The Maine bugle ... campaign; 1-5 Jan. 1894-Oct. 1898 - Maine.gov

328 THE MAINE BUGLE.
regiment, who was my companion during my stay with the
negroes. The door of our house was kept locked and we kept
very still and were quite safe till one day Mrs. Davis Pace,
the owner of the plantation, came out from town (Albany)
where she lived, to give the slaves their yearly allowance of
clothing. I was not aware that she was there and came out of
my house as coolly and leisurely as if I was the owner. Then
the darkies were frightened, but their quick wit saved me and
them. A lot of the women huddled around their mistress and
one of the " boys," " Tweedie " by name, came towards me saying
in a terrified stage whisper, " Go down in 'e pond " ! mean-
Quick ing a little swamp near by. " Quick I tell yer !
down in de pond ! Outen sight ! Go ! Go !
get
" and I went and
staid till Ole Mis' was gone.
They did not dare to let us stay any longer in the house, so
we went into the gin house and staid till sometime in February.
This gin house was about forty feet square with no posts inside
of the sills or under the center, and no boards on the lower
eight feet. Above this eight feet was a floor for the raw or seed
cotton, as brought from the fields. This floor rested on immense
pine timbers to keep the floor from sagging any or springing.
The object in having no inside posts below, was to admit a team
to travel round with a sweep to carry the cotton gin. There
was a stairway outside, up to the second story and the seed
cotton was about four or five feet deep on the floor except the
corner where the gin was. On the north side was a room about
twelve feet wide extending across the end of the building from
the eaves to the ground, this was the " lint room" where the
"lint" or cleaned cotton was thrown from the gin. This was
also boarded overhead and a large lot of cotton seed was
heaped up on top of this lint room. The gable end was
boarded like many of our barns with wide cracks between the
boards. Well, we climbed up on to this pile of cotton seed and
made us a bed by digging a hole down into the seed so we
could be all out of sight. anytime we wanted to hide, and there
we staid day after day waiting, waiting, waiting, for what we