We had here reached the negro cabin. It was one of the more remote of the collection, and stood deep in the woods, an enormous pine growing up directly beside the doorway. In all respects it was like the other huts on the plantation. A bright fire lit up its interior, and through the crevices in the logs we saw, as we approached, a scene that made us pause involuntarily, when within a few rods of the house. The mulatto man, whose clothes were torn and smeared with swamp mud, stood near the fire. On a small pine table near him lay a large carving-knife, which glittered in the blaze, as if recently sharpened. His wife was seated on the side of the low bed at his back, weeping. She was two or three shades lighter than the man, and had the peculiar brown, kinky hair, straight, flat nose, and speckled, gray eyes which mark the metif. Tottling on the floor at the feet of the man, and caressing his knees, was a child of perhaps two years. As we neared the house, we heard the voice of the Overseer issuing from the doorway on the other side of the pine-tree. 'Come out, ye black rascal.' 'Come in, you wite hound, ef you dar,' responded the negro, laying his hand on the carving-knife. 'Come out, I till ye; I sha'n't ax ye agin.' 'I'll hab nuffin' to do wid you. G'way and send your massa har,' replied the mulatto man, turning his face away with a lordly, contemptuous gesture, that spoke him a true descendant of Pocahontas. This movement exposed his left side to the doorway, outside of which, hidden from us by the tree, stood the Overseer. 'Come away, Moye,' said the Colonel, advancing with me toward the door; '_I'll_ speak to him.' Before all of the words had escaped the Colonel's lips, a streak of fire flashed from where the Overseer stood, and took the direction of the negro. One long, wild shriek,--one quick, convulsive bound in the air,--and Sam fell lifeless to the floor, the dark life-stream pouring from his side. The little child also fell with him, and its greasy-grayish shirt was dyed with its father's blood. Moye, at the distance of ten feet, had discharged the two barrels of a heavily-loaded shot-gun directly through the negro's heart. 'You incarnate son of h----,' yelled the Colonel, as he sprang on the Overseer, bore him to the ground, and wrenched the shot-gun from his hand. Clubbing the weapon, he raised it to brain him. The movement occupied but a second; the gun was descending, and in another instant Moye would have met Sam in eternity, had not a brawny arm caught the Colonel's, and, winding itself around his body, pinned his limbs to his side so that motion was impossible. The woman, half frantic with excitement, thrust open the door when her husband fell, and the light which came through it revealed the face of the new-comer. But his voice, which rang out on the night air as clear as a bugle, had there been no light, would have betrayed him. It was Scip. Spurning the prostrate Overseer with his foot, he shouted,--