly dubious value. The negro does not much regard these things, however, and old Mimy enjoyed her sleeps here quite as well as at her more comfortable kitchen. The place, indeed, possessed some advantages under the peculiar circumstances. It stood on the edge of a limestone sink-hole—one of those wonderful natural cavities with which the country abounds. This was girdled by cypresses and pines, and, fortunately for Brough, at this moment, when a drought prevailed, entirely free from water. A negro loves any thing, perhaps, better than water—he would sooner bathe in the sun than in the stream, and would rather wade through a forest full of snakes than suffuse his epidermis unnecessarily with an element which no one will insist was made for his uses. It was important that the sink-hole near Mimy’s abode should be dry at this juncture, for it was here that Brough found his hiding place. He could approach this place under cover of the woods. There was an awkward interval of twelve or fifteen feet, it is true, between this place and the hovel, which the inmates had stripped of all its growth in the search for fuel, but a dusky form, on a dusky night, careful to crawl over the space, might easily escape the casual glance of a drowsy sentinel; and Brough was partisan enough to know that the best caution implies occasional exposure. He was not unwilling to incur the risk. We must not detail his progress. Enough that, by dint of crouching, crawling, creeping, rolling and sliding, he had contrived to bury himself, at length, under the wigwam, occupying the space, in part, of a decayed log connected with the clayed chimney; and fitting himself to the space in the log, from which he had scratched out the rotten fragments, as snugly as if he were a part of it. Thus, with his head toward the fire, looking within—his body hidden from those within by the undecayed portions of the timber, with Mimy on his side of the fire-place, squat upon the hearth, and busy with the hominy pot, Brough might carry on the most interesting conversation in the world, in whispers, and occasionally be fed from the spoon of his spouse, or drink from the calabash, without any innocent person suspecting his propinquity. We will suppose him thus quietly ensconced, his old woman beside him, and deeply buried in the domestic histories which he came to hear. We must suppose all the preliminaries to be dispatched already, which, in the case of an African dramatis personæ, are usually wonderfully minute and copious.
“And dis nigger, Tory, he’s maussa yer for true?”
“I tell you, Brough, he’s desp’r’t bad! He tak’ ebbry ting for he’sef! He sway (swears) ebbry ting for him—we nigger, de plantation, boss, hog, hominy; and ef young misses no marry um—you yeddy? (hear)—he will hang de maussa up to de sapling, same as you hang scarecrow in de cornfiel’!”
Brough groaned in the bitterness of his spirit.
“Wha’ for do, Brough?”
“Who gwine say? I ’spec he mus fight for um yet. Mass Dick no chicken! He gwine fight like de debbil, soon he get strong, ’fore dis ting gwine happen. He hab sodger, and more for come. Parson ’Lijah gwine fight too—and dis nigger’s gwine fight, sooner dan dis tory ride, whip and spur, ober we plantation.”