"The dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty."*

* Ps. 74:20.

Trailing wearily behind a rude wagon, and over a ruder road, Tom and hisassociates faced onward.

In the wagon was seated Simon Legree and the two women, still fetteredtogether, were stowed away with some baggage in the back part of it,and the whole company were seeking Legree's plantation, which lay a gooddistance off.

It was a wild, forsaken road, now winding through dreary pine barrens,where the wind whispered mournfully, and now over log causeways, throughlong cypress swamps, the doleful trees rising out of the slimy, spongyground, hung with long wreaths of funeral black moss, while ever andanon the loathsome form of the mocassin snake might be seen slidingamong broken stumps and shattered branches that lay here and there,rotting in the water.

It is disconsolate enough, this riding, to the stranger, who, withwell-filled pocket and well-appointed horse, threads the lonely way onsome errand of business; but wilder, drearier, to the man enthralled,whom every weary step bears further from all that man loves and praysfor.

So one should have thought, that witnessed the sunken and dejectedexpression on those dark faces; the wistful, patient weariness withwhich those sad eyes rested on object after object that passed them intheir sad journey.

Simon rode on, however, apparently well pleased, occasionally pullingaway at a flask of spirit, which he kept in his pocket.

"I say, _you!_" he said, as he turned back and caught a glance at thedispirited faces behind him. "Strike up a song, boys,--come!"

The men looked at each other, and the "_come_" was repeated, with asmart crack of the whip which the driver carried in his hands. Tom begana Methodist hymn.

"Jerusalem, my happy home, Name ever dear to me! When shall my sorrows have an end, Thy joys when shall--"*

* "_Jerusalem, my happy home_," anonymous hymn dating from the latter part of the sixteenth century, sung to the tune of "St. Stephen." Words derive from St. Augustine's _Meditations_.

"Shut up, you black cuss!" roared Legree; "did ye think I wanted anyo' yer infernal old Methodism? I say, tune up, now, something realrowdy,--quick!"

One of the other men struck up one of those unmeaning songs, commonamong the slaves.

"Mas'r see'd me cotch a coon, High boys, high! He laughed to split,--d'ye see the moon, Ho! ho! ho! boys, ho! Ho! yo! hi--e! _oh!"_

The singer appeared to make up the song to his own pleasure, generallyhitting on rhyme, without much attempt at reason; and the party took upthe chorus, at intervals,

"Ho! ho! ho! boys, ho! High--e--oh! high--e--oh!"

It was sung very boisterouly, and with a forced attempt at merriment;but no wail of despair, no words of impassioned prayer, could have hadsuch a depth of woe in them as the wild notes of the chorus. As ifthe poor, dumb heart, threatened,--prisoned,--took refuge in thatinarticulate sanctuary of music, and found there a language in which tobreathe its prayer to God! There was a prayer in it, which Simon couldnot hear. He only heard the boys singing noisily, and was well pleased;he was making them "keep up their spirits."

"Well, my little dear," said he, turning to Emmeline, and laying hishand on her shoulder, "we're almost home!"

When Legree scolded and stormed, Emmeline was terrified; but when helaid his hand on her, and spoke as he now did, she felt as if she hadrather he would strike her. The expression of his eyes made her soulsick, and her flesh creep. Involuntarily she clung closer to the mulattowoman by her side, as if she were her mother.

"You didn't ever wear ear-rings," he said, taking hold of her small earwith his coarse fingers.

"No, Mas'r!" said Emmeline, trembling and looking down.

"Well, I'll give you a pair, when we get home, if you're a good girl.You needn't be so frightened; I don't mean to make you work very hard.You'll have fine times with me, and live like a lady,--only be a goodgirl."

Legree had been drinking to that degree that he was inclining to bevery gracious; and it was about this time that the enclosures of theplantation rose to view. The estate had formerly belonged to a gentlemanof opulence and taste, who had bestowed some considerable attentionto the adornment of his grounds. Having died insolvent, it had beenpurchased, at a bargain, by Legree, who used it, as he did everythingelse, merely as an implement for money-making. The place had thatragged, forlorn appearance, which is always produced by the evidencethat the care of the former owner has been left to go to utter decay.

What was once a smooth-shaven lawn before the house, dotted here andthere with ornamental shrubs, was now covered with frowsy tangledgrass, with horseposts set up, here and there, in it, where the turf wasstamped away, and the ground littered with broken pails, cobs of corn,and other slovenly remains. Here and there, a mildewed jessamine orhoneysuckle hung raggedly from some ornamental support, which had beenpushed to one side by being used as a horse-post. What once was a largegarden was now all grown over with weeds, through which, here andthere, some solitary exotic reared its forsaken head. What had been aconservatory had now no window-shades, and on the mouldering shelvesstood some dry, forsaken flower-pots, with sticks in them, whose driedleaves showed they had once been plants.

The wagon rolled up a weedy gravel walk, under a noble avenue of Chinatrees, whose graceful forms and ever-springing foliage seemed to be theonly things there that neglect could not daunt or alter,--like noblespirits, so deeply rooted in goodness, as to flourish and grow strongeramid discouragement and decay.

The house had been large and handsome. It was built in a manner commonat the South; a wide verandah of two stories running round every partof the house, into which every outer door opened, the lower tier beingsupported by brick pillars.

But the place looked desolate and uncomfortable; some windows stopped upwith boards, some with shattered panes, and shutters hanging by a singlehinge,--all telling of coarse neglect and discomfort.

Bits of board, straw, old decayed barrels and boxes, garnished theground in all directions; and three or four ferocious-looking dogs,roused by the sound of the wagon-wheels, came tearing out, and were withdifficulty restrained from laying hold of Tom and his companions, by theeffort of the ragged servants who came after them.

"Ye see what ye'd get!" said Legree, caressing the dogs with grimsatisfaction, and turning to Tom and his companions. "Ye see what ye'dget, if ye try to run off. These yer dogs has been raised to trackniggers; and they'd jest as soon chaw one on ye up as eat their supper.So, mind yerself! How now, Sambo!" he said, to a ragged fellow, withoutany brim to his hat, who was officious in his attentions. "How havethings been going?"

"Fust rate, Mas'r."

"Quimbo," said Legree to another, who was making zealous demonstrationsto attract his attention, "ye minded what I telled ye?"

"Guess I did, didn't I?"

These two colored men were the two principal hands on the plantation.Legree had trained them in savageness and brutality as systematicallyas he had his bull-dogs; and, by long practice in hardness and cruelty,brought their whole nature to about the same range of capacities. It isa common remark, and one that is thought to militate strongly againstthe character of the race, that the negro overseer is always moretyrannical and cruel than the white one. This is simply saying that thenegro mind has been more crushed and debased than the white. It is nomore true of this race than of every oppressed race, the world over. Theslave is always a tyrant, if he can get a chance to be one.

Legree, like some potentates we read of in history, governed hisplantation by a sort of resolution of forces. Sambo and Quimbo cordiallyhated each other; the plantation hands, one and all, cordially hatedthem; and, by playing off one against another, he was pretty sure,through one or the other of the three parties, to get informed ofwhatever was on foot in the place.

Nobody can live entirely without social intercourse; and Legreeencouraged his two black satellites to a kind of coarse familiarity withhim,--a familiarity, however, at any moment liable to get one or theother of them into trouble; for, on the slightest provocation, one ofthem always stood ready, at a nod, to be a minister of his vengeance onthe other.

As they stood there now by Legree, they seemed an apt illustration ofthe fact that brutal men are lower even than animals. Their coarse,dark, heavy features; their great eyes, rolling enviously on each other;their barbarous, guttural, half-brute intonation; their dilapidatedgarments fluttering in the wind,--were all in admirable keeping with thevile and unwholesome character of everything about the place.

"Here, you Sambo," said Legree, "take these yer boys down to thequarters; and here's a gal I've got for _you_," said he, as he separatedthe mulatto woman from Emmeline, and pushed her towards him;--"Ipromised to bring you one, you know."

The woman gave a start, and drawing back, said, suddenly,

"O, Mas'r! I left my old man in New Orleans."

"What of that, you--; won't you want one here? None o' your words,--golong!" said Legree, raising his whip.

"Come, mistress," he said to Emmeline, "you go in here with me."

A dark, wild face was seen, for a moment, to glance at the window of thehouse; and, as Legree opened the door, a female voice said something, ina quick, imperative tone. Tom, who was looking, with anxious interest,after Emmeline, as she went in, noticed this, and heard Legree answer,angrily, "You may hold your tongue! I'll do as I please, for all you!"

Tom heard no more; for he was soon following Sambo to the quarters. Thequarters was a little sort of street of rude shanties, in a row, ina part of the plantation, far off from the house. They had a forlorn,brutal, forsaken air. Tom's heart sunk when he saw them. He had beencomforting himself with the thought of a cottage, rude, indeed, but onewhich he might make neat and quiet, and where he might have a shelf forhis Bible, and a place to be alone out of his laboring hours. He lookedinto several; they were mere rude shells, destitute of any species offurniture, except a heap of straw, foul with dirt, spread confusedlyover the floor, which was merely the bare ground, trodden hard by thetramping of innumerable feet.

"Which of these will be mine?" said he, to Sambo, submissively.

"Dunno; ken turn in here, I spose," said Sambo; "spects thar's room foranother thar; thar's a pretty smart heap o' niggers to each on 'em, now;sure, I dunno what I 's to do with more."

It was late in the evening when the weary occupants of the shanties cameflocking home,--men and women, in soiled and tattered garments, surlyand uncomfortable, and in no mood to look pleasantly on new-comers. Thesmall village was alive with no inviting sounds; hoarse, guttural voicescontending at the hand-mills where their morsel of hard corn was yet tobe ground into meal, to fit it for the cake that was to constitute theironly supper. From the earliest dawn of the day, they had been in thefields, pressed to work under the driving lash of the overseers; for itwas now in the very heat and hurry of the season, and no means was leftuntried to press every one up to the top of their capabilities. "True,"says the negligent lounger; "picking cotton isn't hard work." Isn't it?And it isn't much inconvenience, either, to have one drop of water fallon your head; yet the worst torture of the inquisition is produced bydrop after drop, drop after drop, falling moment after moment, withmonotonous succession, on the same spot; and work, in itself nothard, becomes so, by being pressed, hour after hour, with unvarying,unrelenting sameness, with not even the consciousness of free-will totake from its tediousness. Tom looked in vain among the gang, as theypoured along, for companionable faces. He saw only sullen, scowling,imbruted men, and feeble, discouraged women, or women that were notwomen,--the strong pushing away the weak,--the gross, unrestrictedanimal selfishness of human beings, of whom nothing good was expectedand desired; and who, treated in every way like brutes, had sunk asnearly to their level as it was possible for human beings to do. To alate hour in the night the sound of the grinding was protracted; for themills were few in number compared with the grinders, and the weary andfeeble ones were driven back by the strong, and came on last in theirturn.

"Ho yo!" said Sambo, coming to the mulatto woman, and throwing down abag of corn before her; "what a cuss yo name?"

"Lucy," said the woman.

"Wal, Lucy, yo my woman now. Yo grind dis yer corn, and get _my_ supperbaked, ye har?"

"I an't your woman, and I won't be!" said the woman, with the sharp,sudden courage of despair; "you go 'long!"

"I'll kick yo, then!" said Sambo, raising his foot threateningly.

"Ye may kill me, if ye choose,--the sooner the better! Wish't I wasdead!" said she.

"I say, Sambo, you go to spilin' the hands, I'll tell Mas'r o' you,"said Quimbo, who was busy at the mill, from which he had viciouslydriven two or three tired women, who were waiting to grind their corn.

"And, I'll tell him ye won't let the women come to the mills, yo oldnigger!" said Sambo. "Yo jes keep to yo own row."

Tom was hungry with his day's journey, and almost faint for want offood.

"Thar, yo!" said Quimbo, throwing down a coarse bag, which containeda peck of corn; "thar, nigger, grab, take car on 't,--yo won't get nomore, _dis_ yer week."

Tom waited till a late hour, to get a place at the mills; and then,moved by the utter weariness of two women, whom he saw trying to grindtheir corn there, he ground for them, put together the decaying brandsof the fire, where many had baked cakes before them, and then went aboutgetting his own supper. It was a new kind of work there,--a deed ofcharity, small as it was; but it woke an answering touch in theirhearts,--an expression of womanly kindness came over their hard faces;they mixed his cake for him, and tended its baking; and Tom sat downby the light of the fire, and drew out his Bible,--for he had need forcomfort.

"What's that?" said one of the woman.

"A Bible," said Tom.

"Good Lord! han't seen un since I was in Kentuck."

"Was you raised in Kentuck?" said Tom, with interest.

"Yes, and well raised, too; never 'spected to come to dis yer!" said thewoman, sighing.

"What's dat ar book, any way?" said the other woman.

"Why, the Bible."

"Laws a me! what's dat?" said the woman.

"Do tell! you never hearn on 't?" said the other woman. "I used to harMissis a readin' on 't, sometimes, in Kentuck; but, laws o' me! we don'thar nothin' here but crackin' and swarin'."

"Read a piece, anyways!" said the first woman, curiously, seeing Tomattentively poring over it.

Tom read,--"Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and Iwill give you rest."

"Them's good words, enough," said the woman; "who says 'em?"

"The Lord," said Tom.

"I jest wish I know'd whar to find Him," said the woman. "I would go;'pears like I never should get rested again. My flesh is fairly sore,and I tremble all over, every day, and Sambo's allers a jawin' at me,'cause I doesn't pick faster; and nights it's most midnight 'fore I canget my supper; and den 'pears like I don't turn over and shut my eyes,'fore I hear de horn blow to get up, and at it agin in de mornin'. If Iknew whar de Lor was, I'd tell him."

"He's here, he's everywhere," said Tom.

"Lor, you an't gwine to make me believe dat ar! I know de Lord an'there," said the woman; "'tan't no use talking, though. I's jest gwine tocamp down, and sleep while I ken."

The women went off to their cabins, and Tom sat alone, by thesmouldering fire, that flickered up redly in his face.

The silver, fair-browed moon rose in the purple sky, and lookeddown, calm and silent, as God looks on the scene of misery andoppression,--looked calmly on the lone black man, as he sat, with hisarms folded, and his Bible on his knee.

"Is God HERE?" Ah, how is it possible for the untaught heart to keep itsfaith, unswerving, in the face of dire misrule, and palpable, unrebukedinjustice? In that simple heart waged a fierce conflict; the crushingsense of wrong, the foreshadowing, of a whole life of future misery, thewreck of all past hopes, mournfully tossing in the soul's sight, likedead corpses of wife, and child, and friend, rising from the dark wave,and surging in the face of the half-drowned mariner! Ah, was it easy_here_ to believe and hold fast the great password of Christian faith,that "God IS, and is the REWARDER of them that diligently seek Him"?

Tom rose, disconsolate, and stumbled into the cabin that had beenallotted to him. The floor was already strewn with weary sleepers, andthe foul air of the place almost repelled him; but the heavy night-dewswere chill, and his limbs weary, and, wrapping about him a tatteredblanket, which formed his only bed-clothing, he stretched himself in thestraw and fell asleep.

In dreams, a gentle voice came over his ear; he was sitting on the mossyseat in the garden by Lake Pontchartrain, and Eva, with her serious eyesbent downward, was reading to him from the Bible; and he heard her read.

"When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and therivers they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the fire,thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee; forI am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour."

Gradually the words seemed to melt and fade, as in a divine music; thechild raised her deep eyes, and fixed them lovingly on him, and raysof warmth and comfort seemed to go from them to his heart; and, as ifwafted on the music, she seemed to rise on shining wings, from whichflakes and spangles of gold fell off like stars, and she was gone.

Tom woke. Was it a dream? Let it pass for one. But who shall say thatthat sweet young spirit, which in life so yearned to comfort and consolethe distressed, was forbidden of God to assume this ministry afterdeath?

It is a beautiful belief, That ever round our head Are hovering, on angel wings, The spirits of the dead.