on to the road. "Ah! well, I'll tell you; you had better turn round, and keep right straight upon this road till you get to the Court House, and anybody can tell you, there, how to go."
"How far is it, sir?"
"To the Court House?—not above a mile."
"And to Mr. W.'s?"
"To Mr. W.'s, I should think it was as much as ten miles, and long ones, too."
I rode to the Court House, which was a plain brick building in the centre of a small square, around which there were twenty or thirty houses, two of them being occupied as stores, one as a saddler's shop, one had the sign of "Law Office" upon it; one was a jail; two were occupied by physicians, one other looked as if it might be a meeting-house or school-*house, or the shop of any mechanic needing much light for his work, and two were "Hotels." At one of these we stopped to dine; Jane had "corn and fodder" (they had no oats or hay in the stable), and I had ham and eggs (they had no fresh meat in the house). I had several other things, however, that were very good, besides the company of the landlady, who sat alone with me, at the table, in a long, dining hall, and was very pretty, amiable, and talkative.
In a course of apologies, which came in the place of soup, she gave me the clue to the assemblage of negroes I had seen at the mill. It was Christmas week; all the servants thought they must go, for at least one day, to have a frolic, and to-day (as luck would have it, when I was coming) her cook was off "with some others; she did not suppose they'd be back till to-morrow, and then, likely as not, they'd be drunk. She did not think this custom, of letting servants go so, at Christmas, was a good one; niggers were not fit to be let to take care of themselves, anyhow. It was very bad for them,
