IT TOOK BUT A SHORT TIME to familiarize Tom with all that was to be hoped or feared in his new way of life. He was an expert and efficient workman in whatever he undertook; and was, both from habit and principle, very prompt and faithful. Quiet and peaceable in his disposition, he hoped, by unremitting diligence, to avert from himself at least a portion of the evils of his condition. He saw enough of abuse and misery to make him sick and weary; but he determined to toil on, with religious patience, committing himself to Him that judgeth righteously, not without hope that some way of escape might yet be opened to him.

  Legree took silent note of Tom's ability. He rated him as a first-class hand; and yet he felt a secret dislike to him—the native antipathy of bad to good. He saw plainly that when, as was often the case, his violence and brutality fell on the helpless, Tom took notice of it; for, so subtle is the atmosphere of opinion, that it will make itself felt, without words; and the opinion of even a slave may annoy a master. Tom in various ways manifested a tenderness of feeling, a commiseration for his fellow sufferers, strange and new to them, which was watched with a jealous eye by Legree. He had purchased Tom with a view of eventually making him a sort of overseer, with whom he might, at times, intrust his affairs, in short absences from the place; and, in his view, the first, second, and third requisite for that place, was hardness. Legree made up his mind, that as Tom was not hard to his hand, he would harden him forthwith; and some few weeks after Tom came to the place, he determined to commence the process.

  One moming, when the hands were mustered for the field, Tom noticed, with surprise, a newcomer among them, whose appearance excited his attention. It was a woman, tall and slenderly formed, with remarkably delicate hands and feet, and dressed in neat and respectable garments. By the looks of her face, she might have been between thirty-five and forty; and it was a face that once seen could never be forgotten—one of those that, at a glance, seemed to convey to us an idea of a wild, painful, and romantic history.

  Her forehead was high, and her eyebrows marked with beautiful clearness. Her straight, well-formed nose, her finely cut mouth, and the graceful contour of her head and neck, showed that she must once have been very beau-

  Where she came from, or who she was, Tom did not know. The first he did know, she was walking by his side, erect and proud, in the dim gray of the morning. To the gang, however, she was known; for there was much looking and turning of heads, and a smothered yet apparent exultation among the miserable, ragged, half-starved creatures by whom she was surrounded.

  "Got to come to it at last—glad of it!" said one.

  "He, he, he!" said another; "you'll know how good it is, misse!"

  "We'll see her work!"

  "Wonder if she'll get a cuttin' up at night, like the rest of us!"

  "I'd be glad to see her down for a floggin', I'll be bound," said another.

  The woman took no notice of these taunts, but walked on, with the same expression of angry scorn, as if she heard nothing. Tom had always lived among refined and cultivated people, and he felt intuitively, from her air and bearing, that she belonged to that class; but how or why she could be fallen to those degrading circumstances, he could not tell. The woman neither looked at him nor spoke to him, though, all the way to the field, she kept close at his side.

  Tom was soon busy with his work; but, as the woman was at no great distance from him, he often glanced at her at her work. He saw that a native adroitness and handiness made the task to her an easier one than it proved to many. She picked very fast and very clean, and with the air of scorn as if she despised both the work and the disgrace and humiliation of the circumstances in which she was placed.

  In the course of the day, Tom was working near the mulatto woman who had been bought in the same lot with himself. She was evidently in a condition of great suffering, and Tom often heard her praying, as she wavered and trembled and seemed about to fall down. Tom silently, as he came near to her, transferred several handfuls of cotton from his own sack to hers.

  "O, don't do that, don't!" said the woman, looking surprised, "it'll get you into trouble."

  Just then Sambo came up. He seemed to have a special spite against this woman; and, flourishing his whip, said, in brutal tones; "What's dis

  Tom silently resumed his task; but the woman, before at the last point of exhaustion, fainted.

  "I'll bring her to," said the driver, with a brutal grin. "I'll give her something better than camphire!" and taking a pin from his coat sleeve, he buried it to the head in her flesh. The woman groaned and half rose. "Get up, you beast, and work, will yer, or I'll show you a trick more!"

  The woman seemed stimulated, for a few moments, to an unnatural strength, and worked with desperate eagerness.

  "See that you keep to dat ar," said the man, "or yer'll wish yer's dead to-night, I reckin."

  "That I do now!" Tom heard her say. At the risk of all that he might suffer, Tom came forward again, and put all the cotton in his sack into the woman's.

  "O, you mustn't! You dunno what'll happen to you!" said the woman.

  "I can bear it!" said Tom, "better'n you;" and he was at his place again. Suddenly the strange woman whom we have described, and who had, in the course of her work, come near enough to hear Tom's last remark, raised her heavy black eyes, and fixed them for a second on him; then, taking a quantity of cotton from her basket, she placed it in his.

  "You know nothing about this place," she said, "or you wouldn't have done that. When you've been here a month, you'll be doing your own work and not helping anyone; you'll find it hard enough to take care of your own skin."

  "The Lord forbid, missis!" said Tom, using instinctively to his field companion the respectful form proper to the high bred with whom he had lived.

  "The Lord never visits these parts," said the woman, bitterly, as she went nimbly forward with her work; and again the scornful smile curled her lips.

  But the action of the woman had been seen by the driver across the field; and, flourishing his whip he came up to her.

  "What! what!" he said to the woman, with an air of triumph, "you a foolin? Go along! yer under me now—mind yourself, or yer'll cotch it!"

  A glance like sheet lightning suddenly flashed from those black eyes; and, facing about, with quivering lip and dilated nostrils, she drew herself up, and fixed a glance, blazing with rage and scorn, on the driver.

  "Dog!" she said, "touch me if you dare! I've power enough, yet, to have you torn by the dogs, burned alive, cut to inches! I've only to say the word!"

  "What de devil you here for, den?" said the man, evidently cowed, and sullenly retreating a step or two. "Didn't mean no harm, Miss Cassy!"

  "Keep your distance, then!" said the woman, and, in truth, the man seemed greatly inclined to attend to something at the other end of the field, and started off in quick time.

  The woman turned suddenly to her work, and labored with a dispatch that was perfectly astonishing to Tom. She seemed to work by magic. Before the day was through, her basket was filled, crowded down and piled, and she had several times put largely into Tom's basket. Long after dusk, the whole weary train, with their baskets on their heads, defiled up to the building appropriated to the storing and weighing the cotton. Legree was there, busily conversing with the two drivers.

  "Dat ar Tom's gwine to make a powerful deal o' trouble; kept a puttin' into Lucy's basket. One o' these yer dat will get all der niggers to feelin' 'bused, if mas'r don't watch him," said Sambo.

  "Hey-dey! The black cuss!" said Legree. "He'll have to get a breakin' in, won't he, boys?"

  Both negroes grinned a horrid grin at this intimation.

  "Ay, ay! let Mas'r Legree alone, for breakin' in! De debil herself could not beat mas'r at dat!" said Quimbo.

  "Wal, boys, the best way is to give him the flogging to do till he gets over his notions. Break him in!"

  "Lord, mas'r will have hard work to get dat out o' him!"

  "It'll have to come out of him, though!" said Legree, as he rolled his tobacco in his mouth.

  "Now, dar's Lucy, who was real aggravatin' and lazy, and jest sulkin' round. She wouldn't do nothin', and, Tom, he stuck up for her."

  "He did, eh! Wal, then, Tom shall have the pleasure of flogging her. It will be good practise for him, and he won't put it on to the gal like you devils, neither."

  "Wal, but, mas'r, Tom and Misse Cassy, and dey among 'em, filled Lucy's basket. I ruther guess der weight's in it, mas'r!"

  "I do the weighing!" said Legree emphatically. Both the drivers again laughed their diabolical laughter.

  "So," he added, "Misse Cassy did her day's work."

  "She picks like de debil and all his angels."

  "She's got 'em all in her, I believe!" said Legree; and, growling a brutal oath, he proceeded to the weighing room.

  Slowly the weary, dispirited creatures wound their way into the room, and, with crouching reluctance, presented their baskets to be weighed.

  Legree noted on a slate, on the side of which was pasted a list of names, the amount.

  Tom's basket was weighed and approved; and he looked with an anxious glance for the success of the woman he had befriended.

  Tottering with weakness, she came forward, and delivered her basket. It was full weight, as Legree well perceived; but, affecting anger, he said:

  "What, you lazy beast! short again! stand aside, you'll catch it, pretty soon!"

  The woman gave a groan of utter despair, and sat down on a board.

  The person who had been called Misse Cassy now came forward, and, with a haughty, negligent air, delivered her basket. As she delivered it, Legree looked in her eyes with a sneering, yet inquiring glance.

  She fixed her black eyes steadily on him, her lips moved slightly, and she said something in French. What it was, no one knew; but Legree's face became perfectly demoniacal in its expression, as she spoke; he had raised his hand, as if to strike—a gesture which she regarded with fierce disdain, as she turned and walked away.

  "And now," said Legree, "come here, you Tom. You see, I telled ye I didn't buy ye jest for the common work; I mean to promote ye and make a driver of ye; and to-night ye may jest as well begin to get yer hand in. Now, ye jest take this yer gal and flog her; ye've seen enough on't to know how."

  "I begs mas'r's pardon," said Tom; "hopes mas'r won't set me at that. It's what I ain't used to—never did—and can't do, no way possible."

  "Ye'll larn a pretty smart chance o' things ye never did know, before I've done with ye!" said Legree, taking up a cowhide, and striking Tom a heavy blow across the cheek, and following up the infliction by a shower of blows.

  "There," he said, as he stopped to rest; "now, will ye tell me yer can't?"

  "Yes, mas'r," said Tom, putting up his hand to wipe away the blood that trickled down his face. "I'm willin' to work, night and day, and work as long as there's life and breath in me; but this yer thing I can't feel it right to do—and, mas'r, I never shall do it—never."

  Tom had a remarkably smooth, soft voice, and a habitually respectful manner, that had given Legree an idea that he would be cowardly and easily subdued. When he spoke these last words, a thrill of amazement went through every one; the poor woman clasped her hands, and said, "O, Lord!" and every one involuntarily looked at one another and drew in their breath.

  Legree looked stupefied and confounded; but at last burst forth with: "What! ye blasted black beast! tell me ye don't think it right to do what I tell ye! What have any of you cussed cattle to do with thinking what's right? I'll put a stop to it! why, what do ye think ye are? May be ye think yer a gentleman, master Tom, to be telling your master what's right and what ain't. So you pretend it's wrong to flog the gal!"

  "I think so, mas'r," said Tom; "the poor crittur's sick and feeble; it would be downright cruel and it's what I never will do, nor begin to. If you mean to kill me, mas'r, kill me; but, as to my raisin' my finger agin any one here, I never shall—I'll die first!"

  Tom spoke in a mild voice, but with a decision that could not be mistaken. Legree shook with anger; his greenish eyes glared fiercely, and his very whiskers seemed to curl with passion; but, like some ferocious beast, that plays with its victim before he devours it, he kept back his strong impulse to immediate violence, and broke out into bitter raillery.

  "Well, here is a pious dog, at last, let down among us sinners! a saint, a gentleman, and no less, to talk to us sinners about our sins! Powerful holy critter, he must be! Here, you rascal, you make believe to be so pious—didn't you ever hear out of yer Bible, 'Servants, obey your masters'? Ain't I yer master? Didn't I pay down twelve hundred dollars cash, for all there is inside yer old cussed black shell?Ain't yer mine now, body and soul?" he cried, giving Tom a violent kick with his heavy boot; "tell me!"

  In the very depth of physical suffering, bowed by brutal oppression, this question shot a gleam of joy and triumph through Tom's soul. He suddenly stretched himself up, and, looking earnestly to heaven, he exclaimed:

  "No! no! no! my soul ain't yours, mas'r. You haven't bought it—ye can't buy it ! It's been bought and paid for, by one that is able to keep it—no matter, no matter, you can't harm me!"

  "I can't," said Legree with a sneer; "we'll see—we'll see! Here, Sambo, Quimbo, give this dog such a breakin' in as he won't get over, this month!"

  The two gigantic negroes that now laid hold of Tom, with fiendish exultation in their faces, might have formed no unapt personification of the powers of darkness. The poor woman screamed with apprehension, and all rose, as by a general impulse, while they dragged him unresisting from the place.

  It was late at night, and Tom lay groaning and bleeding alone in an old forsaken room of the gin-house, among pieces of broken machinery, piles of damaged cotton, and other rubbish which had there accumulated.

  The night was damp and close, and the thick air swarmed with myriads of mosquitoes, which increased the restless torture of his wounds; while a burning thirst—a torture beyond all others—filled up the uttermost measure of physical anguish.

  "O, good Lord, do look down—give me the victory!—give me the victory over all!" prayed poor Tom, in his anguish.

  A footstep was heard in the room behind him, and the light of a lantern flashed in his eyes.

  "Who's there? Oh, for the Lord's massy, give me some water, please!"

  The woman Cassy—for it was she—set down her lantern, and, pouring water from a bottle, raised his head, and gave him drink. Another and another cup were drained, with feverish eagerness.

  "Drink all ye want," she said; "I knew how it would be. It isn't the first time I've been out in the night, carrying water to such as you."

  "Thank you, missis," said Tom, when he had done drinking.

  "Don't call me missis! I am a miserable slave, like yourself—a lower one than you can ever be!" said she bitterly; "but now," said she, going to the door, and dragging in a small straw bed over which she had spread cloths wet with cold water, "try, my poor fellow, to roll yourself on to this."

  Stiff with wounds and bruises, Tom was a long time in accomplishing this movement; but, when done, he felt a sensible relief from the cooling application to his wounds.

  The woman, whom long practise with the victims of brutality had made familiar with many healing arts, went on to make many applications to Tom's wounds, by means of which he was soon somewhat relieved.

  "Now," said the woman, when she had raised his head on a roll of damaged cotton, which served for a pillow, "that's the best I can do for you."

  Tom thanked her, and the woman, sitting down on the floor, drew up her knees, and embracing them with her arms, looked fixedly before her, with a bitter and painful expression of countenance. Her bonnet fell back, and long, wavy streams of black hair fell around her melancholy face.

  "It is no use, my poor fellow!" she broke out at last, "it's no use, this you have been trying to do. You were a brave fellow—you had the right on your side; but it's all in vain, and out of the question for you to struggle. You are in the devil's hands—he is the strongest, and you must give up!"

  Give up! had not human weakness and physical agony whispered that before? Tom started; for the bitter woman, with her wild eyes and melancholy voice, seemed to him an embodiment of the temptation with which he had been wrestling.

  "O Lord! O Lord!" he groaned, "how can I give up?"

  "There's no use calling on the Lord—he never hears," said the woman, steadily; "there isn't any God, I believe; or, if there is, he's taken sides against us all. All goes against us, heaven and earth. You see, you don't know anything about it—I do. I've been on this place five years, body and soul, under this man's foot; and I hate him as I do the devil! Here you are, on a lone plantation, ten miles from any other, in the swamps; not a white person here, who could testify, if you were burned alive, if you were scalded, if you were cut into inch pieces, set up for the dogs to tear, or hung up and whipped to death. There's no law here, of God or man, that can do you, or anyone of us, the least good; and this man I there's no earthly thing that he's too good to do. I could make anyone's hair rise, and their teeth chatter, if I should only tell what I've seen and been knowing to, here—and it's no use resisting! Did I want to live with him? Wasn't I a woman delicately bred; and he—God in heaven! what was he and is he? And yet, I've lived with him, these five years, and cursed every moment of my life—night and day! And now, he's got a new one—a young thing, only fifteen, and

  she brought up, she says, piously. Her good mistress taught her to read the Bible; and she's brought her Bible here!" and the woman laughed a wild laugh, that rang with a strange, supernatural sound, through the old, ruined shed.

  Tom folded his hands; all was darkness and horror.

  "O Jesus! Lord Jesus! have you quite forgot us poor critturs?" burst forth, at last—"help, Lord, I perish!"

  The woman sternly continued:

  "And what are these miserable, low dogs you work with, that you should, suffer on their account? Every one of them would turn against you, the first time they got a chance. They are all of 'em as low and cruel to each other as they can be; there's no use in your suffering to keep from hurting them."

  "Poor critturs !" said Tom—"what made 'em cruel?—and, if I give out, I shall get used to it, and grow, little by little, just like 'em! No, no, missis! I've lost everything—wife, and children and home, and a kind mas'r—and he would have set me free, if he'd only lived a week longer. I've lost everything in this world, and it's clean gone, forever—and now I can't lose heaven, too; no, I can't get to be wicked, besides it all!"

  "But it can't be that the Lord will lay sin to our account," said the woman; "he won't charge it to us, when we're forced to it; he'll charge it to them that drove us to it."

  "Yes," said Tom, "but that won't keep us from growing wicked. If I get to be as hard-hearted as that ar Sambo, and as wicked, it won't make much odds to me how I come so; it's the bein' so—that ar's what I'm dreadin' the most."

  The woman fixed a wild, startled look on Tom, as if a new thought had struck her; and then, heavily groaning, said:

  "O God a' mercy! you speak the truth! O—O—O!" and with groans, she fell on the floor, like one crushed and writhing under the extremity of mental anguish.

  There was silence, awhile, in which the breathing of both parties could be heard, when Tom faintly said, "O, please, missis!"

  The woman suddenly rose up, with her face composed to its usual stem, melancholy expression.

  "Please, missis, I saw them throw my coat in that ar comer, and in my coat pocket is my Bible—if missis would please get it for me."

  Cassy went and got it. Tom opened, at once, to a heavily marked passage, much worn, of the last scenes in the life of Him by whose stripes we are healed.

  "If missis would only be so good as to read that ar—it's better than water."

  Cassy took the book, with a proud air, and looked over the passage. She then read aloud, in a soft voice, and with a beauty of intonation that was peculiar, that touching account of anguish and of glory. Often, as she read, her voice faltered, and sometimes failed her altogether, when she would stop, with an air of frigid composure, till she had mastered herself. When she came to the touching words: "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do," she threw down the book, and burying her face in the heavy masses of her hair, she sobbed aloud, with a convulsive violence.

  Tom was weeping also, and occasionally uttering a smothered ejaculation.

  "If we could only keep up to that ar!" said Tom—"it seemed to come so natural to him, and we have to fight so hard for't! O Lord, help us! O blessed Lord Jesus, do help us!"

  "O dear!" said Cassy, "I've heard all this crying and praying before; and yet, they've been broken down; and brought under. There's Emmeline, she's trying to hold on, and you're trying—but what's the use? You must give up, or be killed by inches."

  "Well, then, I will die!" said Tom. "Spin it out as long as they can, they can't help my dying, some time—and after that, they can't do no more. I'm clar, I'm set; I know the Lord will help me, and bring me through."

  The woman did not answer; she sat with her black eyes intently fixed on the floor.

  "May be it's the way," she murmured to herself; "but those that have given up, there's no hope for them—none! We live in filth and grow loathsome, till we loathe ourselves, and we long to die, and we don't dare to kill ourselves! No hope! no hope! no hope—this girl now—just as old as I was!"

  Cassy then told Tom her pitiful story. She had been brought up in luxury, but her mother was a slave woman. Although her father had always meant to set her free, he died very suddenly, and she was sold along with the rest of his property to pay his debts. She was repeatedly sold, and passed from hand to hand, until she grew faded and wrinkled, and had a fever. Then Legree bought her and brought her here.

  She hurried through her story, with a wild, passionate utterance; sometimes seeming to address it to Tom, and sometimes speaking as in a soliloquy. So vehement and overpowering was the force with which she spoke, that, for a season, Tom was beguiled even from the pain of his wounds, and, raising himself on one elbow, watched her as she paced restlessly up and down, her long black hair swaying heavily about her, as she moved.

  "You tell me," she said, after a pause, "that there is a God—a God that looks down and sees all these things? Maybe it's so The sisters in the convent used to tell me of a day of judgment, when everything is coming to light—won't there be any vengeance then?"

  "They think it's nothing what we suffer—nothing what our children suffer! It's all a small matter; yet I've walked the streets when it seemed as if I had misery enough in my one heart to sink the city. I've wished the houses would fall on me, or the stones sink under me. Yes! and, in the judgment day, I will stand up before God, a witness against those that have ruined me and my children, body and soul!

  "When I was a girl, I thought I was religious; I used to love God and prayer. Now I am a lost soul, pursued by devils that torment me day and night; they keep pushing me on and on—and I'll do it, too, some of these days!" she said, clinching her hand, while an insane light glanced in her black eyes. "I'll send him where he belongs—a short way too—one of these nights, if they burn me alive for it!" A wild, long laugh rang through the deserted room, and ended in a hysteric sob; she threw herself on the floor, in convulsive sobbings and struggles.

  In a few moments, the frenzy fit seemed to pass off; she rose, slowly, and seemed to collect herself.

  "Can I do anything more for you, my poor fellow?" she said, approaching where Tom lay; "shall I give you some more water?"

  There was a graceful and compassionate sweetness in her voice and manner, as she said this, that formed a strange contrast with the former wildness.

  Tom drank the water, and looked earnestly and pitifully into her face.

  "O, missis, I wish you'd go to him that can give you living waters!"

  "Go to him! Where is he? Who is he?" said Cassy.

  "Him that you read of to me—the Lord."

  "I used to see a picture of him, over the altar, when I was a girl," said Cassy, her dark eyes fixing themselves in an expression of mournful reverie; "but he isn't here! There's nothing here but sin and long, long, long despair! Oh!" She laid her hand on her breast, and drew in her breath, as if to lift a heavy weight.

  Tom looked as if he would speak again, but she cut him short with a decided gesture.

  "Don't talk, my poor fellow. Try to sleep, if you can." And, placing water within his reach, and making him whatever little more comfortable she could, Cassy left the shed.