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THE MAN OF HONOR.
AUGUSTINE CARDINAY, the purchaser of Marion, was from the Green Mountains of Vermont, and his feelings were opposed to the holding of slaves; but his young wife persuaded him into the idea that it was no worse to own a slave than to hire one and pay the money to another.
Hence it was that he had been induced to purchase Marion.
Adolphus Morton, a young physician from the same State, and who had just commenced the practice of his profession in New Orleans, was boarding with Cardinay when Marion was brought home.

The young physician had been in New Orleans but a very few weeks, and had seen but little of slavery.
In his own mountain-home, he had been taught that the slaves of the Southern States were negroes, and if not from the coast of Africa, the descendants of those who had been imported.

He was unprepared to behold with composure a beautiful white girl of sixteen in the degraded position of a chattel slave.
The blood chilled in his young heart as he heard Cardinay tell how, by bantering with the trader, he had bought her two hundred dollars less than he first asked.

His very looks showed that she had the deepest sympathies of his heart.
Marion had been brought up by her mother to look after the domestic concerns of her cottage in Virginia, and well knew how to perform the duties imposed upon her.