His fine figure, alert limbs, and bright face, raised an instant competition, and half a dozen bids simultaneously met the ear of the auctioneer.  Anxious, half-frightened, he looked from side to side, as he heard the clatter of contending bids,—­now here, now there,—­till the hammer fell.  Haley had got him.  He was pushed from the block toward his new master, but stopped one moment, and looked back, when his poor old mother, trembling in every limb, held out her shaking hands toward him.

“Buy me too, Mas’r, for de dear Lord’s sake!—­buy me,—­I shall die if you don’t!”

“You’ll die if I do, that’s the kink of it,” said Haley,—­“no!” And he turned on his heel.

The bidding for the poor old creature was summary.  The man who had addressed Haley, and who seemed not destitute of compassion, bought her for a trifle, and the spectators began to disperse.

The poor victims of the sale, who had been brought up in one place together for years, gathered round the despairing old mother, whose agony was pitiful to see.

“Couldn’t dey leave me one?  Mas’r allers said I should have one,—­he did,” she repeated over and over, in heart-broken tones.

“Trust in the Lord, Aunt Hagar,” said the oldest of the men, sorrowfully.

“What good will it do?” said she, sobbing passionately.

“Mother, mother,—­don’t! don’t!” said the boy.  “They say you ’s got a good master.”

“I don’t care,—­I don’t care.  O, Albert! oh, my boy! you ’s my last baby.  Lord, how ken I?”

“Come, take her off, can’t some of ye?” said Haley, dryly; “don’t do no good for her to go on that ar way.”

The old men of the company, partly by persuasion and partly by force, loosed the poor creature’s last despairing hold, and, as they led her off to her new master’s wagon, strove to comfort her.

“Now!” said Haley, pushing his three purchases together, and producing a bundle of handcuffs, which he proceeded to put on their wrists; and fastening each handcuff to a long chain, he drove them before him to the jail.

A few days saw Haley, with his possessions, safely deposited on one of the Ohio boats.  It was the commencement of his gang, to be augmented, as the boat moved on, by various other merchandise of the same kind, which he, or his agent, had stored for him in various points along shore.

The La Belle Riviere, as brave and beautiful a boat as ever walked the waters of her namesake river, was floating gayly down the stream, under a brilliant sky, the stripes and stars of free America waving and fluttering over head; the guards crowded with well-dressed ladies and gentlemen walking and enjoying the delightful day.  All was full of life, buoyant and rejoicing;—­all but Haley’s gang, who were stored, with other freight, on the lower deck, and who, somehow, did not seem to appreciate their various privileges, as they sat in a knot, talking to each other in low tones.