The ball swayed to and fro, but evinced no disposition for unbending.
The blows fell heavy and fast, but as for outward demonstration, cry or moan, that human form might as well have been a cotton bale.
The wearied hand of the mistress dropped by her side. She leaned against the casement panting for breath. Then Kizzie uprose tearless and stern.
"Miss Rusha, after this cruel floggin', I've a right to speak; but if you had a human heart I would not have this much to say. One after another ye sold my four big boys to the slave-buyer. You promised you would leave me my baby--my Joe. When he was fourteen years old you sold him too. You rob me of my five boys, and you 'cuse _me_ of stealin' a barrel-cover! Miss Rusha, de judgments of de Lord will come upon you. Dis is my prayer, ebery day, ebery hour. Ye may whip, ye may kill--my prayer is mine own prayer to pray."
"Lucy," exclaimed Mrs. Lisle, now able again to speak, "run down to Thornton Hall and tell Mr. Hill to come here at once."
"You will do no such thing, Lucy; and, madam, you have done enough," said the indignant voice of Mr. Lisle, who had entered upon the scene. "Go to your cabin, Kizzie; call for Amy and take her along with you."
Kizzie disappeared, and Mr. Lisle, meeting boldly the angered face of his wife, inquired into the origin of this disgraceful scene.
"Kizzie is mine, not yours. I have a right to do with my slaves as pleases me," said the wife.
"If you have a slave who deserves kindness at your hands, it is Kizzie. You have cruelly wronged her. To have killed her outright would have been a kindness compared to the injury you have inflicted upon her."
"How you talk, Duncan Lisle! One would think you a northern abolitionist. I understand whence you imbibed such principles"--sneeringly--"just as though one has not a perfect right to sell a slave if he wishes to! Don't talk to me in any such way. I have done nothing that I need be sorry for. But Kizzie is indeed the most hateful slave on the plantation. I believe she steals just for the sake of stealing. What earthly use could she have for that cover, which she denies having taken, but which has mysteriously disappeared just when I happened to want it?"
"To what cover do you refer?" questioned her husband.