52 UNCLE TOM’S CABIN; OR,

goes it!” and Sam and Andy laughed till the tears, rolled down
their cheeks,

‘T’ll make yer laugh t’other side yer mouths !” said the trader,
laying about their heads with his riding-whip.

Both ducked, and ran shouting up the bank, and were on their
horses before he was up.

‘Good evening, mas’r!” said Sam, with much gravity. “I
berry much spect missis be anxious ‘bout Jerry. Mas’r Haley
won't want us no longer. Missis wouldn’t hear of our ridin’
the critters over Lizy’s bridge to-night ;” and, with a facetious poke
into Andy’s ribs, he started off, followed by the latter, at full
speed—their shouts of laughter coming faintly on the wind.

 

CHAPTER VIII.
ELIZA’S ESCAPE.

E11za made her desperate retreat across the river just in the
‘dusk of twilight. The grey mist of evening, rising slowly from
the river, enveloped her as she disappeared up the bank, and the
swollen current and floundering masses of ice presented a hope-
less barrier between her and her pursuer. Haley therefore slowly
and discontentedly returned to the little tavern, to ponder further
what was to be done. The woman opened to him the door of a
little parlour, covered with a rag carpet, where stood a table with
@ very shining black oil-cloth, sundry lank, high-backed wood
chairs, with some plaster images in resplendent colours on the
mantel shelf, above a very dimly-smoking grate; a long hard-wood
settle extended its uneasy length by the chimney, and here Haley
sat him down to meditate on the instability of human hopes and

happiness in general. |

«‘ What did I want with the little cuss, now,” he said to him-
self “that I should have got myself treed like a coon, as I am,
this yer way?” and Haley relieved himself by repeating over a
not very select litany of imprecations on himself, which, though
there was the best possible reason to consider them as true, we
shall, as a matter of taste, omit.

He was startled by the loud and dissonant voice of a man
who was apparently dismounting at the door. He hurried to the
window.

“By the Lord! if this yer an’t the nearest, now, to what I've
heard folks call Providence,” said Haley. ‘I do b’lieve that ar’s
Tom Loker.”

Haley hastened out. Standing by the bar, in the corner of the
room, was a brawny, muscular man, full six feet in height, and