They know
and fear the fierce penalty: they are forced to fall back,--to seize
his person, his property, his personal effects.
In this dilemma, Marston repairs to the city, attempts to make an
arrangement with his creditors, singularly fails; he can effect
nothing. Wherever he goes his salutation meets a cold, measured
response; whisper marks him a swindler. The knife stabs deep into
the already festered wound. Misfortune bears heavily upon a
sensitive mind; but accusation of wrong, when struggling under
trials, stabs deepest into the heart, and bears its victim suffering
to the very depths of despair.
To add to this combination of misfortunes, on his return to the
plantation he found it deserted,--a sheriff's keeper guarding his
personal effects, his few remaining negroes seized upon and marched
into the city for the satisfaction of his debts. Clotilda has been
seized upon, manacled, driven to the city, committed to prison.
Another creditor has found out the hiding-place of the children;
directs the sheriff, who seizes upon them, like property of their
kind, and drags them to prison. Oh, that prison walls were made for
torturing the innocent!
Marston is left poor upon the world; Ellen Juvarna is in the hands
of a resurrectionist; Nicholas-a bright boy he has grown-is within
the dark confines of a prison cell, along with Clotilda and Annette.
Melancholy broods over the plantation now. The act of justice,--the
right which Marston saw through wrong, and which he had intended to
carry out,--is now beyond his power.
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