Mrs. Adeler, you laugh and say that I have indulged in gross exaggeration in reproducing the sentence. Not so. I tell you that I have known a boy of thirteen to have that condemnation, couched in almost precisely those words, hurled at him from the bench of the New Castle court-house because he stole a bit of iron said to be worth seventy-five cents. And I was present among the spectators in the jail yard when the sheriff lashed the lad until he writhed with pain. It was infamous--utterly infamous. I cannot, perhaps, justly accuse the judge who imposed the sentence upon the boy of indulging in the lecture which has just been quoted. That, as I have said, may be attributed to a magistrate who lived ten centuries ago. But the sentence is genuine, and it was given recently. I do not blame the judge. He acted under the authority of statutes which were created by other hands. But the law is savagery itself, and the humane men of this State should sweep it from existence. [Illustration] CHAPTER XIV. A DELAWARE LEGEND--A STORY OF THE OLD TIME--THE CHRISTMAS PLAY--A CRUEL ACCUSATION--THE FLIGHT IN THE DARKNESS ALONG THE RIVER SHORE--THE TRIAL AND THE CONDEMNATION--ST. PILLORY'S DAY SEVENTY YEARS AGO--FLOGGING A WOMAN--THE DELIVERANCE. [Illustration] While the scenes at the whipping-post on flogging-day are fresh in my mind, I have written down the story of Mary Engle. It is a Delaware legend, and the events of which it speaks occurred, I will say, seventy-odd years ago, when they were in the habit of lashing women in this very town of New Castle. It was on Christmas day that a little party had assembled in the old Newton mansion to participate in the festivities for which, at this season of the year, it was famous all the country over. The house stood upon the river bank, three miles and more from New Castle, and in that day it was considered the greatest and handsomest building in the whole neighborhood. A broad lawn swept away from it down to the water's edge, and in summer-time this was covered with bright-colored flowers and bounded by green hedges. Now the grass was bleached with the cold; the hedges were brown and sere, and the huge old trees, stripped of their foliage, moaned and creaked and shivered in the wind, rattling their branches together as if seeking sympathy with each other in their desolation. Inside the mansion the scene was as cheerful as life and fun and high spirits could make it. [Illustration]