his wounded arm. In the presence of these facts it was not remarkable that the officers were deaf to argument, or that in five minutes Ernest Adair was on his way to prison.
“You did not tell me he would stab,” said Haureau, reproachfully. “This business is in excess of our bargain.”
“It shall be counted, my best friend,” said Silvain, radiantly. “It shall be counted. But lose no time—hasten to a surgeon.”
And it was with a smiling lip, and with occasional bursts of song, that M. Silvain addressed himself to the work of restoring order in the desecrated bower.
LIFE ON AN ALABAMA PLANTATION.
It is my eldest sister,—some years older than myself,—who lives on the Alabama plantation I have referred to. She married when I was a schoolboy, so that I have paid more visits to her than to my Charleston sister, who married ten years later. I have been the guest of my elder brother-in-law, D, on three different plantations. He went the way of planters’ sons when he was young,—leaving home to buy land further west, and settle down with negroes, to grow cotton. Twice more he has moved westwards; but, as he has lived nine years on his present estate, I hope he may be satisfied to remain there. My sister Anna, his wife, hopes so too, but is far from confident. In a year or two it will be time for their son Madison to be beginning life for himself: and Anna says that when Madison is fairly off, to shift for himself, she shall feel more secure than she does now of not having to go into a new scene of life, and among strange neighbours.
It would look more like remaining, if D would build the house he has been planning for years. We talked it over on my first visit; and it was mentioned on my second: but nothing is done yet; and I have my doubts whether there will be. D gave me an odd sort of a hint, the last time we spoke on the subject,—that a loghouse is safer than a farmhouse for some people, as it does not kindle so well, nor burn so fast; and that as long as the Abolitionists are allowed to talk, a man cannot be too careful. I could not seriously suppose, at the time, that such a master could dread incendiarism at the hands of his own negroes; but I am inclined now to think that he does. It seems an insane apprehension for a man to suffer under, during the mature and vigorous period of his life (he is five-and-forty): but there is no use in contending with it. No opinion from the North has any value in this case; for a citizen from thence is either taken for an abolitionist, or informed that none but Southern men have any knowledge of the designs of “that infernal race.” So Anna must make up her mind to live in a loghouse for three parts of the year, till the great question of slavery is settled. During the three unhealthy months the family go down to Mobile, where they have a pleasant circle of friends, and, as Anna says, can refresh their memories as to how to behave in society. I do not at all agree as to their savagery. They are so hospitable that they really see a great many people in the course of their nine months’ abode on the plantation; and they see them in the domestic way, which is more favourable to intercourse than any amount of mere dinner or evening visiting.
The last time I went, I did hope to find some improvement in the approaches to the house, and in the surrounding features, if not in the dwelling itself. D had made a great deal of money by several good cotton-crops, and had bought more negroes; and it was natural to suppose that some of his gains would be applied to the removal of discomfort and ugliness. But I was cured of all such expectations before I came in sight of the house. My driver took his way among the trees, or over a knoll, crashing and plunging through the underwood, to avoid the road, which would have had to be mended before we could pass some parts of it.
I saw something of the way of mending, a little further on, where some mules had broken the fence. A white man, who looked muddy from head to foot, complexion and all, was chipping lazily at a rail; a negro was slowly turning a dibble in a hole which was to hold a stake; and two more negroes were warming their hands over the fire which was blazing on the ground. My driver pointed with his whip up the glade of the wood, and observed that the master was coming. In a moment a gentleman on a white horse came ambling down the glade, and I saw it was D. We agreed that the fence would hardly be closed before night, at the rate the fellows were proceeding; but D said that would be better than having it fall to pieces next day, as it would if he hurried them. If this was really the alternative, I had nothing to say. But who was the white man actually handling tools?
Why, he was from a distance,—a hungry wretch who must get bread somehow; and hungry enough he must be to work,—or pretend to work,—with negroes. The gentlemen round did not like his coming;—D himself was vexed at it; but they had ascertained that the fellow was no abolitionist; and therefore they could not send him away. Some mischief would come of it, however. It always did turn out so. If nothing worse happened, it was a bad thing for the negroes to despise a white; and they were sure to grow cockahoop when they had a white among them whom they could look down upon. What a state of society it must be in the North, D observed, where white men were daily at work before the eyes of the negroes! For the fiftieth time I tried to make my brother-in-law comprehend that work was no degradation in my part of the country, where it was not associated with the idea of slavery, and that therefore there was nothing for anybody to despise in the act of earning one’s bread; but D cannot understand it at all.
He turned homewards with me, and he enjoyed, as more than once before, my exclamations at the view from the bluff half-a mile from the house. The broad, brimming Alabama river ran far below, between densely-wooded banks, but redeemed from a certain look of desolation by the puff of