CHAPTER XII.
PETE'S SLAVERY AND FREEDOM.
ELL, it's rather flusticatin' to tell grand folks like you about a darkey what's of no account, but I thinks of it considerable when there ain't much else to do. You see I had a father and a mother, and my father wasn't of much account for he drinked like a fish. Then he walloped us all round, and come pretty near killin' the whole of us like he did mother."
"Killed your mother, the wretch! what did you let him do it for?" asked one of the girls excitedly.
"Couldn't help it Miss; but I'm comin' to that. Well, you see he got drunk and walloped us, and mother said she weren't going to slave herself for a animal like him, so when he came home drunk she wouldn't give him nothing to eat, and that made him furiouser.
"Mother said he might bang till he got tired, so she used to lock herself in her room and take us with her, and then when he got tired cussin' and swearin' he lay down and went to sleep. Mother worked hard enough, I tell you, to get bread for us all: you see there was six of us, and it took a powerful sight of wittles. She never said nothin' about workin', though, only when father broke up the cheers and things, and then she used to cry, and we all cried." Here Pete drew his hand across his eyes, and the girls looked pityingly at him. In spite of the pain caused by such recollections, they were so curious to know all, that Pete was again urged to go on.
"Well, I helped de best way I could, for I was a little shaver then, and Jim, he was next to me, he did little jobs for de white folks around. But father he got worse, and wouldn't work no how, and he was always gettin' took up, and then when they let him out of jail he was furiouser than ever. One night, O laws! I most wish I'd never gone and been born when I think of that, mother and all us children was asleep. Father had been took up, and so we wasn't afeard of nothin'. It was a snowin' and a blowin' sky high, and nobody could hear nothin' for the wind. All at once I felt somethin' a movin' over my face, soft like, and then it made for my throat. Then I ups and gives a spring, and run into mother's room, but somethin' tripped me, and I fell down right on top of it. Then it moaned out like, and—and I knowed it was mother a lying there, and that somebody had killed her.