won't tell you. I hate to think of it. And I tell you, the Lord only
knows what we may see tomorrow, if that poor fellow holds out as he's
begun."

"Horrid!" said Emmeline, every drop of blood receding from her cheeks.
"O, Cassy, do tell me what I shall do!"

"What I've done. Do the best you can,--do what you must,--and make it up
in hating and cursing."

"He wanted to make me drink some of his hateful brandy," said Emmeline;
"and I hate it so--"

"You'd better drink," said Cassy. "I hated it, too; and now I can't live
without it. One must have something;--things don't look so dreadful,
when you take that."

"Mother used to tell me never to touch any such thing," said Emmeline.

"_Mother_ told you!" said Cassy, with a thrilling and bitter emphasis
on the word mother. "What use is it for mothers to say anything? You
are all to be bought and paid for, and your souls belong to whoever gets
you. That's the way it goes. I say, _drink_ brandy; drink all you can,
and it'll make things come easier."

"O, Cassy! do pity me!"

"Pity you!--don't I? Haven't I a daughter,--Lord knows where she is,
and whose she is, now,--going the way her mother went, before her, I
suppose, and that her children must go, after her! There's no end to the
curse--forever!"

"I wish I'd never been born!" said Emmeline, wringing her hands.

"That's an old wish with me," said Cassy. "I've got used to wishing
that. I'd die, if I dared to," she said, looking out into the darkness,
with that still, fixed despair which was the habitual expression of her
face when at rest.

"It would be wicked to kill one's self," said Emmeline.

"I don't know why,--no wickeder than things we live and do, day after
day. But the sisters told me things, when I was in the convent, that
make me afraid to die. If it would only be the end of us, why, then--"

Emmeline turned away, and hid her face in her hands.

While this conversation was passing in the chamber, Legree, overcome
with his carouse, had sunk to sleep in the room below. Legree was not an
habitual drunkard. His coarse, strong nature craved, and could endure,
a continual stimulation, that would have utterly wrecked and crazed a
finer one. But a deep, underlying spirit of cautiousness prevented his
often yielding to appetite in such measure as to lose control of himself.

This night, however, in his feverish efforts to banish from his mind
those fearful elements of woe and remorse which woke within him,