sar!" the old man implored; "I can't tell
nuffin', dat am de troof!"

"Work away, boys," said Lysander.

Was it supposed that the good old practice of applying torture to
enforce confession had long since been done away with? A great mistake,
my friend. Driven from that ancient stronghold of conservatism, the
Spanish Inquisition, it found refuge in this modern stronghold of
conservatism, American Slavery. Here the records of its deeds are
written on many a back.

But Toby was not a slave. No matter for that. For in the school of
slavery, this is the lesson that soon or late is learned: Not simply
that there are two castes, freeman and slave; two races, white and
black; but that there are two great classes, the rich and the poor, the
strong and the weak, the lord and the laborer, one born to rule, and the
other to be ruled. All, who are not masters, are, or ought to be,
slaves: black or white, it makes no difference; and the slave has no
rights. This is the first principle of human slavery. This every slave
society tends directly to develop. It may be kept carefully out of
sight, but there it lurks, in the hardened hearts of men, like water
within rocks. It is forever gushing up in little springs of despotism.
Once it burst forth in a vast convulsive flood, and that was the
Rebellion.

Although Lysander had never owned a slave, he had all his life breathed
the atmosphere of the institution, and imbibed its spirit. He hated
labor. He was ambitious. But he was poor. Like a flying fish, he had
forced himself out of the lower element of society, to which he
naturally belonged, and had long desperately endeavored to soar. The
struggle it had cost him to attain his present position rendered him all
the more violent in his hatred of the inferior class, and all the more
eager to enjoy the privileges of the aristocracy. Do not blame this man
too much. The injustice, the cruelty, the atrocious selfishness he
displays, do not belong so much to the individual as to the institution.
The milk of this wolf makes the child it nourishes wolfish.

Torture to the extent of ten lashes was applied; then once more the
question was put. Gashed, bleeding, strung up by his thumbs to the
crossbeam; every blow of the extemporized whips extorting from him a
howl of agony; no rescue at hand; Lysander looking on with a merciless
smile; the brothers doing their assigned work with merciless
nonchalance; well might poor Toby cry out, in the wild i