says:
"Oh, he's dead, he's dead, I know he's dead!"
And Tom he turned his head a little, and muttered something or other,
which showed he warn't in his right mind; then she flung up her hands,
and says:
"He's alive, thank God! And that's enough!" and she snatched a kiss of
him, and flew for the house to get the bed ready, and scattering orders
right and left at the niggers and everybody else, as fast as her tongue
could go, every jump of the way.
I followed the men to see what they was going to do with Jim; and the old
doctor and Uncle Silas followed after Tom into the house. The men was
very huffy, and some of them wanted to hang Jim for an example to all the
other niggers around there, so they wouldn't be trying to run away like
Jim done, and making such a raft of trouble, and keeping a whole family
scared most to death for days and nights. But the others said, don't do
it, it wouldn't answer at all; he ain't our nigger, and his owner would
turn up and make us pay for him, sure. So that cooled them down a
little, because the people that's always the most anxious for to hang a
nigger that hain't done just right is always the very ones that ain't the
most anxious to pay for him when they've got their satisfaction out of
him.
They cussed Jim considerble, though, and give him a cuff or two side the
head once in a while, but Jim never said nothing, and he never let on to
know me, and they took him to the same cabin, and put his own clothes on
him, and chained him again, and not to no bed-leg this time, but to a big
staple drove into the bottom log, and chained his hands, too, and both
legs, and said he warn't to have nothing but bread and water to eat after
this till his owner come, or he was sold at auction because he didn't
come in a certain length of time, and filled up our hole, and said a
couple of farmers with guns must stand watch around about the cabin every
night, and a bulldog tied to the door in the daytime; and about this time
they was through with the job and was tapering off with a kind of generl
good-bye cussing, and then the old doctor comes and takes a look, and
says:
"Don't be no rougher on him than you're obleeged to, because he ain't a
bad nigger. When I got to where I found the boy I see I couldn't cut the
bullet out without some help, and he warn't in no condition for me to
leave to go and get help; and he got a little worse and a little worse,
and after a long time he went out of h
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