heard speaking in a room below.

"See me!" said one; "we sell you, dat's sho'! See me now! You make de
best of it. Sam Ogg yer, we sold twenty-two times. Sam will be sold wid
you and teach yo' de Murrell game."

"Politely, gentlemen," said a feminine voice; "I don't know that I have
the nerve for it. My occupation has been marrying them. It is true that
the hue-and-cry has made that branch dull, but I had great talent for
it."

"Kidnapping," said a third voice, "is running low. It surrounds the
whole slave belt from Illinois to Delaware. The laws of Illinois were
made in our interests till Governor Harrison, whose free man was
kidnapped, raised an excitement out there six years ago. Newt Wright,
Joe O'Neal, and Abe Thomas were the smartest kidnappers along the
Kentucky line. But Joe Johnson, who is getting ready to go south, will
be the last man of enterprise in the business. John A. Murrell's idea is
to divide fair with black men, sell and steal them back, and I think it
is sagacious. It's safer, any way, than Patty Cannon's other plan."

"What is that, Mr. Ogg?" said the feminine-voiced negro.

"Making away with the negro-traders, they say."

"See me! see me!" exclaimed the first voice. "Dey'll hang her some day
fur dat."

"Now," resumed Mr. Ogg, "a man of intelligence like you and me, Mr.
Ransom--pardon, sir, does your shackle incommode you? I'll stuff it with
some wool--"

"Politely, Mr. Ogg; I'm ironed rather too tight."

"I say, Mr. Ransom, you and I can always play the average slaveholder
for a fool. Why, I hardly get into any family before I make love to some
member of it, and if I don't vamose with a black wench, it's with her
mistress."

"Ah, Mr. Ogg, they are perfectly fiendish in resenting _that!_"

"Of course, but there's a grand tit-for-tat going through all nature.
Why, sir, the pleasures of the far South, to a man of art and enterprise
like you, far exceed this poor, plain region. Take the roof off slavery
and the blacks have rather the best of it; the whites would think so if
they could see what is going on."

"Politely, Mr. Ogg; will not the entire institution some day blow itself
out, like one of their Western steamboats?"

"No doubt of it, Mr. Ransom. When we have disposed of you, and you can
see the country for yourself, observe how sensitive slaveholding is! A
thousand anxieties lie in it. They believe in insurrections, rapes, and
incendiaries. A perfect sleep they hardly know, but