miled. "Oh, Lawd 'a' mussy! my back! Ow! It bu'us like
fiah!--o--oh! oh!--ow!"

"It doesn't hurt as bad as it ought to, Cornelius," and the blows came
again.

"Ow! Dey won't git win' of it! 'Deed an 'deedy dey won't,
sweet Mahse John Wesley!--oh!--o--oh!--Ow!--Oh, Lawd, come
down! Dey des _shan't_ git win' of it! 'fo' Gawd dey shan't!
Ow!--oh!--oh!--oh!--a--ah--oo--oo!"

"Now, go!" said Garnet. Cornelius leaped up, ran with his eyes turned
back on the whip, and fell again, wallowing like a scalded dog. "Oh, my
po' back, my po' back! M--oh! it's a-bu'nin' up--oh!"

The Major advanced with the broken whip uplifted. Cornelius ran backward
to the steps and rolled clear to the ground. The whip was tossed after
him. With a gnashing curse he snatched it up and hurried off, moaning
and writhing, into the darkness, down by the spring-house.

Garnet smiled in scorn, far from guessing that soon, almost as soon as
yonder receding clatter of hoofs should pass into silence, the venomous
thing from which he had lifted his heel would coil and strike, and that
another back, a little one that had never felt the burden of a sin or a
task, or aught heavier than the sun's kiss, was to take its turn at
writhing and burning like fire.

The memory of that hour, when it was over and home was reached, was
burnt into the child's mind forever. It was then late. Mrs. March,
"never strong," and,--with a sigh,--"never anxious," had retired. Her
two handmaids, freedwomen, were new to the place, but already fond of
her son. Cornelius found them waiting uneasily at the garden-fence. He
had lingered and toiled with the Judge and his broken wagon, he said,
"notwithstanding we done dissolve," until he had got the worst "misery
in his back" he had ever suffered. When they received John from him and
felt the child's tremblings, he warned them kindly that the less asked
about it the better for the reputations of both the boy and his father.

"You can't 'spute the right an' custody of a man to his own son's
chastisement, naw yit to 'low to dat son dat ef ever he let his maw git
win' of it, he give him double an' thribble."

When the women told him he lied he appealed to John, and the child
nodded his head. About midnight Cornelius handed the horse over to Judge
March, reassuring him of his son's safety and comfort, and hurried off,
much pleased with the length of his own head in that he had not stolen
the animal. John fell asleep almost as soon as he