Beadle's Dime Novels No. 33: Maum Guinea and Her Plantation Children — page 74: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

68 MAUM GUINEA. While they were yet at supper, several negroes passed, with guns and axes, in a high state of excitement. * Oh, massas, we’s treed a coon !” they shouted exultingly, ag they hurried by. Philip, and two or three of the younger gentlemen, were not as yet so wearied, but that they concluded to join the negroes, and_be in at the death of the coon. - Snatching torches, and heedless of the remonstrance of the ladies, though promising not to be away over half an hour, they joined in the pursuit of the poor little worried coon. “ Dar, dar, he’s in dat tree, sure ‘nuff; I seen it move, and de dogs is barking all round it,” cried a darkey, exultingly. “ Whar’s de ax ?” , “Needn’ cut um down,” cried another. _ “I see him berry plain, right in dat crotch up dar, and I’s gwire to shoot um.” : “ Shoot away!” shouted Philip, laughingly, without much confidence in the skill of the negro, who blazed away with his old gun, and was answered by a cry which thrilled the group with horror—not that of a poor coon, in distress, but of a human-being. | “ Good heavens! you've shot a man!” exclaimed Philip. Groans of anguish descended from the tree; they waved their torches, but could see nothing distinctly, for the thick- ness of the branches. It was the first impression of all that they had come upon some negro runaway, who had been skulking in the deep forest, and who had hidden in the tree, fearing | discovery by the hunters. _ The teeth of some of the negroes began to chatter, and their eyes rolled apprehensively; they had heard strange . tales about these refugees, and knew not what desperate character they had chanced upon. “Oh, Lordy! Lord ‘be mussiful to me « sinner! Oh, Cconniclooolks.comnn)