"I thank you Clarissa, but I don't deserve your compliments," Alice replied. "I don't feel as if I could cheer any one or make one human heart light or happy. What will they do with father Clarissa?" she continued.
"De good Lord in heaben only knows, missis. Pears lak dey ez wouring dat po man up wid leetle moufuls at de time, and he so innosen too."
"Poor father," she said to herself. "I have been made very strong by a refreshing influence. If you could only place your burdens upon me until I became wearied like yourself, I would be so happy."
At twilight the old man, foot sore and exhausted, tottered into the verandah very much in the spirit of Cataline "nursing wrath and breathing mischief." "How uniform in all ages," he vehemently exclaimed, "are the workings of tyranny; how plausible its pretexts; how detestable its purposes! I have thought of death and felt no fear when I invited him to come and to come quickly; but I beseech the great God now that he will spare me to behold my people rising in their majesty, with a constitutional exercise of their power, to expel these barbarians from the country; to preserve our laws, our peace, our humanity; and to sustain the liberties of the people against the imminent perils to which they stand exposed."
He knew that he was powerless against that oppression that lacked every resource of intellectual vigor; he knew that whatever indignities were offered to person or property were condoned or excused; he knew that the manhood of the South was suffering a social attaint.
He told his daughter as best he could his humiliating experiences with interjections and volleys of wrath; how that when he was confronted by a black savage in the court he was told with fiendish laughter that the officer "had fotched the rong man," "dat de state had no charge agin him, but it mout hab fore he lef de town." Scarcely had the clear sun begun to overlook the trees the next morning when the negro officer again presented himself at the door with a requisition for Mr. Seymour.
"Yu is ordered ter kote ergin," the negro demanded. "The jedge sed how dat he made er mistake yestiddy und sent de rong man ter jail."
"Let me see your warrant," Colonel Seymour sternly asked.
"If yu fetches a witnis I'll read de warrant," the ignorant brute replied.
Clarissa who was dusting the furniture in the hall, overhearing an animated conversation between her old master and the negro officer, peeped out of the door when the negro saw her and commanded her to come to him.