The lazy gentleman inquired after Colonel ----. Judging that my host's caution, as to secrecy, was only intended to apply to his daughters, I made no scruple of relating what I had heard. My auditors were at once more than interested--anxious. Whenever a negro breaks bounds in the South, everybody is on the alert, a self-constituted detective, judge, inquisitor, and possible executioner. Eternal vigilance is the price of--slavery! 'That boy born on the plantation?' asked the clergyman, when the affair had been discussed at considerable length. 'Yes! He's a valuable hand, too; I've known him pick seven hundred and fifty pounds of cotton in a day--of course, for a wager.' 'The Colonel will have to sell him, I suppose? he can't keep him after this.' 'Reckon so, though he hates to part with any of his hands. This trouble wouldn't have happened, if it hadn't been for the whiskey, I've no doubt. The rascal who sold it ought to be responsible.' 'Are crimes originating in drunkenness common among the negroes?' I asked. 'Well, no!' answered the clergyman, deliberately; 'I can't say that. But most of them will drink, if they get an opportunity--the field hands especially; and then they're apt to be quarrelsome, and if there's a knife handy, they'll use it.' 'That's so,' assented the lazy gentleman, nodding. 'You Englishmen and Yankees--excuse me for coupling you together!--know very little of negro character; and, because the darkies have a habit of indulging in unmeaning laughter on all occasions, you think them the best-tempered people in existence. In reality their tempers are often execrable--infernal!' And he compacently blew a ring of tobacco-smoke into the mild, humid morning. The clergyman looked on assentingly. 'They can never be trusted with any responsibility involving the exercise of authority without abusing it. They ill use animals on all occasions--treat them with positive brutality, and sometimes whip their children so unmercifully that we have to interfere. I don't know what would become of them without us, I'm sure!' 'What do you think of their religious convictions?' I asked of the clergyman, when the speaker had arrived at his comfortable, characteristically Southern conclusion. 'Our best negroes are unquestionably pious,' he answered; 'and some of them have a very earnest sense of their duties as to this life and the next; but I regret to say that a good deal of what passes for religion among them is mere exitement, often of a mischievous and sensual character.' 'Heathenish! quite heathenish!' added the lazy gentleman. 'Did you ever see a _shout_, Mr. ----?' I responded in the negative, and inquired what it was.