th tears.

After a day or two little restless, fun-loving Ned grew tired of this,
and ran out to play; but Lewis stayed by his mother, and she was soon
able to talk with him.

She showed him her wrists where they had been worn by the irons, and her
back scarred by the whip, and she told him of cruelties that we may not
repeat here. She talked with him as if he were a man, and not a child;
and as he listened his heart and mind seemed to reach forward, and he
became almost a man in thought. He seemed to live whole years in those
few days that he talked with his mother. It was here that the fearful
fact dawned upon him as it never had before. _He was a slave_! He had no
control over his own person or actions, but he belonged soul and body to
another man, who had power to control him in everything. And this would
not have been so irksome had it been a person that he loved, but Master
Stamford he hated. He never met him but to be called by some foul
epithet, or booted out of the way. He had no choice whom he would serve,
and there would be no end to the thankless servitude but death.

"Mother," said the boy, "what have we done that we should be treated so
much worse than other people?"

"Nothing, my child, nothing. They say there is a God who has ordered all
this, but I don't know about that." She stopped; her mother's heart
forbade her to teach her child infidel principles, and she went on in a
better strain of reasoning. "Perhaps he allows all this, to try if we
will be good whether or no; but I am sure he cannot be pleased with the
white folk's cruelty toward us, and they'll all have to suffer for it
some day."

Then there was a long pause, when both mother and son seemed to be
thinking sad, sad thoughts. Finally the mother broke the silence by
saying: "Well, here we are, and the great question is how to make the
best of it, if there is any best about it."

"I know what I'll do, mother," said Lewis earnestly, "I'll run away when
I'm old enough."

"I hope you may get out of this terrible bondage, my child," said the
mother; "but you had better keep that matter to yourself at present. It
will be a long time before you are old enough. There is one thing about
it, if you're going to be a free man, you'll want to know how to read."

Lewis's heart was full again, and he told his mother the whole story of
the primer.

"And did Missy Katy never ask about it afterward?" inquired the mother.

"No, she never has said a w