But Felix won it honorably. He got the majority of votes and wuz honestly elected. But Burley and his choice crew of secret Regulators could not brook such an insult as to have one of a race of slaves preferred to him, so they proceeded to mete out the punishment to him fit for such offenders. [Illustration: THE LEADER.] They tore Felix from his bed, leavin’ Hester in a faintin’ fit, and the little child screamin’ with fright. Took him out in the swamp, bound him to a tree, and whipped him till he had only a breath of life left in him; then they put him into a crazy old boat, and launched him out on the river, tellin’ him “if he ever dared to step his foot into his native State agin they would burn him alive.” And this happened in our free country, in a country where impassioned oritors, on the day set apart to celebrate our nation’s freedom, make their voices heard even above the roar of blatant cannons, so full of eloquence and patriotism are they, as they eulogize our country’s liberty, justice, and independence. “The only clime under God’s free sky,” they say, “where the law protects all classes alike, and the vote of the poorest man is as potent as the loftiest, in moulding our perfect institutions. Where the lowest and the highest have full and equal civil and political rights.” Oh, it would have been a goodly sight for our American eagle, proud emblem of liberty, to have witnessed this midnight scene we have been describin’; methinks such a spectacle would almost have magnetism to draw him from his lofty lair on Capitol Hill to swoop down into this cypress swamp, and perchin’ upon some lofty tree-top, look down and witness this administration of justice and equal rights, to mark how these beneficent free laws enwrap all the people and protect them from foreign invasion and home foes, to see how this nation loves its children, its black children, who dumbly endured generations of unexampled wrongs and indignities at its hands, and then in its peril bared their patient breasts and risked their lives to save it. How this bird of freedom must laugh in a parrot-like glee, if so grave and dignified a fowl wuz ever known to indulge in unseemly mirth, to see the play go on, the masquerade of Folly and Brutality in the garb of Wisdom and Order, holding such high carnival. After thus sendin’ Felix half dead from his brutal usage adrift on the turbid river waves that they felt assured would float him down to a sure and swift death, the gang of ruffians returned to the cottage to complete their night’s work. Col. Seybert had dealt out plenty of bad whiskey to them to keep up their courage; and Nick Burley, besides satisfying his own vengeance upon Felix, had been offered a very handsome reward by his master for gettin’ him out of the way and takin’ Hester to a lonely old cabin of his in the depths of the big forest.