All this while, I believe, I was endeavouring to say something in my defence; but I have not the slightest recollection of what it was. Matters were coming--I may say had come--to a crisis, and my life hung upon a thread; when suddenly a negro, who had been among the most active and zealous of the volunteers on the tree, fell from a high branch to the ground, and besides breaking his own neck, as I understood by the cry that was set up, crushed two or three white men that stood below. This produced a great hubbub, and those who had stationed themselves about me as guards ran forward to see what mischief had been done. As they ran one way, I betook me to my heels and ran another. I rushed into the nearest house; but, being instantly pursued and ousted, I fled into a garden, from which I was as quickly chased by men and dogs, the first screaming, and the second howling and barking, so that the uproar they made was inexpressible. Fear lent me wings; but I was surrounded; and run whithersoever I might, I always found myself brought up by some party or other presenting itself in front. The exercise, while it inflamed my own terrors, only exasperated the rage of my persecutors; and I was persuaded they would tear me to pieces the moment they caught me. Judge of my feelings, then, when I found myself hemmed in on all sides in a little field on the skirts of the village, with a party close at my elbow, on which I had stumbled without seeing it until roused by its cries. I looked up and saw that it consisted of about a dozen negroes, who were carrying the body of their companion, the unlucky volunteer who had broken his neck falling from the tree; but which body they now threw upon the ground, and with loud screams of "He-ah, mossa John!" and "He-ah, mossa Dickey!" began to scamper after me with all their might. There was but one resource left me, and that let the reader determine hereafter of how deplorable a character. I made a successful dodge, followed by a dash right through the screaming Africans, who perhaps hesitated to lay a rough hand on one of my colour, and, reaching the body of their companion, cried, half to myself and half to the insensible clay, "It is better to be a slave than a dead man; and the scourge, whatever romantic persons may say to the contrary, is preferable, at any time, to the halter. If thou art dead, my sable brother, yield my spirit a refuge in thy useless body!" That was the last I remember of the adventure, for I had no sooner uttered the words than I fell into a trance. BOOK VI. CONTAINING A HISTORY AND A MORAL. 1. CHAPTER I. IN WHICH SHEPPARD LEE FINDS EVERY THING BLACK ABOUT HIM.