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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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away; and his wife two of them were going to run down to New Orleans to sell, on their own account, and they calculated to get sixteen or eighteen hundred dol- lars for her; and the child, they said, was going to a trader, who had bought him; and then there was the boy, Jim, and his mother, they were to go back to their mas- ters in Kentucky. They said that there were two constables, in a town a little piece ahead, who would go in with ‘em to get ‘em taken up, and the young woman was to be taken before a judge; and one of the fellows, who is small and smooth-spo- ken, was to swear to her for his property, and get her delivered over to him to take south. They’ve got a right notion of the track we are going to-night; and they’ll be down after us, six or eight strong. So, now, what’s to be done?” The group that stood in various attitudes, after this communication, were wor- thy of a painter. Rachel Halliday, who had taken her hands out of a batch of bis- cuit, to hear the news, stood with them upraised and floury, and with a face of the deepest concern. Simeon looked profoundly thoughtful; Eliza had thrown her arms around her husband, and was looking up to him. George stood with clenched hands and glowing eyes, and looking as any other man might look, whose wife was to be sold at auction, and son sent to a trader, all under the shelter of a Christian nation’s laws. “What shall we do, George?” said Eliza, faintly. “I know what I shall do,” said George, as he stepped into the little room, and began examining his pistols. |
