She began to cry again, and her mind seemed to wander, for the next sentence was disconnected. Jimmy took the baby in his arms and kissed it without any scruples, and the child's large, black eyes looked into his as if he might be its own father, while he dandled it tenderly.

"The foxes has come an' barked at me two nights," said the woman; "they wanted the bacon, I 'spect. The water-snakes has crawled around here in the daytime, and the buzzards flew right down before me and looked up, as if they thought I ought to be dead. But I wasn't afraid: that man I give my love to was so much worse than them, that I just sung and let them look at me."

"You say he sold you, Mary?"

The woman rubbed her weary eyes and slowly recollected where she had left off.

"We moved our things on a vessel to Delaware, and come up a creek to a little town in the marshes, and there we started for my husband's farm. He said we had come to it in the night. I couldn't tell, but I saw a house in the woods, and was so tired I went to sleep with my baby there, and in the night I found men in the room, and one of them, a white man, was tying my feet."

A crow cawed with a sound of awe in the pine tops, and squirrels were running tamely all round about as she hesitated.

"I thought then of the kidnappers of Delaware, for I had heard about them, and I jumped out of bed and fought for my life. They knocked me down and the rope around my feet tripped me up; but I fought with my teeth after my hands was tied, too, and I bit that white man's knees, and then he picked up a fire-shovel, or something of iron, and knocked my teeth out. My last hope was almost gone when I saw my husband coming in, and I cried to him, 'Save me! save me, darling!' He had a rope in his hand, and, before I could understand it, he had slipped it over my neck and choked me."

"Your own husband? I can't believe it, to save my life!"

"I didn't believe it, neither, till I heard him say, when they loosened the slipknot that had strangled me - the voice was his I had trusted so much; I never could forget it! - 'Eben,' he said, 'I've took down every mole and spot on her body and can swear to' em, for I've learned 'em by heart, and you won't have no trouble a-sellin' her, as she can't testify."

"The imp of Pangymonum!" Jimmy cried. "He had married you to note down your marks, and by' em swear you to be a slave!"

"The white man tried to sell me to a farmer, and then I told what I had heard them say. He believed me, and told them the mayor of Philadelphia had a reward out for them, for kidnappin' free people, already. Then they talked together - a little scared they was - and tied me again, and brought me on a cart through the woods to the river and fetched me here, and chained me, and told me if I ever said I was free, to another man, they meant to sell my baby and to drown me in the river."

She finished with a chilly tremor and a low wail like an infant, but the sailor passed her baby into her arms to engage her, and said: