The darky soon returned with the heavy, ugly-visaged black who had been whipped, by Madam P——'s order, the day before.
'Sam,' said his master, 'I shall be gone some days, and I leave the field-work in your hands. Let me have a good account of you when I return.'
'Yas, massa, you shill dat,' replied the negro.
'Put Jule—Sam's Jule—into the field, and see that she does full tasks,' continued the Colonel.
'Hain't she wanted 'mong de nusses, massa?'
'Put some one else there—give her field-work; she needs it.'
I will here explain that on large plantations the young children of the field-women are left with them only at night, being herded together during the day in a separate cabin, in charge of nurses. These nurses are feeble, sickly women, or recent mothers; and the fact of Jule's being employed in that capacity was evidence that she was unfit for out-door labor.
Madam P——, who was waiting on the piazza to see us off, seemed about to remonstrate against this arrangement, but she hesitated a moment, and in that moment we had bidden her 'Good-by,' and galloped away.
We were soon at the cabin of the negro-hunter, and the coachman dismounting, called him out.
'Hurry up, hurry up,' said the Colonel, as Sandy appeared, 'we haven't a moment to spare.'