“Good evening, Captain.” And the two men separated. The Captain kept the main road, and the Deacon took a sort of back, plantation route, seldom traveled except by the farmers residing upon it, where he soon fell into deep meditation, his chin dropping upon his breast, and his respiration becoming slow and heavy. His old white horse, even, seeming to pass into a similar state of somnambulency, walked dreamily along, till his nose, far down towards the ground, came in contact with a fresh and tender shrub, around which his long tongue instinctively wrapped itself, and he came to a full stop. “Hud up!” said the startled Deacon, gathering up his bridle with a nervous jerk; and his small eyes quickly swept a circle around him. With something like a shudder and an audible sigh of relief, he composed himself again, for only a quiet landscape had met his vision. A swampy forest was on his left hand, and long stretches of scrub palmettos, interspersed with cotton-patches, on his right. Seeing two colored men at work in one of the latter, and probably feeling a need of human companionship, he rode up to the crooked rail fence, and shouted “Howdy?” “Why, howdy? Deacon, howdy?” was the friendly response, as one of the men laid down his heavy cotton hoe, and approached the fence. “How is work, January?” asked Deacon Atwood, pleasantly. “I gets along mighty well, I thank yo’. I hope yo’ do,” said the freedman, who, though about the age of his neighbor, was too much accustomed to being addressed as a boy, and by his Christian name, to take offense at the familiarity. “Well, I’ll be blamed if yo’ niggers don’t get along better’n the white folks! These confounded carpet-baggers are larnin’ yo’ how to fleece us that owns the land, and blowed if yo’ ain’t doing it!” “Why, Deacon, I don’t know what yo’ mean. I ha’n’t been fleecing nobody, I’m shor’. If God Almighty gives me my freedom, and gives me strength to work what land I’m able, and makes the crops grow, why ha’n’t I a right to get ’long? I can’t see who’s hurt, not to my serious knowledge?” “It a’n’t yo’r working, it’s yo’r voting. Yo’ vote them villains into office, and they’re bleeding the country to death with taxes. Now, we a’n’t gwine to stand it. All the gentleman has agreed together that yo’ve got to come over to our side. It’s for yo’r interest to be thar.” “Can’t do it, nohow, Deacon,” replied the negro, smiling good-humoredly. “If yo’ don’t there’ll lots of yo’ be killed,” said Deacon A., kindling.