airs like white folks!"

In the tobacco-field on the hillside back of his house, Nimbus and
his wife, Lugena, wrought in the light of the full moon nearly all
the night which followed, and early on the morrow Nimbus harnessed
his mule into his canvas-covered wagon, in which, upon a bed
of straw, reclined his friend Eliab Hill, and drove again to the
place of registration. On arriving there he took his friend in his
arms, carried him in and sat him on the railing before the Board.
Clasping the blanket close about his deformed extremities the
cripple leaned upon his friend's shoulder and answered the necessary
questions with calmness and precision.

"There's a pair for you, captain," said Gleason, nodding good-naturedly
toward Nimbus as he bore his helpless charge again to the wagon.

"Is he white?" asked the officer, with a puzzled look.

"White?" exclaimed Sheriff Gleason, with a laugh. "No, indeed! He's
a nigger preacher who lives with Nimbus down at Red Wing. They're
great cronies--always together. I expect he's at the bottom of all
the black nigger's perversity, though he always seems as smooth
and respectful as you please. He's a deep one. I 'llow he does
all the scheming, and just makes Nimbus a cat's-paw to do his work.
I don't know much about him, though. He hardly ever talks with
anybody."

"He seems a very remarkable man," said the officer.

"Oh, he is," said the sheriff. "Even in slave times he was a very