As soon as I could leave her, I went to a friend to ask his advice and assistance. Through him, I learned that what I feared was but too true. By the usages and laws of the State, she was still a slave, and liable to be hurried from me and sold to the highest bidder, or doomed to any drudgery her master might put her to, and even flogged at will. There was only one remedy that could be applied; and the specific was dollars. My friend was so kind as to negotiate with the ruffian. One thousand was demanded, and cheerfully paid. I carried the manumission home to my sorrowing Mary. From her I learned, as she lay in bed--her beautiful face buried in the clothes, and her voice choked by sobs--that the wretch who had called on me was her own father, whose avarice could not let slip this opportunity of extorting money. With an inconsistency often found in man, he had given Mary one of the best of educations, and for long treated her as a favoured child, during the life of her mother, who was one of his slaves, a woman of colour, and with some accomplishments, which she had acquired in a genteel family. At her death, Mary had gone as governess to my landlady; but, until the day of her father's claim, she had never dreamed of being a slave. I allowed the vessel to sail without me, wound up my affairs, and bade adieu for ever to the slave States. 'Tis now twenty years since I purchased a wife, after I had won her love, and I bless the day she was made mine; for I have had uninterrupted happiness in her and her offspring. The slave is now the happy wife and mother of five lovely children, who rejoice in their mother. After remaining some years in Leeds, I returned to Edinburgh. Widow Neil was dead; but one day I discovered, by mere chance, that the murder I committed in her house was on a _sheep_. MY BLACK COAT; OR, THE BREAKING OF THE BRIDE'S CHINA. Gentle reader, the simple circumstances I am about to relate to you, hang upon what is termed--a bad omen. There are few amongst the uneducated who have not a degree of faith in omens; and even amongst the better educated and well informed there are many who, while they profess to disbelieve them, and, indeed, do disbelieve them, yet feel them in their hours of solitude. I have known individuals who, in the hour of danger, would have braved the cannon's mouth, or defied death to his teeth, who, nevertheless, would have buried their heads in the bedclothes at the howling of a dog at midnight, or spent a sleepless night from hearing the tick, tick, of the spider, or the untiring song of the kitchen-fire musician--the jolly little cricket. The age of omens, however, is drawing to a close; for truth in its progress is trampling delusion of every kind under its feet; yet, after all, though a belief in omens is a superstition, it is one that carries with it a portion of the poetry of our nature. But to proceed with our story.