training and instinct kept him out of the old negro's reach. Jeff made a wide circle around Uncle Shade and finally stopped and bayed him, standing far out of harm's way.
The old negro took off his hat, folded it once and placed it between his head and the tree as a sort of cushion. And then the colonel came galloping up, his horse in a lather of sweat. He drew rein and confronted Uncle Shade. For a moment he knew not what to say. It seemed as though his anger choked him; and yet it was not so. He was nonplussed. Here before him was the object of his pursuit, the irritating cause of his heated and hurried journey. There was in the spectacle that which drove the anger out of his heart, and the color out of his face. Here he saw the very essence and incarnation of helplessness,—an old man grown gray and well-nigh decrepit in the service of the family, who had witnessed the very beginning and birth, as it were, of the family fortune.
What was to be done with him? Here in the forest that was almost a wilderness, the spirit of justice threatened to step forth from some convenient covert and take possession
