Mr. Hopper laughed.
"Tarnation!" said he, "you get used to it. When I came here, I was a sort of an Abolitionist. But after you've lived here awhile you get to know that niggers ain't fit for freedom."
Silence from Stephen.
"Likely gal, that beauty," Eliphalet continued unrepressed. "There's a well-known New Orleans dealer named Jenkins after her. I callate she'll go down river."
"I reckon you're right, Mistah," a man with a matted beard chimed in, and added with a wink: "She'll find it pleasant enough—fer a while. Some of those other niggers will go too, and they'd rather go to hell. They do treat 'em nefarious down thah on the wholesale plantations. Household niggers! there ain't none better off than them. But seven years in a cotton swamp,—seven years it takes, that's all, Mistah."
Stephen moved away. He felt that to stay near the man was to be tempted to murder. He moved away, and just then the auctioneer yelled, "Attention!"
"Gentlemen," he cried, "I have heah two sisters, the prope'ty of the late Mistah Robe't Benbow, of St. Louis, as fine a pair of wenches as was ever offe'd to the public from these heah steps—"
"Speak for the handsome gal," cried a wag.
"Sell off the cart hoss fust," said another.
The auctioneer turned to the darker sister: