strung up and flogged, knew by fearful
experience what it was to be strung up and flogged. Then she, who
sympathized with her son in his desire to see every man, woman, and
child, that loved the old Union, served in this fashion, felt in her own
writhing and bleeding flesh the stings of that inhuman vengeance.
Terrible blunder, for which she had only herself to thank! Robbery of
her neighbor's house--the dishonest "borrowing," not of these ill-gotten
goods only, but also of her neighbor's name--had brought her, by what we
call fatality, to this strait.

Fatality is but another name for Providence.

The soldiers waited for a lull in the shrieks, then put once more the
question.

"You tell now? Where is your husband? No? Den you git ten lash more.
Always ten lash till you tell."

A storm of incoherent denial, angry threats, sobs, and screams, was the
response. One of the soldiers drew her skirts over her head again, and
gave another pull at the cords that hauled up her thumbs, while the
other stood off and measured out his whip.

Just then the door opened, and Captain Sprowl looked in.

"How are you getting on, boys?"

The question was accompanied by an approving smile, which seemed to say,
"I see you are getting on very well."

"We whip her once. We give her ten lash. She not tell."

"Very well. Give her ten more."

The widow struggled and screamed. Had she recognized her son's voice?
Muffled as she was, he did not recognize hers. Nor was it surprising
that, in the unusual posture in which he found her, he did not know her
from Mrs. Stackridge.

He stood in the door and smiled while the soldier laid on.

"Make it a dozen," he quietly remarked. "And smart ones, to wind up
with!"

So it happened that, thanks to her son's presence, the screeching victim
got two "smart ones" additional.

"Now uncover her face. Ease away on her thumbs a little. I'll question
her mys--Good Lucifer!" exclaimed the captain, finding himself face to
face with his own mother.

Twenty-two lashes and the torture of the strung-up thumbs had proved too
much even for the strong nerves of Widow Sprowl. She fell down in a
swoon.

Lysander, furious, whipped out his sword, and turned upon the soldiers.
They quietly stepped back, and took their guns from the corner. He would
certainly have killed one of them on the spot had he not seen by the
glance of their eyes that the other would, at the same instant, as
certainly have killed him.