Finally, he asked for a picture of his guest, and the Chief Justice handed him a one-dollar greenback. The scene that followed was curious. Old Sandie, bareheaded and with his shirt thrown loosely back from his brawny bosom, stooped down, spread the bill out on one knee, and gazed from it to Mr. Chase and back to the bill again for some moments, in perfect silence. “Now I knows you,” he broke out at last, “you’s Old Greenback hisself. You mout come heah fifty yeah from now and I’d know you just de same, and tell you all about sittin’ in dis yeah piazza heah.” * * * * * In curious contrast with such impressions as Sandie’s farm and story might leave, was the talk of another old man, like Sandie, “in his sebenty-tree yeah,” and, like him, hale and hearty; but white, a native of Connecticut, and, till the war, a slaveholder. He was the harbor-master; and in the intervals of shouting at the negroes to hurry up putting coal in the “Wayanda,” he wiped his brow and denounced “the niggers.” The ungrateful creatures he had owned, had expected to live with him and work for themselves after the emancipation, but he had told them that if, after his care of them all their lives, they didn’t mean to work for him now, they could just pack out of his house at once. They were all saucy and worthless; wouldn’t work a bit more than enough to keep soul and body together; charged two or three prices always, and still would rather steal than work any day; would dance all night and be good for nothing next day; were fearfully licentious; and, in short, were an unmitigated nuisance. The island was over-populated with runaways, too, from the main land, and before long there would be any amount of suffering among them. Sandie was a great liar and swindler, but managed—the black scoundrel—to make a better appearance than the rest. It might, perhaps, be true, that he had once bought himself and gone through some of the subsequent persecutions he was so fond of talking about; but, for his part, he had his private doubts about the whole story. If these worthless vagabonds were to be allowed to have a share in the future government of the State, no man could tell what a miserable future was before the whole community.