"Is that the experience of all the colored people?" the Colonel inquired. "No sar, no sar," Ned replied with feeling. "Dem dat carries woters to de conwenshun, und drinks de bosses sperits dey gits a leetle now und den, but tother wuns sucks de fingers in misury all de time, specktin, un gittin disappinted." "By the way tell me something about Ephraim, how is he getting on," asked the Colonel. "Why bress your soul mars John he is clean outen site; er totin great big yaller upper lips on his sholders, und er sword dat runs on a wheel on de groun, und fedders on his hat same as a pee-fowell. He is dun und growd outen my membrance. Dey got norated eroun dat he is agwine ter marry a white gal in de town, und Joshaway und Hannah has dun and got er inwite to de weddin." "And Aleck, what is he doing?" asked the Colonel. "Ugh, Ugh," exclaimed Ned, "now yu obersizes my kalkilashuns, mars John. He's wusser den Efrum, er uprarin fine housen all ober dis plantashun." "The savage?" muttered the enraged man. "All Laflin's doings I suppose. Sixty days within which to prove your loyalty," he muttered. "The black flag of the buccaneers of reconstruction marked not with death's heads but by red stars!" A score of carpenters were plying their vocation on the plantation. A confusion of sounds, such as sawing and hammering, drowned the melody of the singing birds, and Aleck like the boldest of pirates, was caracoling here and there giving orders; and fashionably dressed negro women strolled offensively and imperiously over the grounds. "Mars Jon," exclaimed Ned, "I dun and tole yu so; now yu sees fo yosef." Before the deed of purchase was recorded, the devilish freedmen were enforcing their claim to the plantation by visible, notorious and violent occupation. The colonel and Alice were sitting in the verandah one beautiful starlit night; there was scarcely the rustle of a leaf and the full-orbed moon was shining with a radiant splendour. Of course there was but one event to think about. Was it not a grief that lay like a dead bulk upon the heart, all the day and all the night; and peopled their dreams with negroes and ogres too? "Thank God," exclaimed Alice "mother is out of it all. They were but heaping the fagots around the furnace when she so wearied went home to her eternal rest. Now the fires are all consuming." "My daughter," said Colonel Seymour dejectedly after awhile, "I will go to my grave with the knowledge that the Bowden debt has been paid; and not one cent do I owe upon it. It is possible I may err, but as God is my judge, this great loss has come upon me, through the devilish machinations of Laflin, in the employment of the school-mistress, to occupy the office in which he knew my valuable papers were deposited. An ingeniously devised plot doubtlessly, but one distressingly successful." "Mars Jon," interrupted Clarissa quite seriously, "Haint yu neber foun dem papers yit, yu was er sarchin fur?"