ed forth, one a quadroon of great
beauty, to be fingered. Stephen turned his face away,--to behold Mr.
Eliphalet Hopper looking calmly on.

"Wal, Mr. Brice, this is an interesting show now, ain't it? Something we
don't have. I generally stop here to take a look when I'm passing." And
he spat tobacco juice on the coping.

Stephen came to his senses.

"And you are from New England?" he said.

Mr. Hopper laughed.

"Tarnation!" said he, "you get used to it. When I came here, I was a
sort of an Abolitionist. But after you've lived here awhile you get to
know that niggers ain't fit for freedom."

Silence from Stephen.

"Likely gal, that beauty," Eliphalet continued unrepressed. "There's a
well-known New Orleans dealer named Jenkins after her. I callate she'll
go down river."

"I reckon you're right, Mistah," a man with a matted beard chimed in,
and added with a wink: "She'll find it pleasant enough--fer a while.
Some of those other niggers will go too, and they'd rather go to hell.
They do treat 'em nefarious down thah on the wholesale plantations.
Household niggers! there ain't none better off than them. But seven
years in a cotton swamp,--seven years it takes, that's all, Mistah."

Stephen moved away. He felt that to stay near the man was to be
tempted to murder. He moved away, and just then the auctioneer yelled,
"Attention!"

"Gentlemen," he cried, "I have heah two sisters, the prope'ty of the
late Mistah Robe't Benbow, of St. Louis, as fine a pair of wenches as
was ever offe'd to the public from these heah steps--"

"Speak for the handsome gal," cried a wag.

"Sell off the cart hoss fust," said another.

The auctioneer turned to the darker sister:

"Sal ain't much on looks, gentlemen," he said, "but she's the best
nigger for work Mistah Benbow had." He seized her arm and squeezed it,
while the girl flinched and drew back. "She's solid, gentlemen, and
sound as a dollar, and she kin sew and cook. Twenty-two years old. What
am I bid?"

Much to the auctioneer's disgust, Sal was bought in for four hundred
dollars, the interest in the beautiful sister having made the crowd
impatient. Stephen, sick at heart, turned to leave. Halfway to the
corner he met a little elderly man who was the color of a dried gourd.
And just as Stephen passed him, this man was overtaken by an old
negress, with tears streaming down her face, who seized the threadbare
hem of his coat. Stephen paused involuntarily.

"Well, Nancy," s