Before selling him, however, Mr.L.tried what giving William a whipping would do, toward making things smooth; but this was a failure.

It was a compromise, and defeated itself; for,{90} immediately after the infliction, the heart-sickened colonel atoned to William for the abuse, by giving him a gold watch and chain.

Another fact, somewhat curious, is, that though sold to the remorseless _Woldfolk_, taken in irons to Baltimore and cast into prison, with a view to being driven to the south, William, by _some_ means--always a mystery to me--outbid all his purchasers, paid for himself, _and now resides in Baltimore, a_ FREEMAN.

Is there not room to suspect, that, as the gold watch was presented to atone for the whipping, a purse of gold was given him by the same hand, with which to effect his purchase, as an atonement for the indignity involved in selling his own flesh and blood.

All the circumstances of William, on the great house farm, show him to have occupied a different position from the other slaves, and, certainly, there is nothing in the supposed hostility of slaveholders to amalgamation, to forbid the supposition that William Wilks was the son of Edward Lloyd.