She and all her family had belonged to Judge Bullock's wife, and she was still living in her little cabin and doing the work for the family, as she had done heretofore, though she did not work so hard. She would take the time to do our washing for us. She said Judge Bullock was harder to please than her mistress; but he was afraid of our soldiers, and when Natchez was taken he kept hid in a thicket of bushes in the garden a number of days. They took his meals to him when no one was in sight, expecting the Yankees would kill every man they met; but as he found it otherwise he came into the house, and now he talked with us quite freely. Their slaves were mostly house-servants, and better treated than many others. Judge Bullock was formerly from the North, and married in the South, and his wife inherited the slaves. Their cook was a mulatto, of more than ordinary intelligence, and she told me of the most terrible scenes of barbarity that she had witnessed. The marks of cruelty were in that camp so frequently seen--men with broken shoulders and limbs--that it was heart-sickening to listen to the recital of their wrongs. One man I saw with a shred of an ear, and I inquired how his ear became torn like that. He hesitated to tell me, but one of his fellow-slaves said it was done by order of their master; that he was stripped and fastened by a large nail driven through his ear to a tree, and the overseer was directed to whip him on his naked body until his writhings tore his ear out, and that only ended the punishment. One man by the name of Matthew Lasley, living within two miles of this city, owned one hundred slaves, and was his own overseer. He worked his slaves early and late, and was proverbial for cruelty to them. They were not half fed or clothed. A few days after he had sold the wife and child of his slave Jack, they were burning log heaps and clearing off a few acres of new ground. They had worked until about midnight, and were preparing to "turn in." Jack had split an armful of kindling-wood, and was now ready to go to his lonely hut. Then his utter desolation rolled in upon his mind. When his master stooped over to light his cigar, the thought came to him like a flash to kill him, and then he too would die, and so would end his bitter days. No sooner was the thought conceived than the act was done. The ax was buried in Lasley's head; and he sank, a dead man, without uttering a word. Jack came immediately to the city, tapped on the window of Dr. Smith's sleeping apartment, the son-in-law of Lasley, and told him he wanted him to go at once to the new clearing with him. When the doctor went out Jack told him that he had killed his master. "What did you do it for?" "Master sole my wife and chile, an' I don't want to live any longer. Now, master, you may shoot me, or take me to jail, or do any thing you're a min' to."