egun to sneak up on the
coffin with his screw-driver. I was in a sweat then, and watched him
pretty keen. But he never meddled at all; just slid the lid along as soft
as mush, and screwed it down tight and fast. So there I was! I didn't
know whether the money was in there or not. So, says I, s'pose somebody
has hogged that bag on the sly?--now how do I know whether to write to
Mary Jane or not? S'pose she dug him up and didn't find nothing, what
would she think of me? Blame it, I says, I might get hunted up and
jailed; I'd better lay low and keep dark, and not write at all; the
thing's awful mixed now; trying to better it, I've worsened it a hundred
times, and I wish to goodness I'd just let it alone, dad fetch the whole
business!

They buried him, and we come back home, and I went to watching faces
again--I couldn't help it, and I couldn't rest easy. But nothing come
of it; the faces didn't tell me nothing.

The king he visited around in the evening, and sweetened everybody up,
and made himself ever so friendly; and he give out the idea that his
congregation over in England would be in a sweat about him, so he must
hurry and settle up the estate right away and leave for home. He was
very sorry he was so pushed, and so was everybody; they wished he could
stay longer, but they said they could see it couldn't be done. And he
said of course him and William would take the girls home with them; and
that pleased everybody too, because then the girls would be well fixed
and amongst their own relations; and it pleased the girls, too--tickled
them so they clean forgot they ever had a trouble in the world; and told
him to sell out as quick as he wanted to, they would be ready. Them poor
things was that glad and happy it made my heart ache to see them getting
fooled and lied to so, but I didn't see no safe way for me to chip in and
change the general tune.

Well, blamed if the king didn't bill the house and the niggers and all
the property for auction straight off--sale two days after the funeral;
but anybody could buy private beforehand if they wanted to.

So the next day after the funeral, along about noon-time, the girls' joy
got the first jolt. A couple of nigger traders come along, and the king
sold them the niggers reasonable, for three-day drafts as they called it,
and away they went, the two sons up the river to Memphis, and their
mother down the river to Orleans. I thought them poor girls and them
niggers wo