! he was always so full of fun and
singing songs. What a singer he was! and it was right cheerful when Sam
would borrow some neighbor's banjo and play to them. But they were all
gone; and his sad, sweet-faced, lady-like sister Nelly, too, they were
all taken off in one day by one of the ugliest negro-drivers that ever
scared a little slave-boy's dreams. And it was while his mother was away
from home too. How she did cry and take on when she came back and found
them all gone, and she hadn't even the chance to bid them good-by! She
said she knew her master sent her off that morning because he was going
to sell her children.

Lewis shuddered as he thought of that dreadful night. It was hardly two
years ago, and the fearful things he heard then burned into his soul
with terrible distinctness. It seemed as if their little cabin was
deserted after that, for Tom, and Sam, and Nelly were almost grown up,
and the rest were all little ones. The next winter his other sister,
Fanny, died; but that wasn't half so sad. She was about twelve years
old, and a blithesome, cheerful creature, just as her mother had been.
He remembered how his master came to their cabin to comfort them, as he
said; but his mother told him plainly that she did not want any such
comfort. She wished Nelly was dead too. She wished she had never had any
children to grow up and suffer what she had. It was in vain her master
tried to soothe her. He talked like a minister, as he was; but she had
grown almost raving, and she talked to him as she never dared to do
before. She wanted to know why he didn't come to console her when she
lost her other children; "three all at once" she said, "and they're ten
times worse than dead. You never consoled me then at all. Religion?
Pooh! I don't want none of _your_ religion."

And now she, too, was gone. She had been gone more than a year. It was
said that she was hired out to work in another family; but it wasn't so.
They only told her that story to get her away from the children
peaceably. She was sold quite a distance away to a very bad man, who
used her cruelly.

Ned, who was some two years younger than Lewis, and the only brother he
had left, was a wild, careless boy, who raced about among the other
children, and did not seem to think much about anything. Lewis often
wished he could have somebody to talk with, and he wondered if his
mother would ever come back again.

Had he been a poet he might have put his wishes into