oad, in hopes of seeing Sukey
Larkin's wagon. But Sukey had no thoughts of coming to encounter her
entreaties. She was feeding and fatting Tommy, with a view to selling
him and buying a silk gown with the money. The little boy cried and
moped for some days; but, after the manner of children, he soon became
reconciled to his new situation. He ran about in the fields, and
gradually forgot the sea, the moss, the pebbles, and mammy's lullaby.

One day Mrs. Lawton said to her daughter, "How that dreadful cough hangs
on! I begin to be afraid Chloe's going into a consumption. I hope not;
for I don't know where I shall find such another wench to work."

She mentioned her fears to the minister, and he said, "When she gets
over worrying about Tommy, she'll pick up her crumbs."

But the only change that came over Chloe was increasing listlessness of
mind and fatigue of body. At last, she was unable to rise from her
pallet. She lay there looking at her thin hands, and talking to herself,
according to her old habit. The words Mrs. Lawton most frequently heard
were, "It was cruel of missis to take away little Tommy."
Notwithstanding all the clerical arguments she had heard to prove the
righteousness of slavery, the moan of the dying mother made her feel
uncomfortable. Sometimes the mind of the invalid wandered, and she would
hug Tommy's little gown, pat it lovingly, and sing to it the lullaby her
baby loved. Sometimes she murmured, "He looked jest as ef he _wanted_ to
say suthin'"; and sometimes a smiled lighted up her face, as if she saw
some pleasant vision.

The minister came to pray with her, and to talk what he called religion.
But it sounded to poor Chloe more than ever like the murmuring of the
sea. She turned her face away from him and said nothing. With what
little mental strength she had, she rejected the idea that the curse of
Ham, whoever he might be, justified the treatment she had received. She
had no idea what a heathen was, but she concluded it meant something
bad; and she had often told Tom she didn't like to have the minister
talk that way, for it sounded like calling her names.

At last the weary one passed away from a world where the doings had all
been dark and incomprehensible to her. But her soul was like that of a
little child; and Jesus has said, "Of such are the kingdom of heaven."
They found under her pillow little Tommy's ragged gown, and a pink
shell. Why the shell was there no one could conjecture. T