gone. They started back with us to Old Master Jack's, at Panola, and we
stopped for the night at a small farm house. The old woman who kept it
said, tauntingly: "You niggers going to the Yankees? You all ought to be
killed." We started on the following morning, and got back home at one
o'clock in the afternoon. All of us were whipped. All the members of the
family were very angry. Old Lady Jack McGee was so enraged that she said
to my wife: "I thought you were a Christian. You'll never see your God."
She seemed to think that because Matilda had sought freedom she had
committed a great sin.

* * * * *

INCIDENTS.

Ever since the beginning of the war, and the slaves had heard that
possibly they might some time be free, they seemed unspeakably happy.
They were afraid to let the masters know that they ever thought of such
a thing, and they never dreamed of speaking about it except among
themselves. They were a happy race, poor souls! notwithstanding their
down-trodden condition. They would laugh and chat about freedom in their
cabins; and many a little rhyme about it originated among them, and was
softly sung over their work. I remember a song that Aunt Kitty, the cook
at Master Jack's, used to sing. It ran something like this:

There'll be no more talk about Monday, by and by,
But every day will be Sunday, by and by.

The old woman was singing, or rather humming, it one day, and old lady
McGee heard her. She was busy getting her dinner, and I suppose never
realized she was singing such an incendiary piece, when old Mrs. McGee