’Twas Jacob, the man who had escorted me from Spanish Town and been captured with me.  He told me that he had been put to work in the plantation, but had run away on the second day, along with another man.

“Dat him ober dere,” he said, pointing to a burly, pleasant-featured negro who was in close conversation with Moses.  “Dat Noah!  Ah! he hab drefful time—­pufeckly drefful, ’cos he help Missy.”

“What did he do?” I asked, feeling a most friendly disposition towards a man who had done anything for Lucy.

“She want to run away, too,” he said; “ebery one want to run away.  She got on horse, and Noah was leading her round about, but dey cotched him, and den, oh, lor’, didn’t dey jest beat him!

“Say, Noah, show Massa Bold your po’ back.”

The man left Uncle Moses, and, coming to me, turned about (he was naked to the waist) and displayed to my sickened gaze a score of long, raw wounds upon his back.  They had begun to heal; I learned that his companions had anointed them with grease, and plastered them with leaves from a plant that grew abundantly in the forest.

“Dat is what Massa Vetch do,” he said with a dark look, “and his friend he look on and cry to him to gib me mo’.  He say, teach me a lesson, and I learn it—­oh, yes, I learn it.  And now I show how to teach lesson back.”

His pleasant face was darkened with a glare of utter savagery.

“Black man can teach jest as good as white.  Come ‘long o’ me, massa; I show massa somet’ing.”

Wondering, I followed him past the huts, through the copse, into a little clearing, when I saw a white man stripped to the shirt and tightly bound to a tree.

“Dat is him!” cried Noah excitedly.  “Dat is de white debbil what say gib me mo’.  I teach him lesson:  he nebber want no mo’.”

His tone already sent a shiver through me, but as he went on to explain the nature of the lesson he intended, I shuddered with horror.

“Dis berry night we burn him up!” he cried.  “Massa Bold see?  We tie him up to de bough of de tree, and we light a lill fire, jest a lill one, and first it warm his feet, and den it get bigger, and creep up and up, and bimeby it come to his head, and den he burn all up.  Oh, yes; dat is a proper lesson for white debbils to learn!”

“You will not do anything so horrible!” I murmured.

“Hobbible!  Hain’t my back hobbible?  He laugh when he see ole whip come whisk! whisk! on my po’ back; well, den, I laugh when I see de fire go creep, creep, and when I hear him holler.  Oh, yes, it will be a proper lesson, no mistake ’bout it.”

And then the poor bound wretch, whose head was hanging forward as though he were already in extremis, lifted his eyes and saw me.

“Bold!  Humphrey Bold!” he shrieked in a harsh, gasping whisper.  “Save me!  Save me from these monsters!”

I started forward, scarce believing my eyes.  In the pinched, haggard features of the man who was lashed to the tree I recognized my old enemy, my whilom schoolfellow, Dick Cludde.