After selling out this cargo of human flesh, we returned to St. Louis,
and my time was up with Mr. Walker. I had served him one year, and it
was the longest year I ever lived.




CHAPTER VIII.


I was sent home, and was glad enough to leave the service of one who was
tearing the husband from the wife, the child from the mother, and the
sister from the brother,--but a trial more severe and heart-rending than
any which I had yet met with awaited me. My dear sister had been sold to
a man who was going to Natchez, and was lying in jail awaiting the hour
of his departure. She had expressed her determination to die, rather
than go to the far south, and she was put in jail for safe keeping. I
went to the jail the same day that I arrived, but as the jailor was not
in, I could not see her.

I went home to my master, in the country, and the first day after my
return, he came where I was at work, and spoke to me very politely. I
knew from his appearance that something was the matter. After talking
about my several journeys to New Orleans with Mr. Walker, he told me
that he was hard pressed for money, and as he had sold my mother and all
her children except me, he thought it would be better to sell me than
any other one, and that as I had been used to living in the city, he
thought it probable that I would prefer it to a country life. I raised
up my head, and looked him full in the face. When my eyes caught his, he