"No, I don't; neither pistol nor knife. If any one shoots me, he shoots an unarmed man. The local bullies know it, and they have some scruple about shooting in that case. Besides, they know I am an awkward customer at close quarters." Moore relapsed into his Mexican historian, and I into the newspaper. "Here is a chance of seeing one of your institutions at last," I said. I had found an advertisement concerning a lot of negroes to be sold that very day by public auction in Clayville. All this, of course, was "before the war." "Well, I suppose you ought to see it," said Moore, rather reluctantly. He was gradually emancipating his own servants, as I knew, and was even suspected of being a director of "the Underground Railroad" to Canada. "Peter," he cried, "will you be good enough to saddle three horses and bring them round?" Peter, a "darkey boy" who had been hanging about in the garden, grinned and went off. He was a queer fellow, Peter, a plantation humourist, well taught in all the then unpublished lore of "Uncle Remus." Peter had a way of his own, too, with animals, and often aided Moore in collecting objects of natural history. "Did you get me those hornets, Peter?" said Moore, when the black returned with the horses. "Got 'em safe, massa, in a little box," replied Peter, who then mounted and followed at a respectful distance as our squire. Without many more words we rode into the forest which lay between Clayville and Moore's plantation. Through the pine barrens ran the road, and on each side of the way was luxuriance of flowering creepers. The sweet faint scent of the white jessamine and the homely fragrance of honeysuckle filled the air, and the wild white roses were in perfect blossom. Here and there an aloe reminded me that we were not at home, and dwarf palms and bayonet palmettoes, with the small pointed leaf of the "live oak," combined to make the scenery look foreign and unfamiliar. There was a soft haze in the air, and the sun's beams only painted, as it were, the capitals of the tall pillar-like pines, while the road was canopied and shaded by the skeins of grey moss that hung thickly on all the boughs.