im along, and not sayin' nothin'; and I'd got
him nicely swapped off for a keg o' whiskey; but come to get him away
from the gal, she was jest like a tiger. So 't was before we started,
and I hadn't got my gang chained up; so what should she do but ups on
a cotton-bale, like a cat, ketches a knife from one of the deck hands,
and, I tell ye, she made all fly for a minit, till she saw 't wan't no
use; and she jest turns round, and pitches head first, young un and all,
into the river,--went down plump, and never ris."

"Bah!" said Tom Loker, who had listened to these stories with
ill-repressed disgust,--"shif'less, both on ye! _my_ gals don't cut up
no such shines, I tell ye!"

"Indeed! how do you help it?" said Marks, briskly.

"Help it? why, I buys a gal, and if she's got a young un to be sold, I
jest walks up and puts my fist to her face, and says, 'Look here, now,
if you give me one word out of your head, I'll smash yer face in. I
won't hear one word--not the beginning of a word.' I says to 'em, 'This
yer young un's mine, and not yourn, and you've no kind o' business with
it. I'm going to sell it, first chance; mind, you don't cut up none o'
yer shines about it, or I'll make ye wish ye'd never been born.' I tell
ye, they sees it an't no play, when I gets hold. I makes 'em as whist as
fishes; and if one on 'em begins and gives a yelp, why,--" and Mr. Loker
brought down his fist with a thump that fully explained the hiatus.

"That ar's what ye may call _emphasis_," said Marks, poking Haley in the
side, and going into another small giggle. "An't Tom peculiar? he! he! I
say, Tom, I s'pect you make 'em _understand_, for all niggers' heads is
woolly. They don't never have no doubt o' your meaning, Tom. If you an't
the devil, Tom, you 's his twin brother, I'll say that for ye!"

Tom received the compliment with becoming modesty, and began to look
as affable as was consistent, as John Bunyan says, "with his doggish
nature."

Haley, who had been imbibing very freely of the staple of the evening,
began to feel a sensible elevation and enlargement of his moral
faculties,--a phenomenon not unusual with gentlemen of a serious and
reflective turn, under similar circumstances.

"Wal, now, Tom," he said, "ye re'lly is too bad, as I al'ays have told
ye; ye know, Tom, you and I used to talk over these yer matters down in
Natchez, and I used to prove to ye that we made full as much, and was as
well off for this yer world, by treat