_Walk._ Why, Squire, how you do talk! Eighteen hundred dollars for one gal? She must have been a screamer to bring that price. What sort of a lookin’ critter was she? I should like to have bought her.
_Wild._ She was a little of the smartest gal I’ve ever raised; that she was.
_Walk._ Then she was your own raising, was she?
_Wild._ Oh, yes; she was raised on my place, and if I could have kept her three or four years longer, and taken her to the market myself, I am sure I could have sold her for three thousand dollars. But you see, Mr. Walker, my wife got a little jealous, and you know jealousy sets the women’s heads a teetering, and so I had to sell the gal. She’s got straight hair, blue eyes, prominent features, and is almost white. Haskins will make a spec, and no mistake.
_Walk._ Why, Squire, was she that pretty little gal that I saw on your knee the day that your wife was gone, when I was at your place three years ago?
_Walk._ Well, now, Squire, I thought that was your daughter; she looked mightily like you. She was your daughter, wasn’t she? You need not be ashamed to own it to me, for I am mum upon such matters.
_Wild._ You know, Mr. Walker, that people will talk, and when they talk, they say a great deal; and people did talk, and many said the gal was my daughter; and you know we can’t help people’s talking. But here comes the Rev. Mr. Pinchen; I didn’t know that he was in the neighborhood.
_Walk._ It is Mr. Pinchen, as I live; jest the very man I wants to see.
Why, how do you do, Mr. Pinchen? What in the name of Jehu brings you down here to Muddy Creek? Any camp-meetins, revival meetins, death-bed scenes, or any thing else in your line going on down here? How is religion prosperin’ now, Mr. Pinchen? I always like to hear about religion.
_Mr. Pin._ Well, Mr. Walker, the Lord’s work is in good condition every where now. I tell you, Mr. Walker, I’ve been in the gospel ministry these thirteen years, and I am satisfied that the heart of man is full of sin and desperately wicked. This is a wicked world, Mr. Walker, a wicked world, and we ought all of us to have religion. Religion is a good thing to live by, and we all want it when we die. Yes, sir, when the great trumpet blows, we ought to be ready. And a man in your business of buying and selling slaves needs religion more than any body else, for it makes you treat your people as you should. Now, there is Mr. Haskins,—he is a slave-trader, like yourself. Well, I converted him. Before he got religion, he was one of the worst men to his niggers I ever saw; his heart was as hard as stone. But religion has made his heart as soft as a piece of cotton. Before I converted him, he would sell husbands from their wives, and seem to take delight in it; but now he won’t sell a man from his wife, if he can get anyone to buy both of them together. I tell you, sir, religion has done a wonderful work for him.