A celebrated apostle of the Methodist sect, on the Eastern shore of
Maryland, was the Rev. Titus Bates. He had been twenty-six years
engaged in the ministry, and was now a bronzed, worn, failing man,
consumed by the zeal of his order, but still anxious to continue his
work and die at his post. Like all his tribe, he was an itinerant,
moving from town to town every second year--these towns being his
places of abode, while his fields of labor were called "circuits," and
comprised many houses of worship scattered through the surrounding
district. He had chosen his wife with reference to his vocation, and
she was equally earnest with himself. She attended the sick, prayed
with the dying, taught Sabbath-schools, and organized religious
meetings among the women. They had but one son, Paul, an odd, silent
little fellow, who was thought to be more bashful than bright; but his
parents loved him tenderly, and argued the highest usefulness from his
still, sober, thoughtful habits. He was of a singularly dark
complexion, with fine black eyes and curling hair, and he was now old
enough to ride to and fro with his father upon the long pastoral
journeys.
Paul's sixth birthday occurred on a raw Sunday in December. He had
been promised, as a special treat on that occasion, a visit to
Hogson's Corner, an old meeting-house near the bay-side, twenty miles
distant. His mother woke him at an early hour, and, while he
breakfasted, the gray pony Bob came to the door in the "sulky." His
mother bade him to be a good boy, and kissed him; he took his seat
upon a stool at his father's feet, and watched the stone parsonage
fade quickly out of sight. The last houses of the town vanished; they
passed some squalid huts of free negroes; and when, after an hour,
they came to a grim, solitary hill, the snow began to fall. It beat
down very fast, whitening the frozen furrows in the fields, making
pyramids of the charred stumps, and bleaching the sinuous
"worm-fences" which bordered the road. After a while, they found a
gate built across the way, and Paul leaped out to open it. The snow
was deep on the other side, and the little fellow's strength was taxed
to push it back; but he succeeded, and his father applauded him. Then
there were other gates; for there were few public highways here, and
the routes led through private fields. It seemed that he had opened a
great many gates before they came to the forest, and then Paul wrapped
his chilled wet feet in the thick buffalo hide, and watched the dreary
stretches of the pines moan by, the flakes still falling, and the
wheels of the sulky dragging in the drifts. The road was very lonely;
his father hummed snatches of hymns as they went, and the little boy
shaped grotesque figures down the dim aisles of the woods, and
wondered how it would be with travellers lost in their depths. He was
not sorry when they reached the meeting-house--a black old pile of
planks, propped upon logs, with a long shelter-roof for horses down
the side of the graveyard. A couple of sleighs, a rough-covered
wagon, called a "dearbourn," and several saddled horses, were tied
beneath the roof. Two very aged negroes were seen coming up one of the
cross-roads, and the shining, surging Chesapeake, bearing a few pale
sails, was visible in the other direction. Some boors were gossiping
in the churchyard, slashing their boots with their riding-whips; one
lean, solemn man came out to welcome the preacher, addressing him as
"Brother Bates;" and another led the sulky into the wagon-shed, and
treated Bob to some ears of corn, which he needed very much.
Then they all repaired to the church, which looked inside like a
great barn. The beams and shingles were bare; some swallows in the
eaves flew and twittered at will; and a huge stove, with branching
pipes, stood in the naked aisle. The pews were hard and prim, and
occupied by pinch-visaged people; the pulpit was a plain shelf, with
hanging oil-lamps on either side; and over the door in the rear
projected a rheumatic gallery, where the black communicants were boxed
up like criminals. A kind old woman gave Paul a ginger-cake, but his
father motioned him to put it in his pocket; and after he had warmed
his feet, he was told to sit in the pew nearest the preacher on what
was called the "Amen side." Then the services began, the preacher
leading the hymns, and the cracked voices of the old ladies joining in
at the wrong places. But after a while a venerable negro in the
gallery tuned up, and sang down the shrill swallows with natural
melody. The prayers were long, and broken by ejaculations from the
pews. The text was announced amid profound silence, after everybody
had coughed several times, and then the itinerant launched into his
sermon. At first it was dry and argumentative, then burdened with
divisions and quotations, but in the end he closed the great book, and
made one of those fierce, feeling appeals--brimming with promises of
grace and threatenings of hell--in words so homely that all felt them
true, while the wild, interpolated cries of the believers thrilled and
terrified the young.
Little Paul heard with pale lips these grim, religious revelations,
and his child's fancy conjured up awful pictures of worlds beyond the
grave. He wondered that the birds dared riot in the roof: the sky in
the gable window was full of cloudy marvels; and the snow beat under
the door, like a shroud blown out of one of the churchyard tombs. The
closing prayer was said at last, the unconverted walked away, but five
or six communicants remained to tell their experience in the
class-meeting. Paul's father gave him permission to go into the yard
if he liked, and the boy got into the sulky, beneath the buffalo, and
heard the sobs and hymns floating dismally on the wind. Grim shapes
thronged his mind again, wherein the Bible stories were mingled with
tales of ghosts and strange nursery fables. They chased each other in
and out, generating others as they went, and then came drowsiness, and
Paul slept.
The class-meeting lasted an hour. It was very fervent and
demonstrative; and when it was over the kind old lady who had given
Paul the gingerbread asked the preacher home to dinner. She said that
roasted turkey, wild duck, and pumpkin-pie were waiting for them; and
Mr. Bates thought fondly what a treat it would be for Paul on his
birthday. He was to preach again that afternoon, seven miles away, and
so moved briskly toward the sulky.
"The poor fellow is asleep," said the preacher, seeing that the
curling head was not thrust up at his approach. "I wonder of what he
dreams?" He drew near as he spoke. Old Bob was munching his corn
sedately; the sulky had a saucy air; the robe nestled in the front,
with the tiny stool peeping from a corner; but Paul was not there. The
preacher called aloud; the horses raised their ears in reply, and the
wheels crackled in the frozen crust. He called again; some
sleigh-bells jingled merrily, and then the pines moaned. He looked
into the other vehicles; he watched for the little foot-tracks in the
snow; he ran back to the old church, and searched beneath every pew.
"Brethren--sisters," he cried, "I cannot find my boy!" and his voice was
tremulous. They gathered round him and some said that Paul had ridden
away with the worldly lads; others, that he was hiding mischievously.
But one silent bystander looked into the drifts, and traced four great
boot-marks close to the sulky. He followed them across the road into the
pines, and out into the road again, where they were lost in the
multitude of impressions. "Brother," he faltered, "God give you
strength! your boy has been stolen--kidnapped!"
The old man staggered, but the kind old lady caught him, and as he
leaned upon her shoulder his face grew hard and blanched; then he
removed his hat, and his gray hair streamed over his gaunt features.
"Let us pray!" he said.
The preacher plodded to his next appointment as if he had still a
child, and his sermon was as full and straightforward. He announced
his bereavement from the pulpit when he had done, and the whole
country was alarmed and excited. He bore the tidings to his desolate
home, and his stricken wife heard it with a stern resignation.
Thenceforward he preached more of the burning pit, and less of the
golden city; his eyes were full of fierce light, and his visage grew
long and ghastly. He denied himself all joys and comforts; his prayers
rang in the midnight through the gloomy parsonage; and he toiled in
the ministry as if reckless of life, and anxious to lose it in his
Master's service. The end came at last; the world closed over the grim
couple, and they hoped through the grave's portal to find their child.
When Paul awoke from his nap in the sulky, he found himself far in the
forest, and moving swiftly forward. A huge negro, with bloodshot eyes,
was transferring him to an evil-looking white man, and he struggled in
the latter's arms, crying for his papa.
The negro drew a long knife from his breast and flourished it before
Paul's face. "Hold um jaw, or I kill um dead!" he muttered. "Got um
grave dug out yer."
"O yer young yerlin!" said the other man, boxing Paul's ears, "yer
don't know yer own father, don't yer? I'm yer parpa!"
"You are not," cried Paul. "Where are you taking me? Where is the
church, and the sulky, and old Bob?"
The negro drove his knife so close to Paul's throat that the boy
flinched and shrieked.
"You dare to say fader to anybody," yelled the negro, "and I cut yo'
heart out! You dare to tell yer name, or yer fader's name, or wha yo
come from, and I cut yo' eyes out! I cut yo' heart and eyes out--do
yo' yar?"
The lad was cowed into cold, tearless terror; he shrank from the
glittering edge, and trembled at the giant's murderous expression. He
thought they had brought him to this lonely spot to slay him, and he
embraced silence as the only chance for his young life. He wondered if
this were not one of his wild imaginings, or if it had not something
to do with the punishment pronounced in the morning's fierce sermon.
The two men came to a ruined cabin after awhile; it was buried in deep
shade; the logs were worm-eaten, and the clay chimney had fallen down.
They climbed by a creaking ladder into the loft and laid Paul upon a
ragged bed. A young negro woman and her child were there, and the boy
saw that her foot was shackled to the floor, for the chain rattled as
she moved. They gave him a piece of beef and a corn-cake, and
stripping him of his tidy clothes, dressed him in the coarse blue
drilling worn by slaves. The two men drank frequently from the same
bottle, talking in low tones, and after a time both of them lay down
and slept. The woman dandled her child to and fro, for it moaned
painfully, and the pines without made a deep dirge. No birds trilled
or screamed in this desert place, but a roaring as of loud waters was
borne now and then on the twilight; it was the bay close below them,
making thunder upon the beach.
When Paul woke from his second sleep he was on the deck of a vessel.
The shore lay beneath him, and the waves heaved behind. It was night;
the snow-flakes still filtered through the profound darkness, and the
wind whistled in the rigging. A red lantern moved along the beach;
some voices were heard speaking together, and one of them said:
"Don't be afraid of the boy; I have sold lots paler than him. Lick him
smartly if he gammons, and he'll tell no tales."
Then they lifted the anchor aboard; the tide floated off the sloop;
they were soon scudding before the wind under a freezing starlight.
Two weary days passed over Paul, of travel by land and water. They
came to the city of Richmond at last, and marched him with five other
unfortunates to the common slave-pen. It was situated in a squalid
suburb, surrounded by a high spiked wall, and entered by an office
from which a watchman could observe the interior through two grated
doors. The pen consisted of a paved area open to the sky, except on
one side, where it was protected by a shelving roof, and of a jail or
den. The latter was walled up in a corner, but its inmates could look
out upon the area through a window in the door, and their savage
features revealed at the bars so terrified Paul that he retreated to
the opposite corner, afraid to look towards them. Now and then they
howled and blasphemed; for two were delirious from drunkenness and one
was desperate from rage, and as they moved like tigers to and fro,
their irons clanked behind them, dragging on the stone floor. A number
of women were huddled together beneath the roof, some as fair as Paul,
others as black as ebony. Some had babes at their breasts, others had
no regard for their offspring, but sat stolidly apart while their
children cried for nourishment. In the open place a bevy of the
coarser inmates were holding a rude dance, a large gray-haired man
patted time or "juber" with his feet and hands, calling the figures
huskily aloud; while the women, with bright turbans tied around their
heads, grinned and screamed with glee as they followed the measure
with their large, heavy shoes.
Their efforts were directed not so much to grace as to strength, for
some kept up the dance for a whole hour, divesting themselves of
parcels of clothing as they proceeded, and breathing hard as if weary
to exhaustion. The men applauded vociferously, coupling the names of
the performers with wild ejaculations, but subsiding when the keeper
appeared at the door occasionally to command less noise. Remote from
the bacchanals crouched a serious group of negroes, who sang religious
melodies, quite oblivious of their wild associates; and in still
another quarter a humorous fellow was enlivening his constituents with
odd sayings and stories. Paul's heart sank within him as he looked
upon these scenes. A sense of his degradation rushed over his young
mind, and he threw himself upon the stones with his head in his hands,
and wept hot tears of bitterness. Henceforth he should be a creature,
a thing, a slave! He must know no ambition but indolence, no bliss but
ignorance, no rest but sleep, no hope but death! Long leagues must
interpose between himself and his home; he should never kiss his
mother again, or kneel with his father in the holiness of prayer. The
recollections of his childhood would be crushed out by agonizing
experiences of bondage; he would forget his name and the face of his
friends, and at last preserve only the horrible consciousness that he
was the chattel of his master!
The uproar continued far into the night; one poor creature was
delivered of a child in the hazy light of the morning. Paul was too
young to think much of the matter, for his own sorrows engrossed him;
but he often recurred, in his subsequent career, to the romance of
that bondwoman, and the soul which first felt the breath of life in
the precincts of the slave shamble. What a childhood must it have had
to look back upon--cradled in disgrace, sung to sleep with the simple
melodies of grief, bred for no high purposes, but with the one
distinct and dreadful idea of gain--to be filched from that dusky
bosom when its little limbs had first essayed motion, that its feeble
lips might lisp the accents of servility. Days and weeks passed over
Paul, but he found no opportunity to tell his story. They kept him
purposely that he might forget it, or feel the hopelessness of
relating it. Other wretches came and went, till there remained none of
the original inmates of his prison, and he learned to mingle with his
coarse companions, joining sometimes in their gayety, and the high
walls stood forever between his dreams and the sky till the sombre
shadows were printed upon his heart.
The boy's turn came at length. He climbed the auction block before the
gaping multitude, and leaped to show his suppleness. They were pleased
with his still serious manner, the paleness of his skin, his
thoughtful eyes, and the shining ringlets of his hair. Bids were
bandied briskly upon him, and the auctioneer rattled glibly of the
rare lot to be sold.
"Who owns the boy?" cried a bystander.
"Colonel James Purnell, of the Eastern shore," answered the
auctioneer. "His mother is a likely piece that will be in the market
presently."
Tears came to Paul's eyes, but he held down the great sob that started
to his throat, and called lustily: "It is a wicked story! My father is
white, and my mother is white! I am not a slave, and they have stolen
me!"
A loud, long laugh broke from the crowd, and the trader cracked a
merry joke, which helped the pleasantry.
"We may call that a 'white lie,'" he said; "but it is a peart lad, and
the air with which he told it is worth a cool hundred! Going at four
hundred dollars--four hundred," etc.
The bidding recommenced. The article rose in esteem, and Paul was
pushed from the block into the arms of a tall, angular person, who led
him into the city. That afternoon he was placed in a railway carriage,
and on the third night he was quartered in Mobile, at the dwelling of
his purchaser. The tall person proved to be the agent of a rich old
lady--a childless widow--who required a handsome, active lad, to wait
upon her person, and make a good appearance in the drawing-room.
She had many servants; but Paul was not compelled to associate with
them, and his duties were light, though menial. When his mistress went
out to walk, he must carry her spaniel in his arms. He must stand
behind her at dinner, wielding a fly-brush of peacock's feathers. He
must run errands, and be equally ready to serve her whims and satisfy
her wants. She was not harsh, but very petulant; and had Paul been
hasty or high-tempered, his lot might have been a bitter one. On the
contrary, he was quiet, docile, and bashful, and he pleased her
marvellously. If he sometimes wept for the happy past, or felt a
child's strong yearning for something to love, he hid his grief from
those about him, and sought that consolation which the world cannot
take away in the simple prayers he had conned from his mother. He was
a slave, but not a negro. His pleasures were not theirs, for he had
quick intelligence, and he shrank from their loud, lewd glee. Their
blood had thickened through generations of bondage, and trained in the
harness of beasts, they had become creatures of draught. His had
rippled bright and brisk through generations of freedom, and a year
could not drag him to their level. He had learned to read and write,
and it was his habit to stand at the window in his leisure moments,
adding to his information from some pleasant book; but his mistress
supposed that he was looking at the pictures merely, till one day,
entering the dining-room softly, she heard him reading aloud. He had a
sweet, boy's voice, which somewhat pacified the anger she felt at such
presumption in a slave; and though at first rebuking him, she
reconsidered the matter during the evening, and bade him read to her
from a new novel. Henceforward Paul gained favor, and his mistress
found it convenient to employ him as an amanuensis. She released him
from menial duties, and gave him neat attire, and it was wonderful how
well these accessories became him. He was unassuming, as before,
submitting with patience to his lot; and at length he became
indispensable to Mrs. Everett. Her attachment to books of fiction
amounted to dissipation, and the part that he bore in their perusal
filled his warm imagination till his fancies were brighter than
romance--they became poetry. The one great grief of his life touched
his whole face with a pensive melancholy, but he forebore to tell them
his true history again, preferring to wait for some golden moment when
he might be believed and emancipated.
From the beginning Mrs. Everett's agent disliked him. Wait was a
Northern adventurer, cool, courageous, and ambitious, who had settled
in the South with the resolution of becoming rich, and he had pursued
his purpose with steady inflexibility. He was not a bad man, but a
bitter one, and Paul had in some sort divided Mrs. Everett's esteem
from him. Previously he had been her sole and undisputed adviser, and
as she was readily influenced, he hoped, in course of time, to be
acceptable as her second husband. He was young and manly, and she was
giddy and middle-aged. Her relatives held him in contempt, but he had
proved his courage, and they did not care to cross him. But with the
coming of Paul he had lost somewhat of her regard, and he had laid it
to the boy's charge. Paul read his calm purpose in his keen eyes, and
he shuddered at the thought of some day falling into his relentless
hands. He labored to conciliate his enemy, but with little effect,
until one afternoon, Wait told him to obtain permission from Mrs.
Everett and come to the office. He dictated some ambiguous letters to
Paul, and gave him many papers to burn, meanwhile inspecting a pair of
long pistols which he took from a portmanteau. It was late in the
afternoon when he had done, and then he bade Paul take the case of
pistols, slip quietly into the street, and walk straight on till he
was overtaken. He obeyed, not without suspicion, and when he reached
the city limits found the agent, to his great surprise, seated in a
carriage. Two other persons attended him, and one, who was bald and
wore glasses, had a case of surgical instruments lying at his feet.
Paul climbed to the driver's box, and they dashed along by the
water-side, meeting a second carriage on their way. The last rays of
sunset were streaming over the low landscape when both carriages
stopped, their occupants dismounted, and Wait came to the front and
reached up his hand to Paul.
"Good-by, boy," he said in a tone of unwonted tenderness; "remain here
a moment and you will see me again!"
They filed along a dyke separating two swamps, and turning down to the
beach, were hidden behind a line of cypress trees. For a few moments
Paul only heard the roar of the surf, the noise of the distant town,
and the short breathing of the sedate negro beside him. Then there
were shouts, as of a person counting rapidly, and two reports so close
that one seemed the echo of the other. A few minutes afterward the
agent appeared, leaning upon the arms of his attendants. He was
divested of coat and vest, and as he came nearer, bareheaded, Paul saw
that his face was colorless and working as from deadly pain. His shirt
was perforated close to the collar, and the blood flowing beneath had
stained it to his waist, and dripped in a runnel from his boots. He
fainted when he had taken his seat; and as the carriage rolled away,
Paul looked back toward the duelling-ground, and beheld two men
bearing upon their shoulders a stiff, straight burden, wrapped in a
cloak.
The second carriage passed him, driven swiftly, and it seemed to emit
a chill draught upon Paul like the damp wind from a tomb; it was the
presence of death, at whose very mention we grow cold.
Wait had vindicated his courage, but at the expense of his life. He
lingered on in agony many days; and Paul so pitied him that he stole
into his darkened chamber and begged to do him kindnesses. The grim
man lay implacable, waiting for death; but one night as he writhed
with the dew upon his forehead, Paul heard him mutter, "My God! my
mother!"
The boy remembered a quaint text of Scripture: "Save me, O God! for
the waters have come in unto my soul;" and he repeated it in the
strong man's ear. "Go on," cried Wait, rising upon his elbow; "I have
heard that before: tell me the rest."
"I have the good book here," replied Paul. "I am sure it will be
pleasant to you, sir, if you will let me read."
"Do so, boy; I used to know it well. An old friend taught those
strange words to me, but I have forgotten them now."
Paul read some soothing and beautiful Psalms, which took his
companion's mind back to his native mountains, and the white spire of
the village church where he had worshipped with his mother. The hard
lines melted in his face as he listened, but Paul fell upon a bitter
verse, and the agent's conscience began to trouble him. He could not
look into the boy's eyes, for they seemed to rebuke him, and at last
he commanded Paul to stop.
It was midnight. They heard the great clock in the hall strike twelve,
and all the household slumbered.
"Go to your mistress's room," said Wait; "tell her that I must see her
_now_--she must come at once. The morning may never come to me. Go;
God bless you!"
He called Paul back when he had got to the door, and added
falteringly:
"My boy, do you say your prayers?"
"Yes, sir."
"Would you mind thinking of me when you say them to-night?"
"I do so every night, sir."
"Good-night!"
Paul heard the agent sobbing as he stole away; but when he knocked at
Mrs. Everett's door she answered petulantly, and at first she refused
to rise. She had little self-denial; it would pain her to enter a
dying chamber; and she would have left Wait to perish, had not some
strange passage from the romance entered her head of dead folk, with
secrets on their minds, haunting the living. It would be very terrible
to be haunted, and the old woman was frightened into obedience. When
she returned her mind was disquieted, and she made Paul stay in her
room to compose her with cheerful talk. Finally she fell asleep, and
he hastened to the agent's chamber. It was very dark within, and he
waited a moment that the other might recognize him. Wait seemed to be
in deep slumber, though Paul could not hear him breathe; but as the
lad ventured to place his head upon the quilt, it encountered a hand
so cold and hard that it seemed to be marble. Paul knew that he need
no longer remember his enemy in his prayers.
What transpired between his mistress and her agent at this dying
interview Paul could not surmise, but he believed that it concerned
himself. He perceived that Mrs. Everett treated him more considerately
afterward; and many times, as he looked up from a long silence, he
found her regarding him inquisitively. She asked him strange questions
once, bearing upon his early life, and he was almost encouraged to
reveal the secret of his birth; but she seemed to divine his purpose,
and changed the theme. Something troubled her, he knew; and when he
applied himself to conciliate and cheer her, at those moments she
suffered most. Had she loved the stern, ambitious man whose closed
chamber still chilled her mansion? Was it because she was childless,
and travelling graveward? Or did she cherish a mother's feeling for
Paul, and wish that he was of her race, and worthy to be her son?
Toward each of these theories he inclined, favoring the last, and
finally he concluded that she did not love, but feared him. He had
grown tall and manly. An individual beauty, rather of mind than of
face, developed in him, and his mistress had been prodigal of favors,
so that his dress and ornaments corresponded with his person. He
might have ruled, rather than served in her dwelling; but content with
the recognition of his equality, he maintained the same modest guise,
and his mistress felt an uneasy pride in his promotion. One day he
found her weeping, and when he spoke she answered bitterly:
"Paul, you have ceased to love me; you are ungrateful; you wish to be
free--you would leave me!"
He responded pleasantly--for he had become familiar with such
moods--that he had found a new romance which he would read. It was not
a long story, but a thrilling one, and based upon the simple narrative
of Joseph in bondage. The outline was true, the details were fabulous,
and the old lady marvelled that a theme so trite could be so well
embellished. He read far into the night, and she bade him leave the
book upon her table, that she might peruse it again.
"It is manuscript," he said, "and this is the only copy."
"Why, Paul," she said, "how came you by it?"
"I wrote it myself."
Paul was indeed the author, having filled in the sorrows of his hero
from his own experiences. Mrs. Everett was loud in its praises; she
was sure that it indicated genius, and she lay awake that night
meditating an act of charity and of justice. She would make a free man
of Paul, and he should find in far lands that equality which he could
not obtain in his own. They would journey together. He should have
means and advantages, and become her protégé and heir. But the strong
self-love defeated this resolve. If Paul were not bound to her by law,
he might forsake her, and she could not bear to lose him, for he had
become a part of her heart; but when she broached the matter, Paul
gave his parole never to leave her without consent.
He was still a slave, with the taint of a trampled race in his blood,
and he said nothing to Mrs. Everett of his origin. They crossed the
seas; they dwelt in pleasant places, beneath soft skies; and Paul grew
in knowledge. But his patron was still harassed by some deep remorse.
She hurried him from city to city like the fabled apostate, and at
length fell sick in London, on the eve of their return to America.
Paul gleaned from her ravings in delirium the cause of her unrest.
Wait had made known to her on the night of his decease the secret of
the young man's origin, and had conjured her to do justice to the lad.
Her self-love had deterred her in consummating this duty, and
conscience had therefore tortured her. She was enabled to reach New
York, where she left the preacher's son the bulk of her property, and
received his gratitude and forgiveness before she died.
Paul was free--haunted no longer by premonitions of future suffering;
and his first impulse was to return to the Eastern shore and discover
his desolate parents. His recollections of them were imperfect. He
preserved many trifling circumstances, though more important events
were forgotten; but as he made his way to the old village his heart
beat high. There were the negro quarters, the cornfields, the twisting
fences, and, at last, the shady stone parsonage--recollections they
seemed of objects beheld in a foggy dream. They directed him to the
Methodist Church--a prim, square structure in the centre of the
village--a tavern on one side, a court-house and market on the other;
and when the sexton threw open a window, the bleared light fell upon a
marble slab set in the wall:
"Near this spot lie the remains of
REV. TITUS BATES,
for two years Pastor of this Congregation,
and of PEGGY, his Wife.
'They have ceased from their labors, and their
works do follow them.'"
Paul's hopes fell. He walked through the village friendless, and,
impelled by his swift-coming fancies, strolled far into the suburbs.
A crowd was collected round a squalid negro cabin, and, less by
interest than by instinct, he bent his steps toward it.
"What is the matter, friend?" he asked of a bystander.
"The boys hez scented kidnappers to this shanty," answered the man;
"and by doggy! they going to trap 'em!"
The mob seemed to be fearfully incensed as Paul pushed close to the
scene. There were said to be two of the man-stealers, both of whom had
been very daring and successful. He heard their names called as Peter
Gettis and Dave Goule, and the opinion was expressed that the
first-named would not yield without a desperate struggle. The mob was
hot and clamorous, and while a selected committee entered the den to
search it, the rest brandished clubs and knives, and yelled for
justice and blood. Word came at length that the kidnappers were
concealed beneath the floor of the cabin; and at the hint, a score of
stalwart fellows began to pull up the planks, while their associates
formed a wide circle around, prepared to prevent escape.
Finally, the cry arose: "Here they air! This is them! Drag 'em out!
Whoo-oop!"
The men within the cabin rushed through the doors and windows as if
pursued, and a stalwart negro, with bloodshot eyes, almost naked, and
flourishing a huge knife, staggered to the threshold, and glared
fiercely round him.
The circle stood firm; some were clubbing their cudgels, others
lifting their blades, and here and there along the line rang out the
click of a pistol.
"Come, Pete," cried one of the ringleaders; "you're treed, Pete! Don't
be a fool, but give yourself in."
The negro gnashed his teeth, and his wild eyes glared like coals of
fire.
"Do you give me faih-play?" he bellowed, extending the knife.
"Yes, Pete, yes," answered the multitude.
"Then look heah," answered the wretch, drawing his knife across his
throat. He staggered into the air like an ox, cursing as he came. They
parted to avoid him, and as he reached a fence, a few rods from the
cabin, he leaned upon it, and swaying to and fro, raised his horrible
eyes to the sky.
Paul recognized his ancient captor with a thrill and a silent prayer.
Vengeance had come in His own good time, and Paul felt no bitterness
toward the poor fellow, but prayed forgiveness for his slipping soul.
The second offender burrowed so remotely that the mob could not drag
him from his covert. They struck at him with knives, and hired dogs to
creep beneath the logs and rend him, but in vain. At length one of the
ringleaders obtained a torch, and the cabin was fired in several
places. The flames spouted into the night, bursting from the small
windows, and the roof fell in with a crash, scattering ashes and
red-hot coals. They could hear the shriek of the victim now, and he
was seen dancing among the fire-brands, for the blaze encircled him
like an impassable wall. He made a desperate rush at length to
overleap the fire, and his figure, magnified by the red light, looked
gigantic as he sprang high in the air. A dozen pistols clattered
together--the man fell heavily forward, tossing up his scorched hands,
and the frizzing, cracking timbers closed darkly above him to the
thunder of his executioners' huzzas.
Paul did not reveal himself. He left the village stealthily, and
journeyed northward. Years afterwards a name was added to the tablet
in the old church:
"Here lie also the Remains of the
REV. PAUL BATES.
'He went about doing good.'"