The sisters sat talking over their affairs with their husbands, in low tones, listening anxiously meanwhile to every sound.  Mr. and Mrs. King were just saying they thought it was best to return home, when Mr. Bright opened the door and Tulee walked in.  Of course, there was a general exclaiming and embracing.  There was no need of introducing the husbands, for Tulee remembered them both.  As soon as she could take breath, she said:  “I’ve had such a time to get here!  I’ve been trying all day, and I couldn’t get a chance, they kept such watch of me.  At last, when they was all abed and asleep, I crept down stairs softly, and come out of the back door, and locked it after me.”

“Come right up stairs with me,” said Rosa.  “I want to speak to you.”  As soon as they were alone, she said, “Tulee, where is the baby?”

“Don’t know no more than the dead what’s become of the poor little picaninny,” she replied.  “After ye went away, Missy Duroy’s cousin, who was a sea-captain, brought his baby with a black nurse to board there, because his wife had died.  I remember how ye looked at me when ye said, ‘Take good care of the poor little baby.’  And I did try to take good care of him.  I toted him about a bit out doors whenever I could get a chance.  One day, just as I was going back into the house, a gentleman o’horseback turned and looked at me.  I didn’t think anything about it then; but the next day, he come to the house, and he said I was Mr. Royal’s slave, and that Mr. Fitzgerald bought me.  He wanted to know where ye was; and when I told him ye’d gone over the sea with Madame and the Signor, he cursed and swore, and said he’d been cheated.  When he went away, Missis Duroy said it was Mr. Bruteman.  I didn’t think there was much to be ’fraid of, ’cause ye’d got away safe, and I had free papers, and the picaninny was too small to be sold.  But I remembered ye was always anxious about his being a slave, and I was a little uneasy.  One day when the sea-captain came to see his baby, he was marking an anchor on his own arm with a needle and some sort of black stuff; and he said ’t would never come out.  I thought if they should carry off yer picaninny, it would be more easy to find him again if he was marked.  I told the captain I had heard ye call him Gerald; and he said he would mark G.F. on his arm.  The poor little thing worried in his sleep while he was doing it, and Missis Duroy scolded at me for hurting him.  The next week Massa Duroy was taken with yellow-fever; and then Missis Duroy was taken, and then the captain’s baby and the black nurse.  I was frighted, and tried to keep the picaninny out doors all I could.  One day, when I’d gone a bit from the house, two men grabbed us and put us in a cart.  When I screamed, they beat me, and swore at me for a runaway nigger.  When I said I was free, they beat me more, and told me to shut up.  They put us in the calaboose; and when I told ’em the picaninny belonged to a white lady,