Reports have spread among the professedly knowing that Marston can
never have made away with all his property in so few years. And the
manner being so invisible, the charge becomes stronger. Thus,
labouring between the pain of misfortune and the want of means to
resent suspicion, his cheerless chamber is all he can now call his
home. But he has two good friends left-Franconia, and the old negro
Bob. Franconia has procured a municipal badge for Daddy; and,
through it (disguised) he seeks and obtains work at stowing cotton
on the wharfs. His earnings are small, but his soul is large, and
embued with attachment for his old master, with whom he will share
them. Day by day the old slave seems to share the feelings of his
master,--to exhibit a solicitous concern for his comfort. Earning his
dollars and twenty-five cents a day, he will return when the week
has ended, full of exultation, spread out his earnings with
childlike simplicity, take thirty cents a day for himself, and slip
the remainder into Marston's pocket. How happy he seems, as he
watches the changes of Marston's countenance, and restrains the
gushing forth of his feelings!
It was on one of those nights upon which Daddy had received his
earnings, that Marston sat in his cheerless chamber, crouched over
the faint blaze of a few pieces of wood burning on the bricks of his
narrow fire-place, contemplating the eventful scenes of the few
years just passed. The more he contemplated the more it seemed like
a dream; his very head wearied with the interminable maze of his
difficulties.
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