_PENN AND THE RUFFIANS_.
Penn traversed the field, followed by the gang from the school-house. As
he approached the woods, Silas and his friends rose up before him. He
was thus surrounded.
"Thought you'd come and meet us half way, did ye?" said Mr. Ropes,
striding across his path. "Very accommodating in you, to be shore!" And
he laughed a brutal laugh, which was echoed by all his friends except
Dan.
"I have not come to meet you," replied Penn, "but I am going about my
own private business, and wish to pass on."
"Wal, you can't pass on till we've settled a small account with you
that's been standing a little too long a'ready. Bring that tar, some on
ye! Come, Pepperill! show your sperrit!"
This Pepperill was a ragged, lank, starved-looking man, whose appearance
was on this occasion rendered ludicrous by the feathers sticking all
over him, and by an expression of dejection which _would_ draw down the
corners of his miserable mouth and roll up his piteous eyes,
notwithstanding his efforts to appear, what Silas termed, "sperrited."
"You, too, among my enemies, Daniel!" said Penn, reproachfully.
It was a look of grief, not of anger, which he turned on the wretched
man. Poor Pepperill could not stand it.
"I own, I own," he stammered forth, a picture of mingled fear and
contrition, "you've allus used me well, Mr. Hapgood,--but," he hastened
to add, with a scared glance at Silas, "I hate your principles!"
"Look here, Dan Pepperill!" remarked Mr. Ropes, with grim significance,
"you better shet your yaup, and be a bringin' that ar kittle!"
Dan groaned, and departed. Penn smiled bitterly. "I have always used him
well; and this is the return I get!" He thought of another evening, but
little more than a week since, when, passing by this very path, he heard
a deeper groan than that which the wretch had just uttered. He turned
aside into the edge of the woods, and there beheld an object to excite
at once his laughter and compassion. What he saw was this.
Dan Pepperill, astride a rail; his hands tied together above it, and his
feet similarly bound beneath. The rail had been taken from a fence a
mile away, and he had been carried all that distance on the shoulders of
some of these very men. They had taken turns with him, and when, tired
at last, had placed the rail in the crotches of two convenient saplings,
and there left him. The crotch in front was considerably higher than
that behind, which circumstance gave him the appearance of clinging to
the back of an animal in the act of rearing frightfully, and exposed a
delicate part of his apparel that had been sadly rent by contact with
splinters. And there the wretch was clinging and groaning when Penn came
up.
"For the love of the Lord!" said Dan, "take me down!"
"Why, what is the matter? How came you here?"
"I'm a dead man; that's the matter! I've been wipped to death, and then
rode on a rail; that's the way I come here!"
"Whipped! what for?" said Penn, losing no time in cutting the sufferer's
bonds.
"Ye see," said Dan, when taken down and laid upon the ground, "the
patrolmen found Combs's boy Pete out t'other night without a pass, and
took him and tied him to a tree, and licked him."
The "boy Pete" was a negro man upwards of fifty years old, owned by the
said Combs.
"Wal, ye see, jest cause I found him, and took him home with me, and
washed his back fur him, and bound cotton on to it, and kep' him over
night, and gin him a good breakfast, and a drink o' suthin' strong in
the morning, and then went home with him, and talked with his master
so'st he wouldn't git another licking,--just for that, Sile Ropes and
his gang took me and served me wus'n ever they served him!" And the
broken-spirited man cried like a child at the recollection of his
injuries.
He was one of the "white trash" of the south, whom even the negroes
belonging to good families look down upon; a weak, degraded,
kind-hearted man, whose offence was not simply that he had shown mercy
to the "boy Pete," after his flogging, but that he associated on
familiar terms with such negroes as were not too proud to cultivate his
acquaintance, and secretly sold them whiskey. After repeated warnings,
he had been flogged, and treated to a ride on a three-cornered rail, and
hung up to reflect upon his ungentlemanly conduct and its sad
consequences.
At sight of him, Penn, who knew nothing of his selling whiskey to the
blacks, or of any other offence against the laws or prejudices of the
community, than that of befriending a beaten and bleeding slave, felt
his indignation roused and his sympathies excited.
"It's a dreadful state of society in which such outrages are tolerated!"
he exclaimed.
"_I_ say, dreadful!" sobbed Mr. Pepperill.
"The good Samaritan himself would be in danger of a beating here!" said
Penn.
"I don't know what good smart 'un you mean," replied the weeping Dan,
whose knowledge of Scripture was extremely limited, "but I bet he'd git
some, ef he didn't keep his eyes peeled!" And he wiped his nose with his
sleeve.