hat can we do?"

"Get out of it as quickly as possible."

"That is easier said than done. I would willingly free every slave on my
plantation if I could do so without expatriating them. Some of them have
wives and children on other plantations, and to free them is to separate
them from their kith and kin. To let them remain here as a free people
is out of the question. My hands are tied by law and custom."

"Who tied them?" asked Marie.

"A public opinion, whose meshes I cannot break. If the negro is the
thrall of his master, we are just as much the thralls of public
opinion."

"Why do you not battle against public opinion, if you think it is
wrong?"

"Because I have neither the courage of a martyr, nor the faith of a
saint; and so I drift along, trying to make the condition of our slaves
as comfortable as I possibly can. I believe there are slaves on this
plantation whom the most flattering offers of freedom would not entice
away."

"I do not think," said Marie, "that some of you planters understand your
own slaves. Lying is said to be the vice of slaves. The more intelligent
of them have so learned to veil their feelings that you do not see the
undercurrent of discontent beneath their apparent good humor and
jollity. The more discontented they are, the more I respect them. To me
a contented slave is an abject creature. I hope that I shall see the
day when there will not be a slave in the land. I hate the whole thing
from the bottom of my heart."

"Marie, your Northern education has unfitted you for Southern life. You
are free, yourself, and so are our children. Why not let well enough
alone?"

"Because I love liberty, not only for myself but for every human being.
Think how dear these children are to me; and then for the thought to be
forever haunting me, that if you were dead they could be turned out of
doors and divided among your relatives. I sometimes lie awake at night
thinking of how there might be a screw loose somewhere, and, after all,
the children and I might be reduced to slavery."

"Marie, what in the world is the matter with you? Have you had a
presentiment of my death, or, as Uncle Jack says, 'hab you seed it in a
vision?'"

"No, but I have had such sad forebodings that they almost set me wild.
One night I dreamt that you were dead; that the lawyers entered the
house, seized our property, and remanded us to slavery. I never can be
satisfied in the South with such a possibility hanging over