ve nothing?"

"Pity! pity!" sobbed the blind man. "I'm burned so bad nobody will buy
_me_, but I stole her pass to help a slave off that I fell in love
with."

Judge Custis left Clayton's side, and waited till the hour in the
pillory was done, and, after a fierce contest, saw Sorden come off
victorious at the sale, though it took every dollar the Judge could
raise in Georgetown on his private credit.

"What is the name of the girl you gave her pass to?" asked the Judge of
the blind mulatto.

"Virgie, marster."

"My heart told me so," exclaimed the Judge. "Your crime has been
punished enough. I will send you to your wife."[15]

* * * * *

John Randel, Jr., observed, that evening:

"Devil Jim Clark has taken example from Patty Cannon, and squared the
circle."

"Not dead?" asked Clayton.

"Yes, dead and buried. He was cleaning up his contract on the canal, and
mistook the white Irish laborers there for kidnapped niggers. They set
on him, and beat him and scared him together, so that he never
recovered. They say he was 'converted' on his death-bed; or, as the
saying is, 'he died triumphantly;' but the darkeys report that the devil
came straight down with a chariot and drove him off."

"That fellow, Whitecar, I'm reserving," said Clayton, "to punish when I
can use him to sustain an argument in favor of admitting negro testimony
in kidnapping cases.[16] Without that admission, these kidnappers cannot
be convicted: even Patty Cannon here may escape us, though she has
killed white men."

Sorden spoke up, he being of the party:

"A disease called leprosy has broke out in ole Derrick Molleston's
cabin; Sam Ogg has got it, too, and they say he fetched it up from the
breakwater. Nobody will go near them. Black Dave is dead; he said he
killed a man at Prencess Anne: the young wife of Levin Dennis, who
turns out to be a lady, stayed and prayed with him to the last, and he
went off humble and happy. But, my skin! another kidnapper has rented
Johnson's tavern a'ready."

"The railroad will clear all these evils out," exclaimed Randel. "I've
put it into poetry," and he began to recite:

"To dark Naswaddox forest fled
The murderer from the main,
And with the otter laid his head
Amid the swamp and cane:
'Here nothing can pursue my ear,
From travelled paths astray;
I shall forget, from year to year,
The world beyond the bay!'

"The hunted man one morning