ing. It was a short draught,
after all, for the cup was only half full, but Marcelline turned away
with a shiver from the imploring eyes and outstretched hands, which
asked her to replenish it, and, as though unable to endure the sight of
suffering which she could not alleviate, went out upon the open gallery
and sat down on the steps.

The room was on the ground floor, and the house was an old-fashioned
creole dwelling, long and low, with many doors and innumerable little
staircases--everything in disorder and out of repair, and weeds and
grass growing up to the threshold. There was a well-stocked and
carefully-tended vegetable garden not a hundred yards off: the
poultry-yards, dove-cotes and smoke-houses were as full as they could
hold, and over yonder, just behind the tall picket fence, were
corn-cribs bursting with corn and hay-lofts choked with hay. Fifty or
sixty negro hovels, irregularly grouped together down by the bayou-side,
and indistinctly seen in the fading twilight, contained about three
hundred slaves, who, having trooped in from the field at the sound of
the bell, were now eating pork and hominy as fast as they could swallow.
But no one would have guessed that all this abundance was at hand, or
that this was the homestead of one of the richest creole families in the
State. Yet it was so. Old Madame Levassour--or Madame Hypolite, as she
was invariably called--was not only the widow of a wealthy planter, but
had been herself a great heiress, perhaps the greatest in the whole
South, at the time of her marriage. The property had gone on
appreciating, as slave property did in old times, and now that she was
lying at the point of death, her two daughters, who had married
brothers, and, like all true creoles, still lived at home with their
mother, would soon be enormously rich. They were well off already by
inheritance from their father, and each owned a valuable plantation and
many slaves; but these were nothing compared to the possessions of their
mother, who was an excellent business-woman, full of energy, prudence
and moderation, and never weak or capricious, especially where the
interests of others were concerned. She had always been a kind and
indulgent mistress to her slaves, who loved her in return with
passionate fidelity, and many were the sighs and tears their approaching
change of owners produced among them. Her sons-in-law were educated men,
of good birth and moderate fortune; but negroes are the b