“Had you any friends?” said Emmeline.
“Yes, my husband,—he’s a blacksmith.
Mas’r gen’ly hired him out. They
took me off so quick, I didn’t even have time
to see him; and I’s got four children.
O, dear me!” said the woman, covering her face
with her hands.
It is a natural impulse, in every one, when they hear
a tale of distress, to think of something to say by
way of consolation. Emmeline wanted to say something,
but she could not think of anything to say. What
was there to be said? As by a common consent,
they both avoided, with fear and dread, all mention
of the horrible man who was now their master.
True, there is religious trust for even the darkest
hour. The mulatto woman was a member of the Methodist
church, and had an unenlightened but very sincere
spirit of piety. Emmeline had been educated much
more intelligently,—taught to read and
write, and diligently instructed in the Bible, by
the care of a faithful and pious mistress; yet, would
it not try the faith of the firmest Christian, to find
themselves abandoned, apparently, of God, in the grasp
of ruthless violence? How much more must it shake
the faith of Christ’s poor little ones, weak
in knowledge and tender in years!
The boat moved on,—freighted with its weight
of sorrow,—up the red, muddy, turbid current,
through the abrupt tortuous windings of the Red river;
and sad eyes gazed wearily on the steep red-clay banks,
as they glided by in dreary sameness. At last
the boat stopped at a small town, and Legree, with
his party, disembarked.
Dark Places
“The dark places of the earth are full of the
habitations Of cruelty."*
* Ps. 74:20.
Trailing wearily behind a rude wagon, and over a ruder
road, Tom and his associates faced onward.
In the wagon was seated Simon Legree and the two women,
still fettered together, were stowed away with some
baggage in the back part of it, and the whole company
were seeking Legree’s plantation, which lay a
good distance off.
It was a wild, forsaken road, now winding through
dreary pine barrens, where the wind whispered mournfully,
and now over log causeways, through long cypress swamps,
the doleful trees rising out of the slimy, spongy
ground, hung with long wreaths of funeral black moss,
while ever and anon the loathsome form of the mocassin
snake might be seen sliding among broken stumps and
shattered branches that lay here and there, rotting
in the water.
It is disconsolate enough, this riding, to the stranger,
who, with well-filled pocket and well-appointed horse,
threads the lonely way on some errand of business;
but wilder, drearier, to the man enthralled, whom
every weary step bears further from all that man loves
and prays for.
So one should have thought, that witnessed the sunken
and dejected expression on those dark faces; the wistful,
patient weariness with which those sad eyes rested
on object after object that passed them in their sad
journey.
