“Golly!” said Cæsar, with a chuckle that exhibited a mouth open from ear to ear, “Massa Harry breeches fit.”
“Anything but your leg,” said the peddler, coolly pursuing the toilet of Henry. “Slip on the coat, captain, over all. And here, Cæsar, place this powdered wig over your curls, and be careful and look out of the window whenever the door is open, and on no account speak, or you will betray all.”
“I s’pose Harvey t’ink a colored man has no tongue like oder folk,” grumbled the black, as he took the station assigned him.
Everything was now ready for action, and the peddler very deliberately went over the whole of his injunctions to the two actors in the scene. The captain he conjured to dispense with his erect military carriage, and for a season to adopt the humble paces of his father’s negro; and Cæsar he enjoined to silence and disguise, so long as he could possibly maintain them. Thus prepared, he opened the door and called aloud to the sentinel, who had retired to the farthest end of the passage.
“Let the woman of the house be called,” said Harvey, in the solemn key of the assumed character; “and let her come alone. The prisoner is in a happy train of meditation, and must not be led from his devotions.”
Cæsar sank his face between his hands; and when the soldier looked into the apartment, he thought he saw his charge in deep abstraction. Casting a glance of huge contempt at the divine, he called aloud for the good woman of the house. She hastened at the summons, with earnest zeal, entertaining a secret hope that she was to be admitted to the gossip of a death-bed repentance.
“Sister,” said the minister in the authoritative tones of a master, “have you in the house ‘The Christian Criminal’s Last Moments, or Thoughts on Eternity, for them who die a violent death’?”
“I never heard of the book!” said the matron in astonishment.
“’’Tis not unlikely; there are many books you have never heard of; it is impossible for this poor penitent to pass in peace, without the consolation of that volume. One hour’s reading in it is worth an age of man’s preaching.”
“Bless me, what a treasure to possess!—when was it put out?”