red during
work hours in the field. Simon followed his father, however, but made,
as he went along, all manner of "faces" at the old man's back;
gesticulated as if he were going to strike him between the shoulders
with his fists, and kicking at him so as almost to touch his coat tail
with his shoe. In this style they walked on to the mulberry-tree, in
whose shade Simon's brother Ben was resting.

It must not be supposed that, during the walk to the place of
punishment, Simon's mind was either inactive, or engaged in suggesting
the grimaces and contortions wherewith he was pantomimically expressing
his irreverent sentiments toward his father. Far from it. The movements
of his limbs and features were the mere workings of habit--the
self-grinding of the corporeal machine--for which his reasoning half was
only remotely responsible. For while Simon's person was thus, on its own
account "making game" of old Jed'diah, his wits, in view of the
anticipated flogging, were dashing, springing, bounding, darting about,
in hot chase of some expedient suitable to the necessities of the case;
much after the manner in which puss--when Betty, armed with the broom,
and hotly seeking vengeance for pantry robbed or bed defiled, has closed
upon her the garret doors and windows--attempts all sorts of impossible
exits, to come down at last in the corner, with panting side and glaring
eye, exhausted and defenseless. Our unfortunate hero could devise
nothing by which he could reasonably expect to escape the heavy blows of
his father. Having arrived at this conclusion and the "mulberry" about
the same time, he stood with a dogged look, awaiting the issue.

The old man Suggs made no remark to any one while he was sizing up
Bill,--a process which, though by no means novel to Simon, seemed to
excite in him a sort of painful interest. He watched it closely, as if
endeavoring to learn the precise fashion of his father's knot; and when
at last Bill was swung up a-tiptoe to a limb, and the whipping
commenced, Simon's eye followed every movement of his father's arm; and
as each blow descended upon the bare shoulders of his sable friend, his
own body writhed and "wriggled" in involuntary sympathy.

"It's the devil, it is," said Simon to himself, "to take such a
wallopin' as that. Why, the old man looks like he wants to git to the
holler, if he could,--rot his old picter! It's wuth, at the least,
fifty cents--je-e-miny, how that hurt!--yes, it's wuth thr