"Well, Thomas, have you looked over the lot?" asked another planter.
"Yes, though I am shortened in money, and unable to purchase to-day."
"Well, Bradley, what have you seen among them?"
"There are many fine, lusty fellows; but I was most interested and grieved in one."
"He is a man who has known refinement and ease, is perchance thirty-five and has with him a child."
"Yes, a maid not to exceed ten years, but very beautiful with her golden hair and soft blue eyes."
"His is truly a pathetic story as I have heard it. It seems he was a widower with his child wandering about the country, when he fell in with some of the Duke of Monmouth's people and enlisted. He was captured at Sedgemore, and condemned by Jeffries. The child was left to wander at will; but by some means she accompanied her father, managed to smuggle herself on shipboard, and was not discovered until the vessel was well out to sea. Then the captain, who was a humane man, permitted them to remain together to the end of the voyage. She is with her father now, and a prettier little maid I never saw."
"By the mass! I will go and see her," cried Hull. "If she be all you say, I will buy them both."
With the cold, heartless laugh of a natural tyrant, Hull answered:
"It will be all the same. He who purchases the father will have the maid also."
He went to the place where the slaves were confined and gazed on the lot, very much as a cattle dealer might look upon a herd he contemplated purchasing. His gaze soon fastened on a fine, manly person in whose proud eye the sullen fires were but half subdued. He stood with his arms folded across his broad chest and his eye fixed upon a beautiful girl at his side.
The captive spoke not. A pair of handcuffs were on his wrists, and the chains came almost to the ground; but slavery and chains could not subdue the proud captive.
Hull delighted in punishing those whom he disliked. He was a papist at heart and consequently in sympathy with James II., so for this indented slave he incurred from the very first a most bitter dislike. When the slave was brought forth to be sold, he bid twelve pounds for him. This was two pounds more than the required price, and he became the purchaser.
"You are mine," cried Hull to the servant. "Come with me." The father turned his great brown eyes dim with moisture upon his child, and Hull, interpreting the look, added, "Hold, I will buy the maid also."