“Mary Ann first,” said the master, as catching her suddenly and firmly by the neckband of her dress and imprisoning her struggling legs by wrapping her skirts tightly around them, he held her over the well-hole, head a little down. The struggles and writhings of the child were of no avail in the grasp of the strong man. “I want you to tell the truth and promise never to tell another lie before I drop you down this well.” The child squirmed and screamed in the relentless clutch, swearing entire ignorance of the whole matter. Charlotte felt she must pile on the agony, so she saw “de debbil down dar wid his pitchfork, ready to ketch her.” That vision was too much for the now thoroughly alarmed little darky.
“I tuck it, Marse Jim, I tuck it,” she screamed.
“Will you ever steal again?” still holding her over the well, where in her own little reflection in the placid water she was convinced to her dying day she had seen “de debbil.”
“Neber, neber, ’fore God, neber agin.”
“Never tell another lie if I let you off?”
“Neber, Marse Jim; neber’s long as I lib. Please the Lord and Miss Liza, I’ll be a good little nigger; neber lie agin if you’ll lemme off dis time.”
While that harrowing scene was being enacted with the most determined and refractory of the little witches, and the spectators on the outskirts were convulsed with laughter—every one of them had at one time or another been suspected of the theft—Martha, the tearful, was on her knees, holding despairingly to Miss Liza’s skirts and imploring her “Jist to save me dis time, I’ll be good, I’ll neber tell anoder lie. I’se got a mammy dat will cry fur me, and I don’t want ter die. Oh! save me frum de debbil,” she screamed, when Charlotte’s voice proclaimed him at the bottom of the well. “Don’t let de debbil have your good little nigger.”
Confessions and promises being obtained, Mary Ann was placed upon her feet. Four little black legs flew down the backyard; two little guinea-blue skirts flipped over the cowyard fence and two little dusky spots vanished in the distance. William called after them to “clip it ’fore de debbil gits outen dat well.” Charlotte held her sides with outbursts of laughter that had been held in painful restraint.
“De debbil done skeer ’em more en Marse Jim,” Sawny remarked, as he shambled back to the woodpile.
“I think, my dear,” said the planter, linking his arm into that of his wife and returning to the library with her, “I think those children had a lesson that may last them all their lives. They had to be scared into a confession.”