ately recognized him. What could these persons want there?
thought she. Without any parleying or word of explanation, the two
entered the house, leaving the carriage in charge of a servant.

Clotelle ran to her mother, and clung to her dress as if frightened by
the strangers.

"She's a fine-looking wench," said the speculator, as he seated
himself, unasked, in the rocking-chair; "yet I don't think she is worth
the money you ask for her."

"What do you want here?" inquired Isabella, with a quivering voice.

"None of your insolence to me," bawled out the old woman, at the top of
her voice; "if you do, I will give you what you deserve so much, my
lady,--a good whipping."

In an agony of grief, pale, trembling, and ready to sink to the floor,
Isabella was only sustained by the hope that she would be able to save
her child. At last, regaining her self-possession, she ordered them
both to leave the house. Feeling herself insulted, the old woman seized
the tongs that stood by the fire-place, and raised them to strike the
quadroon down; but the slave-trader immediately jumped between the
women, exclaiming,--

"I won't buy her, Mrs. Miller, if you injure her."

Poor little Clotelle screamed as she saw the strange woman raise the
tongs at her mother. With the exception of old Aunt Nancy, a free
colored woman, whom Isabella sometimes employed to work for her, the
child had 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 youth,
wonde