horse, and increase his stock of choice wines. While he sleeps off
drunkenness, you are toiling for him, with the blessed prospect of
freedom far ahead, but burning brightly in the distance, like a
Drummond Light, guiding the watchful mariner over a midnight sea.

When you have paid five hundred dollars of the required sum, your
lonely heart so longs for the comforts of a home, that you can wait
no longer. You marry Amy, with the resolution of buying her also,
and removing to those Free States, about which you have often talked
together, as invalids discourse of heaven. Amy is a member of the
church, and it is a great point with her to be married by a
minister. Her master and mistress make no objection, knowing that
after the ceremony, she will remain an article of property, the same
as ever. Now come happy months, during which you almost forget that
you are a slave, and that it must be a weary long while before you
can earn enough to buy yourself and your dear one, in addition to
supporting your dissipated master. But you toil bravely on, and soon
pay another hundred dollars toward your ransom. The Drummond Light
of Freedom burns brighter in the diminished distance.

Alas! in an unlucky hour, your tipsy master-brother sees your gentle
Amy, and becomes enamored of her large dark eyes, and the rich
golden tint of her complexion. Your earnings and your ransom-money
make him flush of cash. In spite of all your efforts to prevent it,
she becomes his property. He threatens to cowhide you, if you ever
speak to her again. You remind him that she is your wife; that you
were married by a minister. "Married, you damned nigger!" he
exclaims; "what does a slave's marriage amount to? If you give me
any more of your insolence, you'll get a taste of the cowhide."