Nicholas tremblingly-he cannot understand the strange movement-follows them through the vault; he looks up submissively, and with instinctive sympathy commences a loud blubbering.  “You’re going to be sold, little uns! but, don’t roar about it; there’s no use in that,” says the gaoler, inclining to sympathy.

Nicholas does’nt comprehend it; he looks up to Annette, plaintively, and, forgetting his own tears, says, in a whisper, “Don’t cry, Annette; they ’ll let us go and see mother, and mother will be so kind to us-.”

“It does seem a pity to sell ye, young ’uns; ye’r such nice ‘uns,—­have so much interestin’ in yer little skins!” interrupts the gaoler, suddenly.  The man of keys could unfold a strange history of misery, suffering, and death, if fear of popular opinion, illustrated in popular liberty, did not seal his lips.  He admits the present to be

We are narrating a scene related to us by the very gaoler we here describe, and as nearly as possible in his own language. rather an uncommon case, says it makes a body feel kind a’ unhinged about the heart, which heart, however rocky at times, will have its own way when little children are sorrowing.  “And then, to know their parents! that’s what tells deeper on a body’s feeling,—­it makes a body look into the hereafter.”  The man of keys and shackles would be a father, if the law did but let him.  There is a monster power over him, a power he dreads-it is the power of unbending democracy, moved alone by fretful painstakers of their own freedom.

“Poor little things! ye ’r most white, yes!-suddenly changing-just as white as white need be.  Property’s property, though, all over the world.  What’s sanctioned by the constitution, and protected by the spirit and wisdom of Congress, must be right, and maintained,” the gaoler concludes.  His heart is at war with his head; but the head has the power, and he must protect the rights of an unrighteous system.  They have arrived at a flight of steps, up which they ascend, and are soon lost in its windings.  They are going to be dressed for the market.

The sheriff is in the yard, awaiting the preparation of the property.  Even he-iron-hearted, they say-gives them a look of generous solicitude, as they pass out.  He really feels there is a point, no less in the scale of slave dealing, beyond which there is something so repugnant that hell itself might frown upon it.  “It’s a phase too hard, touches a body’s conscience,” he says, not observing Romescos at his elbow.

“Conscience!” interrupts Romescos, his eyes flashing like meteors of red fire, “the article don’t belong to the philosophy of our business.  Establish conscience-let us, gentlemen, give way to our feelins, and trade in nigger property ’d be deader than Chatham’s statue, what was pulled through our streets by the neck.  The great obstacle, however, is only this-it is profitable in its way!” Romescos cautiously attempts to shield this, but it will not do.