"Virginia!" said I, seized with dismay. Before I could add any thing farther, one of my captors, jumping from the front of the cart, where he had been riding with the other, clapped to the door of the box, swearing at me for an old fool, who could not keep myself out of mischief. "Hillo, stranger!" I heard the horseman cry to my jailer, "what white man's that you've got locked up thaw?" "Oh, darn it," was the answer, "it's an old fellow of the north, jist as mad as the dickens." "Friend!" cried I from my prison, seized with a sudden hope of escape, "the man tells thee a fib. If thee is an honest man and a lover of the law, I charge thee to give me help; for these men are villains, who have dragged me from my home contrary to law, and now have me fastened up by the legs." "I say, strange-aw! by hooky!" cried the horseman, in very emphatic tones, addressing himself to my captor, as I saw through a crack, while his companion rode up to his assistance, "what's the meaning of all this he-aw? What aw you doing, toting a white man off in this style, like a wild baw?" What a "wild _baw_" was I could not conveniently comprehend; but I saw that I had lighted on a friend, who had the power to deliver me from thraldom. "My name," said I, "is Zachariah Longstraw, and I can reward thee for thy trouble." "You hear him!" said my jailer, with all imaginable coolness. "Well now, darn it, if I must tell, it is Zachariah Longstraw, the famous Zachariah Longstraw. You understand!" And here he nodded and winked at the questioner with great significancy; but, as it appeared, all in vain. "Never heard of the man in my life," said my friend, "and I've followed niggur-driving ever since I could hold a two-year-old bo' pig." "What!" cried my jailer, "never heard of Zachariah Longstraw, the famous abolitionist?" "_Abolitionist_!" cried the two horsemen together, and they cried it with a yell that made my hair stand on end. "Can't say ever heard the name, but reckon he's one of them 'aw New-Yorkers and Yankees what sends 'cendiary things down he-aw! I say, strange-aw! is it a true, right up-and-down, no-mistake abolitionist?" "Darn it, I think you'd say so, if you had ever read the papers." "Jist open the box then, and if I don't take the scalp off him, call me a black man!" "You won't do no sitch thing, meaning no offence," said my jailer. "Didn't go to the expense to fetch him so far for nothing; and don't mean him for the Virginnee market. Bound down to Louisianee, stranger; that's the best market for abolitionists; seen a public advertisement offering fifty thousand dollars for fellers not half so bad. I rather estimate we'll get full price for our venture." With that my jailers whipped up, and succeeded in putting a proper distance betwixt them and that ferocious person who had such a desire to rob me of my scalp. 17. CHAPTER XVII. CONTAINING OTHER SECRETS, BUT NOT SO IMPORTANT.