The Commonwealth's attorney then rejoined with a few remarks.
After a retirement of a few minutes, the jury returned with a verdict of "guilty as charged in the indictment," ordering me to receive two hundred lashes on my bare back, not exceeding fifty at a time. I was then remanded to jail to await the execution of my sentence.
Very gloomy looked that little room to me when I returned to it, with a horrid crime of which, Heaven knows, I was guiltless, affixed to my name, and the prospect of a cruel punishment awaiting me. Who may tell the silent, unexpressed agony that I there endured? Certain I am, that the nightly stars and the old pale moon looked not down upon a more wretched heart. There I sat, looking ever and again at the stolid Fanny, who had been sentenced to the work-house for a limited time. Since the death of her infant she had lost all her loquacity, and remained in a kind of dreamy, drowsy state, between waking and sleeping.
Through how many scenes of vanished days, worked the plough-share of memory, upturning the fresh earth, where lay the buried seeds of some few joys! And, sometimes, a sly, nestling thought of Henry hid itself away in the most covert folds of my heart. His melancholy bronze face had cut itself like a fine cameo, on my soul. The old, withered flowers, which he had sent, lay carefully concealed in a corner of the cell. Their beauty had departed like a dim dream; but a little of their fragrance still remained despite decay.
One day, after the trial, I was much honored and delighted by a visit from no less a personage than Mr. Trueman himself.
I was overcome, and had not power to speak the thanks with which my grateful heart ran over. He kindly pitied my embarrassment, and relieved me by saying,
"Oh, I know you are thankful to me. I only wish, my good girl, that my speech had rescued you from the punishment you have to suffer. Believe me, I deeply pity you; and, if money could avert the penalty which I know you have not merited, I would relieve you from its infliction; but nothing more can be done for you. You must bear your trouble bravely."
"Oh, my kind, noble friend!" I passionately exclaimed, "words like these would arm me with strength to brave a punishment ten times more severe than the one that awaits me. Sympathy from you can repay me for any suffering. That a noble white gentleman, of distinguished talents, should stoop from his lofty position to espouse the cause of a poor mulatto, is to me as pleasing as it is strange."
"Alas, my good girl, you and all of your wronged and injured race are objects of interest and affection to me. I would that I could give you something more available than sympathy: but these Southerners are a knotty people; their prejudices of caste and color grow out, unsightly and disgusting, like the rude excrescences upon a noble tree, eating it away, and sucking up its vital sap. These Western people are of a noble nature, were it not for their sectional blemishes. I never relied upon the many statements which I have heard at the North, taking them as natural exaggerations; but my sojourn here has proved them to be true."
I then told him of the discussion that I had overheard between him and Mr. Winston.