"This fine buck-negro, warranted absolutely unsound of wind and limb, going, going, a shameful sacrifice, for a poor three thousand six hundred dollars. Going, going--gone!" The hammer fell with a sharp, decisive sound. A fearful volley of oaths rattled after the noise, like thunder rolling away in the distance. Moore's brother had returned from achieving a "short drink" just in time to see his coveted lot knocked down to his rival. We left the spot, with the negro in the care of Peter, as quickly as might be. "I wonder," said Moore, as we reached the inn and ordered a trap to carry our valuable bargain home in--"I wonder what on earth made Isaacs run off like a maniac." "Massa," whispered Peter, "yesterday I jes' caught yer Brer Hornet a-loafin' around in the wood. 'Come wi' me,' says I, 'and bottled him in this yer pasteboard box,'" showing one which had held Turkish tobacco. "When I saw that Hebrew Jew wouldn't stir his pencil, I jes' crept up softly and dropped Brer Hornet down his neck. Then he jes' rose and went. Spec's he and Brer Hornet had business of their own." "Peter," said Moore, "you are a good boy, but you will come to a bad end." II. As we rode slowly homeward, behind the trap which conveyed the dear-bought slave, Moore was extremely moody and disinclined for conversation. "Is your purchase not rather an expensive one?" I ventured to ask, to which Moore replied shortly-- "No; think he is perhaps the cheapest nigger that was ever bought." To put any more questions would have been impertinent, and I possessed my curiosity in silence till we reached the plantation. Here Moore's conduct became decidedly eccentric. He had the black man conveyed at once into a cool, dark, strong room with a heavy iron door, where the new acquisition was locked up in company with a sufficient meal. Moore and I dined hastily, and then he summoned all his negroes together into the court of the house. "Look here, boys," he cried: "all these trees"--and he pointed to several clumps "must come down immediately, and all the shrubs on the lawn and in the garden. Fall to at once, those of you that have axes, and let the rest take hoes and knives and make a clean sweep of the shrubs." The idea of wholesale destruction seemed not disagreeable to the slaves, who went at their work with eagerness, though it made my heart ache to see the fine old oaks beginning to fall and to watch the green garden becoming a desert. Moore first busied himself with directing the women, who, under his orders, piled up mattresses and bags of cotton against the parapets of the verandahs. The house stood on the summit of a gradually sloping height, and before the moon began to set (for we worked without intermission through the evening and far into the night) there was nothing but a bare slope of grass all round the place, while smoke and flame went up from the piles of fallen timber. The plantation, in fact, was ready to stand a short siege.