MINERVA

he next day after the funeral, along about noon-time, the girls’ joy got the first jolt. A couple of nigger traders come along, and the king sold them the niggers reasonable, for three-day drafts as they called it, and away they went, the two sons up the river to Memphis, and their mother down the river to Orleans. I thought them poor girls and them niggers would break their hearts for grief; they cried around each other, and took on so it most made me down sick to see it. The girls said they hadn’t ever dreamed of seeing the family separated or sold away from the town. I can’t ever get it out of my memory, the sight of them poor miserable girls and niggers hanging around each other’s necks and crying; and I reckon I couldn’t a stood it all, but would a had to bust out and tell on our gang if I hadn’t knowed the sale warn’t no account and the niggers would be back home in a week or two. The thing made a big stir in the town, too, and a good many come out flatfooted and said it was scandalous to separate the mother and the children that way. It injured the frauds some; but the old fool he bulled right along, spite of all the duke could say or do, and I tell you the duke was powerful uneasy. Next day was auction day. About broad day in the morning the king and the duke come up in the garret and woke me up, and I see by their look that there was trouble. The king says: “Was you in my room night before last?” “No, your majesty”—which was the way I always called him when nobody but our gang warn’t around. “Was you in there yisterday er last night?” “No, your majesty.” “Honor bright, now—no lies.” “Honor bright, your majesty, I’m telling you the truth. I hain’t been a-near your room since Miss Mary Jane took you and the duke and showed it to you.” The duke says: “Have you seen anybody else go in there?” “No, your grace, not as I remember, I believe.” “Stop and think.” I studied awhile and see my chance; then I says: “Well, I see the niggers go in there several times.” Both of them gave a little jump, and looked like they hadn’t ever expected it, and then like they _had_. Then the duke says: “What, _all_ of them?” “No—leastways, not all at once—that is, I don’t think I ever see them all come _out_ at once but just one time.” “Hello! When was that?” “It was the day we had the funeral. In the morning. It warn’t early, because I overslept. I was just starting down the ladder, and I see them.” “Well, go on, _go_ on! What did they do? How’d they act?” “They didn’t do nothing. And they didn’t act anyway much, as fur as I see. They tiptoed away; so I seen, easy enough, that they’d shoved in there to do up your majesty’s room, or something, s’posing you was up; and found you _warn’t_ up, and so they was hoping to slide out of the way of trouble without waking you up, if they hadn’t already waked you up.” “Great guns, _this_ is a go!” says the king; and both of them looked pretty sick and tolerable silly. They stood there a-thinking and scratching their heads a minute, and the duke he bust into a kind of a little raspy chuckle, and says: “It does beat all how neat the niggers played their hand. They let on to be _sorry_ they was going out of this region! And I believed they _was_ sorry, and so did you, and so did everybody. Don’t ever tell _me_ any more that a nigger ain’t got any histrionic talent. Why, the way they played that thing it would foo