[CHAPTER XXI.
PERSECUTION.]
“Oh, you didn’t know we was here or you wouldn’t have kep’ us waitin’, would you?”—“Now, ain’t she a slick un!—and in her bare feet too. Well, the walk through the grass will be good fer her corns.”—“Say, now less get her drunk. She’ll be awful funny when she’s full,” and they passed up a whisky-bottle toward me; and so the remarks flew as the crowd of thirty or more men kept pushing closer around, anxious to get a nearer view of me.
“I say, miss, is that the latest style of wearing hair on Canal street?”—“Oh, you forgot your bustle!”—“You don’t feel as big as you generally do!”—“You won’t snub us now, will you, even if we do live at the Cross-roads?”
Sam Scott took me by the arm. “Don’t be afraid, missis—I know them all. Let us go,” he said.
I looked into the face of this tall young man, and saw the look of quiet determination as we moved out of the door. There are two kinds of composure—one which speaks of calm rest and peace, the other a calm that is so quiet it threatens. It is the hush we feel before the storm—the composure of the couchant leopard before he springs. This was the look on the face of this twenty years old stripling as he pushed me not ungently before him and motioned that The Man should walk by my side.
Bilkson led the way, his head tied up so he could not wear his hat. Doubtless he exaggerated the severity of his wounds, hoping to get sympathy from the crowd. But be it known this was not a sympathetic assemblage. Scott seemed the only sober man among them, and they kept still crowding near, and still the ribald jeering continued. Scott walked close behind me, and I noticed that he was the only one who carried no weapon—even Bilkson, who walked like a drum major at the head of the procession, carried on his shoulder a fencerail.
“The band will now play the wedding-march,” shouted a loud mouthed buffoon. “They took their wedding tower afore the ceremony, didn’t they?” And still the awful obscenity which I dare not think of, still less write, continued.