money? My mother makes me a very good allowance."

"And I suppose you spend it," the lawyer interrupted.

"Well, yes, I generally spend it; but then, you see, when I come of age
I come in for the outlying estates."

"And if you die before, or get shot, or any other accident befalls you,"
Mr. Renfrew said, "they go to your sisters. However, one must risk
something for a client, so I will lend you the money. I had better put
somebody up to bid for you, for after what has happened the Jacksons
would probably not let her go if they knew that you were going to be the
purchaser."

"Thank you very much," Vincent said warmly; "it will be a great weight
off my mind," and with a light heart he rode back to the Orangery.

Vincent said nothing during the next two days to any of his friends as
to the course the Jacksons were taking in selling Tony's wife; for he
thought that if the news got about, some one of his friends who had
heard the circumstances might go down to the auction and make such a
demonstration that Jackson would be obliged to withdraw Dinah from the
sale, in which case he could no doubt dispose of her privately. On the
Saturday he mounted his horse and rode into Richmond, telling Dan to
meet him there. At the hour the sale was announced he went to the yard
where it was to take place.

This was a somewhat quiet and secluded place; for although the sale of
slaves was permitted by law in Virginia, at any rate these auctions were
conducted quietly and with as little publicity as possible. For although
the better classes still regarded slavery as a necessary institution,
they were conscious that these sales, involving as they did the
separation of families, were indefensible, and the more thoughtful would
gladly have seen them abolished, and a law passed forbidding the sale of
negroes save as part and parcel of the estate upon which they worked, an
exception only being made in the case of gross misconduct. Many of the
slave-owners, indeed, forbade all flogging upon their estates, and
punished refractory slaves, in the first place, by the cutting off of
the privileges they enjoyed in the way of holidays, and if this did not
answer, threatened to sell them--a threat which was, in the vast
majority of cases, quite sufficient to insure good behavior; for the
slaves were well aware of the difference between life in the
well-managed establishments in Virginia and that in some of the other
Southern States. Handing his hor