Methought they frisked and fattened in the joy of their deliverance from the shadow of Mrs.A.'s slave-jail, and gladly contemplated translation into mutton-broth for sick or wounded soldiers.

The very slaves who once, perchance, were sold at auction with yon aged patriarch of the flock, had now asserted their humanity, and would devour him as hospital rations.

Meanwhile our shepherd bore a sharp bayonet without a crook, and I felt myself a peer of Ulysses and Rob Roy,--those sheep-stealers of less elevated aims,--when I met in my daily rides these wandering trophies of our wider wanderings..