Poor Annette! she leaves for her home in the slave-pen, sad at heart, and in tears.  “My mother!  Oh, that I had a mother to love me, to say Annette so kindly,—­to share with me my heart’s bitter anguish.  How I could love Nicholas, now that there is no mother to love me!” she mutters as she sobs, wending her way to that place of earthly torment.  How different are the feelings of the oppressor.  He drinks a social glass of wine with his friend Blackett, lights his cigar most fashionably, bids him a polite good morning, and intimates that a cheque for the amount of the purchase will be ready any time he may be pleased to call.  And now he wends his way homeward, little imagining what good fortune awaits him at the pen to which he has despatched his purchase.

Annette has reached the pen, in which she sits, pensively, holding her bonnet by the strings, the heavy folds of her light auburn hair hanging dishevelled over her shoulders.  Melancholy indeed she is, for she has passed an ordeal of unholy brutality.  Near her sits one Pringle Blowers, a man of coarse habits, who resides on his rice-plantation, a few miles from the city, into which he frequently comes, much to the annoyance of quietly disposed citizens and guardsmen, who are not unfrequently called upon to preserve the peace he threatens to disturb.  Dearly does he love his legitimate brandy, and dearly does it make him pay for the insane frolics it incites him to perpetrate, to the profit of certain saloons, and danger of persons.  Madman under the influence of his favourite drink, a strange pride besets his faculties, which is only appeased with the demolition of glass and men’s faces.  For this strange amusement he has become famous and feared; and as the light of his own besotted countenance makes its appearance, citizens generally are not inclined to interpose any obstacle to the exercise of his belligerent propensities.

Here he sits, viewing Annette with excited scrutiny.  Never before has he seen anything so pretty, so bright, so fascinating-all clothed with a halo of modesty-for sale in the market.  The nigger is completely absorbed in the beauty, he mutters to himself:  and yet she must be a nigger or she would not be here.  That she is an article of sale, then, there can be no doubt.  “Van, yer the nicest gal I’ve seen!  Reckon how Grasp. paid a tall shot for ye, eh?” he says, in the exuberance of his fascinated soul.  He will draw nearer to her, toss her undulating hair, playfully, and with seeming unconsciousness draw his brawny hand across her bosom.  “Didn’t mean it!” he exclaims, contorting his broad red face, as she puts out her hand, presses him from her, and disdains his second attempt.  “Pluck, I reckon! needn’t put on mouths, though, when a feller’s only quizzin.”  He shrugs his great round shoulders, and rolls his wicked eyes.