He shouted to the darkies. They huddled in an excited bunch, but they did not come. Then as a matter of honor Doby was obliged to catch that rabbit. So of course he did! But he was over-tired, out of breath, and a little indignant as he said to the lyric tenor, "Next time, come and help." And he tried the grand manner of a Virginia slave-owner. Such a bow and a scrape and a grin as he got! "Yas, sir, nex' time, Mars'er Dob', yas, sir." "Well, then, why didn't you come this time?" "'Cause you is red-headed, Mars'er Dob'!" with a polite and complimentary flourish. In anger too great for words, Doby stalked away. If he had had one of the Virginia whips he would have laid it on that darky then and there. Red-headed! He had pummeled many a chum for that one word. "I am _not_ red-headed. It is the firelight that makes my hair look coppery. I don't so much mind being called tow-headed, because I _am_ a little bit tow-headed," he conceded, "but red-headed, never!" "Don't bother to dress the rabbit," said Simon Kenton to Doby. "Why not?" asked the boy, putting back his stone knife as quickly as he had pulled it out, for Kenton's slightest wish was law to him. "The niggers'll steal it 'fore sun-up." "Why?" "Red-head for luck! That coon with a high voice needs a left hind foot, or I miss my guess." "Why?" "Watch and see," was the puzzling answer. So Doby slept on top of his rabbit to save it. But in the morning it was gone. He spied around. About a freshly built knob of kinks on the tenor's head, the taint of over-warm rabbit fur was climbing above all other odors, as the tuneful one hummed, "Dar am a b'ar," with flagrant unconsciousness. As an article of diet, Doby lost his interest in rabbit, but as a charm it might prove exciting, so he decided to keep still and "watch and see." It is one of the results of slavery that the superstitions of the "quarters" creep into the "big house" where the master lives. Thus it happened that when they came to Ashland, one of those splendid estates which slave labor made possible, in the neighborhood of Lexington, the lucky boy, Doby, who looked red-headed but was not, became one of the important persons invited with the Virginia "gentlemen," the scout "officers," and the Quaker "preachers," by the statesman, Henry Clay, to be his guest at dinner and to view his model house and grounds.