cost nothin';--never thought, yer know, of the gal's taking' on about
it,--but, Lord, yer oughter seen how she went on. Why, re'lly, she did
seem to me to valley the child more 'cause _'t was_ sickly and cross,
and plagued her; and she warn't making b'lieve, neither,--cried about
it, she did, and lopped round, as if she'd lost every friend she had.
It re'lly was droll to think on 't. Lord, there ain't no end to women's
notions."

"Wal, jest so with me," said Haley. "Last summer, down on Red river, I
got a gal traded off on me, with a likely lookin' child enough, and his
eyes looked as bright as yourn; but, come to look, I found him stone
blind. Fact--he was stone blind. Wal, ye see, I thought there warn't no
harm in my jest passing him along, and not sayin' nothin'; and I'd got
him nicely swapped off for a keg o' whiskey; but come to get him away
from the gal, she was jest like a tiger. So 't was before we started,
and I hadn't got my gang chained up; so what should she do but ups on
a cotton-bale, like a cat, ketches a knife from one of the deck hands,
and, I tell ye, she made all fly for a minit, till she saw 't wan't no
use; and she jest turns round, and pitches head first, young un and all,
into the river,--went down plump, and never ris."

"Bah!" said Tom Loker, who had listened to these stories with
ill-repressed disgust,--"shif'less, both on ye! _my_ gals don't cut up
no such shines, I tell ye!"

"Indeed! how do you help it?" said Marks, briskly.

"Help it? why, I buys a gal, and if she's got a young un to be sold, I
jest walks up and puts my fist to her face, and says, 'Look here, now,
if you give me one word out of your head, I'll smash yer face in. I