“Don’t call me Missis!  I’m a miserable slave, like yourself,—­a lower one than you can ever be!” said she, bitterly; “but now,” said she, going to the door, and dragging in a small pallaise, over which she had spread linen cloths wet with cold water, “try, my poor fellow, to roll yourself on to this.”

Stiff with wounds and bruises, Tom was a long time in accomplishing this movement; but, when done, he felt a sensible relief from the cooling application to his wounds.

The woman, whom long practice with the victims of brutality had made familiar with many healing arts, went on to make many applications to Tom’s wounds, by means of which he was soon somewhat relieved.

“Now,” said the woman, when she had raised his head on a roll of damaged cotton, which served for a pillow, “there’s the best I can do for you.”

Tom thanked her; and the woman, sitting down on the floor, drew up her knees, and embracing them with her arms, looked fixedly before her, with a bitter and painful expression of countenance.  Her bonnet fell back, and long wavy streams of black hair fell around her singular and melancholy-face.

“It’s no use, my poor fellow!” she broke out, at last, “it’s of no use, this you’ve been trying to do.  You were a brave fellow,—­you had the right on your side; but it’s all in vain, and out of the question, for you to struggle.  You are in the devil’s hands;—­he is the strongest, and you must give up!”

Give up! and, had not human weakness and physical agony whispered that, before?  Tom started; for the bitter woman, with her wild eyes and melancholy voice, seemed to him an embodiment of the temptation with which he had been wrestling.

“O Lord!  O Lord!” he groaned, “how can I give up?”

“There’s no use calling on the Lord,—­he never hears,” said the woman, steadily; “there isn’t any God, I believe; or, if there is, he’s taken sides against us.  All goes against us, heaven and earth.  Everything is pushing us into hell.  Why shouldn’t we go?”

Tom closed his eyes, and shuddered at the dark, atheistic words.

“You see,” said the woman, “you don’t know anything about it—­I do.  I’ve been on this place five years, body and soul, under this man’s foot; and I hate him as I do the devil!  Here you are, on a lone plantation, ten miles from any other, in the swamps; not a white person here, who could testify, if you were burned alive,—­if you were scalded, cut into inch-pieces, set up for the dogs to tear, or hung up and whipped to death.  There’s no law here, of God or man, that can do you, or any one of us, the least good; and, this man! there’s no earthly thing that he’s too good to do.  I could make any one’s hair rise, and their teeth chatter, if I should only tell what I’ve seen and been knowing to, here,—­and it’s no use resisting!  Did I want to live with him?  Wasn’t I a woman delicately bred; and he,—­God in heaven! what was he, and is he?  And yet, I’ve