But little cared he for that. Rosa Lee was to be overtaken, and to accomplish this, he would willingly have sacrificed every horse of which he was owner, even were they twice as valuable as the dappled greys. So, wishing him a successful journey, and leaving him on the same seat with a Yankee peddler, who saw him when he came up and “_guessed_ he was after a runaway nigger,” we return for a moment to Bill, who with tears streaming from his eyes, patched the struggles of Fred until the noble animal was dead, bringing him water which he vainly coaxed him to drink, while the bystanders, who crowded around, asked him innumerable questions as to why they drove so fast and where his master was going. To the first Bill could not reply, but to the last he promptly answered, as he patted the remains of the departed Ferdinand, “Gwine to the _devil_, in course! Whar you spect a white man to go, what treats hosses in dis kind of style, won’t let ’em hev all the water dey wants and drives ’em till dey draps dead in der tracks.” The story of the half bucket was duly rehearsed, Bill firmly believing that if Ferd had drank it, he would undoubtedly have lived “dis minit and been as spry as a cricket. But now he’s dead and Fred, too,” continued the negro, as the latter ceased to move. “Sich another span of hosses, that ain’t in all Georgy,” and laying his black face upon the neck of the insensible Ferd, the negro cried like a child. “There is one comfort, at least, my boy,” said a gentlemanly looking man, who stood near and who knew Mr. Delafield, “your horses didn’t suffer, for they were too much excited.” This in a measure consoled Bill, who, wiping his eyes, asked what he was to do with them, saying he “never could dig thar grave.” “My negroes shall do it for you,” answered the stranger, and in a short time several stalwart men were busy in an adjacent field making a grave for the dappled greys, which they carefully buried, while on a stump, with his head resting on his knees, sat Bill as chief mourner. “I wish I knew a prar,” he whispered to himself, “for if ever hosses ’sarved it they do;” but the rude African had never prayed since he was a little child, and thinking himself too old to begin now, he rose up from the stump, just as his companions, having finished their task, were beginning to ridicule his bare head, telling him he must have an unkind master, judging from his own appearance and the sad fates of the horses, while one of them advised him to run away. This was touching Bill in a tender point, for though he had loved the horses much, he loved his master more, and he would not hear him censured; accordingly he retorted petulantly that “thar warn’t a better master in all Georgy than mars’r Dick, nor a richer one neither,—and ’twan’t nobody’s business if he killed five hundred horses—he could afford it—’twan’t as though he was poor and owned nothin’ but a few _low trash_ like the ’Gusty niggers!”