Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/314

 after having first killed the overseer in some quarrel about whipping his wife ; and the burning down of the expensive rice mills at Loosahatchie, which had happened no less than five or six times within the last twenty years, had been commonly ascribed to his artful and daring malice and revenge.

Great efforts had been made at times to take this dangerous outlaw, and many ingenious plans had been formed to entrap him, but all had hitherto failed, not without the desperate wounding of several persons who had met him in personal encounter. He seemed to have various lurking-places, scattered over a considerable range of country, from one to another of which he fled, as occasion required, thus eluding all attempts at his capture. Sometimes, when the pursuit after him had been very hot, he would seem to disappear for months, or even a year or two, but was pretty certain to make his reappearance when least expected and least welcome. Had he merely confined himself to the petty depredations necessary to support himself and his band of confederates, the matter would have been of less consequence ; but he was believed to keep up an underhand communication with almost every plantation in the neighborhood, and to be a general instructor in mischief and insubordination, an aider and abetter of runaways, and harborer of fugitives.

This same Wild Tom had been seen, within a short time past, lurking about in the neighborhood; and it was suspected that the late stampede had not taken place without his aid and assistance. It was deemed a much easier thing to find and to take him encumbered by a dozen or twenty raw recruits than if alone, or only attended, as he generally was, or at least was generally supposed to be, for in all that was commonly reported of him, there was a great deal more of conjecture than of knowledge,—by one or two trusty, tried, and experienced companions. With my new acquaintance, the planter, — from whom I was deriving all this information, in which, since he had