"Yes, they were, I know, almost daily. The old slave-block is shown there yet, if genuine."
"Ah, genuine or not, what difference? From one that was there grandpère bought many slaves. He and his father speculated in them."
"Why! How strange! The son? your grandfather? the radical, who married--'Maud'?"
"Yes, the last slave he bought was for her."
"Why, why, why! He couldn't have met her be'--well--before the year of Lincoln's election."
"No, let me tell you. You remember 'Sidney'?"
"'Maud's' black maid? my uncle's Euonymus? Yes."
"Well, when she came to Maud, at Maud's home, in the North, she was still in agony about Mingo, who'd been recaptured. So Maud wrote South, to her aunt, who wrote back: 'Yes, he had been brought home, and at creditor's auction had been sold to a slave-trader to be resold here in New Orleans.' So then Sidney begged Maud, who by luck was coming here, to bring her here to find him."
"Brave Sidney. Brave Euonymus."
"Yes--although--her Southern mistress--I know not how legally--had sent to her her free-paper. That made it safer, I suppose, eh?"