"Do so, if you please, Ishmael; I trust entirely to your discretion," answered the judge. "Katie," said Ishmael to the old woman, who had never left the carriage, "can you direct us the way to find the man who bought you?" "Not to save my precious life, couldn't I, honey. Because you see, I nebber can t'ink o' de barbareous names dey has to de streets in dis outlan'ish place. But I knows where I is well 'nough. An' I knows where it is--de shop, I mean. And so if you'll put me up alongside ob de driver I can point him which way to go an' where to stop," said Katie. This proposition was agreed to. The carriage was stopped and Katie was let out and enthroned upon the seat beside the coachman, a Spaniard, whom she proceeded to direct more by signs and gestures than by words. After a very circuitous route through the city they turned into a narrow street and stopped before a house partly confectionery and partly tobacco shop. They alighted and went in, and found the proprietor doing duty behind his counter. The study of the Spanish language had been one of the few recreations Ishmael had allowed himself in his self-denying youth. He had afterwards improved his opportunities by speaking the language with such Spaniards as he met in society in Washington. He therefore now addressed the tobacconist in that tongue, and proceeded to explain the business that brought himself and his friend to the shop. The tobacconist, who was the ordinary, small, lean, yellow specimen of the middle class of Cubans, courteously invited the "senors" into the back parlor, where they all seated themselves and entered more fully into the subject, Ishmael acting as interpreter between the judge and the tobacconist, whose name they discovered to be Marinello. Marinello expressed himself very much shocked to find that his purchase of the woman was illegal, if not positively felonious; and that an appeal to the law would probably deprive him of his bargain, and possibly criminate him as the accomplice of the slave stealer. He said that he had given eight hundred dollars for the woman Katie, who had been extolled by the trader as a most extraordinary cook. And a "most extraordinary" one, he declared, he found her to be, for she did not appear to know beef from mutton or rice from coffee. And in fact she was good for nothing; for even if he sent her on an errand, as on this occasion, she would stay forever and one day after, and charge her sloth upon her infirmities. She had been a bitter bargain to him. Judge Merlin smiled; he knew Katie to be one of the best cooks in this world and to be in the enjoyment of perfect health, and so he supposed that the cunning old woman had taken a lesson from the sailor's monkey, who could talk, but wouldn't, for fear he should be made to work. And that she had feigned her ignorance and ill health to escape hard labor for one who she knew could have no just claim to her services.