He was a man to whom a slave seldom felt any disposition to speak.

Cold, distant, morose, with a face wearing all the marks of captious pride and malicious sternness, he repelled all advances.

Covey was not a large man; he was only about five feet ten inches in height, I should think; short necked, round shoulders; of quick and wiry motion, of thin and wolfish visage; with a pair of small, greenish-gray eyes, set well back under a forehead without dignity, and constantly in motion, and floating his passions, rather than his thoughts, in sight, but denying them utterance in words.

The creature presented an appearance altogether ferocious and sinister, disagreeable and forbidding, in the extreme.

When he spoke, it was from the corner of his mouth, and in a sort of light growl, like a dog, when an attempt is made to take a bone from him.