f a
wizard's abode. The paper she wants is nowhere to be found. "I must
exercise a little judgment in this affair," she mutters, folding a bit
of paper, and seizing her pen. Having written--

"TO THE MASTER OF THE WORK-HOUSE:

"I am sorry I have to trouble you so often with old Cicero. He will not
pay wages all I can do. Give him at least thirty--well laid on. I go to
New York in a few days, and what is due you from me for punishments will
be paid any time you send your bill.

"SARAH PRINGLE HUGHES SWIGGS."

"Well! he deserves what he gets," she shakes her head and ejaculates.
Having summoned Rebecca, Master Cicero, a hard-featured old negro, is
ordered up, and comes tottering into the room, half-bent with age, his
hair silvered, and his face covered with a mossy-white beard--the
picture of a patriarch carved in ebony. "Good mornin', Missus," he
speaks in a feeble and husky voice, standing hesitatingly before his
august owner. "You are--well, I might as well say it--you're a
miserable old wretch!" Cicero makes a nervous motion with his left hand,
as the fingers of his right wander over the bald crown of his head, and
his eyes give out a forlorn look. She has no pity for the poor old
man--none. "You are, Cicero--you needn't pretend you ain't," she
pursues; and springing to her feet with an incredible nimbleness, she
advances to the window, tucks up the old curtain, and says, "There; let
the light reflect on your face. Badness looks out of it, Cicero! you
never was a good nigger--"

"Per'aps not, Missus; but den I'se old."

"Old! you ain't so old but you can pay wages," the testy old woman
interrupts, tossing her head. "You're a capital hand at cunning excuses.
This will get you done for, at the workhouse." She hands him a
delicately enveloped and carefully superscribed _billet_, and commands
him to proceed forthwith to the workhouse. A tear courses slowly down
his time-wrinkled face, he hesitates, would speak one word in his own
defence. But the word of his owner is absolute, and in obedience to the
wave of her hand he totters to the door, and disappears. His tears are
only those of a slave. How useless fall the tears of him who has no
voice, no power to assert his manhood! And yet, in that shrunken
bosom--in that figure, bent and shattered of age, there burns a passion
for liberty and hatred of the oppressor more terrible than the hand that
has made him the wretch he is. That tear! how forcibly it tells the ta