'Indeed! I feel honoured, madam,' and the corners of the clergyman's thick lips turned contemptuously down—'and that is—?'
'That you will cease your visits to this house. It would be painful indeed to me to receive you as a guest from this time forth, for this very day it is my intention to write to the Governor and acquaint him with the shocking act of cruelty committed this morning—'twas a shameful, cruel deed to flog an old man so cruelly.'
Mr Sampson's face was now livid with the rage he could not suppress.
'Beware, madam, of what you say or do. 'Tis a pretty example you set your children to thus insult a clergyman.'
My mother's answer cut like a whip-lash. 'A clergyman such as you, Mr Sampson, can inspire naught in their childish minds but fear and abhorrence,' and then she pulled the bell cord so violently that not only Denham but my father entered as well.
'Show Mr Sampson out,' she said in accents of mingled anger and scorn, and then turning to the window nearest, she seemed to be gazing unconcernedly upon the blue expanse of ocean before her; but her little hands were clasped tightly together, and her whole frame trembled with excitement.
As soon as the clergyman had mounted his horse and ridden off, my father returned to the dining-room.
'You have made a bitter enemy of a man who can do me much harm,' he began; but something in my mother's face made him cease from further reproaches, and he added lightly, that he hoped 'twould soon blow over.
'Charles,' said my mother, who was now herself again, 'it must not blow over. The Governor shall know of this man's doings. And never again shall I or my children enter the church when he preaches. To-night, I suppose, he will visit that wretched old man—the victim of his brutality—and administer “spiritual admonition.” Come, children, let us go to the beach and forget that that dreadful man has been here.'
It was, I think, this practice of 'administering admonition' to convicts after he had had them sentenced to a severe flogging that first gave my mother such an utter abhorrence of the man, together with his habit of confining his sermons to the prisoners to the one subject—their own criminal natures and the terrors of hell-fire everlasting. Then, too, his voice was appalling to hear, for he had a way of suddenly dropping his harsh, metallic tones, and raising his voice to a howl, like to that of a hungry dingo.{*}