She handed me the letter. 'Read that.'
It was hurriedly and nervously written. I read:
'My Dearest Friend: I know you have not forsaken me, but I have written you, oh! so many times. To-day, Ally has told me that perhaps our letters are intercepted at the Trenton post office. It must be so. He takes this to Newbern. Is he not kind? He has been my faithful friend through all. Though ordered away from the plantation, he refused to go, and stood by me through the worst. He whom my own sister so cruelly wronged, has done everything for me! Whatever may become of me, I shall ever bless him.
'I have not heard from or seen any of my friends. Even my brother has not answered my letters; but he must be here, on the 17th, at the sale. That is now my only hope. I shall then be freed from this misery—worse than death. God bless you!
Your wretched Selma.'
'I will go,' was all that I said. Kate sat down, and wept 'Oh! some terrible thing has befallen her! What can it be?'
I was giving some hurried directions to my partners, when a telegram was handed in. It was from Boston, and addressed to me personally. I opened it, and read:
'I have just heard that Selma is a slave. To be sold on the seventeenth. I can't go. You must. Buy her on my account. Pay any price. I have written Frank. Let nothing prevent your starting at once. If your partners should be short while you're away, let them draw on me.
'Augustus Cragin.'
It was then the morning of the twelfth. Making all the connections, and there being no delay of the trains, I should reach the plantation early on the seventeenth.