Pretty soon everybody comes crawling out from under that tent, and they straightens her up, and the boss of the show begins to talk like Uncle Zeb has done the whole thing, and Uncle Zeb just sits on the grass and smiles and scratches his head. And finally the boss of the show says to Uncle Zeb could he hire Burning Deck for the bloodhound's part? Because Burning Deck has just about chewed that proud and haughty dog to pieces, and they've got to have a bloodhound! “No, suh,” says Uncle Zeb. “No, suh! I thank yo' kindly fo' yo' offer, suh, but Burnin' Deck, he ain't gwine inter no show whah he likely ter be sicked on ter no cullud pusson. Burnin' Deck, he allers been a good Republican, bringed up that-a-way, des de same as me, an' we ain't gwine ter take no paht in any gwines-on agin' de cullud nation.” “But see here,” says the boss. “In this show the coloured people get all the best of it. In this show the coloured people go to Heaven!” Uncle Zeb says he had heard a good deal about that Uncle Tom show in his life, first and last, and because he had heard so much, he went to see it one time. And he says if getting chased by bloodhounds and whipped by whips is giving them the best of it, he hopes he never obtains admission to any show where they get the worst of it. The boss, he says that show is the show that helped make the coloured people free, and Uncle Zeb ought to be proud of Burning Deck acting in it. But Uncle Zeb says he ain't to be fooled; it was General Washington set 'em free first, and Abraham Lincoln set 'em free the second time, and now President Wilson is licking them Germans and setting them free again. And as for him, he says, he will stick to his own white folks that he knows and janitors for and whose clothes fit him, and Burning Deck will do the same. And as far as them Tom-show coloured folks' going to heaven is concerned, he reckons he don't want to be chased there by no bloodhounds; and it ain't likely that a man that has janitored for a Baptist church as faithful as he has would go anywhere else, anyhow. So he takes Burning Deck and goes along home. “I've got to have a dog,” says the boss, watching them get the tent fixed up, and rubbing his head. “Would Spot do?” says Freckles, which is my boy, Spot being me. Well, I never expected to be an actor, as I said before. But they struck a bargain, which Freckles was to get free admission to that show, and I was to be painted and dyed up some and be a bloodhound. Which the boss said the regular bloodhound which Burning Deck had eat so much of wasn't really a bloodhound, anyhow, but only a big mongrel with bloodhound notions in his head. Well, maybe you've seen that show. Which all the bloodhound has to do is to run across the stage chasing that Uncle Tom, and Freckles was to run across with me, so there wasn't much chance to go wrong.