"Oh God, hab mercy! Miss Jane, please don't beat me any more. My poor back is so sore. It aches and smarts dreadful," and she lifted up her face, which was one mass of raw flesh; and wiping or trying to wipe the blood away from her eyes with a piece of her sleeve that had been cut from her body, she besought Miss Jane to have mercy on her; but the spirit of her father was too strongly inherited for Jane Peterkin to know aught of human pity. "Where are the forks?" "Oh, law! oh, law!" Amy cried out, "I swar I doesn't know anything 'bout 'em." Such blows as followed I have not the heart to describe; for they descended upon flesh already horribly mangled. The poor girl looked up to me, crying out: "Oh, Ann, beg for me." "Miss Jane," I ventured to say; but the tigress turned and struck me such a blow across the face, that I was blinded for full five minutes. "There, take that! you impudent hussy. Do you dare to ask me not to punish a thief?" I made no reply, but withdrew from her presence to cleanse my face from the blood that was flowing from the wound. As I bathed my face and bound it up, I wondered if acts such as these had ever been reported to those clergymen, who so stoutly maintain that slavery is just, right, _and almost_ available unto salvation. I cannot think that they do understand it in all its direful wrongs. They look upon the institution, doubtless, as one of domestic servitude, where a strong attachment exists between the slave and his owner; but, alas! all that is generally fabulous, worse than fictitious. I can fearlessly assert that I never knew a single case, where this sort of feeling was cherished. The very nature of slavery precludes the existence of such a feeling. Read the legal definition of it as contained in the statute books of Kentucky and Virginia, and how, I ask you, can there be, on the slave's part, a love for his owner? Oh, no, that is the strangest resort, the fag-end of argument; that most transparent fiction. Love, indeed! The slave-master love his slave! Did Cain love Abel? Did Herod love those innocents, whom, by a bloody edict, he consigned to death? In the same category of lovers will we place the slave-owner. When Miss Jane had beaten Amy until _she_ was satisfied, she came, with a face blazing, like Mars, from the "lock-up." "Well, she confesses now, that she put the forks under the corner of a log, near the poultry coop." "Its only another one of her lies," replied Miss Tildy. "Well, if it is, I'll beat her until she tells the truth, or I'll kill her." So saying, she started off to examine the spot. I felt that this was but another subterfuge, devised by the poor wretch to gain a few moments' respite. The examination proved, as I had anticipated, a failure. "What's to be done?" inquired Miss Tildy. "Leave her a few moments longer to herself, and then if the truth is not obtained from her, kill her." These words came hissing though her clenched teeth.