simple old friend,-'What a thing it is to be a Christian!'
He turned: Legree was standing, sullenly, behind him.
Something in that dying scene had checked the natural fierceness of youthful passion. The presence of the man was simply loathsome to George; and he felt only an impulse to get away from him, with as few words as possible.
Fixing his keen dark eyes on Legree, he simply said, pointing to the dead, 'You have got all you ever can of him. What shall I pay you for the body? I will take it away, and bury it decently.'
'I don't sell dead niggers,' said Legree, doggedly. 'You are welcome to bury him where and when you like.'
'Boys,' said George, in an authoritative tone, to two or three negroes, who were looking at the body, 'help me lift him up, and carry him to my wagon; and get me a spade.'
One of them ran for a spade; the other two assisted George to carry the body to the wagon.
George neither spoke to nor looked at Legree, who did not countermand his orders, but stood, whistling, with an air of forced unconcern. He sulkily followed them to where the wagon stood at the door.
George spread his cloak in the wagon, and had the body carefully disposed of in it,-moving the seat, so as to give it room. Then he turned, fixed his eyes on Legree, and said, with forced composure,
'I have not, as yet, said to you what I think of this most atrocious affair;-this is not the time and place. But, sir, this innocent blood shall have justice. I will proclaim this murder. I will go to the very first magistrate, and expose you.'
'Do!' said Legree, snapping his fingers, scornfully. 'I'd like to see you doing it. Where you going to get witnesses?-how you going to prove it?-Come, now!'
George saw, at once, the force of this defiance. There was not a white person on the place; and, in all southern courts, the testimony of colored blood is nothing. He felt, at that moment, as if he could have rent the heavens with his heart's indignant cry for justice; but in vain.
'After all, what a fuss, for a dead nigger!' said Legree.
The word was as a spark to a powder magazine. Prudence was never a cardinal virtue of the Kentucky boy. George turned, and, with one indignant blow, knocked Legree flat upon his face; and, as he stood over him, blazing with wrath and defiance, he would have formed no bad personification of his great namesake triumphing over the dragon.
Some men, however, are decidedly bettered by being knocked down. If a man lays them fairly flat in the dust, they seem immediately to conceive a respect for him; and Legree was one of this sort. As he rose, therefore, and brushed the dust from his clothes, he eyed the slowly-retreating wagon with some evident consideration; nor did he open his mouth till it was out of sight.
Beyond the boundaries of the plantation, George had noticed a dry, sandy knoll, shaded by a few trees; there they made the grave.
'Shall we take off the cloak, Mas'r?' said the negroes, when the grave was ready.
'No, no,-bury it with him! It's all I can give you, now, poor Tom, and you shall have it.'
They laid him in; and the men shovelled away, silently. They banked it up, and laid green turf over it.
'You may go, boys,' said George, slipping a quarter into the hand of each. They lingered about, however.
'If young Mas'r would please buy us-' said one.
'We'd serve him so faithful!' said the other.
'Hard times here, Mas'r!' said the first. 'Do, Mas'r, buy us, please!'
'I can't!-I can't!' said George, with difficulty, motioning them off; 'it's impossible!'
The poor fellows looked dejected, and walked off in silence.
'Witness, eternal God!' said George, kneeling on the grave of his poor friend; 'oh, witness, that, from this hour, I will do
There is no monument to mark the last resting-place of our friend. He needs none! His Lord knows where he lies, and will raise him up, immortal, to appear with him when he shall appear in his glory.
Pity him not! Such a life and death is not for pity! Not in the riches of omnipotence is the chief glory of God; but in self-denying, suffering love! And blessed are the men whom he calls to fellowship with him, bearing their cross after him with patience. Of such it is written, 'Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.'
CHAPTER XLII
For some remarkable reason, ghostly legends were uncommonly rife, about this time, among the servants on Legree's place.
It was whisperingly asserted that footsteps, in the dead of night, had been heard descending the garret stairs, and patrolling the house. In vain the doors of the upper entry had been locked; the ghost either carried a duplicate key in its pocket, or availed itself of a ghost's immemorial privilege of coming through the keyhole, and promenaded as before, with a freedom that was alarming.
Authorities were somewhat divided, as to the outward form of the spirit, owing to a custom quite prevalent among negroes,-and, for aught we know, among whites, too,-of invariably shutting the eyes, and covering up heads under blankets, petticoats, or whatever else might come in use for a shelter, on these occasions. Of course, as everybody knows, when the bodily eyes are thus out of the lists, the spiritual eyes are uncommonly vivacious and perspicuous; and, therefore, there were abundance of full-length portraits of the ghost, abundantly sworn and testified to, which, as if often the case with portraits, agreed with each other in no particular, except the common family peculiarity of the ghost tribe,-the wearing of a
And, therefore, their all hitting upon this is a striking fact in pneumatology, which we recommend to the attention of spiritual media generally.
Be it as it may, we have private reasons for knowing that a tall figure in a white sheet did walk, at the most approved ghostly hours, around the Legree premises,-pass out the doors, glide about the house,-disappear at intervals, and, reappearing, pass up the silent stairway, into that fatal garret; and that, in the morning, the entry doors were all found shut and locked as firm as ever.
Legree could not help overhearing this whispering; and it was all the more exciting to him, from the pains that were taken to conceal it from him. He drank more brandy than usual; held up his head briskly, and swore louder than ever in the daytime; but he had bad dreams, and the visions of his head on his bed were anything but agreeable. The night after Tom's body had been carried away, he rode to the next town for a
