[Illustration:  HANDCUFFING JUDY’S HUSBAND]

“O mamma!” said little Cornelia, burying her face in her mother’s lap, and sobbing aloud, “Do they do such wicked things?”

“I wish I had hold of him,” said Alfred, “wouldn’t I give it to him?”

“I should feel very much grieved if I saw you harm him in any way, Ally.  Do you forget what our blessed Saviour said about returning good for evil?” asked his mother.

“Well, but mother, I am sure it would have been no more than fair just to give him a good cowhiding, so as it did not kill him.”

“No more than he deserved, perhaps, but, my son, you should remember that Jesus taught us that we should forgive the greatest injuries.

“After this cruel treatment of John, Judy, with the aid of one of the other slaves who sympathized with her and John, carried him to a little hut that was not so much exposed as the one in which he had previously lain.  He had a razor with which he had attempted to kill himself, but Judy came in at that moment, and as he was very weak, she easily took it from him; but he said: 

“’O let me die!  I would rather be in my grave, than endure this over again.’

“He was sick and helpless a long time, but he would have suffered much more if Judy had not been free, and had it in her power to nurse him.  There is many a poor slave that has fallen a victim to this kind of barbarity, with no eye to witness his distress but his heavenly Father’s.

“To add to John’s misery was the brutal treatment of a little brother; a smart active child of eight years of age, who was owned by the same man.  Mr. Jackson was a great drunkard, and when under the influence of liquor no crime was too great for him.  One day, for some slight offense, he took the child, marked his throat from ear to ear, and then cut the rims of his ears partly off and left them hanging down.  A little while after this, a gentleman, who had been in the habit of visiting at the house, rode up, and noticing the child’s throat, asked him how it happened.  He said, “Massa did it.”  The gentleman was so enraged, that he immediately mounted his horse, rode away, and had him arrested.

“When John was able to leave his bed, his mistress, a kind and humane woman, whose slave he had been before her marriage, took him and hid him in a cave that was on the plantation, and supplied him with food, intending to send him away as soon as she could do so safely.

“He was there several weeks, and his master supposed he had again escaped, and was hid somewhere in the woods, but he had become so much dissipated that he took no interest in his business affairs, and never explored the hiding-places on his own plantation.  One day a gentleman by the name of Mr. Lawrence, of Vincennes, came to Mr. Jackson’s to purchase a servant to take with him to Indiana.

“Why, mother, I thought that they would not allow any one to hold slaves here,” said Ally.