uld ill afford it!"

"Where is the master?"

"Wal, after Ropes and his friends was gone, he comes too, an awful
lookin' object as ever you see! 'Mrs. Sprowl,' says he, 'don't be
scared; it's only me; won't ye let me in?' for ye see, I'd shet the
house agin' him in season, detarmined so dangerous a character should
never darken my doors agin."

"And he was naked!"

"I 'spose he was, all but the feathers, and suthin' or other he seemed
to have flung over him."

"Such a night as this!" exclaimed Stackridge. "You're a heartless jade,
Mrs. Sprowl!--I don't wonder the fellow hates slavery," he muttered to
himself, "when it makes ruffians of the men and monsters even of the
women!--Which way did he go?"

"That's more'n I can tell!" answered the lady, sharply. "It's none o' my
business where he goes, if he don't come here! That I won't have, call
me what names you please!" And she shut the window.

"Hang the critter! after all Hapgood has done for her!" said the
indignant Stackridge,--for it was well-known that she was indebted to
the gentle and generous Penn for many benefits. "But it's no use to
stand here. We'll go to my house, men,--may be he's there."

V.

_CARL AND HIS FRIENDS._

Carl Minnevich was the son of a German, who, in company with a brother,
had come to America a few years before, and settled in Tennessee. There
the Minneviches purchased a farm, and were beginning to prosper in their
new home, when Carl's father suddenly died. The boy had lost his mother
on the voyage to America. He was now an orphan, destined to experience
all the humiliation, dependence, and wrong, which ever an orphan knew.

Immediately the sole proprietorship of the farm, which had been bought
by both, was assumed by the surviving brother. This man had a selfish,
ill-tempered wife, and a family of great boys. Minnevich himself was
naturally a good, honest man; but Frau Minnevich wanted the entire
property for her own children, hated Carl because he was in the way, and
treated him with cruelty. His big cousins followed their mother's
example, and bullied him. How to obtain protection or redress he knew
not. He was a stranger, speaking a strange tongue, in the land of his
father's adoption. Ah, how often then did he think of the happy
fatherland, before that luckless voyage was undertaken, when he still
had his mother, and his friends, and all his little playfellows, whom he
could never see more!

So matters went on for