in the field, and Agnes' baby was left to the care
of an aged woman who was too old to work in the fields, but not being
entirely past service, she was appointed as one of the nurses for the
babies and young children, while their mothers were working in the
fields.

Camilla, feeling an unusual interest in the child, went to the
overseer, and demanded that Miriam should be released from her tasks,
and permitted to attend the child.

In vain the overseer plead the pressure for hands, and the busy season.
Camilla said it did not matter, she wanted Miriam, and she would have
her; and he, feeling that it was to his interest to please the little
lady, had Miriam sent from the field to Camilla.

"Mammy, I want you to come to the house. I want you to come and be my
Mammy. Agnes is dead; your husband is gone, and I want you to come and
bring the baby to the house, and I am going to get him some beautiful
dresses, and some lovely coral I saw in New Orleans, and I am going to
dress him so handsomely, that I believe Pa will feel just as I do, and
think it a shame that such a beautiful child should be a slave."

Camilla went home, and told her father what she had done. And he,
willing to compromise with her, readily consented; and in a day or two
the child and his grandmother were comfortably ensconced in their new
quarters.

The winter passed; the weeks ripened into months, and the months into
years, and the child under the pleasant dispensations of love and
kindness grew to be a fine, healthy, and handsome boy.

One day, when Mr. Le Croix was in one of his most genial moods, Camilla
again introduced the subject which she had concealed, but not abandoned.

"Now, father, I do think it is a shame for this child to be a slave,
when he is just as white as anybody; I am sure we could move away from
here to France, and you could adopt him as your son, and no one would
know anything of his birth and parentage. He is so beautiful, I would
like him for my brother; and he looks like us anyhow."

Le Croix flushed deep at these words, and he looked keenly into his
daughter's face; but her gaze was so open, her expression so frank and
artless, he could not think that her words had any covert meaning in
reference to the paternity of the child; but to save that child from
being a slave, and to hide his origin was with her a pet scheme; and, to
use her own words, "she had set her heart upon it."

Chapter II

Mr. Bernard Le Croi