Some of the Virginians had known Henry Clay when, as the barefooted "mill boy" of the "Slashes"--a newly cleared region--he had ridden back and forth in the Old Dominion with grist for his widowed mother, and they now rejoiced in his self-made prosperity. Several of the scouts had worked with him in political changes and they were proud of his positions of trust. Many of the preachers of the "Society of Friends," as the Quakers called themselves, had discussed with the great leader the evils and injustice of slavery; no one knew better than they how hard Henry Clay worked to influence the laws which were intended to help the blacks' condition and which tended toward final emancipation for them. In the evening, by torch-light on the lawn, darkies played the banjo and danced and sang for the company. Not one of them equaled the lyric tenor of the wagon-train, so Doby wandered away from the lawn and in curiosity strolled out through the quarters where the slaves lived. All the little whitewashed houses were deserted, for the servants were allowed to look on at all festivities and "minstrel shows." He was turning back when from one of the cabins there came a tiny sound. Again he heard that never-to-be-forgotten chime of distant silver bells, that low gurgle of exquisite music. He would have known that voice any place. How did the Virginia slave happen to be here and not with the wagons? Why should that note of sadness creep into his sigh? Why was he weeping? His sobbing rose, so touched with grief, so poignant with despair, that Doby's heart-strings tightened. He could hardly bear to hear it. Then some motherly creature began to croon, "Da, chil' honey, poo' chil' honey, don' you cry--" The lyric tenor wailed in broken syllables: "My daddy--he whipped--he die--my mammy--she whipped--she run away. I want my mammy--" "Da, chil' honey, poo' chil' honey, don' you cry--" "I want my mammy--I don' want ole Virginny--I don' want this yere--I want my mammy--" The chant was torn with sorrow. Then came the comforting, "Don' cry, honey," over and over again. Poor Doby, listening in distressed sympathy, could not in the least make out this black thief of the rabbit foot, whose lilting laughter had turned to such bitter tears. The boy who had heard both, stole away to hide in one of the wagons and to cry himself to sleep over a trouble he could not understand. He was ashamed to worry his father or Simon Kenton with further questions about the slaves, who left them next day when the Virginians stopped at their prospective settlement north of Lexington. With the picturesque and merry blacks went much of the zest of life in the wagon-train, and Doby was glad when the Ohio River came in sight and the journey was at an end.