A coroner's jury was assembled, who decided that the girl had come to her death by severe beating.

It was ascertained that the offense for which this girl was thus hurried out of the world, was this: she had been set that night, and several preceding nights, to mind Mrs.Hicks's baby, and having fallen into a sound sleep, the baby cried, waking Mrs.Hicks, but not the slave-girl.

Mrs.Hicks, becoming infuriated at the girl's tardiness, after calling several times, jumped from her bed and seized a piece of fire-wood from the fireplace; and then, as she lay fast asleep, she deliberately pounded in her skull and breast-bone, and thus ended her life.

I will not say that this most horrid murder produced no sensation in the community.

It _did_ produce a sensation; but, incredible to tell, the moral sense of the community was blunted too entirely by the ordinary nature of slavery horrors, to bring the murderess to punishment.