it—­you’re a miserable old wretch!” Cicero makes a nervous motion with his left hand, as the fingers of his right wander over the bald crown of his head, and his eyes give out a forlorn look.  She has no pity for the poor old man-none.  “You are, Cicero-you needn’t pretend you ain’t,” she pursues; and springing to her feet with an incredible nimbleness, she advances to the window, tucks up the old curtain, and says, “There; let the light reflect on your face.  Badness looks out of it.  Cicero! you never was a good nigger—­”

“Per’aps not, Missus; but den I’se old.

“Old! you ain’t so old but you can pay wages,” the testy old woman interrupts, tossing her head.  “You’re a capital hand at cunning excuses.  This will get you done for, at the workhouse.”  She hands him a delicately enveloped and carefully superscribed billet, and commands him to proceed forthwith to the workhouse.  A tear courses slowly down his time-wrinkled face, he hesitates, would speak one word in his own defence.  But the word of his owner is absolute, and in obedience to the wave of her hand he totters to the door, and disappears.  His tears are only those of a slave.  How useless fall the tears of him who has no voice, no power to assert his manhood!  And yet, in that shrunken bosom-in that figure, bent and shattered of age, there burns a passion for liberty and hatred of the oppressor more terrible than the hand that has made him the wretch he is.  That tear! how forcibly it tells the tale of his sorrowing soul; how eloquently it foretells the downfall of that injustice holding him in its fierce chains!

Cicero has been nicely got out of the way.  Molly, his wife, is summoned into the presence of her mistress, to receive her awful doom.  “To be frank with you, Molly, and I am always outspoken, you know, I am going to sell you.  We have been long enough together, and necessity at this moment forces me to this conclusion,” says our venerable lady, addressing herself to the old slave, who stands before her, leaning on her crutch, for she is one of the cripples.  “You will get a pious owner, I trust; and God will be merciful to you.”

The old slave of seventy years replies only with an expression of hate in her countenance, and a drooping of her heavy lip.  “Now,” Mrs. Swiggs pursues, “take this letter, go straight to Mr. Forcheu with it, and he will sell you.  He is very kind in selling old people-very!” Molly inquires if Cicero may go.  Mrs. Swiggs replies that nobody will buy two old people together.

The slave of seventy years, knowing her entreaties will be in vain, approaches her mistress with the fervency of a child, and grasping warmly her hand, stammers out:  “Da-da-dah Lord bless um, Missus.  Tan’t many days fo’h we meet in t’oder world-good-bye.”