He felt the pulse of Dandy, and satisfied himself that he was not dead. We must do him the justice to say that he was sorry for what had happened—sorry as a kind parent is when compelled to punish a dear child. He did not believe that he had done wrong, even accepting as true the statement of the culprit; for the safety of the master and his family made it necessary for him to regard the striking even of a blow justifiable under other circumstances as a great enormity. It was the system, more than the man, that was at fault.
Dandy was not dead, and Colonel Raybone ordered two of the house servants, who were present, to do every thing that his condition required. He and Archy then walked towards the house, gloomy and sad, both of them.
CHAPTER VI.
A VISION OF THE PROMISED LAND.
Dandy, lacerated and bleeding, but still insensible, was conveyed to his chamber in the mansion house, by some of the servants. His physician was an old slave, skilled in the treatment of cases of this kind. When the patient recovered from the swoon into which he had fallen, his back was carefully washed, and the usual remedies were applied. Though suffering terribly from the effects of his wounds, he did not permit a sigh nor a groan to escape him.
The mangled flesh could be healed, but there was no balm at Redlawn that could restore his mangled spirit. Dandy felt that he had been crushed to earth. Slavery, which had before been endurable with patience and submission, was now intolerable. He had been scourged with the lash. He had realized what it was to be a slave in the most bitter and terrible sense.
"I will watch and wait," said he to himself, when the old slave had left him alone with his reflections, "but no longer with patience and submission. I will cease to be a slave, or I will die a freeman with the herons and the alligators in the swamp."