He tried to look loving, but the expression was utterly revolting. Twelve years of unbridled sensuality had rendered his countenance even more disgusting than it was when he shocked Alfred's youthful soul by his talk about "Duncan's handsome wench."
"Come, my beauty," he continued, persuasively, "I'm glad to see you in a better temper. Come with me, and behave yourself."
She curled her lip scornfully, and repeated,—
"I will never live with you! Never!"
"We'll see about that, my wench," said he. "I may as well take you down a peg, first as last. If you'd rather be in the calaboose with niggers than to ride in a carriage with me, you may try it, and see how you like it. I reckon you'll be glad to come to my terms, before long."
He beckoned to two police-officers, and said, "Take this wench into custody, and keep her on bread and water, till I give further orders."
The jail to which Loo Loo was conveyed was a wretched place. The walls were dingy, the floor covered with puddles of tobacco-juice, the air almost suffocating with the smell of pent-up tobacco-smoke, unwashed negroes, and dirty garments. She had never seen any place so loathsome. Mr. Jackson's log-house was a palace in comparison. The prison was crowded with colored people of all complexions, and almost every form of human vice and misery was huddled together there with the poor victims of misfortune. Thieves, murderers, and shameless girls, decked out with tawdry bits of finery, were mixed up with modest-looking, heart-broken wives, and mothers mourning for the children that had been torn from their arms in the recent sale. Some were laughing, and singing lewd songs. Others sat still, with tears trickling down their sable cheeks. Here and there the fierce expression of some intelligent young man indicated a volcano of revenge seething within his soul. Some were stretched out drowsily upon the filthy floor, their natures apparently stupefied to the level of brutes. When Loo Loo was brought in, most of them were roused to look at her; and she heard them saying to each other, "By gum, dat ar an't no nigger!" "What fur dey fotch her here?" "She be white lady ob quality, she be."
The tenderly-nurtured daughter of the wealthy planter remained in this miserable place two days. The jailer, touched by her beauty and extreme dejection, offered her better food than had been prescribed in his orders. She thanked him, but said she could not eat. When he invited her to occupy, for the night, a small room apart from the herd of prisoners, she accepted the offer with gratitude. But she could not sleep, and she dared not undress. In the morning, the jailer, afraid of being detected in these acts of indulgence, told her, apologetically, that he was obliged to request her to return to the common apartment.
Having recovered somewhat from the stunning effects of the blow that had fallen on her, she began to take more notice of her companions. A gang of slaves, just sold, was in keeping there, till it suited the trader's convenience to take them to New Orleans; and the parting scenes she witnessed that day made an impression she never forgot. "Can it be," she said to herself, "that such things have been going on around me all these years, and I so unconscious of them? What should I now be, if Alfred had not taken compassion on me, and prevented my being sent to the New Orleans market, before I was ten years old?" She thought with a shudder of the auction-scene the day before, and began to be afraid that her friends could not save her from that vile man's power.
She was roused from her reverie by the entrance of a white gentleman, whom she had never seen before. He came to inspect the trader's gang of slaves, to see if any one among them would suit him for a house-servant; and before long, he agreed to purchase a bright-looking mulatto lad. He stopped before Loo Loo, and said, "Are you a good sempstress?"