At a Girl's Mercy, or, The Fortunes of War — page 67: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

56 AT A GI8L’S MERCY. but did not return, she learned, when she asked of a lady in the room why he did not return, she learned the bitter, crushing truth—that he had sold her only the day before to the lady of the house where she was. The bitterness of her lot, free as she should have been at that moment, free as the birds of the air, yet bound irrevocably for life, with only the bare drop of sweet in her cup from her good-natured mis- tress that she would arrange in her will that she should never be sold again after her death—the bit- terness settled upon her like the chill of death, creeping up and up from faint comprehension toa full knowledge of what was upon her. And what could she do? She knew nothing of law, nothing of a way to right her wrong; all men who had author- ity were against her, and would let the man go free; she had nowhere to turn, and she bore the blow as many another such has been borne. By and by she married. Her husband was a sailor, in whose veins ran the purest African blood. He was kind to her when he was at home, and when her baby came, her heart was softened and her bonds almost forgotten. Then, when the child grew with a wild beauty of her own, with the high-spir- ited free blood of the forest and the hot deserts of the East in her veins, and the mother, even in bond- age, watched her grow and ripen to womanhood, in love and pride, the best loved of all her children, the blow fell upon them from the treachery of another white man who had promised the girl her freedom, promised her all things for her good, that her wrong should be righted and her life made happy—for to her proud spirit it was like death to be bound in slavery—and had violated his trust, and Eomicbooks.co