htful pace to destruction, until the
young man, mindful, perhaps, of his mistress, torn from his sight to
inhabit another's arms, and feeling that this poor quadroon was dear as
a sister to Vesta's heart, bent down in the midst of his apprehensions
and kissed the slave girl pityingly.

Then, with an instant's greater torrent of tears, a sense of rest and
man's respect fell upon Virgie's soul, and she paid no heed to time or
dangers till the carriage came to a stop in the deep forest sands
several miles east of Princess Anne.

"William," said Rhoda Holland, "what air we to do to save Virgie? Uncle
Meshach's gone. Jedge Custis is nobody knows whar, now. This yer Allan
McLane, Aunt Vesty says, is dreffle snifflin' an' severe. I think it's a
conspliracy to steal Virgie when they's all away. Misc Somers would take
keer of her, but I'm afraid she'd tell somebody."

"Are you sure that you saw and heard truly?" the minister said to
Virgie.

"Oh, yes. I saw the same man at Mr. Milburn's the day he was taken sick.
He looked at me a low, familiar look, and muttered something evil. Mary
knew him too well. Oh, do not take me back to Princess Anne. I will
never go there again."

"It may be true," Tilghman reflected. "It probably _is_ true. Vesta has
no faith in Allan McLane. She says he makes money in the negro trade,
with all his religious formality. He is the trustee already of Mrs.
Custis's estate; no doubt, the administrator by will. He may have sent
Joe Johnson to kidnap Virgie, under color of his right, and Johnson
would abuse anybody. Vesta will never forgive us if we let Virgie go to
him."

"But I am a slave," Virgie sobbed. "Oh, my Lord! to think I am not Miss
Vesta's, but a strange man's, slave. How could she give me away!"

"It was an error of judgment," Tilghman replied. "She could not
anticipate her mother's immediate death. Yet there, where she thought
you safest, you were most in peril."

They had now crossed the Dividing creek into Worcester County, and
halted to cool the horses off at the same old spring, under the
gum-tree, where Meshach Milburn stopped, the evening he went to the
Furnace village.

"William," Rhoda Holland spoke, "if Virgie is McLane's slave you can't
keep him from a-takin' her. She can't go back to Prencess Anne at all."

"I don't mean that she shall, Rhoda. I know you are a brave woman, and
we will drive her to-night to Snow Hill, and leave her there with a
nurse, a free woman, once b