“Brother Springer,” said Uncle Jesse, grasping his companion’s arm, “don’t tell me no such talk! You don’t expect I’m going to believe it’s more than an awful bad dream you’ve had.”
“Did you dream you saw the blood back there? and there’s four or five dead men in this hall at your left.”
“That’s a fact! Nor I didn’t dream the threats I’ve heard made; but I really thought it was mostly blow and bluster; half of it any how!”
“So did I, so did I,” replied Springer, “and I wouldn’t believe, though I seen all these streets thick with armed men in the evening, that they meant to kill anybody,—only to scare the colored people,—till I heard ’em shoot John Carr, and then I was scared.”
By this time the two men had passed another street and an embankment of the lower rail road, and approached a small group of citizens, both colored and white. Upon the bare ground, in a great pool of blood, lay the poor boy Minton, apparently in the last agonies of death. He was in great distress, and unable to converse at all.
Fire-arms alone had not sufficed for the fiendishness of his murderers; for blows as with an axe or hatchet, had gashed his side, broken his ribs, and cut a large piece of flesh from his thigh. It was a horrible, sickening sight.
“Alfred! Alfred!” cried Uncle Jesse, falling upon his knees at the boy’s head.
“Alfred, who cut you so? Tell us who did it, Alfred; it makes fury boil all over me!”
A groan was the only response; and then from the depths of his great heart, so uniformly held in subjection to his clear reason, and well balanced judgment, Uncle Jesse poured forth such a prayer as had never been heard by those spectators before,—a prayer for the departing soul; that it, going from this body weltering in blood shed by murderous hands, might go up to the righteous Judge innocent of any vengeful or unforgiving spirit;—a prayer full of righteous indignation at these atrocious crimes against his people, and of the spirit which said ‘Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.’