oh!"

"But she's going back into yo' hands?"

"My 'an's," said madame.

"And you'll never sell her?"

"Can't!" laughed Ramsey, with eyes ahead.

"You can hire her."

"Yes," said Ramsey, turning. "Oh, yes."

"Well, what'll you take, from the right bidder, for that girl's free
papers dated ahead to when you come of age, bidder takin' all the
resks?"

"You said down-stairs you wasn't an abolitionist!"

He twinkled. "Well, down-stairs I wa'n't, and in general I ain't.
I'm a Kentuckian. But I've got an offer to make." He turned to the
Courteneys: "I allowed to make it to this young gentleman first, alone,
an' get his advice--an' the commodo's if he'd give it; but the' ain't
anybody in this small crowd but what's welcome to hear it, even this
young lady, considerin' that she's jest heard so much worse again'
me--insinuated--down-stairs."

There was a pause. Old Joy murmured and Madame spoke the daughter's
name, adding something in French.

"_Moi_," replied Ramsey, planting herself and gazing up the river, "_je
prefere_ to stay right here."

The mother's smile to the Kentuckian bade him proceed, but he still
addressed Hugh and the grandfather:

"You see, that girl down-stairs, 'Harriet,' 'Phyllis,' has been
free--Lawdy, free's nothin', she's been white!--fo' ten years. Now, if
she goes back home, there may be no place like it, but she's got to be
black again. Well, think what that is. I've been weighin' that fact
while I looked into her eyes and listened to her voice, an' thinks I to
myself: 'If I was this girl, this goin' back to be black would mean one
of two things: I'd either die myself, aw I'd kill some one, maybe
sev'l.' True, I'm pyo' white an' she ain't, quite, but I don't believe
her po' little drop o' low blood makes her any mo' bridlewise 'n what
I'd be."

While the speaker's smile drew smiles from madame and the commodore,
Ramsey turned to him a severe face and in the same glance managed to see
Hugh's, but Hugh's might as well have been, to her mind, the face of a
Chickasaw bluff.

"Well, what then?" she asked the gold hunter.

"Same time," said "California," still to the Courteneys, while madame
promptly discerned his covert argument and Ramsey suddenly busied
herself talking up to the pilot-house, "I noticed, more'n eveh, how much
she, Phyllis, favoh'd somebody I was once 'pon a time pow'ful soft on,
but whose image"--his smile won smiles again--"I to'e out o' my
heart--aw buried in thah--a