She was a mulatto or octoroon as they say, and as pretty as a red wagon.

You see the stranger was pure white and from New Orleans; but the mother of the girl was a slave and they say kind of coffee colored.

And the upshot of it was that the stranger offered this man $2500 to marry the octoroon.

What he wanted to do was to place her well.

He didn't want her to run the chance of ever being a slave, as she might be in the South.