Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/323

 messenger had been sent, and to delay final proceedings till the prisoner had first been identified as the veritable Wild Tom, and general Carter's property, lest otherwise there might be some difficulty in recovering the promised reward.

The more violent and drunken party had, however, prevailed; a court of three freeholders had been organized on the spot, and Thomas, again surrounded by a rabble of blacks and whites, was now brought before this august tribunal. I was myself at the same time taken into custody as a suspected person, with an intimation that my case should be attended to as soon as that of the negro was disposed of.

"Whom do you belong to?" Such was the first question which the honorable court addressed to the prisoner.

"I belong," answered Thomas, with much solemnity, "to the God who made us all!" A reply so unusual was received by some with a stare, by others with a laugh, redoubled at the repartee by one of the judges, "To God, ah! I rather reckon you belong to the devil! Any how, he'll very soon have you."

To reiterated demands as to whose property he was, Thomas steadily replied that he was a free man; when the same witty judge raised a new laugh by requesting him to show his free papers.

The court, after hearing a witness or two, pronounced him guilty of the murder of the overseer, after which he was asked, with a sort of mock solemnity, if he had any thing to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon him.

"Go on," said the indignant culprit; "hang me, kill me, do your will! I was held a slave for the best years of my life. My wife was flogged to death before my eyes. Asa free man, you have hunted me -with bloodhounds, and shot at me with rifles, and placed a price upon my head. Long have I fooled you, and paid you back in your own coin. That white man to-day was not the first who has found me _ too much for him. One by one, two by two, three by

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