"Who will care for her there?" asked Hull. "Do you know her relatives?"
"No; all are strangers to me."
The father, with his proud breast heaving with tumultuous emotion, stood silently gazing on the scene. He was a slave and he remembered that a slave must not speak unless permission be granted him by his master; but it was his child, the only link that bound him to earth, whose fate they were to decide, and, had he been unfettered, he might have clasped her to his bosom.
"Speak with the maid," suggested a by-stander, "and see if she has a friend in England who will care for her."
The master of the ship went to the bewildered child and, taking her little hand in his broad palm, said:
"Sweet little maid, you are not afraid to trust me?"
She turned her great blue eyes up to him and, in a whisper, answered:
"I am not."
"Have you a mother?"
"No."