never before seen a strange face in her mother's dwelling.
Fearing that Isabella would offer some resistance, Mrs. Miller had
ordered the overseer of her own farm to follow her; and, just as
Jennings had stepped between the two women, Mull, the negro-driver,
walked into the room.

"Seize that impudent hussy," said Mrs. Miller to the overseer, "and tie
her up this minute, that I may teach her a lesson she won't forget in a
hurry."

As she spoke, the old woman's eyes rolled, her lips quivered, and she
looked like a very fury.

"I will have nothing to do with her, if you whip her, Mrs. Miller," said
the slave-trader. "Niggers ain't worth half so much in the market with
their backs newly scarred," continued he, as the overseer commenced his
preparations for executing Mrs. Miller's orders.

Clotelle here took her father's walking-stick, which was lying on the
back of the sofa where he had left it, and, raising it, said,--

"If you bad people touch my mother, I will strike you."

They looked at the child with astonishment; and her extreme you,
wonderful beauty, and uncommon courage, seemed for a moment to shake
their purpose. The manner and language of this child were alike beyond
her years, and under other circumstances would have gained for her the
approbation of those present.

"Oh, Henry, Henry!" exclaimed Isabella, wringing her hands.

"You need not call on him, hussy; you will never see him again," said
Mrs. Miller.

"What! is he dead?" inquired the heart-stricken woman.

It was then that she forgot her own situation, thinking only of the
man she loved. Never having been called to endure any kind of abusive
treatment, Isabella was not fitted to sustain herself against the
brutality of Mrs. Miller, much less the combined ferociousness of the
old woman and the overseer too. Suffice it to say, that instead of
whipping Isabella, Mrs. Miller transferred her to the negro-speculator,
who took her immediately to his slave-pen. The unfeeling old woman would
not permit Isabella to take more than a single change of her clothing,
remarking to Jennings,--

"I sold you the wench, you know,--not her clothes."

The injured, friendless, and unprotected Isabella fainted as she saw her
child struggling to release herself from the arms of old Mrs. Miller,
and as the wretch boxed the poor child's ears.

After leaving directions as to how Isabella's furniture and other
effects should be disposed of, Mrs. Miller took Clotelle