mother of this girl
and her grandmother were the property of your ancestors?"

"They could not be their property justly," I said, glad to get back to
my ancestors.

"The law made it so."

"Not God's law, Dr. Sandford," I said, looking up at him.

"No? Does not that law give a man a right to what he has honestly
bought?"

"No," I said, "it _can't_--not if it has been dishonestly sold."

"Explain, Daisy," said Dr. Sandford, very quietly; but I saw the gleam
of that light in his eye again. I had gone too far to stop. I went on,
ready to break my heart over the right and wrong I was separating.

"I mean, the _first_ people that sold the first of these coloured
people," I said.

"Well?" said the doctor.

"They could not have a right to sell them."

"Yes. Well?"

"Then the people that bought them could not have a right, any more," I
said.

"But, Daisy," said Dr. Sandford, "do you know that there are different
opinions on this very point?"

I was silent. It made no difference to me.

"Suppose for the moment that the first people, as you say, had no
precise right to sell the men and women they brought to this country;
yet those who bought them and paid honest money for them, and
possessed them from generation to generation--had not _they_ a right
to pass them off upon other hands, receiving their money back again?"

"I don't know how to explain it," I said. "I mean--if at first--Dr.
Sandford, hadn't the people that were sold, hadn't they rights too?"

"Rights of what sort?"

"A right to do what they liked with themselves, and to earn money, and
to keep their wives?"

"But those rights were lost, you know, Daisy."

"But _could_ they be?" I said. "I mean--Dr. Sandford, for instance,
suppose somebody stole your watch from you; would you lose the right
to it?"

"It _seems_ to me that I should not, Daisy."

"That is what I mean," I said.

"But there is another view of the case, Daisy. Take Margaret, for
instance. From the time she was a child, your father's, or your
mother's money has gone to support her; her food and clothing and
living have been wholly at their expense. Does not that give them a
right to her services? ought they not to be repaid?"

I did not want to speak of my father and mother and Margaret. It was
coming too near home. I knew the food and clothing Dr. Sandford spoke
of; I knew a very few months of a Northern servant's wages would have
paid for it all; was this girl's whole life t