Eliza trembled, and was silent.  She had never seen her husband in this mood before; and her gentle system of ethics seemed to bend like a reed in the surges of such passions.

“You know poor little Carlo, that you gave me,” added George; “the creature has been about all the comfort that I’ve had.  He has slept with me nights, and followed me around days, and kind o’ looked at me as if he understood how I felt.  Well, the other day I was just feeding him with a few old scraps I picked up by the kitchen door, and Mas’r came along, and said I was feeding him up at his expense, and that he couldn’t afford to have every nigger keeping his dog, and ordered me to tie a stone to his neck and throw him in the pond.”

“O, George, you didn’t do it!”

“Do it? not I!—­but he did.  Mas’r and Tom pelted the poor drowning creature with stones.  Poor thing! he looked at me so mournful, as if he wondered why I didn’t save him.  I had to take a flogging because I wouldn’t do it myself.  I don’t care.  Mas’r will find out that I’m one that whipping won’t tame.  My day will come yet, if he don’t look out.”

“What are you going to do?  O, George, don’t do anything wicked; if you only trust in God, and try to do right, he’ll deliver you.”

“I an’t a Christian like you, Eliza; my heart’s full of bitterness; I can’t trust in God.  Why does he let things be so?”

“O, George, we must have faith.  Mistress says that when all things go wrong to us, we must believe that God is doing the very best.”

“That’s easy to say for people that are sitting on their sofas and riding in their carriages; but let ’em be where I am, I guess it would come some harder.  I wish I could be good; but my heart burns, and can’t be reconciled, anyhow.  You couldn’t in my place,—­you can’t now, if I tell you all I’ve got to say.  You don’t know the whole yet.”

“What can be coming now?”

“Well, lately Mas’r has been saying that he was a fool to let me marry off the place; that he hates Mr. Shelby and all his tribe, because they are proud, and hold their heads up above him, and that I’ve got proud notions from you; and he says he won’t let me come here any more, and that I shall take a wife and settle down on his place.  At first he only scolded and grumbled these things; but yesterday he told me that I should take Mina for a wife, and settle down in a cabin with her, or he would sell me down river.”

“Why—­but you were married to me, by the minister, as much as if you’d been a white man!” said Eliza, simply.

“Don’t you know a slave can’t be married?  There is no law in this country for that; I can’t hold you for my wife, if he chooses to part us.  That’s why I wish I’d never seen you,—­why I wish I’d never been born; it would have been better for us both,—­it would have been better for this poor child if he had never been born.  All this may happen to him yet!”