Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/103

 been treated with peculiar indulgence, such as their sex and weakness demands, — but demands so often without obtaining it. Major Thornton's illness gave an instance how full of gratitude is the female heart, and at what a trifling expense, one may purchase its most zealous affection. All the women on the place, were anxious to be employed, in some way, in ministering to the comfort of their suffering master. The most disagreeable duties were eagerly. performed; and if ever man was tenderly and assiduously nursed, it was major Thornton. But all this care, all our sympathy, our sorrow and our terrors, were of no effect. The. fever raged with unabated fury, and seemed to find new fuel in the strength of the patient's ‘constitution. But that fuel was soon exhausted; and in ten days, our master was no more.

When his decease became known, we looked upon each other in silent consternation. A family of helpless orphans, from whom death had just snatched their last surviving parent, could not have felt a greater destitution. Tears rolled down the cheeks of the men; and the lamentations of the women were violent and wild. His old nurse, in particular, wept, and would not listen to any consolation. She had good reason. At his father's death she had been sold, with the other property, to satisfy the creditors. But major Thornton had re-purchased her, out of his very first earnings; he had made her the head-servant of his household, and had always treated her with great tenderness. The old woman loved him like her own child, and lamented her "dear son Charley," as she called him, with all the pathetic energy of a widowed and childless mother. We all attended the funeral, and followed our dead master to the grave. The hollow sound of the earth as it fell upon the coffin, was echoed back from every bosom; and when this last sad office was finished, we. stood over the spot, and wept together. Doubt not the sincerity of our sorrow! It was for ourselves we were lamenting. Major Thornton was never married; and he left no children whose rights the laws acknowledged. If he had intended to make a will, his sudden' death prevented him; and his property passed to a troop of cousins for whom,