“‘Don’t, you give me the lie again,’ says Abers, ‘or I’ll give you what a liar deserves.’ Well, master give him the lie agin, and Abers took him by the nape of the neck and by the britch of his clothes, and flings him down on the floor, as you would a child, (for master was a small man,) and he pounds him and kicks him and bruises him up _most egregiously_ and then starts for the door and says, ‘come along with me, Peter, you are agoin’ to be my boy a spell, and I’ll see if this is your fault, or ‘_master’s_’ as _you_ call him.’
“So I picks up my old hat, there warn’t any crown in it, but swindle tow stuffed in, and goes along with him. I gits there, and Mrs. Abers, master’s sister, says, ‘my dear feller, ain’t you almost dead?’
“So arter breakfast, for Mr. Abers had come down afore breakfast, and I sets down and eats with ’em, Mrs. Abers takes a leetle skillet, and warms some water, and then she tries to pull my shirt off, and it stuck fast to my back, and so she puts in some castile soap-suds all over my back, and I finally gits it off, and all the wool that had come off of my old homespun shirt of wool, and the hairs of this, sticks in the wounds, and so she takes and picks ’em all out, and washes me with a sponge very carefully, but oh! how it hurt.—Arter this she takes a piece of fine cambric linen, and wets it in sweet ile, and lays it all over my back, and I felt like a new crutter; and then I went to bed and slept a good while, and only got up at sundown to eat, and then to bed agin. So next mornin’ she put on another jist like it, and I stayed there a fortnight and had my ease, and lived on the fat of the land tu, I tell ye.”
A. “Didn’t your master come after you, Peter?”
P. “Oh! no, Sir; he had all he could do to take care of the bruises Abers gin him. So one Monday mornin’ he tells me I had better go home to master’s. Well, I begins to cry, and says, ‘I’ll go, but master will whip me to death, next time.’ ‘No he won’t,’ says Abers. ‘You go and do your chores, and be a good boy; and I’ll be over bim’bye, and see how you git along.’
“Well, as soon as I got home, I opened the door, and mistress says, ‘You come home agin’, have you, you black son of a bitch?’
“‘None of your business, you black skunk, you.’