University of Virginia Library

11. XI.
CONSEQUENCES.

The rioters seemed aware that a grave accident had
occurred, and to be frightened at their own work. The
shattered door was closed, and in an instant all was silent
about the hut, except the wind. And when, a minute
later, the door was boldly opened again, and Mr. Williams
appeared, fearless of missiles, calling loudly, “Help!
will somebody bring help, for mercy's sake!” the dispersing
mob, in still greater alarm, skulked off, and made no
sign. As if they, who had committed a deed of darkness,
could be expected now to come forward and expose themselves
by answering that appeal!

Mr. Williams goes back into the hut, but reappears
presently, and is hurrying into the street, when he sees a
lantern coming over towards him from the Judge's gate.

“That you, Williams?” cries Gingerford, meeting him.
“What 's the matter? Where are you going?”

“I was going for you first, then for the doctor.” And
Williams relates in a few words what has chanced.

“I heard the villains!” says the Judge, striding towards
the hut. “They shall rue this night, if there is
law in the land!”

He has regained his self-control when he enters and
looks upon the pallid face and lifeless form of the simple
boy lying upon the bed, with the women bending over
him, trying to bring back to that shattered clay sense and
breath.

Williams returns with the doctor, and now excited
neighbors — for the noise of the riot has got abroad —
begin to come in; among them, our friend Frisbie, accompanied
by Stephen, looking pale. They find Gingerford,
with his coat off, chafing one of the hands of the murdered
boy.

“Gentlemen,” says the Judge, stepping back to make
room for the doctor, “you see what has been done!”

“How did it happen?” falters poor Frisbie, very much
disturbed.

“Yes!” exclaims Stephen, with conspicuous innocence,
“how did it happen?”

“It was a perfectly murderous attack!” cries Gentleman
Bill, nursing his broken shin in the corner. “They
had smashed that winder, and the door, — the fiends
incarnate, — and disfigured my features with a club; and
when I rushed out to defend the domicile, they flung a
big beam at my legs, — crippled me, as you see; then as
my father went to pick me up, and the clubs kept coming,

that boy sacrificed himself; he rushed between us and
the cowardly attackers, and got a stick side the head.
That 's the history, gentlemen.”

“Who were they?” demands the flushed Frisbie.

“Ay, ay! who were they?” echoes the virtuous Stephen.

“I a'n't prepared to give evidence on that p'int,
though one or two of 'em is known,” says Gentleman Bill,
significantly.

Frisbie makes a choking effort to speak, and finally
addresses his much-hated neighbor: “Judge Gingerford,
you and I have had some political differences, and perhaps
personal misunderstandings, but about this thing we feel
alike. No man can abominate such proceedings more
than I do.”

“I am relieved to hear you say it,” replies the Judge;
“and, believing that you speak sincerely, I offer you my
hand.”

Frisbie, flustered, could not well refuse this magnanimously
proffered token of reconciliation; and the Judge's
shining behavior shed something of its lustre even upon
him. The spectators were so much affected by this scene,
that Stephen immediately turned and offered his hand to
Gentleman Bill, who wrung it with a sardonic grin.

“Excuse me, my friends,” said Frisbie, looking very
apoplectic in the face, “but I left a sick child at home;
I was watching with her when Stephen came to tell me
there was a disturbance in the village.”

“I had heard a noise and gone out to the stable,
thinking it was the horses,” Stephen makes haste to
explain.

“Now, if I can do nothing, I will go back to my
sick child,” adds Frisbie. “What do you think, doctor?”

“The boy is dead,” replies the doctor, quietly, having
completed his examination.

“He died for us!” exclaimed the old negress, bending
with devoutly clasped hands over the foot of the bed.
“He gave up his life for us poor colored folks, when the
children of the Evil One surrounded us. He was simple
in his mind; but he done all a Christian could do. I
bless the Lord for him, for he was a child of God, and he
has gone to be an angel with the rest.”

Then Mrs. Williams and the girls came and wept over
the pale corpse, and Joe, moved by the contagion of grief,
sent up a wild wail of woe that filled the hut.