"Then, Huldy, hear me, lady with such purty eyes,--I must believe in
'em, wicked as all you look at has been! I never stole anything in my
life, nor trampled on a worm if I could git out of his path,--so help me
my poor mother's prayers! Huldy, how shall I save myself from these
wicked men and the laws I never broke till Sunday? Oh, tell me what to
do!"
"Do anything but commit their crimes," she answered. "Promise me you
will never do that! Let us begin, and be the friends I wished we might
be, before I ever heard you speak. What is your name?"
"Levin--Levin Dennis. My father's lost to me, and mother, too."
"Then Heaven has answered my many prayers, Levin, to give me something
to cherish and protect. I am almost a woman: oh, what is my dreadful
doom?--to become a woman here among these wolves of men, who meet around
my stepfather's tavern to buy the blood and souls of people born free.
Joe Johnson sells everything; he has often threatened to sell me to some
trader whose bold and wicked eyes stared at me so coarsely, and I have
heard them talk of a price, as if I was the merchandise to be
transferred--I, in whose veins every drop of blood is a white woman's."?
"I want you to watch over me, Huldy: I'm a poor drunken boy, my boat
chartered to Joe Johnson fur a week an' paid fur. Tell me what to do,
an' I'll do it."
"First," she said, "you must eat something and drink milk--nothing
stronger.
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