befall one of her race. She had been brought up in the house, and was lady’s maid to Stowe’s wife. Stowe had consented to their marriage, hoping thereby to prevent Tom of availing himself of the U. G. R. R., in sight of whose depots along the Ohio River they often passed. They had a boy, who was the pride and joy of his mother. Stowe had bought some colts in Texas, and sent Tom to bring them home; and while he was absent the old man sold their little boy, only three years old, to a trader, in a paroxysm of rage because Lucy would not be unfaithful to Tom. When he came home, he found her but just alive, only able to tell him that Georgiehad been sold to a trader by the name of Austin, and carried off. She died of a broken heart for the loss of her boy. It was difficult for Tom to get through this part of his story, and the meanest copperhead in our village, could he have heard and seen him, would never again dispute that a slave has a soul.
After Tom had buried his wife, his first impulse was towards finding his boy, determined not to leave his master until he had learned something about him. Stowe avoided going north by their usual route, fearing, no doubt, that he would lose his man. At the end of two years Tom saw Austin, who told him that he sold Georgie to a lawyer in Savannah, and soon after, beingin that city with his master, he called on the lawyer at his office, and asked him if he had bought such a boy. “Yes,” he said, “I bought him, though I always was opposed to owning slaves, but they were selling the little fellow at auction. He would not have sold for $50 but for his beauty. They had bid $700 ; his beauty and his grief were too much for my caution and my principles, and on the spur of excitement, I bid $800, and no one would raise the bid. “Now,” said he, “I suppose he
