Cudjo's Cave Part 3

These words being accompanied by a severe hint from Sile's boot, Mr.

Pepperill remembered that Penn _did_ corrupt him.

"And if I hadn't took ye in season, you'd have returned to your base-born mire, wouldn't you?"

"I suppose I would," the miserable Dan admitted.

"Wal! now!"--Sile spread his palm over the tar to see if it retained its temperature,--"hurry up, Dan, and tell us all this northern agitator said to you that night."

"O Lord!" groaned Pepperill, "my memory is so short!"

"Bring that rope, boys! and give him suthin' to stretch it!" said Silas, growing impatient.

Dan, knowing that stretching his memory in the manner threatened, implied that his neck was to be stretched along with it, made haste to remember.

"My friends," said Penn, interrupting the poor man's forced and disconnected testimony, "let me spare him the pain of bearing witness against me. I recall perfectly well every thing I said to him that night. I said it was a shame that such outrages as had been committed on him should be tolerated in a civilized society. I told him it was partly his own fault that such a state of things existed. I said, 'It is owing to the ignorance and degradation of you poor whites that a barbarous system is allowed to flourish and tyrannize over you.' I said----"

But here Penn was interrupted by a violent outcry, the majority of the persons present coming under the head of "poor whites."

"Let him go on! let him perceed!" said Silas. "What did you mean by 'barbarous system'?"

"I meant," replied Penn, all fear vanis.h.i.+ng in the glow of righteous indignation which filled him,--"I meant the system which makes it a crime to teach a man to read--a punishable offence to befriend the poor and down-trodden, or to bind up wounds. A system which makes it dangerous for one to utter his honest opinions, even in private, to a person towards whom he is at the same time showing the mercy which others have denied him." He looked at Dan, who groaned. "A system----"

"Wal, I reckon that'll do fur one spell," broke in Silas Ropes. "You've said more 'n enough to convict you, and to earn a halter 'stead of a mild coat of tar and feathers."

"I am well aware," said Penn, "that I can expect no mercy at your hands; so I thought I might as well be plain with you."

"And plain enough you've been, I swear to gos.h.!.+" said Silas. "Boys, strip him!"

"Wait a moment!" said Penn, putting them off with a gesture which they mistook for an appeal to some deadly weapon in his pocket. "What I have said has been to free my mind, and to save Daniel trouble. Now, allow me to speak a few words in my own defence. I have committed no crime against your laws; if I have, why not let the laws punish me?"

"We take the laws into our hands sech times as these," said the man called Gad.

"You're an abolitionist, and that's enough," said another.

"If I do not believe slavery to be a good thing, it is not my fault; I cannot help my belief. But one thing I will declare. I have never interfered with your inst.i.tution in any way at all dangerous to you, or injurious to your slaves. I have not rendered them discontented, but, whenever I have had occasion, I have counselled them to be patient and faithful to their masters. I came among you a very peaceable man, a simple schoolmaster, and I have tried to do good to everybody, and harm to no one. With this motive I opened an evening school for poor whites.

How many men here have any education? How many can read and write? Not many, I am sure."

"What's the odds, so long as they're men of the true sperrit?"

interrupted Silas Ropes. "I can read for one; and as for the rest, what good would it do 'em to be edecated? 'Twould only make 'em jes' sech low, sneakin', thievin' white slaves, like the greasy mechanics at the north."

"The white slaves are not at the north," said Penn. "Education alone makes free men. If you, who threaten me with violence here to-night, had the common school education of the north, you would not be engaged in such business; you would be ashamed of a.s.saulting a peaceable man on account of his opinions; you would know that the man who comes to teach you is your best friend. If you were not ignorant men, you, who do not own slaves, would know that slavery is the worst enemy of your prosperity, and you would not be made its willing tools."

The firm dignity of the youth, a.s.sisted by the illusion that prevailed concerning a revolver in his pocket, had kept his foes at bay, and gained him a hearing. He now attempted to pa.s.s on, when the man Gad, stepping behind him, raised the broom-handle, and dealt him a stunning blow on the back of the head.

"Down with him!" "Strip him!" "Give him a thras.h.i.+ng first!" "Hang him!"

And the ruffians threw themselves furiously upon the fallen man.

"Whar's that Dutch boy?" cried Silas. "I meant he should help Dan lay on the tar."

But Carl was nowhere to be seen, having taken advantage of the confusion and darkness to escape into the woods.

III.

_THE SECRET CELLAR._

No sooner did the lad feel himself safe from pursuit, than he made his way out of the woods again, and ran with all speed to Mr. Stackridge's house.

To his dismay he learned that that stanch Unionist was absent from home.

"Is he in the willage?" said the breathless Carl.

"I reckon he is," said the farmer's wife; adding in a whisper,--for she guessed the nature of Carl's business,--"inquire for him down to barber Jim's." And she told him what to say to the barber.

Barber Jim was a colored man, who had demonstrated the ability of the African to take care of himself, by purchasing first his own freedom of his mistress, buying his wife and children afterwards, and then acc.u.mulating a property as much more valuable than all Silas Ropes and his poor white minions possessed, as his mind was superior to their combined intelligence.

Jim had accomplished this by uniting with industrious habits a natural shrewdness, which enabled him to make the most of his labor and of his means. He owned the most flouris.h.i.+ng barber-shop in the place, and kept in connection with it (I am sorry to say) a bar, at which he dealt out to his customers some very bad liquors at very good prices. Had Jim been a white man, he would not, of course, have stooped to make money by any such low business as rum-selling--O, no! but being only a "n.i.g.g.e.r," what else could you expect of him?

Well, on this very evening Jim's place began to be thronged almost before it was dark. A few came in to be shaved, while many more pa.s.sed through the shop into the little bar-room beyond. What was curious, some went in who appeared never to come out again; Mr. Stackridge among the number.

It was not to get shaved, nor yet to get tipsy, that this man visited Jim's premises. The moment they were alone together in the bar-room, he gave the proprietor a knowing wink.

"Many there?"

"I reckon about a dozen," said Jim. "Go in?" Stackridge nodded; and with a grin Jim opened a private door communicating with some back stairs, down which his visitor went groping his way in the dark.

Customers came and went; now and then one disappeared similarly down the back stairs; many remained in the barber's shop to smoke, and discuss in loud tones the exciting question of the day--secession; when, lastly, a boy of fifteen came rus.h.i.+ng in. His face was flushed with running, and he was quite out of breath.

"What's wanting, Carl?" said the barber. "A shave?"

This was one of Jim's jokes, at which his customers laughed, to the boy's confusion, for his cheeks were as smooth as a peach.

"I vants to find Mishter Stackridge," said the lad.

"He ain't here," said Jim, looking around the room.

"It is something wery partic'lar. One of his pigs have got choked mit a cob, and he must go home and unchoke him."

This was what Carl had been directed by the farmer's wife to say to the barber, in case he should profess ignorance concerning her husband.

"Pity about the pig," said Jim. "Mabby Stackridge'll be in bime-by. Any thing else I can do for ye?"

Carl stepped up to the barber, and said in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, loud enough to be heard by every body,--