of his life it was said among other things that he preserved his wonderful strength by drinking human blood a tale which in a certain sense i have never seen reason to question making all his life was a blot upon civilization at length it a brutal temper by passions after a long period of license and came to a climax in a final of ferocity and fury in which he was guilty of an act whose surpassed belief and he was brought to judgment in modern times the very of the crime would probably have proved his security and as he had destroyed his own property while he was a crime of appalling and horror he might have found a defence in that standing refuge of extraordinary � insanity in virginia this defence indeed was put in and was pressed with much ability by his counsel one of whom was my father who had just then been admitted to the bar but fortunately for the cause of justice neither courts nor were then so sentimental as they have become of late years and the last of no paid under the law the full penalty of his hideous crime it was one of the curious incidents of the trial that his all lamented his death and declared that he was a good master when he was not drunk he was hanged just at the rear of his own house within sight of the spot where his awful crime was committed at his execution which according to the custom of the country was public a horrible coincidence occurred which furnished the text of many a sermon on justice among the the body was near the pond close by the thicket where the were buried but the declared that it preferred one of the stone chambers under the mansion where it made its home and that it might be seen at any time of the day or night about the place they used to dwell with peculiar zest on the most details of this wretch s dreadful crime the whole in the final act of fury when the gigantic monster dragged the and corpse of his victim up the staircase and stood it up before the open window in his hall no in the full view of the terrified slaves after these the continued of the murderer and his victim was as natural to us as it was to the themselves and as night after night we would hurry up to the great house through the darkness we were ever on the watch lest he should appear to our vision from the shades of the filled yard thus it was that of all ghostly places no had the distinction of being invested to us with horror and thus to us no less than because the had given way and the had turned again to swamp and it was that no was abandoned and was now by any foot but that of its ghostly tenants the time of my story was the spring previous continuous rains had kept the river full and had the low grounds and this had been followed by an dense growth in the summer then public feeling was greatly excited at the time of which i write over the discovery in the neighborhood of several of the railway or � as they were universally considered in that country � of the devil they had been run off or had disappeared suddenly but had left behind them some little excitement on the part of the slaves and a great deal on the part of their masters and more than the usual number of ne in virginia had run away all however had been caught or had returned home after a sufficient interval of freedom except one who had escaped permanently and who was supposed to have accompanied his on their flight this man was a well known character he belonged to one of our neighbors and had been bought and brought there from an estate on the lower he was the most brutal negro i ever knew he was of a type rarely found among our who judging from their and general characteristics came principally from the coast of africa they are of moderate stature with dull but amiable faces this man however was of immense size and he possessed the features and expression of a in character also he differed essentially from all the other slaves in our country he was alike without their and their and was as fearless as he was brutal he was the only negro i ever knew who was without either superstition or reverence indeed he differed so widely from the rest of the slaves in that section that there existed some feeling against him almost akin to a race feeling at the same time that he exercised considerable influence over them they were dreadfully afraid of him and were always in terror that he would trick them to which awful power he laid well known claim his curses in his strange dialect used to them no beyond measure and they would do anything to him he had been a continual source of trouble and an object of suspicion in the neighborhood from the time of his first appearance and more than one that the declared had wandered into the of no and had cut his an in de ma sh had been suspected of finding its way to this man s cabin his master had often been urged to get rid of him but he was kept i think probably because he was valuable on the plantation he was a fine butcher a good work hand and a first class moreover ours was a population in which every man minded his own business and let his neighbor s alone at the time of the visits of those secret agents to which i have referred this negro was discovered to be the leader in 