"Say what you like," said the colonel, drawing out his pocketbook.
"You don't care to bid, Mr. Turner?" asked the justice.
"Not by a damn sight," replied Turner, with native elegance. "I buy niggers to work, not to bury."
"I withdraw my bid in favour of the gentleman," said the two-year bidder.
"Remember, suh," said the justice to the colonel, "that you are responsible for his keep as well as entitled to his labour, for the period of your bid. How long shall I make it?"
"As long as you please," said the colonel impatiently.
"Sold," said the justice, bringing down his gavel, "for life, to--what name, suh?"
There was some manifestation of interest in the crowd; and the colonel was stared at with undisguised curiosity as he paid the fine and costs, which included two dollars for two meals in the guardhouse, and walked away with his purchase--a purchase which his father had made, upon terms not very different, fifty years before.
"One of the old Frenches," I reckon, said a bystander, "come back on a visit."
"Yes," said another, "old 'ristocrats roun' here. Well, they ought to take keer of their old niggers. They got all the good out of 'em when they were young. But they're not runnin' things now."
An hour later the colonel, driving leisurely about the outskirts of the town and seeking to connect his memories more closely with the scenes around him, met a buggy in which sat the man Turner. After the buggy, tied behind one another to a rope, like a coffle of slaves, marched the three Negroes whose time he had bought at the constable's sale. Among them, of course, was the young man who had been called Bud Johnson. The colonel observed that this Negro's face, when turned toward the white man in front of him, expressed a fierce hatred, as of some wild thing of the woods, which finding itself trapped and betrayed, would go to any length to injure its captor.
Turner passed the colonel with no sign of recognition or greeting.
Bud Johnson evidently recognised the friendly gentleman who had interfered in Peter's case. He threw toward the colonel a look which resembled an appeal; but it was involuntary, and lasted but a moment, and, when the prisoner became conscious of it, and realised its uselessness, it faded into the former expression.