The above being "levied on to satisfy three
fi fas," &c. &c.
Poor Clotilda! her beauty has betrayed her: her mother was made a
slave, and she has inherited the sin which the enlightened of the
western world say shall be handed down from generation to generation
until time itself has an end. She is within the damp walls of a
narrow cell; the cold stones give forth their moisture to chill her
bleeding heart; the rust of oppression cuts into her very soul. The
warm sunlight of heaven, once so cheering, has now turned black and
cold to her. She sits in that cold confine, filled with sorrow,
hope, and expectation, awaiting her doom, like a culprit who
measures the chances of escape between him and the gallows. She
thinks of Marston. "He was a kind friend to me-he was a good
master," she says, little thinking that at that very moment he sits
in the saloon reading that southern death-warrant which dooms so
many to a life of woe. In it fathers were not mentioned-Marston's
feelings were spared that pain; mothers' tears, too, were omitted,
lest the sensitiveness of the fashionable world should be touched.
Pained, and sick at heart-stung by remorse at finding himself
without power to relieve Clotilda-he rises from his seat, and makes
arrangement to return to his plantation.
CHAPTER XV.
A SCENE OF MANY LIGHTS.
WE must leave Marston wending his way for the old plantation, and
pass to another phase of this complicated affair. In doing this, we
must leave the reader to draw from his own imagination much that
must have transpired previous to the present incidents.
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