Adeline, shocked at the knowledge of a distress which she was not able to remove, was turning away as the woman said this, when she felt that the little boy pulled her gown gently, as if appealing to her generosity; while a surly-looking man, who was the creditor himself, forcing a passage through the crowd, said, 'Why, bring him along, and have done with it; here is a fuss to make indeed about that idle dog, and that ugly black toad!' Adeline till then had not recollected that she was a mulatto; and this speech, reflecting so brutally on her colour,--a circumstance which made her an object of greater interest to Adeline,--urged her to step forward to their joint relief with an almost irresistible impulse; especially when another man reproached the fellow for his brutality, and added, that he knew them both to be hard-working, deserving persons. But to disappoint Glenmurray of his promised pleasure was impossible; and having put sixpence in the tawny boy's hand, she was hastening to the fruiterer's, when the crowd, who were following William and the mulatto to the jail, whither the bailiffs were dragging rather than leading him, fell back to give air to the poor man, who had fainted on Savanna's shoulder, and seemed on the point of expiring--while she, with an expression of fixed despair, was gazing on his wan cheek. Adeline thought on Glenmurray's danger, and shuddered as she beheld the scene; she felt it but a too probable anticipation of the one in which she might soon be an actor. At this moment a man observed, 'If he goes to prison he will not live two days, that every one may see;' and the mulatto uttered a shriek of agony. Adeline felt it to her very soul; and, rushing forward, 'Sir, sir,' she exclaimed to the unfeeling creditor, 'if I were to give you a guinea now, and promise you two more a fortnight hence, would you release this poor man for the present?'