He stroked his pointed, tuft-like beard which hung from the end of his chin, and twirled his long, grey moustaches, while his eyes looked from one object to another as if searching for something. Then he saluted, saying, "Is there a Prince George county nigger about here, Mr. Judkins?" Snake in the Grass bent forward in his saddle, and I noticed a thin, rod-like contrivance rise from the back of his coat collar and lift off his hat, replacing it again the instant he sat up straight. "Yes, sir, there is. Here, Sam!" I cried, and my boy stepped out from behind a corner of the house and stood attention. "If there is," continued the Major, "he can hold my horse a few moments while Snake, there, takes up my left stirrup a hole or two. It is an outrage the way some saddles are built, and I'm certain this one will be the death of me yet. It has already given me trouble in my left knee joint." I gave a look at Sam who sprang to the Major's bridle--and I might say here, that for an all-around good nigger, my boy Sam was hard to beat. He stood six feet one inch on a pair of ham like feet and weighed two hundred weight. He was a black, big-limbed, bullet-headed, broad-faced, hog-nosed nigger of the pure Guinea breed, and he came from the best stock in Prince George's--but that goes without saying, for the Major would rather have seen his favorite mare struck with a whip than in care of any other but a Prince George nigger. "Well, sir, how do you feel, and what is the news to-day?" I asked, as I stepped down from the verandah and shook his hand when he had dismounted. It was always the custom to ask Major Bullbeggor how he felt, for although he was only fifty, or but little over twice my age, he always appeared to be suffering very much. "I feel a little better than I did last week," he answered, "but I have some pains shooting all through me, sir. Yes, sir, a pain, now and then, a shooting all through me. I've been taking Miranda Jones' spring medicine, but it don't seem to do me much good. I'm quite certain there's a settling in my joints, coupled with a numbing of the nerves and twitching of the scalp. Dr. McGuire bled me twice last week and drenched me three times--but no matter, a soldier has no time to devote to talking about his physical sufferings, even if they are unwarranted. News I have, unless you have seen Roger Booker to speak to while he was riding an express to the assembly at Richmond." "No!" I answered, "I've not seen Booker since last May, when he went with you to help organize some of the colonial companies. But what has happened? No more of that rioting and massacre like the affair of Concord and Lexington, I hope?"