'My friend, I have two hundred mouths to feed. I depend on the sale of my crop to give them food. If our ports are closed, I can not do it,--they will starve, and I be ruined. But sooner than submit to the domination of the cursed Yankees, I will see my negroes starving and my child a beggar.' At this point in the conversation we arrived at the negro shanty where the sick child was. Dismounting, the Colonel and I entered. The cabin was almost a counterpart of the 'Mills House,' described in my previous paper, but it had a plank flooring, and was scrupulously neat and clean. The logs were stripped of bark, and whitewashed. A bright, cheerful fire was blazing on the hearth, and an air of rude comfort pervaded the whole interior. On a low bed in the farther corner of the room lay the sick child. He was a boy of about twelve years, and evidently in the last stages of consumption. By his side, bending over him as if to catch his almost inaudible words, sat a tidy, youthful-looking colored woman, his mother, and the wife of the negro we had met at the 'still.' Playing on the floor, was a younger child, perhaps five years old, but while the faces of the mother and the sick lad were of the hue of charcoal, _his_ skin, by a process well understood at the South, had been bleached to a bright yellow. The woman took no notice of our entrance, but the little fellow ran to the Colonel and caught hold of the skirts of his coat in a free-and-easy way, saying, 'Ole massa, you got suffin' for Dickey?' 'No, you little nig,' replied the Colonel, patting his woolly head as I might have done a white child's, 'Dickey isn't a good boy.' 'Yas, I is,' said the little darky; 'you'se ugly ole massa, to gib nuffin' to Dickey.' Aroused by the Colonel's voice, the woman turned towards us. Her eyes were swollen and her face bore traces of deep emotion. 'Oh massa!' she said, 'de chile am dyin'! It'm all along ob his workin' in de swamp,--no _man_ orter work dar, let alone a chile like dis.' 'Do you think he is dying, Rosey?' asked the Colonel, approaching the bedside. 'Shore, massa, he'm gwine fass. Look at 'em.' The boy had dwindled to a skeleton, and the skin lay on his face in crimpled folds, like a mask of black crape. His eyes were fixed, and he was evidently going. 'Don't you know massa, my boy?' said the Colonel, taking his hand tenderly in his. The child's lips slightly moved, but I could hear no sound. The Colonel put his ear down to him for a moment, then, turning to me, said,-- 'He _is_ dying. Will you be so good as to step to the house and ask Madam P---- here, and please tell Jim to go for Junius and the old man.' I returned in a short while with the lady, but found the boy's father and 'the old man'--the darky preacher of the plantation--there before us. The preacher was a venerable old negro, much bowed by years, and with thin wool as white as snow. When we entered he was bending over the dying boy, but shortly turning to my host, said,--