Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/386

 ; and finding his ownership of this woman unquestionable, had directed her to be sold; "and here comes the owner himself," said the auctioneer, "and his Boston lawyer with him; no doubt they can satisfy you as to the title."

As he spoke I observed two individuals entering the room, one a very small man, with a head about as large as that of a respectable tabby cat, and with little wandering, unquiet eyes, and a compressed, pursed-up mouth, that might call to mind the said tabby, caught in the act of stealing cream, but while seeming to anticipate a box on the ear for her villany, still licking her chops all the while, as though the cream was all tht sweeter for having been stolen. This I afterwards understood was Thomas Littlebody, Esq., of Boston, counsellor at law and legal adviser of Mr Agrippa Curtis, or Grip Curtis, as he was more commonly called among his familiars, — the principal in this business, a bald-headed man about forty, the impenetrable and immovable stolidity of whose features made it difficult to form any conjecture, from that source, as to his character, beyond the probability of his not being likely to be carried away by any great excess of sensibility.

"A very pretty story," said Colter, stepping up to these two worthies as they entered the room and approached the auctioneer, and eyeing them with a look that seemed to make them rather uncomfortable. "The company see how it is. I am glad to find no Louisianian is concerned in this pitiful, kidnapping business. The woman is as free as you or I. This story about the flaw in the papers is all a humbug; nothing in the world but one of your scurvy, low-lived, Yankee tricks, to put a few hundred dollars into the pocket of a scoundrel. Yet, to save trouble, I'm willing to buy off this pretence of claim for a hundred dollars. Come, Mr. Auctioneer, go ahead with your sale. One hundred dollars — that's my bid."

"One hundred dollars!" repeated the auctioneer,