Thus the old negro congratulated himself on his way home. At the same time Carl, still in irons, was saying to himself,—
"So far so goot. If they had whipped Toby, two things vould be wery pad—the whipping, for one, and he would have told, for another. But I have made vun promise. It vas a pad promise, and a pad promise is petter proken as kept. But if I preak it, they vill preak my head. Vot shall I do? Now let me see!" said Carl.
And he remained plunged in thought.
XXXIV.
CAPTAIN LYSANDER'S JOKE.
Since the time when she lost her best feather-bed and her boarder, the worthy widow Sprowl had suffered serious pecuniary embarrassment. She missed sadly the regular four dollars a week, and the irregular gratuities, she had received from Penn. So much secession had cost her, without yielding as yet any of its promised benefits. The Yankees had not stepped up with the alacrity expected of them, and thrust their servile necks into the yoke of their natural masters. The slave trade was not reopened. Niggers were not yet so cheap that every poor widow could, at a trifling expense, provide herself with several, and grow rich on their labor. In the pride of seeing her son made what she called a "capting," and in the hope of enjoying some of the golden fruits of his valor, she had given him her last penny, and received up to the present time not a penny from him in return. In short, Lysander was ungrateful, and the widow was a disappointed woman.
So it happened that the sugar-bowl and tea-canister were often empty, and the poor widow had no legitimate means of replenishing them. In this extremity she resorted to borrowing. She borrowed of everybody, and never repaid. She borrowed even of the hated Unionists in the neighborhood, and confessed with bitterness to her son that she found them more ready to lend to her than the families of secessionists.
Again, on the morning of the events related in the last chapter, she found herself in want of many things—tea, sugar, meal, beans, potatoes, snuff, and tobacco; for this excellent woman snuffed, "dipped," and smoked.
"Where shall I go and borry to-day?" said she, counting her patrons, and the number of times she had been to borrow of each, on her fingers. "Thar's Mis' Stackridge. I hain't been to her but oncet. I'll go agin, and carry the big basket."