Five days have passed since Clotilda’s departure; her absence is creating alarm.  No one knows anything of her! a general search is instituted, but the searchers search in vain.  Maxwell has eluded suspicion-Franconia no one for a moment suspects.  Colonel M’Carstrow-his mind, for the time, absorbed in the charms of his young bride-gives little attention to the matter.  He only knows that he has signed a bond for fifteen hundred dollars, to indemnify the sheriff, or creditors, in the event of loss; he reconciles himself with the belief that she has been enticed into some of the neighbouring bright houses, from which he can regain her in the course of time.  M’Carstrow knows little of Clotilda’s real character; and thus the matter rests a time.

The sheriff,—­important gentleman of an important office,—­will give himself no concern about the matter:  the plaintiff’s attorney acknowledged the deed of release, which is quite enough for him.  Graspum, a perfect savan where human property was to be judged, had decided that her square inches of human vitality were worth strong fifteen hundred; that was all desirable for the sheriff-it would leave margin enough to cover the cost.  But M’Carstrow, when given the bond, knew enough of nigger law to demand the insertion of a clause leaving it subject to the question of property, which is to be decided by the court.  A high court this, where freemen sit assembled to administer curious justice.  What constitutional inconsistencies hover over the monstrous judicial dignity of this court,—­this court having jurisdiction over the monetary value of beings moulded after God’s own image!  It forms a happy jurisprudence for those who view it for their selfish ends; it gains freedom tyranny’s license, gives birth to strange incongruities, clashing between the right of property in man and all the viler passions of our nature.  It holds forth a jurisprudence that turns men into hounds of hell, devouring one another, and dragging human nature down into the very filth of earth.

Marston’s troubles keep increasing.  All the preliminaries of law necessary to a sale of the undisputed property have been gone through; the day of its disposal has arrived.  The children, Annette and Nicholas, have remained in a cell, suffering under its malarious atmosphere, anxiously awaiting their fate.  Marston has had them taught to read,—­contrary to a generous law of a generous land,—­and at intervals they sit together pondering over little books he has sent them.

What are such little books to them? the unbending avarice of human nature, fostered by slavery’s power, is grappling at their existence.  There is no sympathy for them; it is crushed out by the law which makes them chattels.  Oh, no! sympathy, generosity, human affections, have little to do with the transactions of slave dealing; that belongs to commerce,—­commerce has an unbending rule to maintain while money is to be made by a legalised traffic.