But they all tarried in the great Queen City of the West--in chains, and in a felon's cell. There our preacher visited them again and again. There he saw the old grandfather and his aged companion, whose weary pilgrimage of unrequited toil and tears was nearly at its end. And there stood the young father and the heroic wife "Margaret." Said the preacher, "Margaret, why did you kill your child?" "It was my own," she said, "given me of God, to do the best a mother could in its behalf. _I have done the best I could!_ I would have done more and better for the rest! I knew it was better for them to go home to God than back to slavery." "But why did you not trust in God--why not wait and hope?" "I did wait, and then we dared to do, and fled in fear, but in hope; hope fled--God did not appear to save--_I did the best I could!"_ And who was this woman? A noble, womanly, amiable, _affectionate mother_. "But was she not deranged?" Not at all--calm, intelligent, but resolute and determined. "But was she not fiendish, or beside herself with passion?" No, she was most tender and affectionate, and all her passion was that of a _mother's fondest love_. I reasoned with her, said the preacher; tried to awaken a sense of guilt, and lead her to repentance and to Christ. But there was no remorse, no desire of pardon, no reception of Christ or his religion. To her it was a religion of _slavery_, more cruel than death. And where had she lived? where thus taught? Not down among the rice swamps of Georgia, or on the banks of Red River. No, but within sixteen miles of the Queen City of the West! In a nominally Christian family--whose master was most liberal in support of the Gospel, and whose mistress was a communicant at the Lord's table, and a professed follower of Christ! Here, in this family, where slavery is found in its mildest form, she had been kept in ignorance of God's will and word, and learned to know that the mildest form of American slavery, at this day of Christian civilization and Democratic liberty, was worse than death itself! She had learned by an experience of many years, that it was so bad she had rather take the life of her own dearest child, without the hope of Heaven for herself, than that _it_ should experience its unutterable agonies, which were to be found even in a Christian family! But here are her two little boys, of eight and ten years of age. Taking the eldest boy by the hand, the preacher said to him, kindly and gently, "Come here, my boy; what is your name?" "Tom, sir." "Yes, _Thomas_." "No sir, _Tom_." "Well, Tom, how old are you?" "Three _months_." "And how old is your little brother?" "Six _months_, sir!" "And have you no other name but Tom?" "No." "What is your father's