the cotton-field. My men pick one hundred and fifty pounds a day, and the women one hundred and forty pounds; and those who fail to perform their task receive five stripes for each pound that is wanting. Now, do you think you could keep up with the rest of the hands?"
"I don't know, sar, but I 'specs I'd have to."
"How long did you live with your third master?"
"Three years, sar."
"Why, that makes you thirty-three." I thought you told me you were only twenty-five?"
Aaron now looked first at the planter, then at the trader, and seemed perfectly bewildered. He had forgotten the lesson given him by Pompey relative to his age; and the planter's circuitous questions—doubtless to find out the slave's real age—had thrown the negro off his guard.
"I must see your back, so as to know how much you have been whipped, before I think of buying."
Pompey, who had been standing by during the examination, thought that his services were now required, and, stepping forth with a degree of officiousness, said to Aaron,—
"Don't you hear de gemman tell you he wants to 'zamin you. Cum, unharness yo'seff, ole boy, and don't be standin' dar."
Aaron was soon examined, and pronounced "sound;" yet the conflicting statement about his age was not satisfactory.
Fortunately for Marion, she was spared the pain of undergoing such an examination. Mr. Cardney, a teller in one of the banks, had just been married, and wanted a maid-servant for his wife, and, passing through the market in the early part of the day, was pleased with the young slave's appearance, and his dwelling the quadroon found a much better home than often falls to the lot of a slave sold in the New Orleans market.
CHAPTER VII.
THE SLAVE-HOLDING PARSON.
The Rev. James Wilson was a native of the State of Connecticut, where he was educated for the ministry in the Methodist persuasion. His father was a strict follower of John Wesley, and spared no pains in his son's education, with the hope that he would one day be as renowned as the leader of his sect. James had scarcely finished his education at New Haven, when he was invited by an uncle, then on a visit to his father, to spend a few months at Natchez in Mississippi. Young Wilson accepted his uncle's invitation, and accompanied him to the South. Few young men, and especially clergymen, going fresh from college to the
