r outright would have
been a kindness compared to the injury you have inflicted upon her."

"How you talk, Duncan Lisle! One would think you a northern abolitionist.
I understand whence you imbibed such principles"--sneeringly--"just as
though one has not a perfect right to sell a slave if he wishes to!
Don't talk to me in any such way. I have done nothing that I need be
sorry for. But Kizzie is indeed the most hateful slave on the
plantation. I believe she steals just for the sake of stealing. What
earthly use could she have for that cover, which she denies having
taken, but which has mysteriously disappeared just when I happened to
want it?"

"To what cover do you refer?" questioned her husband.

He was informed.

"I saw some little black fellows rolling something of the kind back of
the stables this morning. Lucy, go hunt them up, and have the cover
found. Is such a trifle sufficient to drive you into a passion, in which
you accuse and punish an innocent person wrongfully?"

"I repeat to you, Mr. Lisle, that I shall do as I please with my own
servants, and yours too, as you will find, and _have_ found, I should
think. Moreover, I am not going to be lectured by you as if I were a
child"--Mrs. Lisle flung herself out of the room, to vent her bad humor
upon whatever ill-starred persons should cross her path.

To do justice to Mrs. Lisle, she had intended to have sold both Kizzie
and her son to the same buyer. As she herself said, she was always
having trouble with Kizzie. There were times when she was positively
afraid of her. Just before the proposed sale she had had a serious
difficulty with her. Mistress and servant regarded each other as two
enraged tigers might do, whenever they met. Mrs. Lisle made up her mind
she would have Kizzie taken to the Court House and sold. Court was to be
holden in a week or so; at such a time more or less slaves were put up
at auction.

Kizzie was not sorry when informed of the proposed plan; though she
shared, with others of her class, a horror of being "sold South," she
had come to think she could not possibly fall into more cruel hands.
Besides, in that region so terrible to the imagination of the slaves,
she might come across one or all of her lost sons! At any rate, she
would be beneath the same sky, and the dear hope of meeting them would
be a continual comfort.

A whole day was consumed by Tippy--her real name was Xantippe--in
plucking out Aunt Kizzie's grey hairs, and