“Well, next Sunday a Methodist preacher comes along, and was agoin’ to preach at Ingen Fields. And so he and his wife come down to dine with us, and we cooked a leg of mutton we had on hand, for dinner, and got it on the table, and all sets down, and master begins to cut it, and come tu, ’twas distressedly tain’ted round the bone, and smelled bad.
“Well, master orders it off the table; and I goes and knocks over five chickens, and dresses ’em, and friccazeed them in a hurry, and got ’em on to the table; and I guess we didn’t hinder ’em mor’n half an hour.
“Well, nobody could stand the mutton, it stunk so; but master tells the folks to give me nothin’ else to eat; and I eat, and eat away upon it, day after day, as long as I could; and then I’d tear off bits, and hide ’em in my bosom, and carry ’em out, and fling ’em away, to git rid on it; and one night, when it stunk so bad it fairly knocked me down, I takes the _whole frame_ and leaves for the lot with it, and buries it; and thinks, says I, _now_ the old mutton leg won’t trouble me any more.—— ☞ But it happened, that a few days arter this, that we was ploughin’ that lot, and he was holdin’ the plough; and fust he knows, up comes the mutton leg, and fust he looks at it, and then at me, and takes it up, and scrapes the dirt off on it—and oh! how he biled!—and says he, ‘You black devil, what did you hide that mutton for?’ And he took the whip out of my hand, and cut me with it a few times; and says I, ‘Master, I won’t stand this;’ and off I run towards the house, and he arter, as fast as we could clip it; and he into the house and gits the rifle, and I see it, and oh! how I cleared the coop into the lots; and as I was a goin’ over a knoll, he let strip arter me, and I hears the ball whistle over my head. I tell ye, how it come!—and I scart enemost to death.
“Well, I wanders round a while, my heart a pittepattin’ all the time, and finally, comes back to the house. But I see him a comin’ with the rifle agin’ as I got into the lot, and I fled for shelter into the shell of an old hemlock-tree left standin’, (you’ve seen such arter a lot is burnt,) and he see me, and he let strip agin’, and whiz went the ball through the old shell, about a foot over my head, for I’d squat down, and if I hadn’t he’d a fixed me out as stiff as a maggot. He comes up, and sings out, ‘You dead, nigger?’ ‘Yis, Sir.’