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284 UNCLE TOM’S CABIN; OR,

wards her. She looks with agony in the face of the man who has
bought her—a respectable middle-aged man of benevolent
countenance.

“*O mas'r, please do buy my daughter !”

“Td like to, but I’m afraid I can’t afford it!” said the gentle-
man, looking with painful interest as the young girl mounted the
block, and looked around her with a frightened and timid glance.

The blood flushes painfully in her otherwise colourless cheek,
her eye has a feverish fire, and her mother groans to see that she
looks more beautiful than she ever saw her before. The auctioneer
sees his advantages, and expatiates volubly in mingled French
and English, and bids rise in rapid succession.

“Tl do anything in reason,” said the benevolent-looking gen-
tleman, pressing in and joining with the bids. In a few moments
they have run beyond his purse. He is silent; the auctioneer
grows warmer ; but bids gradually drop off. It lies now between
an aristocratic old citizen and our bullet-headed acquaintance.
The citizen bids for a few turns, contemptuously measuring his
opponent; but the bullet-head has the advantage over him, both
in obstinacy and concealed length of purse, and the controversy
lasts but a moment; the hammer falls—he has got the girl, body
and soul, unless God help her!

Her master is Mr. Legree, who owns a cotton-plantation on
the Red River. She is pushed along in the same lot with Tom
and two other men, and goes off, weeping as she goes. |

The benevolent gentleman is sorry; but then the thing hap-
pens every day! One sees girls and mothers crying at these
sales always! it can't be helped, &c.; and he walks off with his
acquisition in another direction.

Two days after, the lawyer of the Christian firm of B. and Co.,
New York, sent on their money to them. On the reverse of that
draft, so obtained, let them write these words of the great Pay-
master, to whom they shall make up their account in a future day :
“When he maketh inquisition for blood, he forgetteth not the cry
of the humble !’

-

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE MIDDLE PASSAGE.

~ “Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look upon ey:
wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest thy
congne when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than he.”—

Hab. i. 13.

On the lower part of a small, mean boat, on the Red River,
Tom sat—chains on his wrists, chains on his feet, and a weight
heavier than chains lay on his heart. All had faded from the sky
—moon and star; all had passed by him, as the trees and banks |

Eine