the doors of cells. An
ominous stillness is broken by the dull clank of chains, the muttering
of voices, the shuffling of limbs; then a low wail breaks upon the ear,
and rises higher and higher, shriller and shriller, until in piercing
shrieks it chills the very heart. Now it ceases, and the echoes, like
the murmuring winds, die faintly away. "Look in here, now," says Mr.
Glentworthy--"a likely wench--once she was!"

He swings open a door, and there issues from a cell about four feet six
inches wide, and nine long, the hideous countenance of a poor, mulatto
girl, whose shrunken body, skeleton-like arms, distended and glassy
eyes, tell but too forcibly her tale of sorrow. How vivid the picture of
wild idiocy is pictured in her sad, sorrowing face. No painter's touch
could have added a line more perfect. Now she rushes forward, with a
suddenness that makes Madame Montford shrink back, appalled--now she
fixes her eyes, hangs down her head, and gives vent to her tears. "My
soul is white--yes, yes, yes! I know it is white; God tells me it is
white--he knows--he never tortures. He doesn't keep me here to die--no,
I can't die here in the dark. I won't get to heaven if I do. Oh! yes,
yes, yes, I have a white soul, but my skin is not," she rather murmurs
than speaks, continuing to hold down her head, while parting her long,
clustering hair over her shoulders. Notwithstanding the spectacle of
horror presented in this living skeleton, there is something in her look
and action which bespeaks more the abuse of long confinement than the
result of natural aberration of mind. "She gets fierce now and then,
and yells," says the unmoved Glentworthy, "but she won't hurt ye--"

[6]"How long," inquires Madame Montford, who has been questioning within
herself whether any act of her life could have brought a Human being
into such a place, "has she been confined here?" Mr. Glentworthy says
she tells her own tale.

[Footnote 6: Can it be possible that such things as are here pictured
have an existence among a people laying any claim to a state of
civilization? the reader may ask. The author would here say that to the
end of fortifying himself against the charge of exaggeration, he
submitted the MS. of this chapter to a gentleman of the highest
respectability in Charleston, whose unqualified approval it received, as
well as enlisting his sympathies in behalf of the unfortunate lunatics
found in the cells described. Four years have passed sinc