Preston had been quietly enjoying the dialogue, and as the driver rode away, said to me:
'I knew you wouldn't make any thing out of him. Come, let us walk on; a little exercise, after our warm work, will do us good.'
Leaving the other passengers to await the motions of the driver, the blacksmith, and the black 'huff'-holder, we trudged on through the mud, and in about two hours reached the next station.
The reader will find the spot which bears the dignified cognomen of 'Tom's Store,' if he looks on the map of North-Carolina. It is there destitute of a name, but is plainly designated by the circular character which is applied by geographers to villages. It is situated on the bank of a small tributary of the Neuse, and consists of a one-story building about twenty feet wide, and forty feet long, divided into two apartments, and built of pine slabs. One half of the village is sparsely filled with dry-goods, groceries, fish-hooks, log-chains, goose-yokes, tin-pans, cut-nails, and Jews'-harps, while the other is densely crowded with logwood, 'dog-leg,' strychnine, juniper-berries, New-England rum, and cistern-water, all mixed together. This latter region is the more populous neighborhood; and at the date of my visit it was absolutely packed with thirsty natives, who were imbibing certain fluids known 'down South' as 'blue-ruin,' 'bust-head, 'red-eye,' 'tangle-foot,' 'rifle-whisky,' and 'devil's-dye,' at the rate of a 'bit' a glass, and of four 'bits' for 'as much as one could carry.'
I was introduced by the Squire to Tom himself, the illustrious founder of the village. He was a stout, bloated specimen of humanity, with a red, pimpled face, a long grizzly beard, small inflamed eyes, and a nose that might have been mistaken for a peeled beet. His whole appearance showed that he was an _habitué_ of the more fashionable quarter of his village, (the groggery,) and a liberal imbiber of his own compounds. He informed me that he did a 'right smart' business; bought dry-goods in 'York,' 'sperrets' in 'Hio, and rum in Bostin', and he added: 'Stranger, I never keeps none but th' clar juice, th' raal, genuwine critter, d----d ef I do. Come, take a drink.'
I declined, when a bystander who seemed to know--he could scarcely keep his feet--overhearing the remark, confirmed it by saying with a big oath: