'Why, you everlasting nigger, if the top leaks you'll be blown to eternity in half a second.'
'Reckon not, massa; de barrl and me kin hole her. We'll take de risk.'
'Perhaps you will,' said the Colonel, laughing, 'but I won't. Nigger property isn't of much account, but you're too good a darky, June, to be sent to the devil for a charge of turpentine.'
'Tank you, massa, but you dun kno' dis ole ting like I do. You cudn't blow her up nohow; I'se tried her afore dis way.'
'Don't you do it again; now mind; if you do I'll make a white man of you.' (This I suppose referred to a process of flaying with a switch; though the switch is generally thought to redden, not whiten, the darky.)
The negro did not seem at all alarmed, for he showed his ivories in a broad grin as he replied, 'Jess as you say, massa; you'se de boss in dis shanty.'
Directing the fire to be raked out, and the still to stand unused until it was repaired, the Colonel turned his horse to go, when he observed that the third negro was shoeless, and his feet chapped and swollen with the cold. 'Jake,' he said, 'where are your shoes?'
'Wored out, massa.'
'Worn out! Why haven't you been to me?'
''Cause, massa, I know'd you'd jaw; you tole me I wears 'em out mighty fass.'