"Bad ole hats?" asks Samson.

"Roxy'll burn all the bell-crowns for her beau, and I'll bury the steeple-hat and you that cleans it, and the people will be so glad they'll set me free and I can go North."

"Look out, Virgie; I'll put dat high-crown hat on you like Marster Milburn put de bell on de buzzard. He went up to dat buzzard one day wid a little tea-bell in his hand an' says, 'Buzzard, how do ye like music?' Says de buzzard, tickled wid de compliment, 'I'm so larnid in dat music, I disdains to sing; I criticises de birds dat does.' 'Den,' says Mars Milburn, 'I needn't say to ye, P'ofessor Buzzard, dat dis little bell will be very pleasin' to yo' refine taste.' Wid dat he takes a little piece o' wire an' fastens de tea-bell to de bird's foot an' says, 'Buzzard, let me hear ye play!' De buzzard flew and de bell tinkled, an' all de other buzzards hear some'in' like de cowbell on de dead cow dey picked yisterday, an' dey says, 'Who's dat a flyin' heah? Maybe it's a cow's ghose!' So dey up, all scart, an' cross'd de bay; an' de buzzard wid a bell haint had no company sence, becoz he stole a talent he didn't have, and it made everybody oncomfitable."

"I've heard about Meshach belling a buzzard," said Roxy, "but they say he's got something on his foot, too, like a hoof - a clove foot. Did you ever see it, Samson?"

"He never tuk his foot off," said the negro, warily, "to let me see it. Dat bell on de buzzard, gals, is like white beauty in a colored skin; it draws white men and black men, like quare music in de air, but it makes de pale gal lonesome. She can't marry ary white man; she despises black ones."

The shrewd lover had touched a chord of young pain in the hearts of both those delicate quadroons. Both were so nearly white that the slight corruption increased their beauty, rounded their graceful limbs, plumpened their willowy figures, gave a softness like mild night to their expressive eyes, and blackened the silken tassels of their elegant long hair. No tutor had taught them how to walk, - they who moved on health like skylarks on the air. Faithful, pure-minded, modest, natural, they were still slaves, and their place in matrimony, which nature would have set among the worthiest - superior in love, superior in maternity, superior in length of days and enjoyment - was, by the freak of man's caste, as doubtful as the mermaid's.

Roxy was a little the shorter and fuller of shape, the milder and more pathetic; in Virgie the white race had left its leaner lines and greater unrelenting. She said to Samson, with the pique her reflections inspired,

"I never thought the first man to make love to me would be as black as you."

"De white corn years," says Samson, "de rale sugar-corn, de blackbird gits. None of dem white gulls and pigeons gits dat corn. A white feller wouldn't suit you, Virgie."

"Why?" says Roxy, "Virgie was raised among white children; so was I. We didn't know any difference till we grew up."

"Dat was what spiled ye," Samson said; "de colored man is de best husban'. He ain't thinkin' 'bout business while he makin' love, like Marster Milburn. The black man thinks his sweetheart is business enough, long as she likes him. He works fur her, to love her, not to be makin' a fool of her, and put his own head full of hambition, as dey calls it. You couldn't git along wid one o' dem pale, mutterin' white men, Virgie. Now, Roxy's white man, he's most as keerless as a nigger; he kin't do nothin' but make love, nohow. Dat's what she likes him fur."