“Mr. Wilson, I think,” said he, in a tone of recognition, and extending his hand. “I beg your pardon, I did n’t recollect you before. I see you remember me, – Mr. Butler, of Oaklands, Shelby County.”

“Ye – yes – yes, sir,” said Mr. Wilson, like one speaking in a dream.

Just then a negro boy entered, and announced that Mas’r’s room was ready.

“Jim, see to the trunks,” said the gentleman, negligently; then addressing himself to Mr. Wilson, he added – “I should like to have a few moments’ conversation with you on business, in my room, if you please.”

Mr. Wilson followed him, as one who walks in his sleep; and they proceeded to a large upper chamber, where a new-made fire was crackling, and various servants flying about, putting finishing touches to the arrangements.

When all was done, and the servants departed, the young man deliberately locked the door, and putting the key in his pocket, faced about, and folding his arms on his bosom, looked Mr. Wilson full in the face.

“George!” said Mr. Wilson.

“Yes, George,” said the young man.

“I could n’t have thought it!”

“I am pretty well disguised, I fancy,” said the young man, with a smile. “A little walnut bark has made my yellow skin a genteel brown, and I’ve dyed my hair black; so you see I don’t answer to the advertisement at all.”

“O, George! but this is a dangerous game you are playing. I could not have advised you to it.”

“I can do it on my own responsibility,” said George, with the same proud smile.

We remark, en passant^[44], that George was, by his father’s side, of white descent. His mother was one of those unfortunates of her race, marked out by personal beauty to be the slave of the passions of her possessor, and the mother of children who may never know a father. From one of the proudest families in Kentucky he had inherited a set of fine European features, and a high, indomitable spirit. From his mother he had received only a slight mulatto tinge, amply compensated by its accompanying rich, dark eye. A slight change in the tint of the skin and the color of his hair had metamorphosed him into the Spanish-looking fellow he then appeared; and as gracefulness of movement and gentlemanly manners had always been perfectly natural to him, he found no difficulty in playing the bold part he had adopted – that of a gentleman travelling with his domestic.

Mr. Wilson, a good-natured but extremely fidgety and cautious old gentleman, ambled up and down the room, appearing, as John Bunyan hath it, ‘much tumbled up and down in his mind,’ and divided between his wish to help George, and a certain confused notion of maintaining law and order: so, as he shambled about, he delivered himself as follows:

“Well, George, I s’pose you ’re running away – leaving your lawful master, George – (I don’t wonder at it) – at the same time, I’m sorry, George, – yes, decidedly – I think I must say that, George – it ’s my duty to tell you so.”

“Why are you sorry, sir?” said George, calmly.

“Why, to see you, as it were, setting yourself in opposition to the laws of your country.”

“My country!” said George, with a strong and bitter emphasis; “what country have I, but the grave, – and I wish to God that I was laid there!”

“Why, George, no – no – it won’t do; this way of talking is wicked – unscriptural. George, you ’ve got a hard master – in fact, he is – well he conducts himself reprehensibly – I can’t pretend to defend him. But you know how the angel commanded Hagar^[45] to return to her mistress, and submit herself under her hand; and the apostle sent back Onesimus^[46] to his master.”

“Don’t quote Bible at me that way, Mr. Wilson,” said George, with a flashing eye, “don’t! for my wife is a Christian, and I mean to be, if ever I get to where I can; but to quote Bible to a fellow in my circumstances, is enough to make him give it up altogether. I appeal to God Almighty; – I’m willing to go with the case to Him, and ask Him if I do wrong to seek my freedom.”

“These feelings are quite natural, George,” said the good-natured man, blowing his nose. “Yes they ’re natural, but it is my duty not to encourage ’em in you. Yes, my boy, I’m sorry for you, now; it ’s a bad case – very bad; but the apostle says, ‘Let every one abide in the condition in which he is called.’ We must all submit to the indications of Providence, George, – don’t you see?”

George stood with his head drawn back, his arms folded tightly over his broad breast, and a bitter smile curling his lips.

“I wonder, Mr. Wilson, if the Indians should come and take you a prisoner away from your wife and children, and want to keep you all your life hoeing corn for them, if you ’d think it your duty to abide in the condition in which you were called. I rather think that you ’d think the first stray horse you could find an indication of Providence – should n’t you?”

The little old gentleman stared with both eyes at this illustration of the case; but, though not much of a reasoner, he had the sense in which some logicians on this particular subject do not excel, – that of saying nothing, where nothing could be said. So, as he stood carefully stroking his umbrella, and folding and patting down all the creases in it, he proceeded on with his exhortations in a general way.

“You see, George, you know, now, I always have stood your friend; and whatever I’ve said, I’ve said for your good. Now, here, it seems to me, you ’re running an awful risk. You can’t hope to carry it out. If you ’re taken, it will be worse with you than ever; they ’ll only abuse you, and half kill you, and sell you down river.”

“Mr. Wilson, I know all this,” said George. “I do run a risk, but – ” he threw open his overcoat, and showed two pistols and a bowie-knife. “There!” he said, “I ’m ready for ’em! Down south I never will go. No! if it comes to that, I can earn myself at least six feet of free soil, – the first and last I shall ever own in Kentucky!”

“Why, George, this state of mind is awful; it ’s getting really desperate, George. I’m concerned. Going to break the laws of your country!”

“My country again! Mr. Wilson, you have a country; but what country have I, or any one like me, born of slave mothers? What laws are there for us? We don’t make them, – we don’t consent to them, – we have nothing to do with them; all they do for us is to crush us, and keep us down. Have n’t I heard your Fourth-of-July speeches? Don’t you tell us all, once a year, that governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed? Can’t a fellow think, that hears such things? Can’t he put this and that together, and see what it comes to?”

Mr. Wilson’s mind was one of those that may not unaptly be represented by a bale of cotton, – downy, soft, benevolently fuzzy and confused. He really pitied George with all his heart, and had a sort of dim and cloudy perception of the style of feeling that agitated him; but he deemed it his duty to go on talking good to him, with infinite pertinacity.

“George, this is bad. I must tell you, you know, as a friend, you ’d better not be meddling with such notions; they are bad, George, very bad, for boys in your condition, – very;” and Mr. Wilson sat down to a table, and began nervously chewing the handle of his umbrella.

“See here, now, Mr. Wilson,” said George, coming up and sitting himself determinately down in front of him; “look at me, now. Don’t I sit before you, every way, just as much a man as you are? Look at my face, – look at my hands, – look at my body,” and the young man drew himself up proudly; “why am I not a man, as much as anybody? Well, Mr. Wilson, hear what I can tell you. I had a father – one of your Kentucky gentlemen – who did n’t think enough of me to keep me from being sold with his dogs and horses, to satisfy the estate, when he died. I saw my mother put up at sheriff’s sale, with her seven children. They were sold before her eyes, one by one, all to different masters; and I was the youngest. She came and kneeled down before old Mas’r, and begged him to buy her with me, that she might have at least one child with her; and he kicked her away with his heavy boot. I saw him do it; and the last that I heard was her moans and screams, when I was tied to his horse’s neck, to be carried off to his place.”

“Well, then?”

“My master traded with one of the men, and bought my oldest sister. She was a pious, good girl, – a member of the Baptist church, – and as handsome as my poor mother had been. She was well brought up, and had good manners. At first, I was glad she was bought, for I had one friend near me. I was soon sorry for it. Sir, I have stood at the door and heard her whipped, when it seemed as if every blow cut into my naked heart, and I could n’t do anything to help her; and she was whipped, sir, for wanting to live a decent Christian life, such as your laws give no slave girl a right to live; and at last I saw her chained with a trader’s gang, to be sent to market in Orleans, – sent there for nothing else but that, – and that ’s the last I know of her. Well, I grew up, – long years and years, – no father, no mother, no sister, not a living soul that cared for me more than a dog; nothing but whipping, scolding, starving. Why, sir, I’ve been so hungry that I have been glad to take the bones they threw to their dogs; and yet, when I was a little fellow, and laid awake whole nights and cried, it was n’t the hunger, it was n’t the whipping, I cried for. No, sir; it was for my mother and my sisters, – it was because I had n’t a friend to love me on earth. I never knew what peace or comfort was. I never had a kind word spoken to me till I came to work in your factory. Mr. Wilson, you treated me well; you encouraged me to do well, and to learn to read and write, and to try to make something of myself; and God knows how grateful I am for it. Then, sir, I found my wife; you ’ve seen her, – you know how beautiful she is. When I found she loved me, when I married her, I scarcely could believe I was alive, I was so happy; and, sir, she is as good as she is beautiful. But now what? Why, now comes my master, takes me right away from my work, and my friends, and all I like, and grinds me down into the very dirt! And why? Because, he says, I forgot who I was; he says, to teach me that I am only a nigger! After all, and last of all, he comes between me and my wife, and says I shall give her up, and live with another woman. And all this your laws give him power to do, in spite of God or man. Mr. Wilson, look at it! There is n’t one of all these things, that have broken the hearts of my mother and my sister, and my wife and myself, but your laws allow, and give every man power to do, in Kentucky, and none can say to him nay! Do you call these the laws of my country? Sir, I have n’t any country, any more than I have any father. But I’m going to have one. I don’t want anything of your country, except to be let alone, – to go peaceably out of it; and when I get to Canada, where the laws will own me and protect me, that shall be my country, and its laws I will obey. But if any man tries to stop me, let him take care, for I am desperate. I’ll fight for my liberty to the last breath I breathe. You say your fathers did it; if it was right for them, it is right for me!”

This speech, delivered partly while sitting at the table, and partly walking up and down the room, – delivered with tears, and flashing eyes, and despairing gestures, – was altogether too much for the good-natured old body to whom it was addressed, who had pulled out a great yellow silk pocket-handkerchief, and was mopping up his face with great energy.

“Blast ’em all!” he suddenly broke out. “Have n’t I always said so – the infernal old cusses! I hope I an’t swearing, now. Well! go ahead, George, go ahead; but be careful, my boy; don’t shoot anybody, George, unless – well – you ’d better not shoot, I reckon; at least, I would n’t hit anybody, you know. Where is your wife, George?” he added, as he nervously rose, and began walking the room.

“Gone, sir, gone, with her child in her arms, the Lord only knows where; – gone after the north star; and when we ever meet, or whether we meet at all in this world, no creature can tell.”

“Is it possible! astonishing! from such a kind family?” “Kind families get in debt, and the laws of our country allow them to sell the child out of its mother’s bosom to pay its master’s debts,” said George, bitterly.