"Amy, God loves you." "I doesn't love Him." "Don't talk that way, child." "Well, you go off, and let me 'lone." "I wish to comfort you." "I doesn't want no comfort." "Come," said I, "talk freely to me. It will do you good." "I tells you I doesn't want no good for to happen to me. I'd rather be like I is." "Amy," and it was with reluctance I ventured to allude to a subject so painful; but I deemed it necessary to excite her painfully rather than leave her in that granite-like despair, "you may yet have your sisters and little brother restored to you." "How? how? and when?" she screamed with joy, and started up, her wild eyes beaming with exultation. "Don't be so wild," I said, softly, as I took her little, hard hand, and pressed it tenderly. "But, say, Ann, ken I iver git de chilen back? Has Masser said anything 'bout it? Oh, it 'pears like too much joy fur me to iver know any more. Poor little Ben, it 'pears like I kan't do nothin' but hear him cry. And maybe dey is a beatin' of him now. Oh, Lor' a marcy! what shill I do?" and she rocked her body back and forward in a transport of grief. There are some sorrows for which human sympathy is unavailing. What to that broken heart were words of condolence? Did she care to know that others felt for her? that another heart wept for her grief? No, like Rachel of old, she would not be comforted. "Oh, Ann!" she added, "please leave me by myself. It 'pears like I kan't get my breath when anybody is by me. I wants to be by myself. Jist let me 'lone for a little while, then I'll talk to you." I understood the feeling, and complied with her request. The slave is so distrustful of sympathy, he is so accustomed to deception, that he feels secure in the indulgence of his grief only when he is alone. The petted white, who has friends to cluster round him in the hour of affliction, cannot understand the loneliness and solitude which the slave covets as a boon. For several days young master lingered on, declining visibly. The hectic flush deepened upon his cheek, and the glitter of his eye grew fearfully bright, and there was that sharp contraction of his features that denoted the certain approach of death. His cough became low and even harder, and those dreadful night-sweats increased. He lay in a stupid state, half insensible from the effects of sedatives. Dr. Mandy, who visited him three times a day, did not conceal from Mr. Peterkin the fact of his son's near dissolution. "Save his life, doctor, and you shall have all I own." "If my art could do it, sir, I would, without fee, exert myself for his restoration." Yet for a poor old negro his art could do nothing unfeed. Do ye wonder that we are goaded on to acts of desperation, when every day, nay, every moment, brings to our eyes some injustice that is done us--and all because our faces are dark?