t?"

"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, al