“How do you know I am?  Didn’t you just warrant him for a preacher?  Has he been examined by any synod or council?  Come, hand over your papers.”

If the trader had not been sure, by a certain good-humored twinkle in the large eye, that all this banter was sure, in the long run, to turn out a cash concern, he might have been somewhat out of patience; as it was, he laid down a greasy pocket-book on the cotton-bales, and began anxiously studying over certain papers in it, the young man standing by, the while, looking down on him with an air of careless, easy drollery.

“Papa, do buy him! it’s no matter what you pay,” whispered Eva, softly, getting up on a package, and putting her arm around her father’s neck.  “You have money enough, I know.  I want him.”

“What for, pussy?  Are you going to use him for a rattle-box, or a rocking-horse, or what?

“I want to make him happy.”

“An original reason, certainly.”

Here the trader handed up a certificate, signed by Mr. Shelby, which the young man took with the tips of his long fingers, and glanced over carelessly.

“A gentlemanly hand,” he said, “and well spelt, too.  Well, now, but I’m not sure, after all, about this religion,” said he, the old wicked expression returning to his eye; “the country is almost ruined with pious white people; such pious politicians as we have just before elections,—­such pious goings on in all departments of church and state, that a fellow does not know who’ll cheat him next.  I don’t know, either, about religion’s being up in the market, just now.  I have not looked in the papers lately, to see how it sells.  How many hundred dollars, now, do you put on for this religion?”

“You like to be jokin, now,” said the trader; “but, then, there’s sense under all that ar.  I know there’s differences in religion.  Some kinds is mis’rable:  there’s your meetin pious; there’s your singin, roarin pious; them ar an’t no account, in black or white;—­but these rayly is; and I’ve seen it in niggers as often as any, your rail softly, quiet, stiddy, honest, pious, that the hull world couldn’t tempt ’em to do nothing that they thinks is wrong; and ye see in this letter what Tom’s old master says about him.”

“Now,” said the young man, stooping gravely over his book of bills, “if you can assure me that I really can buy this kind of pious, and that it will be set down to my account in the book up above, as something belonging to me, I wouldn’t care if I did go a little extra for it.  How d’ye say?”

“Wal, raily, I can’t do that,” said the trader.  “I’m a thinkin that every man’ll have to hang on his own hook, in them ar quarters.”

“Rather hard on a fellow that pays extra on religion, and can’t trade with it in the state where he wants it most, an’t it, now?” said the young man, who had been making out a roll of bills while he was speaking.  “There, count your money, old boy!” he added, as he handed the roll to the trader.