“What rights have you beyond these?” he interrupted, suddenly.  “There is mystery in what you have said, in what I have seen; something I want to solve.  The same ardent devotion, tenderness, affection,—­the same touching chasteness, that characterises Franconia, assimilates in you.  You are a slave, a menial-she is courted and caressed by persons of rank and station.  Heavens! here is the curse confounding the flesh and blood of those in high places, making slaves of their own kinsmen, crushing out the spirit of life, rearing up those broken flowers whose heads droop with shame.  And you want your freedom?”

“For my child first,” she replied, quickly:  “I rest my hopes of her in the future.”

Maxwell hesitated for a moment, as if contemplating some plan for her escape, ran his fingers through his hair again and again, then rested his forehead in his hand, as the perspiration stood in heavy drops upon it.  “My child!” There was something inexpressibly touching in the words of a mother ready to sacrifice her own happiness for the freedom of her child.  And yet an awful responsibility hung over him; should he attempt to gain their freedom, and fail in carrying out the project, notwithstanding he was in a free country, the act might cost him his life.  But there was the mother, her pride beaming forth in every action, a wounded spirit stung with the knowledge of being a slave, the remorse of her suffering soul-the vicissitudes of that sin thus forced upon her.  The temptation became irresistible.

“You are English!"-northerners and Englishmen know what liberty is.

Negroes at the South have a very high opinion of Northern cleverness in devising means of procuring their liberty.  The Author here uses the language employed by a slave girl who frequently implored aid to devise some plan by which she would be enabled to make her escape.  Northerners could do great things for us, if they would but know us as we are, study our feelings, cast aside selfish motives, and sustain our rights!” Clotilda now commenced giving Maxwell a history of her mother,—­which, however, we must reserve for another chapter.  “And my mother gave me this!” she said, drawing from her pocket a paper written over in Greek characters, but so defaced as to be almost unintelligible.  “Some day you will find a friend who will secure your freedom through that,” she would say.  “But freedom-that which is such a boon to us-is so much feared by others that you must mark that friend cautiously, know him well, and be sure he will not betray the liberty you attempt to gain.”  And she handed him the defaced paper, telling him to put it in his pocket.

“And where is your mother?”