“Look at the children, my dear, they are half asleep,” said Mr. Garie.  “Call nurse and see them safe into bed, and when you come back we will have the whole story.”

“Very well;” replied she, rising and calling the nurse.  “Now remember, George, you are not to begin until I return, for I should be quite vexed to lose a word.”

“Oh, go on with the children, my dear, I’ll guarantee he shall not say a word on the subject till you come back.”

With this assurance Mrs. Garie left the room, playfully shaking her finger at them as she went out, exclaiming, “Not a word, remember now, not a word.”

After she left them Mr. Garie remarked, “I have not seen Em as happy as she is this afternoon for some time.  I don’t know what has come over her lately; she scarcely ever smiles now, and yet she used to be the most cheerful creature in the world.  I wish I knew what is the matter with her; sometimes I am quite distressed about her.  She goes about the house looking so lost and gloomy, and does not seem to take the least interest in anything.  You saw,” continued he, “how silent she has been all tea time, and yet she has been more interested in what you have been saying than in anything that has transpired for months.  Well, I suppose women will be so sometimes,” he concluded, applying himself to the warm cakes that had just been set upon the table.

“Perhaps she is not well,” suggested Mr. Winston, “I think she looks a little pale.”

“Well, possibly you may be right, but I trust it is only a temporary lowness of spirits or something of that kind.  Maybe she will get over it in a day or two;” and with this remark the conversation dropped, and the gentlemen proceeded to the demolition of the sweetmeats before them.  And now, my reader, whilst they are finishing their meal, I will relate to you who Mr. Winston is, and how he came to be so familiarly seated at Mr. Garie’s table.

Mr. Winston had been a slave.  Yes! that fine-looking gentleman seated near Mr. Garie and losing nothing by the comparison that their proximity would suggest, had been fifteen years before sold on the auction-block in the neighbouring town of Savanah—­had been made to jump, show his teeth, shout to test his lungs, and had been handled and examined by professed negro traders and amateur buyers, with less gentleness and commiseration than every humane man would feel for a horse or an ox.  Now do not doubt me—­I mean that very gentleman, whose polished manners and irreproachable appearance might have led you to suppose him descended from a long line of illustrious ancestors.  Yes—­he was the offspring of a mulatto field-hand by her master.  He who was now clothed in fine linen, had once rejoiced in a tow shirt that scarcely covered his nakedness, and had sustained life on a peck of corn a week, receiving the while kicks and curses from a tyrannical overseer.

The death of his master had brought him to the auction-block, from which, both he and his mother were sold to separate owners.  There they took their last embrace of each other—­the mother tearless, but heart-broken—­the boy with all the wildest manifestations of grief.