The negro answers her adieu with “Good by, little dear!  God bless ’um!” Nay, the native goodness of his heart will not permit him to leave her thus.  He turns round, takes her in his arms, kisses and kisses her fair cheek.  It is the truth of an honest soul, expressed with tears glistening in his eyes.  Again taking Nicholas by the hand, he hastens through the passage of Mrs. Tuttlewell’s house where, on emerging into the street, he is accosted by that very fashionable lady, who desires to know if he has got the boy “all right!” Being answered in the affirmative, she gives a very dignified-"Glad of it,” and desires her compliments to Mr. Graspum, who she hopes will extend the same special regards to his family, and retires to the quietude of her richly-furnished parlour.

The gentleman dealer and his customer are waiting in the man shambles, while the negro messenger with his boy article of trade plod their way along through the busy streets.  The negro looks on his charge with a smile of congratulation.  “Mas’r ’ll laugh all over ’e clothes when he sees ye-dat he will!” he says, with an air of exultation.

“I’d like to know where I’m goin’ to afore I go much further,” returns the boy, curtly, as he walks along, every few minutes asking unanswerable questions of the negro.

“Lor, child!” returns the negro, with a significant smile, “take ye down to old massa what own ’um!  Fo’h true!”

“Own me!” mutters the child, surlily.  “How can they own me without owning my mother?—­and I’ve no father.”

“White man great ’losipher; he know so much, dat nigger don’t know nofin,” is the singularly significant answer.

“But God didn’t make me for a nigger,—­did he?”

“Don’ know how dat is, child.  ‘Pears like old mas’r tink da’ ain’t no God; and what he sees in yander good book lef ’um do just as ’e mind to wid nigger.  Sometimes Buckra sell nigger by de pound, just like ’e sell pig; and den ’e say ’t was wid de Lord’s will.”

“If mas’r Lord be what Buckra say he be, dis child don’ want t’be ’quainted wid ’um,” he coolly dilates, as if he foresees the mournful result of the child’s bright endowments.

The negro tries to quiet the child’s apprehensions by telling him he thinks “Buckra, what’s waiting down in da’h office, gwine t’ buy ’um of old mas’r.  Know dat Buckra he sharp feller.  Get e’ eye on ye, and make up ’e mind what ’e gwine to give fo’h ’um, quicker!” says the negro.

Graspum has invited his customer, Mr. Grabguy, into his more comfortable counting-room, where, as Nicholas is led in, they may be found discussing the rights of the south, as guaranteed by the federal constitution.  The south claim rights independent of the north; and those rights are to secede from the wrongs of the north whenever she takes into her head the very simple notion of carrying them out.  Graspum, a man of great experience, whose keen sense of justice is made keener by his sense of practical injustice,—­thinks the democracy of the south was never fully understood, and that the most sure way of developing its great principles is by hanging every northerner, whose abolition mania is fast absorbing the liberties of the country at large.