No words can do full justice to the varied expressions that flitted across the negro’s face as the midshipman’s narrative went on.
“So,” he said slowly, when it was concluded, “you’s bin an’ had a long privit convissation wid one ob Ben-Ahmed’s ladies! My! you know what dat means if it found out?”
“Well, Miss Sommers herself was good enough to tell me that it would probably mean flogging to death.”
“Floggin’ to deaf!” echoed Peter. “P’r’aps so wid massa, for he’s a kind man; but wid most any oder man it ’ud mean roastin’ alibe ober a slow fire! Geo’ge, you’s little better’n a dead man!”
“I hope it’s not so bad as that, for no one knows about it except the lady and yourself.”
“Das so; an’ you’re in luck, let me tell you. Now you go to work, an’ I’ll retire for some meditation—see what’s to come ob all dis.”
Truly the changes that take place in the feelings and mind of man are not less sudden and complete than the physical changes which sometimes occur in lands that are swept by the tornado and desolated by the earthquake. That morning George Foster had risen from his straw bed a miserable white slave, hopeless, heartless, and down at spiritual zero—or below it. That night he lay down on the same straw bed, a free man—in soul, if not in body—a hero of the most ardent character—up at fever-heat in the spiritual thermometer, or above it, and all because his heart throbbed with a noble purpose—because an object worthy of his efforts was placed before him, and because he had made up his mind to do or die in a good cause!
What that cause was he would have found it difficult to define clearly in detail. Sufficient for him that an unknown but stalwart father, with Radical tendencies, and a well-known and lovely daughter, were at the foundation of it, and that “Escape!” was the talismanic word which formed a battery, as it were, with which to supply his heart with electric energy.
He lived on this diet for a week, with the hope of again seeing Hester; but he did not see her again for many weeks.
One morning Peter the Great came to him as he was going out to work in the garden and said—