ractised; but he was used to it. He had seen that
same look hundreds of times. You can get used to such things, too, my
friend; and it is the great object of recent efforts to make our whole
northern community used to them, for the glory of the Union. So the
trader only regarded the mortal anguish which he saw working in those
dark features, those clenched hands, and suffocating breathings, as
necessary incidents of the trade, and merely calculated whether she was
going to scream, and get up a commotion on the boat; for, like other
supporters of our peculiar institution, he decidedly disliked agitation.

But the woman did not scream. The shot had passed too straight and
direct through the heart, for cry or tear.

Dizzily she sat down. Her slack hands fell lifeless by her side. Her
eyes looked straight forward, but she saw nothing. All the noise and
hum of the boat, the groaning of the machinery, mingled dreamily to her
bewildered ear; and the poor, dumb-stricken heart had neither cry not
tear to show for its utter misery. She was quite calm.

The trader, who, considering his advantages, was almost as humane as
some of our politicians, seemed to feel called on to administer such
consolation as the case admitted of.

"I know this yer comes kinder hard, at first, Lucy," said he; "but such
a smart, sensible gal as you are, won't give way to it. You see it's
_necessary_, and can't be helped!"

"O! don't, Mas'r, don't!" said the woman, with a voice like one that is
smothering.

"You're a smart wench, Lucy," he persisted; "I mean to do well by
ye, and get ye a nice place down river; and you'll soon get another
husband,--such a likely gal as you--"

"O! Mas'r, if you _only_ won't talk to me now," said the woman, in a
voice of such quick and living anguish that the trader felt that there
was something at present in the case beyond his style of operation. He
got up, and the woman turned away, and buried her head in her cloak.

The trader walked up and down for a time, and occasionally stopped and
looked at her.

"Takes it hard, rather," he soliloquized, "but quiet, tho';--let her
sweat a while; she'll come right, by and by!"

Tom had watched the whole transaction from first to last, and had a
perfect understanding of its results. To him, it looked like something
unutterably horrible and cruel, because, poor, ignorant black soul! he
had not learned to generalize, and to take enlarged views. If he had
only been instruct