slave. Tobacco! I hate the sight of it, and the smell of it! There's too
much tobacco raised in Virginia. You fought the old King because he was
a tyrant, but you would make me spend my life in the tobacco-field! You
are a tyrant, too. I'm to be a man just as you're a man. You went your
way; well, I'm going mine! I'm going to be a lawyer, like--like Ludwell
Cary at Greenwood. I'm not afraid of your horse-whip. Strike, and be
damned to you! You can break every colt in the country, but you can't
break me! I've seen you strike my mother, too!"

"Way down in New Orleans,
Beneath an orange tree,
Beside the lapping water,
Upon the old levee,
A-laughing in the moonlight,
There sits the girl for me!"

sang Gaudylock.

"She's sweeter than the jasmine,
Her name it is Delphine."

The day wore on, the land grew level, and the clearings more frequent.
Stretches of stacked corn appeared like tented plains, brown and silent
encampments of the autumn; and tobacco-houses rose from the fields
whence the weed had been cut. Blue smoke hung in wreaths above the high
roofs, for it was firing-time. Now and then they saw, far back from the
road and shaded by noble trees, dwelling-houses of brick or wood. Behind
the larger sort of these appeared barns and stables and negro quarters,
all very cheerful in the sunny October weather. Once they passed a
schoolhouse and a church, and twice they halted at cross-road taverns.