I'm going to do to them as
they would have done to us. The whipping will come off as soon as Abe
can find Little Pete to handle the gad. I sent him off some time ago.
I don' see what's keeping him."
His manner was as quiet and matter-of-course as if he were proposing
the most ordinary sort of forenoon occupation, and when he finished
speaking he walked away without so much as a glance around to see how
the people took it. It was nevertheless quite worth observing, the
fascinated stare with which they looked after him, and then turned to
fix on each other. It was Abner who, after several moments of dead
silence, said in an awed voice, like a loud whisper:
"He's a gonter whip em." And Obadiah almost devoutly murmured, "By
Gosh!"
The men who stood around, were intensely angry with the prisoners, for
their plot to arrest and whip them, but the idea of retaliating in
kind, by whipping the prisoners themselves, had not for an instant
occurred to the boldest. The prisoners were gentlemen, and the idea of
whipping a gentleman just as if he were one of themselves, was
something the most lawless of them had never entertained. Education,
precedent, and innate caste sentiment had alike precluded the idea.
Pages:
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286