“And he said, ’Oh Missus, I can’t!  Ise got a mighty heap of trouble on my mind.’  And he looked so down-hearted when he said this, I wanted to know what was the matter; but he said, ’It won’t do, for a little lady like you to know the troubles of we poor creatures,’ but one day, when Sam came home from New Orleans he brought him a letter from his wife, and he really seemed to be overjoyed, and he kissed the letter, and put it in his bosom, and I never saw him look half so happy before.  So the next day when I asked him to get the pony ready, he asked me if I wouldn’t read it for him.  He said he had been trying to make it out, but somehow he could not get the hang of the words, and so I sat down and read it to him.  Then he told me about his wife, how beautiful she was; and how a trader, a real mean man, wanted to buy her, and that he had begged his master not to sell her; but it was no use.  She had to go; but he was glad of one thing; the trader was dead, and his wife had got a place in the city with a very nice lady, and he hoped to see her when he went to New Orleans.  Pa, I wonder how slavery came to be.  I should hate to belong to anybody, wouldn’t you, Pa?”

“Why, yes, darling, but then the negroes are contented, and wouldn’t take their freedom, if you would give it to them.”

“I don’t know about that, Pa; there was Mr. Le Grange’s Peter.  Mr. Le Grange used to dress him so fine and treat him so well that he thought no one would ever tempt Peter to leave him; and he came North with him every year for three or four summers, and he always made out that he was afraid of the abolitionists—­bobolitionists he used to call them—­and Mr. Le Grange just believed that Peter was in earnest, and somehow he got Mrs. Le Grange to bring his wife North to wait on her.  And when they both got here, they both left; and Mrs. Le Grange had to wait on herself, until she got another servant.  She told me she had got enough of the North, and never wanted to see it again so long as she lived; that she wouldn’t have taken three thousand dollars for them.”

“Well, darling, they would have never left, if these meddlesome abolitionists hadn’t put it in their heads; but, darling, don’t bother your brain about such matters.  See what I have bought you this morning,” said he, handing her a necklace of the purest pearls; “here, darling, is a birth-day present for you.”  Camilla took the necklace, and gazing absently upon it said, “I can’t understand it.”

“What is it, my little philosopher, that you can’t understand?”

“Pa, I can’t understand slavery; that man made me think it was something very bad.  Do you think it can be right?”

Le Croix’s face flushed suddenly, and he bit his lip, but said nothing, and commenced reading the paper.

“Why don’t you answer me, Pa?” Le Croix’s brow grew darker, but he tried to conceal his vexation, and quietly said, “Darling, never mind.  Don’t puzzle your little head about matters you cannot understand, and which our wisest statesmen cannot solve.”