The matter was an inexplicable mystery to him, and to all that received those packages. They knew him well, and afterward described his character to me as far different from that which usually pertains to a tract-distributor. They told me that he was a very cruel master, and that it was the general belief that he had shot and secretly paid the owner his price for a negro because he thought him too intimate with his housekeeper. At night I preached in a small school-house, near his residence, to about a dozen persons who had assembled in response to the ringing of a small bell late in the afternoon and at the hour of assembling, the signal in all that region for preaching by a stranger, as I have elsewhere described. Perhaps I should say that as a matter of form I asked my host, soon after my arrival, if he had received the letters I had forwarded to him, and sent his overseer's boys to school as he had proposed. He said he had received the letters, but gave some excuse or reason for not having sent them as yet. He ordered them dressed and called into the parlor for my inspection, that I might judge of their capacity for an education. This I afterward learned caused a great commotion in the "negro quarters," as they all thought I must be a "nigger-trader," and this examination was in reference to the price I would pay for them. As my duties were very pressing, I spent but two nights with my host, and left him the next morning, with many thanks for his hospitality, and with earnest expressions of regret on his part--never to see him again. A few months later I read a notice of his death in the papers, accompanied with this statement: "He has left a very large estate. By his will he has freed a part of his slaves, and given his plantation and nearly all his property, including his slaves, to those he has freed." On my next visit to the county-seat, I hitched my horse to a post, and before entering any other house went directly to the county clerk's office and asked him if he would do me the favor to allow me to read Mr. ----'s will. He at once produced the volume in which it was recorded, and I was about to read it, when he said: "I have the original will here, if you would prefer to see that." I thanked him, and he handed it to me. It was in his own handwriting. The spelling was very bad; as, for instance, I remember that "be" was spelt "bea," and a good many other words were as badly spelled. I have often been similarly astonished to find that men who had a great deal of general intelligence, and were most interesting talkers, were unable to spell the simplest sentence correctly. But the clerk told me that he recorded the will exactly as it was written, and that bad spelling did not vitiate any legal document. The will was very brief, and I remember its principal provisions as follows: "I give and bequeath to ----" (the mother of his children) "her liberty from the hour of my death."