The kind words touch Harry’s feelings; tears glistening in his eyes tell how he struggles to suppress the emotions of his heart.  “Did you mean my wife and children, master?” he enquires.

M’Fadden, somewhat regaining strength, replies in the affirmative.  He acknowledges to have seen that the thing “warn’t just right.”  His imagination has been wandering through the regions of heaven, where, he is fully satisfied, there is no objection to a black face.  God has made a great opening in his eyes and heart just now.  He sees and believes such things as he neither saw nor believed before; they pass like clouds before his eyes, never, never to be erased from his memory.  Never before has he thought much about repentance; but now that he sees heaven on one side and hell on the other, all that once seemed right in bartering and selling the bodies and souls of men, vanishes.  There, high above all, is the vengeance of heaven written in letters of blood, execrating such acts, and pointing to the retribution.  It is a burning consciousness of all the suffering he has inflicted upon his negroes.  Death, awful monitor! stares him in the face; it holds the stern realities of truth and justice before him; it tells him of the wrong,—­points him to the right.  The unbending mandates of slave law, giving to man power to debase himself with crimes the judicious dare not punish, are being consumed before Omnipotence, the warning voice of which is calling him to his last account.

And now the wounded man is all condescension, hoping forgiveness!  His spirit has yielded to Almighty power; he no longer craves for property in man; no, his coarse voice is subdued into softest accents.  He whispers “coloured man,” as if the merchandise changed as his thoughts are brought in contact with revelations of the future.

“Take the Bible, my good boy-take it, read it to me, before I die.  Read it, that it may convert my soul.  If I have neglected myself on earth, forgive me; receive my repentance, and let me be saved from eternal misery.  Read, my dear good boy,"-M’Fadden grasps his hand tighter and tighter-"and let your voice be a warning to those who never look beyond earth and earth’s enjoyments.”  The physician thinks his patient will get along until morning, and giving directions to the attendants, leaves him.

Harry has recovered from the surprise which so sudden a change of circumstances produced, and has drawn from the patient the cause of his suffering.  He opens the restored Bible, and reads from it, to Mr. M’Fadden’s satisfaction.  He reads from Job; the words producing a deep effect upon the patient’s mind.

The wretched preacher, whose white soul is concealed beneath black skin, has finished his reading.  He will now address himself to his master, in the following simple manner.

“Master, it is one thing to die, and another to die happy.  It is one thing to be prepared to die, another to forget that we have to die, to leave the world and its nothingness behind us.  But you are not going to die, not now.  Master, the Lord will forgive you if you, make your repentance durable.  ’Tis only the fear of death that has produced the change on your mind.  Do, master! learn the Lord; be just to we poor creatures, for the Lord now tells you it is not right to buy and sell us.”