premonitory grumbles of Abolition. Horton Pen,
over there, came back with astonishing clearness before me. I seemed to
hear old, wall-eyed, sandy-headed Macdonald, agitating his immense bulk
of ill-fitting white clothes in front of his newspaper, and bellowing in
his ox-voice:

"Abolition, they give us Abolition... or ram it down our throats. _They_
who haven't even the spunk to rid us o' the d------d pirates, not the
spunk to catch and hang one.... Jock, me lahd, we's abolush them before
they sail touch our neegurs.... Let them clear oor seas, let them hang
_one_ pirate, and then talk."

I was the one they were going to hang, to consolidate the bond with the
old island. The cement wanted a little blood in the mixing. Damn them!
I was going to make a fight; they had torn me from Seraphina, to fulfill
their own accursed ends. I felt myself grow harsh and strong, as a tree
feels itself grow gnarled by winter storms. I said to the turnkey again
and again:

"Man, I will promise you a thousand pounds or a pension for life, if you
will get a letter through to my mother or Squire Rooksby of Horton."

He said he daren't do it; enough was known of him to hang him if he
gave offence. His flabby fingers trembled, and his eyes grew large with
successive shocks of cupidity. He became afraid of coming near me; of
the strain of the temptation. On the next day he did not speak a word,
nor the next, nor the next. I began to grow horribly afraid of being
hung. The day before the trial arrived. Towards noon he flung the door
open.

"Here's paper, here's pens," he said. "You can prepare your defence. You
may write letters. Oh, hell! why did not they let it come sooner, I'd
have had your thousand pounds. I'll run a letter down to your people
fast as the devil could take it. I know a man, a gentleman of the road.
For twenty pun promised, split between us, he'll travel faster'n Turpin
did to York." He was waving a large sheet of newspaper agitatedly.

"What does it mean?" I asked. My head was whirling.

"Radical papers got a-holt of it," he said. "Trust them for nosing out.
And the Government's answering them. They say you're going to suffer
for your crimes. Hark to this... um, um... 'The wretched felon now in
Newgate will incur the just penalty...' Then they slaps the West Indies
in the face. 'When the planters threaten to recur to some other power
for protection, they, of course, believe that the loss of the colonies
would be severe