Chapter 2

It was not enough that he had shown his "sperrit" by fetching the victim's own bed from his boarding-house, telling his landlady, the worthy Mrs. Sprowl, that Sile said she must "charge it to her abolition boarder." He must now show still more "sperrit" by bringing the tar. A well-worn broom had been borrowed of Mrs. Pepperill, by those who knew best how the tar in such cases should be applied: the handle of this was thrust by one of the men, named Griffin, through the bail of the kettle, and Dan was ordered to "ketch holt o' t'other eend," and help carry.

Dan "ketched holt" accordingly. But never was kettle so heavy as that; its miserable weight made him groan at every step. Suddenly the broom-handle slipped from his hand, and down it went. No doubt his laudable object was to spill the tar, in order to gain time for his benefactor, and perhaps postpone the tarring and feathering altogether. But Griffin grasped the kettle in time to prevent its upsetting, and the next instant flourished the club over Dan's head.

"I didn't mean tu! it slipped!" shrieked the terrified wretch. After which he durst no more attempt to thwart the chivalrous designs of his friends, but carried the tar like a gentleman.

"This way!" said Silas, getting the escaped feathers into a pile with his foot. "Thar! set it down. Now, sir," throwing away his own coat, "peel off them clo'es o' yourn, Mr. Schoolmaster, mighty quick, if you don't want 'em peeled off fur ye!"

Penn gave no sign of compliance, but fixed his eye steadfastly upon Mr. Ropes.

"I insist," said he,--for he had already made the request while the men were bringing the tar,--"on knowing what I have done to merit this treatment."

"Wal, that I don't mind tellin' ye," said Silas, "for we've all night for this yer little job before us. Dan Pepperill, stand up here!"

Dan came forward, appearing extremely low-spirited and weak in the knees.

"Is it you, Daniel, who are to bear witness against me?" said Penn, in a voice of singular gentleness, which chimed in like a sweet and solemn bell after the harsh clangor of Silas's ruffian tones.

Dan rolled up his eyes, hugged his tattered elbows, and gave a dismal groan.

"Come!" said Silas, bestowing a slap on his back which nearly knocked him down, "straighten them knees o' yourn, and be a man. Yes, Mr. Schoolmaster, Dan is a-going to bear witness agin' you. He has turned from the error of his ways, and now his noble southern heart is a-burnin' to take vengeance on all the enemies of his beloved country. Ain't it, Dan?--say yes," he hissed in his ear, giving him a second slap, "or else--you know!"

"O Lord, yes!" ejaculated Dan, with a start of terror. "What Mr. Ropes says is perfectly--perfectly--jes' so!"

"Your heart is a-burnin', ain't it?" said Silas.

"Ye--yes! I be durned if it ain't!" said Dan.

"This man," continued Ropes, who prided himself on being a great orator, with power to "fire the southern heart," and never neglected an occasion to show himself off in that capacity,--"this individgle ye see afore ye, gentlemen,"--once more hitting Dan, this time with the toe of his boot, gently, to indicate the subject of his remarks,--"was lately as low-minded a peep as ever you see. He had no more conscience than to 'sociate with niggers, and sell 'em liquor, and even give 'em liquor when they couldn't pay fur't; and you all know how he degraded himself by takin' Combs's Pete into his house and doin' for him arter he'd been very properly licked by the patrol. All which, I am happy to say, the deluded man sincerely repents of, and promises to behave more like a gentleman in futur'. Don't you, Dan?"

As Dan, attempting to speak, only gasped, Ropes administered a sharp poke in his ribs, whispering fiercely,--

"Say you do, mighty quick, or I'll----!"

"O! I repents! I--I be durned if I don't!" said Dan.

"And now, as to you!" Silas turned on the schoolmaster. "Your offence in gineral is bein' a northern abolitionist. Besides which, your offences in partic'ler is these. Not contented with teachin' the Academy, which was well enough, since it is necessary that a few should have larnin', so the may know how to govern the rest,--not contented with that, you must run the thing into the ground, by settin' up a evenin' school, and offerin' to larn readin', writin', and 'rithmetic, free gratis, to whosomever wanted to 'tend. Which is contrary to the sperrit of our institootions, as you have been warned more 'n oncet. That's charge Number Two. Charge Number Three is, that you stand up for the old rotten Union, and tell folks, every chance you git, that secession, that noble right of southerners, is a villanous scheme, that'll ruin the south, if persisted in, and plunge the whole nation into war. Your very words, I believe. Can you deny it?"

"Certainly, I have said something very much like that, and it is my honest conviction," replied Penn, firmly.

"Gentlemen, take notice!" said Mr. Ropes. "We will now pass on to charge Number Four, and be brief, for the tar is a-coolin'. Suthin' like eight days ago, when the afore-mentioned Dan Pepperill was in the waller of his degradation, some noble-souled sons of the sunny south"--the orator smiled with pleasant significance--"lifted him up, and hung him up to air, in the crotches of two trees, jest by the edge of the woods here, and went home to supper, intending to come back and finish the purifying process begun with him later in the evenin'. But what did you do, Mr. Schoolmaster, but come along and take him down, prematoorely, and go to corruptin' him agin with your vile northern principles! Didn't he, Dan?"

"I--I dun know" faltered Dan.

"Yes, you do know, too! Didn't he corrupt you?"

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 vanishing 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 gosh!" 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 institution 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 assaulting 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, assisted 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 pass 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 thrashing 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 accumulating 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 flourishing 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 "nigger," 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 passed 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 rushing 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 hoarse whisper, loud enough to be heard by every body,--

"A mug of peer, if you pleashe."

"I got some that'll make a Dutchman's head hum!" said Jim, leading the way into the little grog room.

"That's Villars's Dutch boy," said one of the smokers in the barber-shop. "Beats all nater, how these Dutch will swill down any thing in the shape of beer!"

This elegant observation may have had a grain of truth in it, as we who have Teutonic friends may have reason to know. However, the man had mistaken the boy this time.

"It is not the peer I vants, it is Mr. Stackridge," whispered Carl, when alone with the proprietor.

Jim regarded him doubtfully a moment, then said, "I reckon I shall have to open a cask in the suller. You jest tend bar for me while I am gone."

He descended the stairs, closing the door after him. Carl, who thought of the schoolmaster in the hands of the mob, felt his heart swell and burn with anxiety at each moment's delay. Jim did not keep him long waiting.

"This way, Carl, if you want some of the right sort," said the negro from the stairs.

Carl went down in the darkness, Jim taking his hand to guide him. They entered a cellar, crowded with casks and boxes, where there was a dim lamp burning; but no human being was visible, until suddenly out of a low, dark passage, between some barrels, a stooping figure emerged, giving Carl a momentary start of alarm.

"What's the trouble, Carl?"

"O! Mishter Stackridge! is it you?" said Carl, as the figure stood erect in the dim light,--sallow, bony, grim, attired in coarse clothes. "The schoolmaster--that is the trouble!" and he hastily related what he had seen.

"Wouldn't take the pistol? the fool!" muttered the farmer. "But I'll see what I can do for him." He grasped the boy's collar, and said in a suppressed but terribly earnest voice, "Swear never to breathe a word of what I'm going to show you!"

"I shwear!" said Carl.

"Come!"

Stackridge took him by the wrist, and drew him after him into the passage. It was utterly dark, and Carl had to stoop in order to avoid hitting his head. As they approached the end of it, he could distinguish the sound of voices,--one louder than the rest giving the word of command.

"_Order--arms!_"

The farmer knocked on the head of a cask, which rolled aside, and opened the way into a cellar beyond, under an old storehouse, which was likewise a part of Barber Jim's property.

The second cellar was much larger and better lighted than the first, and rendered picturesque by heavy festoons of cobwebs hanging from the dark beams above. The rays of the lamps flashed upon gun-barrels, and cast against the damp and mouldy walls gigantic shadows of groups of men. Some were conversing, others were practising the soldiers' drill.

"Neighbors!" said Stackridge, in a voice which commanded instant attention, and drew around him and Carl an eager group. "It's just as I told you,--Ropes and his gang are lynching Hapgood!"

"It's the fellow's own fault," said a stern, dark man, the same who had been drilling the men. "He should have taken care of himself."

"Young Hapgood's a decent sort of cuss," said another whom Carl knew,--a farmer named Withers,--"and I like him. I believe he means well; but he ain't one of us."

"I've been deceived in him," said a third. "He always minded his own business, and kept so quiet about our institutions, I never suspected he was anti-slavery till I talked with him t'other day about joining us--then he out with it."

"He thinks we're all wrong," said a bigoted pro-slavery man named Deslow. "He says slavery's the cause of the war, and it's absurd in us to go in for the Union and slavery too!" For these men, though loyal to the government, and bitterly opposed to secession, were nearly all slaveholders or believers in slavery.

"May be the fellow ain't far wrong there," said he who had been drilling his comrades. "I think myself slavery's the cause of the war, and that's what puts us in such a hard place. The time may come when we will have to take a different stand--go the whole figure with the free north, or drift with the cotton states. But that time hain't come yet."

"But the time _has_ come," said Stackridge, impatiently, "to do something for Hapgood, if we intend to help him at all. While we are talking, he may be hanging."

"And what can we do?" retorted the other. "We can't make a move for him without showing our hand, and it ain't time for that yet."

"True enough, Captain Grudd," said Stackridge. "But three or four of us, with our revolvers, can happen that way, and take him out of the hands of Ropes and his cowardly crew without much difficulty. I, for one, am going."

"Hapgood don't even believe in fighting!" observed Deslow, with immense disgust; "and blast me if I am going to fight _for_ him!"

Carl was almost driven to despair by the indifference of these men and the time wasted in discussion. He could have hugged the grim and bony Stackridge when he saw him make a decided move at last. Three others volunteered to accompany them. The cask was once more rolled away from the entrance, and one by one they crept quickly through the passage into the first cellar.

Stackridge preceded the rest, to see that the way was clear. There was no one at the bar; the door leading into the shop was closed; and Carl, following the four men, passed out by a long entry communicating with the street, the door of which was thrown open to the public on occasions when there was a great rush to Jim's bar, but which was fastened this night by a latch that could be lifted only from the inside.

IV.

_A SEARCH FOR THE MISSING._

The academy was situated in a retired spot, half a mile out of the village. Stackridge and his party were soon pushing rapidly towards it along the dark, unfrequented road. Carl ran on before, leading the way to the scene of the lynching.

The place was deserted and silent. Only the cold wind swept the bleak wood-side, making melancholy moans among the trees. Overhead shone the stars, lighting dimly the desolation of the ground.

"Now, where's yer tar-and-feathering party?" said Stackridge. "See here, Dutchy! ye hain't been foolin' us, have ye?"

"I vish it vas notting but fooling!" said Carl, full of distress, fearing the worst. "We have come too late. The willains have took him off."

"Feathers, men!" muttered Stackridge, picking up something from beneath his feet. "The boy's right! Now, which way have they gone?--that's the question."

"Hark!" said Carl. "I see a man!"

Indeed, just then a dim figure arose from the earth, and appeared slowly and painfully moving away.

"Hold on there!" cried Stackridge. "Needn't be afeared of us. We're your friends."

The figure stopped, uttering a deep groan.

"Is it you, Hapgood?"

"No," answered the most miserable voice in the world. "It's me."

"Who's _me_?"

"Pepperill--Dan Pepperill; ye know me, don't ye, Stackridge?"

"You? you scoundrel!" said the farmer. "What have ye been doing to the schoolmaster? Answer me this minute, or I'll----"

"O, don't, don't!" implored the wretch. "I'll answer, I'll tell every thing, only give me a chance!"

"Be quick, then, and tell no lies!"

The poor man looked around at his captors in the starlight, stooping dejectedly, and rubbing his bent knees.

"I ain't to blame--I'll tell ye that to begin with. I've been jest knocked about, from post to pillar, and from pillar to post, till I don't know who's my friends and who ain't. I reckon more ain't than is!" added he, dismally.

"That's neither here nor there!" said Stackridge. "Where's Hapgood? that's what I want to know."

"Ye see," said Dan, endeavoring to collect his wits (you would have thought they were in his kneepans, and he was industriously rubbing them up), "Ropes sent me to tote the kittle home, and when I got back here, I be durned if they wasn't all gone, schoolmaster and all."

"But what had they done to him?"

"I don't know, I'm shore! That's what I was a comin' back fur to see. He let me down when I was hung up on the rail, and helped me home; and so I says to myself, says I, 'Why shouldn't I do as much by him?' so I come back, and found him gone."

"What was in the kittle?" Stackridge took him by the throat.

"O, don't go fur to layin' it to me, and I'll tell ye! Thar'd been tar in the kittle! It had been used to give him a coat. That's the fact, durn me if it ain't! They put it on with the broom--my broom--they made me bring my own broom, that's the everlastin' truth! made me do it myself, and spile my wife's best broom into the bargain!" And Pepperill sobbed.

"You put on the tar?"

"Don't kill me, and I'll own up! I did put on some on't, that's a fact. Ropes would a' killed me if I hadn't, and now you kill me fur doin' of it. He did knock me down, 'cause he said I didn't rub it on hard enough; and arter that he rubbed it himself."

"What next, you scoundrel?"

"Next, they rolled him in the feathers, and sent me, as I told ye, to tote the kittle home. Now don't, don't go fur to hang me, Mr. Stackridge! Help me, men! help me, Withers,--Devit! For he means to be the death of me, I'm shore!"

Indeed, Stackridge was in a tremendous passion, and would, no doubt, have done the man some serious injury but for the timely interposition of Carl.

"O, you're a good boy, Carl!" cried Dan, in an exstasy of terror and gratitude. "You know they druv me to it, don't ye? You know I wouldn't have gone fur to do it no how, if 't hadn't been to save my life. And as fur rubbing on the tar, I know'd they'd rub harder 'n I did; so I took holt, if only to do it more soft and gentle-like."

Carl testified to Dan's apparent unwillingness to participate in the outrage; and Stackridge, finding that nothing more could be got out of the terror-stricken wretch, flung him off in great rage and disgust.

"We must find what they have done with Hapgood," he said. "We're losing time here. We'll go to his boarding-place first."

As Pepperill fell backwards upon some stones, and lay there helplessly, Carl ran to him to learn if he was hurt.