NEGRO LIFE IN AMERICA. 297

CHAPTER XXXTIT.

CASSY.

“ And behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter ;
and on the ve of their oppressors there was power, but they had no comforter.’
—Ecct. iv. 1.

Ir took but a short time to familiarise Tom with all that was to
be hoped or feared in his new way of life. He was an expert and
efficient workman in whatever he undertook ; and was, both from
habit and principle, prompt and faithful. Quiet and peaceable in
his disposition, he hoped, by unremitting diligence, to avert from
himself at least a portion of the evils of his condition. He saw
enough of abuse and ‘misery to make him sick and weary ; but he
determined to toil on with religious patience, committing himself
to Him that judgeth righteously, not without hope that some way
of escape might yet be opened to hin.

Legree took silent note of Tom’s availability. He rated him
as a first-class hand ; and yet he felt a secret dislike to him—the
native antipathy of pad to good. He saw plainly that when, as
was often the case, his violence and brutality fell on the helpless,
Tom took notice of it; for, so subtle is the atmosphere of opinion,
that it will make itself felt without words, and the opinion even
of a slave may annoy a master. Tom in various ways manifested
a tenderness of feeling, a commiseration for his fellow-sufferers,
strange and new to them, which was watched with a jealous eye
by Legree. He had purchased Tom with a view of eventually
making him a sort of overseer, with whom he might at times in-
trust his affairs in short absences; and, in his view, the first,
second, and third requisite for that place was hardness.
made up his mind that, as Tom was not hard to his hand, he would
harden him forthwith; and some few weeks after Tom had been
on the place he determined to commence the process.

One morning, when the hands were mustered for the field, Tom
noticed with surprise a new comer among them, whose appearance
excited his attention. It was a woman, tall and slenderly formed,
with remarkably delicate hands and feet, and dressed in neat and
respectable garments. By the appearance of her face, she might
have been between thirty-five and forty; and it was a face that,
once seen, could never be forgotten—one of those that at a glance _
seem to convey to us an idea of a wild, painful and romantic his-
tory. Her forehead was high, and her eyebrows marked with
beautiful clearness. Her straight, well-formed nose, her finely-
cut mouth, and the graceful contour of her head .and neck,
showed that she must once have been beautiful; but her face was