"True, true, I scorn to deceive so good a friend," rejoined the negro, half afraid that Irving would recede from his implied bargain: "You shall certainly see this refractory woman; that is, she is only obstinate when I remove the boy. I wish they had killed the young urchin at once, when they carried her off. She is very gentle when he is with her: she only chooses to sing those mournful songs about Tumiáh: I suppose he was her husband. However, at all events, the boy cannot go to the palace with her." During this conversation, they had reached the hut in which the poor slave was confined alone, in the hope of making her yield to the will of the African, by consenting to be conveyed to the palace without her child. Irving followed the negro into the hut. The moment the latter got within it, the miserable inmate uttered a piercing shriek, and clasped her child with convulsive strength to her bosom, imploring the tyrant not to tear him from her widowed arms. There was one chord in the soul of Irving, which, amid the circumstances of his life, and despite of time, yet responded. It was the memory of his mother's caresses, when in his childhood she became a widow. The scene he now witnessed, struck powerfully on this chord of feeling. The distraction of the captive, her extreme youth, her beauty, the neglect of grief so apparent in her simple dress, her unornamented hair, her trembling limbs, her heaving bosom, her eloquent eye, her fevered lip, her attitude, and the energy with which she held her now alarmed child; altogether, combined a picture, which coming suddenly upon his previously somewhat softened feelings, had a powerful effect upon him, and, for a time, made him forget he was a slave-dealer, and caused the nobler feeling of the man to prevail. He determined, if possible, to save the wretched woman from the fate that awaited her; forgetting that, perhaps, one equally horrible might be her lot, did she become his property. When, therefore, he heard the African tyrant threaten her with a flogging if she persisted in singing such mournful songs, he almost involuntarily said: "If you are willing to barter her and the child, for what I named, and a selection of those trinkets you admired, to which I will add four gallons of rum, we are agreed upon the bargain." The negro again regarded Irving with a half suspicious, half incredulous glance, but remained silent. "I am serious," said Irving; "are we agreed?" "Let me see," muttered the negro to himself; "that fong, (sword,) mounted in silver gilt, and embossed handle; the chest with fine brandy; ten fine kiddos; (guns;) trinkets to please woollima moosa, (handsome wife,) and four gallons of rum: delicious rum make me merry, happy. Make the rum eight gallons," he added aloud to Irving, "and she," pointing to the being he was thus selling, "she is yours."--"And the boy, remember?" replied Irving. "O yes, the boy, the boy, to be sure," reiterated the African, hardly knowing how to