Page:The Partisan (revised).djvu/218

 never whipped him!&mdash;they will murder him!&mdash;two&mdash;for he came to see her&mdash;three&mdash;was ever the like to whip a son for this!&mdash;four&mdash;God curse them! God curse them!&mdash;five&mdash;I can curse, too, that I can&mdash;they shall feel me, they shall hear me!&mdash;six, seven&mdash;that is eight&mdash;nine. Oh, the wretches! but bear up, Ned, bear up&mdash;it is half over&mdash;that is ten&mdash;my poor boy! Oh, do not strike so hard! Look! the red on the shirt&mdash;it is blood! Oh, wretches! have you no mercy?&mdash;it is most done&mdash;there, there&mdash;stop! Hell blast you for ever!&mdash;that was twenty. Why did you strike another? I curse you with a black curse for that other stroke! You ragged imp!&mdash;you vile polecat!&mdash;I curse you for that stroke!"

The execution was over. Unflinching to the last, though the strokes were severely dealt, the criminal had borne them. He looked the very embodiment of callosity. His muscles were neither composed nor rigid during the operation; and though the flesh evidently felt, the mood of the wretch seemed to have undergone no change. Before he could yet be freed from the cords, his mother's arms were thrown around him; and though he strove to shake her off, and shrank from her embraces, she yet persisted, and, with a childish fondness, she strove, with kind words, while helping him on with his jacket, to console him for his sufferings.

"And you will go with me now, Neddy&mdash;you will go from these cruel men?"

"I cannot, mother; don't you know I'm to be under guard so long as the major chooses?"

"He will not&mdash;you will not tie him up again; you will let him go now with his mother."

She turned to Singleton as she spoke; but his eye refused her ere his tongue replied&mdash;

"He will be in custody for twelve hours; and let me say to you, dame, that for such an offence his punishment is a very slight one. Marion's men would suffer two hundred lashes, and something more restraint, for the same crime."

"God curse him!" she said bitterly, as she again approached her son, with whom she conversed apart. He whispered but a word in her ear, and then turned away from her. She looked after him a moment, as the guard marched him into the rear, but her finger