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Show 220 UNCLE TOM'S OABIN: OR, And clear and loud swelled through the empty halls the refrain, oc 0 there'll be mourning, mourning, mourning, 0 there '11 be mourning, at tho judgment-scat of Christ! '' Legree stopped. lie would have been ashamed to tell of it, but large drops of sweat stood on his forehead, his heart beat heavy and thick with fear ; he even thought he saw something white rising and glimmering in the gloom before him, and shuddered to think what if the form of his dead mother shoulu suudcnly appear to him. "I know ouc thing," he said to himself, as he stumbled back in the sitting-room, and sat down; "I 'II let that fellow alone, after this! What did I want of his cussed paper 1 I h1lievc I am bewitched, sure enough! I 'vo been shivering and sweating, ever since ! Where did be get that hair 1 It couldn't have been that! I burnt t!tat up, I know I did! It would be a joke, if hair could rise from the dead ! " Ah, Legree ! that golden tress was charmed ; each hair had ju it a spell of terror and remorse for thee, and was used by a mightier power to bind thy cruel hands from inflicting uttermost evil on the helpless ! "I say," saill Legree, stamping and whistling to the dogs, "wake up, some of you, and keep me company! n but tho dogs only opened one eye at him, sleepily, and closed it again. "I 'II have Sambo and Quimbo up here, to sing and danco one of their hell dances, and keep off these horrid notions," said Legree ; and, putting on his hat, he went on to tho verandah, and blew a horn, with which he commonly summoned his two sable drivers. Legree was often wont, when in a gracious humor, to get r LIFE AMONG TIIB LOWLY. 221 these two worthies into his sitting-room, and, after warming them up with whiskey, amuse himself by setting them to singing, dancing or fighting, as the humor took him. l t was between one and two o'clock at night, as Cassy was returning from her ministrations to poor Tom, that she heard the sound of wild shrieking, whooping, halloing, and singing, from the sitting-room, mingled with the barking of dogs, and other symptoms of general uproar. She came up on the verandah steps, and looked in. Legree and both the drivers, in a state of furious intoxication, were singing, whooping, upsetting chairs, and making all manner of ludicrous and horrid grimaces at each other. She rested her small, slender hand on the window-blind, and looked fixedly at them; - there was a world of anguish, scorn, and fierce bitterness, in her black eyes, as she did so. "Would it be a sin to rid the world of such a wretch 1" she said to herself. She turned hurriedly away, and, passing round to a back door, glided up stairs, and tapped at Emmeline's door. VOL. II. 19~ |