164 ON THE ST. AUGUSTINE ROAD. 
for his part, he didn’t trouble them a great 
deal. The vines (and he pointed at them, 
_ fringing the roadside indefinitely) were 
great places for rattlesnakes. He liked the 
berries, but he lked somebody else to pick 
them. He was awfully afraid of snakes; 
they were so dangerous. ‘“ Yes, sir” (this 
in answer to an inquiry), “there are plenty 
of rattlesnakes here clean up to Christmas.”’ 
I liked him for his frank avowal of coward- 
ice, and: still more for his quiet bearing. 
He remembered the days of slavery, — “ be- 
fore the surrender,” as the current Southern 
phrase is, —and his face beamed when I 
spoke of my joy in thinking that his peo- 
ple were free, no matter what might befall 
them. He, too, raised cotton on hired land, 
and was bringing up his children — there 
were eight of them, he said — to habits of 
industry. 
My second stroll toward St. Augustine 
carried me perhaps three miles, — say one 
sixty-sixth of the entire distance, — and 
none of my subsequent excursions took me 
any farther; and having just now com- 
mended a negro for his candor, | am moved 
to acknowledge that, between the sand un- 
