"Samson knocked Joe Johnson down? Den de debbil has got him, and means to pay him back!"
"What's that?" cried Jimmy Phœbus.
The sweat stood on the big slave's forehead, as if his imagination was terribly possessed, but before he could explain Mrs. Custis interrupted:
"I think it was said that old Patty Cannon corrupted Jake Purnell, who cut his throat at Snow Hill five years ago. He was a free negro who engaged slaves to steal other slaves and bring them to him, and he delivered them up to the white kidnappers for money; and nobody could account for his prosperity till a negro who had been beaten to death was found in the Pocomoke River, and three slaves who had been seen in his company were arrested for the murder. They confessed that they had stolen the dead negro and he had escaped from them, and was so beaten with clubs, to make him tractable, that when they gave him to Purnell his life was all gone. Then he was thrown in the river, but his body came up after sinking, and the confession of the wretched tools explained to the slave-owners where all their missing negroes had gone. They marched and surrounded Purnell's hut, and he was discovered burrowed beneath it. They brought the dogs, and fire to drive him out, and as he came out he cut his throat with desperate slashes from ear to ear."
During this narrative the man Dave had listened with rising nervous excitement, rolling his eyes as if in strong inward torment, till the concluding words inspired such terror in him that he dropped the reins, threw back his head, and shouted, with large beads of sweat all round his brow:
"Mercy! mercy! Have mercy! Save me, oh, my Lord!"
"He's got a fit, I reckon," cried Jimmy Phœbus, promptly grasping the reins as the horses started at the cry, and with his leg pinning Dave to the carriage-seat. At that moment the road descended into the hollow of Barren Creek, and, leaping down at the old Mineral Springs Hotel, a health resort of those days, Phœbus humanely procured water and freshened up the gasping negro's face.
"I declare, I am almost afraid to trust myself to this man," Mrs. Custis observed, with more distaste than trepidation.
"Every nigger in this region," exclaimed Jimmy Phœbus, "thinks Pangymonum's comin' down at the dreaded name of Patty Cannon; an' this nigger's gone most to ruin, any way."
"Oh, marster," exclaimed the slave, recovering his speech and glaring wildly around, "I hain't been always the pore sinner rum an' fightin' has made of me. I served the Lord all my youth; I praised his name an' kept the road to heaven; an' thinkin' of the shipwreck I'se made of a good conscience, an' hearin' missis tell of the end of Jake Purnell, it made me yell to de good Lord for mercy, mercy, oh, my soul!"