Robert’s door was fastened when the child got home; and when she called to be let in, her master cried out, that she should be punished in the morning for loitering; and that in the mean time she might get supper and sleep where she could, for he and Sukey would not get up to let her in. The child began to wail, but was threatened with a double flogging if she did not hold her tongue and go to sleep at the door. She sat down on the ground to consider whether she dared go and ask shelter of Cassius, or whether she should lie down on the litter of straw beside Robert’s dog, and try to keep herself warm in that manner. In a minute she heard a giggle from within, and suspecting her master might not be in bed, she crept round to where the fire-light shone through a chink, and looking in, saw both the old people up and stirring. They seemed to be making a plentiful supper, and little heaps of yams and potatoes were lying about, which she had no doubt came out of Cassius’s ground. It was by this time so very cold, and the sight of a fire was so tempting, that she determined to seek shelter with Cassius, resolving, however, with a prudence melancholy at her years, to say nothing of what she had seen, and hoping that the spoils would be put out of the way of discovery before the morning. Cassius was not gone to bed, for he knew there would be no rest for him this night. It was a relief to him to have something to do; and he bestirred himself to heap wood on the fire, to get the child some supper, and to cover her up warm. He also promised to beg her off from the threatened flogging; so that the child was unusually happy at the end of her day’s troubles, and got rest by pleasanter means than crying herself to sleep. Cassius laid his complaint against the watchman as a watchman, as he had no means of proving him to be a thief; for Robert and Sukey had employed the night in removing all traces of their spoils, which, however, filled their pockets well the next market-day. Robert was slightly punished for negligence on his beat, in the face of all the many stories he had to tell of his unequalled excellence as a watchman, and of the extraordinary difficulties which attended his duty on that particular day. By dint of repeated and pertinacious complaints, Cassius obtained some ungracious and imperfect redress, the overseer swearing at him for his obstinacy, and his master complaining of the interference of the law in his private property. Mr. Mitchelson was perfectly correct in saying that planters are subject to an evil which their countrymen in England are free from, when the law interferes with private property; but that evil is chargeable upon the nature of the property. It is another branch of the mischief of the claimant and the infringer of the law being opposed to one another in one sense, while in another they constitute the same party.