it
yer?"

The woman, a young and once comely person of about twenty-eight years of
age, sang on a moment as if she did not understand the question, till
Phoebus repeated it with a kinder tone:

"Pore, abused creatur, tell me as your friend! I ain't none of these
kidnappers. Git your pore, scattered wits together an tell a friend of
all women an' little childern how he kin help you, fur time's worth a
dollar a second, an' bloody vultures are nigh by. Speak, Mary!"

The universal name seemed timely to this woman; she stopped her chanting
and burst into tears.

"My husband brought me here," she said, between her long sobs. "He sold
me. I give him everything I had and loved him, too, and he sold me--me
and my baby."

"I reckon you don't belong fur down this way, Mary? You don't talk like
it."

"No, sir; I belong to Philadelphia. I was a free woman and a widow; my
husband left me a little money and a little house and this child;
another man come and courted me, a han'some mulatto man, almost as white
as you. He told me he had a farm in Delaware, and wanted me to be his
wife; he promised me so much and was so anxious about it, that I
listened to him. Oh, he was a beautiful talker, and I was lonesome and
wanted love. I let him sell my house and give him the money, and started
a week ago to come to my new home. Oh, he did deceive me so; he said he
loved me dearly."

She began to cry again, and her mind seemed to wander, for the next
sentence was disconnected. Jimmy took the baby in his arms and kissed it
without any scruples, and the child's large, black eyes looked into his
as if he might be its own father, while he dandled it tenderly.

"The foxes has come an' barked at me two nights," said the woman; "they
wanted the bacon, I 'spect. The water-snakes has crawled around here in
the daytime, and the buzzards flew right down before me and looked up,
as if they thought I ought to be dead. But I wasn't afraid: that man I
give my love to was so much worse than them, that I just sung and let
them look at me."

"You say he sold you, Mary?"

The woman rubbed her weary eyes and slowly recollected where she had
left off.

"We moved our things on a vessel to Delaware, and come up a creek to a
little town in the marshes, and there we started for my husband's farm.
He said we had come to it in the night. I couldn't tell, but I saw a
house in the woods, and was so tired I went to sleep with my baby there,
and in the night I