“Had you any friends?” said Emmeline.

“Yes, my husband,—­he’s a blacksmith.  Mas’r gen’ly hired him out.  They took me off so quick, I didn’t even have time to see him; and I’s got four children.  O, dear me!” said the woman, covering her face with her hands.

It is a natural impulse, in every one, when they hear a tale of distress, to think of something to say by way of consolation.  Emmeline wanted to say something, but she could not think of anything to say.  What was there to be said?  As by a common consent, they both avoided, with fear and dread, all mention of the horrible man who was now their master.

True, there is religious trust for even the darkest hour.  The mulatto woman was a member of the Methodist church, and had an unenlightened but very sincere spirit of piety.  Emmeline had been educated much more intelligently,—­taught to read and write, and diligently instructed in the Bible, by the care of a faithful and pious mistress; yet, would it not try the faith of the firmest Christian, to find themselves abandoned, apparently, of God, in the grasp of ruthless violence?  How much more must it shake the faith of Christ’s poor little ones, weak in knowledge and tender in years!

The boat moved on,—­freighted with its weight of sorrow,—­up the red, muddy, turbid current, through the abrupt tortuous windings of the Red river; and sad eyes gazed wearily on the steep red-clay banks, as they glided by in dreary sameness.  At last the boat stopped at a small town, and Legree, with his party, disembarked.

CHAPTER XXXII

Dark Places

“The dark places of the earth are full of the habitations Of cruelty."*

     * Ps. 74:20.

Trailing wearily behind a rude wagon, and over a ruder road, Tom and his associates faced onward.

In the wagon was seated Simon Legree and the two women, still fettered together, were stowed away with some baggage in the back part of it, and the whole company were seeking Legree’s plantation, which lay a good distance off.

It was a wild, forsaken road, now winding through dreary pine barrens, where the wind whispered mournfully, and now over log causeways, through long cypress swamps, the doleful trees rising out of the slimy, spongy ground, hung with long wreaths of funeral black moss, while ever and anon the loathsome form of the mocassin snake might be seen sliding among broken stumps and shattered branches that lay here and there, rotting in the water.

It is disconsolate enough, this riding, to the stranger, who, with well-filled pocket and well-appointed horse, threads the lonely way on some errand of business; but wilder, drearier, to the man enthralled, whom every weary step bears further from all that man loves and prays for.

So one should have thought, that witnessed the sunken and dejected expression on those dark faces; the wistful, patient weariness with which those sad eyes rested on object after object that passed them in their sad journey.