"Perhaps I can fly to our old house across the State Line, and take
refuge with the new tenant there," Hulda thought. "Oh! I wish Van Dorn
was here; he is so brave; and when he left me his kiss was like my
father's."
Chains clanked, and the drone of low hymns came down the hatchway from
the slave-pen.
"There is a white man up there," Hulda reflected; "dare I go up to see?"
She unlocked the padlock, and stepped up the ladder. At the pen door she
peeped, but could not make out anything in the blackness. Then she
pulled the peg out of the staple, and walked into the sickly odor of the
jail.
"How many are here?" Hulda asked. "I hear you, but cannot see."
"Three men, one old woman, and some little things, makes the present
contents of Pangymonum," spoke up a rough, cheery voice, "an', by smoke!
it's jess enough."
"Is it the white man that talks?"
"He says he's white, but they think it's goin' to be easy hokey-pokey to
pass him off for a nigger."
Her eyes soon recognized the speaker as he said, "By smoke! miss, you're
not much like a Johnson. I reckon you're Huldy."
"Yes, and you, sir?"
"I was Jimmy Phoebus before I was a nigger."
The girl went rapidly up to him, and put her arms around him.
"Thank God!" she said, "you are not dead. Levin Dennis, my dear friend,
wept to think you were at the river bottom. But, quick, sir; I may be
caught here. Are you all true to each other?"
"Yes, the traitor's cut his wizzen.
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