entered and stood asking permission with his tail to come to the fire-place. The white child, a frowzy girl of ten, came toward us. I turned and asked her name. She knitted her brows, but made no verbal reply. I turned my chair towards her, and asked her to come to me. She hung her head for an instant, then turned, ran to the hound and struck him a hard blow in the chops. The hound quailed. She struck him again, and he turned half around; then she began with her feet, and kicked him out, taking herself after him.
At length the woman finished her ironing, and went to the kitchen, whence quickly returning, she placed upon the table a plate of cold, salt, fat pork; a cup of what to both eye and tongue seemed lard, but which she termed butter; a plate of very stale, dry, flaky, micaceous corn-bread; a jug of molasses, and a pitcher of milk.
"Well, now it's ready, if you'll eat it," she said, turning to us. "Best we've got. Sit up. Take some pone;" and she sat down in the rocker at one end of the table. We took seats at the other end.
"Jupiter! what's the matter with this child?" A little white child that had crawled up into the gallery, and now to my side—flushed face, and wheezing like a high-pressure steamboat.
"Got the croup, I reckon," answered the woman. "Take some 'lasses."
The child crawled into the room. With the aid of a hand it stood up and walked round to its mother.
"How long has it been going on that way?" asked we.
"Well, it's been going on some days, now, and keeps getting worse. 'Twas right bad last night, in the night. Reckoned I should lose it, one spell. Take some butter."
We were quite faint with hunger when we rode up, but didn't eat much of the corn-cake and pork. The woman and
