The Kidnapped & the Ransomed by Kate E.R. Pickard

Author:Kate E.R. Pickard
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-11-08T22:46:18+00:00

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The overseer's wife was thar, and she was shocked mightily. She called her husband, and he come and looked at it; and two gentlemen, whar was thar a visitin' him, they see it too; and they all 'lowed they never see nuthin' like it in all their lives.

"Well, I staid, and done all I could for Leah, and dressed the baby--for it was livin' after all, and when I got all done, I went up to the house to tell Missus. Mass'r was a sittin' by, but I never stopped for him--I told her the whole story, and all about the beatin' too. She hated it mightily, partic'lar when I told her 'bout the overseer and them other two white men seein' it. 'That's just like, you,' says she to Mass'r, 'you're always bringing some disgrace on this plantation. The report of this will go all over the country.'

" 'Why I did'nt know she was sick,' says he.

" 'Yes, you did know it, she told you she was sick, and if she had not, you might have known better than to beat her so, and she in such a state. You did it on purpose to disgrace yourself, and the plantation, it is just like you. I'll order my carriage, and go away till the talk about this is over. It is just the way you always do--just like you.'

"That's all the comfort Leah got from Missus. She was mighty sorry to have folks know such works was a gwine on, but she didn't never do much for them whar was a sufferin'. If she could keep cl'ar o' the disgrace, that thar was all she cared for.

"Leah's baby lived a week, and I reckon it was a good thing it died, for 'peared like it suffered a heap all the time. Oh! it aint no wonder so many o' their chillun dies, its more wonder that any of

'em lives when the women has to b'ar so much."

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE RE-UNION.

TOWARDS the close of the year 1854, their being no immediate need of Vina's presence on the "low place," she went back to the island. Susanna had died during the summer, and now the boys were both with their mother, leaving Catharine sole tenant of the old home cabin.

"The island," although it was five miles above the home plantation, was not a lonely place. There were good neighbors on the river bank opposite, and with some of these, the slaves who were kept here, formed lasting friendships; even Vina, though she had been so morose and sad during these last years, had not been unmindful of the sympathy of her own people.

On Sunday morning, December seventeenth, as she was sitting alone in her cabin, a woman belonging to Mr. Hawkins, who owned a plantation on the North bank of the river, came over to pay her a visit.

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