Sol came to the quarters one night and found his wife and child gone. They were on their way to Tallahassee in a coffle which had been made up as a sudden speculation on the cheerful Bourse of Jacksonville. Four doors away Mossa Cutter could be seen between the flaunting red curtains of a bar-room window, drinking Sol's heart's blood at sixpence the tumblerful.
Sol, I hear they are going to put an English musket in your hands!
Sol fell paralyzed to the ground. A moment after, he was up on his feet again, and, without thought of nine o'clock, pass, patrol, or whipping-house, rushing on the road likely to be taken by chain-gangs to Tallahassee. He reached the "Piny Woods" timber on the outskirts of the town. No one had noticed him, and he struck madly through the sand that floors those forests, knowing no weariness, for his heart-strings pulled that way. He travelled all night without overtaking them; but just as the first gray dawn glimmered between the piny plumes behind him, he heard the coarse shout of drivers close ahead, and found himself by the fence of a log-hut where the gang had huddled down for its short sleep. It was now light enough to travel, and the drivers were "geeing" up their human cattle.
Sol rushed to his wife and baby. As the man and woman clasped each other in frantic caress, the driver came up, and, kicking them, bade them with an oath to have done.
"Whose nigger are you?" (to Sol.)
"I belong to Mossa Cutter. I's come to be taken along."
"Did he send you?"
"He did so, Sah. He tol' me partic'lar. I done run hard to catch up wid you gemplemen, Mossa. Mossa Cutter he sell me to-day to be sol' in de same lot wid Nancy."
The drivers went aside and talked for a while, then took him on with them, and, for a wonder, did sell Sol and Nancy in the same lot. Nancy's and the baby's price had one good use to Sol, for it kept Mossa Cutter for a week too drunk to know of his loss or care for his recovery.
Sol was the coachman, Nancy the laundress, of a gentleman residing at the capital. Their master had the happy eccentricity of getting more amiable with every rum-toddy; and as he never for any length of time discontinued rum-toddies, the days of Sol and Nancy at Judge Q.'s were halcyon.