“I’ll go you one better,” he said, as he sighted the distance and exact place to make his mark with mathematical precision, at the same time shifting his tobacco from the right to the left cheek. Again the rawhide whistled through the air, falling across the other cut squarely in the center. Another shriek, a stifled sob, a long-drawn quivering sigh—then the deep stillness of unconsciousness. Again and again was the outrage repeated. Fainting fit followed fainting fit. The blood stood in a pool about her feet.
When Hank Davis had satiated his vengeful thirst he cut the ropes which bound her, and she sank upon the ground again—unconscious, bleeding, friendless, alone. Lucy had hidden in the smokehouse with the two children, that they might not witness their mother’s agony.
Meantime, the committee on public safety, instigated by Anson Pollock to put down an imaginary insurrection (having no existence but in his own mind, and supposed to have originated with the slaves of Charles Montfort) and to legalize the looting of the house, took possession of the mansion. Soon the crowd had stripped it of its furniture and all the articles of value. The house itself was fired, and Grace Montfort again became conscious of her misery in time to see the dead body of her husband flung amid the burning rafters of his dwelling. Two and two the slaves were handcuffed together to be driven to the market place. Mrs. Montfort, secured to her maid, was placed in a wagon with her two children; and so the miserable woman was driven away from her outraged home.
In those old days, if accused of aiding slaves in a revolt, a white man stood no more chance than a Negro accused of the same crime. He forfeited life and property. This power of the law Anson Pollock had invoked; and to add to the devilishness of the plot, had used Bill Sampson’s suggestion of black blood in Mrs. Montfort, to further his scheme for possessing the beautiful woman. So the two children and their mother fell to the lot of Anson Pollock as his portion of the spoils. Shortly after these events Grace Montfort disappeared and was never seen again. The waters of Pamlico Sound tell of sweet oblivion for the brokenhearted found within their soft embrace.
After the loss of their mother the two lads clung very closely to each other. So many changes had come to them, such desperate, bloody scenes had dazed their brains and terrified them, that even the loss of their mother seemed but in keeping with the rest. Bewilderment at so much sorrow, the numbness of black despair was ever with them.
Pollock’s rage was terrible when he learned that Mrs. Montfort had destroyed herself. He grew morose and unsociable, so that his society was no longer sought in the county. He seemed to have a superstitious fear of the children, and for a long time would not tolerate them in his presence. It was common talk among the slaves that Mrs. Montfort “walked,” weeping and wringing her hands, night after night about the plantation.
But wonder could go no farther when Pollock elected to take Lucy in the place he had designed for Mrs. Montfort. God’s mysteries are past man’s understanding; and thus the poor black girl became his instrument to temper the wind to the shorn lambs. Night after night she stole away to the little attic under the eaves laden with dainties to tempt the appetite of the children. For hours she would sit hushing Jesse’s sobs upon her ample breast, and speaking words of comfort in her poor, blind way to Charles.
When a year had dragged its slow length past, a stranger in the town stopped Bill Sampson on the street one day and asked him if he knew where he could hire a likely boy to go with him into the woods for a few days and help arrange specimens of the quartz in that locality. He was looking up the minerals in that section for speculators, he said. Bill promised to get him a boy, and asked Pollock’s permission for Charles to go with the man.
“I don’t care what you do with him, only keep him away from me. I’ll sell him south soon,” said Pollock.
So it happened that Charles went every day for a month with the mineralogist. The lad’s appearance, education and refinement puzzled the man for a time, until he learned the tragic story.
“Charles,” said he, a few weeks later, “I am about to leave this part of the country. I don’t want to leave you here. Do you think Mr. Pollock could be induced to part with you?”
“O sir!” cried Charles, throwing himself at the gentleman’s feet, “for the love of God buy me and my little brother. If you will only take us to Bermuda, someone there will pay you back. My father had money there; we have friends there. O sir, for the love of God!”
The man looked at the weeping boy as through a mist. He had a tender heart.
“I will tell you something, Charles,” said he kindly, as he raised the lad and drew him to a seat beside him on the grass, with his arm tenderly enfolding the child. “I am an Englishman, but it will not do to have that fact known here, for then I would be powerless to help you. Anson Pollock would never sell you to me if he knew that fact. I have been trying to buy you and Jesse, but Pollock wants to keep the boy for a valet. He intends to sell you south; you are too old to forget, and he fears you. Now I propose to buy you; and as soon as possible I shall take you to Bermuda, collect the proofs there
