When they were seated in their private parlor, Le Croix said: "Birdie,
I am sorry that we attended that meeting this morning. I didn't believe
a word that nigger said; and yet these people all drank it down as if
every word were gospel truth. They are a set of fanatics, calculated to
keep the nation in hot water. I hope that you will never enter such a
place again. Did you believe one word that negro said?"

"Why, yes, Pa, I did, because our Isaac used to tell me just such a
story as that. If I had shut my eyes, I could have imagined that it was
Isaac telling his story."

"Isaac! What business had Isaac telling you any such stories?"

"Oh, Pa, don't get angry with Isaac. It wasn't his fault; it was mine.

"You know when you brought him home to drive the carriage, he used to
look so sorrowful, and I said to him one day, Isaac, what makes you so
sad? Why don't you laugh and talk, like Jerry and Sam?

"And he said, 'Oh Missus, I can't! Ise got a mighty heap of trouble on
my mind.' And he looked so down-hearted when he said this, I wanted to
know what was the matter; but he said, 'It won't do, for a little lady
like you to know the troubles of we poor creatures,' but one day, when
Sam came home from New Orleans he brought him a letter from his wife,
and he really seemed to be overjoyed, and he kissed the letter, and put
it in his bosom, and I never saw him look half so happy before. So the
next day when I asked him to get the pony ready, he asked me if I
wouldn't read it for him. He said he had been trying to make it out, but
somehow he could not get the hang of the words, and so I sat down and
read it to him. Then he told me about his wife, how beautiful she was;
and how a trader, a real mean man, wanted to buy her, and that he had
begged his master not to sell her; but it was no use. She had to go; but
he was glad of one thing; the trader was dead, and his wife had got a
place in the city with a very nice lady, and he hoped to see her when
he went to New Orleans. Pa, I wonder how slavery came to be. I should
hate to belong to anybody, wouldn't you, Pa?"

"Why, yes, darling, but then the negroes are contented, and wouldn't
take their freedom, if you would give it to them."

"I don't know about that, Pa; there was Mr. Le Grange's Peter. Mr. Le
Grange used to dress him so fine and treat him so well that he thought
no one would ever tempt Peter to leave him; and he came North with him
every year for three or four sum