It must not be supposed that, during the walk to the place of punishment, Simon’s mind was either inactive or engaged in suggesting the grimaces and contortions wherewith he was pantomimically expressing his irreverent sentiments towards his father. Far from it. The movements of his limbs and features were the mere workings of habit—the self-grinding of the corporeal machine—for which his reasoning half was only remotely responsible. For while Simon’s person was thus on its own account, “making game” of old Jedediah, his wits, in view of the anticipated flogging, were dashing, springing, bounding, darting about, in hot chase of some expedient suitable to the necessities of the case—much after the manner in which puss, when Betty, armed with the broom, and hotly seeking vengeance for the pantry robbed or room defiled, has closed upon her the garret doors and windows, attempts all sorts of impossible exits, comes down at last in the corner, with panting side and glaring eye, exhausted and defenceless. Our unfortunate hero could devise nothing by which he could reasonably expect to escape the heavy blows of his father. Having arrived at this conclusion and the “Mulberry” about the same time, he stood with a dogged look, awaiting the issue. The old man Suggs made no remark to any one while he was seizing up Bill—a process which, though by no means novel to Simon, seemed to excite in him a sort of painful interest. He watched it closely, as if to learn the precise fashion of his father’s knot; and when at last Bill was strung up a-tiptoe to a limb, and the whipping commenced, Simon’s eye followed every movement of his father’s arm; and as each blow descended upon the bare shoulders of his sable friend, his own body writhed and “wriggled” in involuntary sympathy. “It’s the devil!—it’s tarnation,” said Simon to himself, “to take such a wallopin’ as that. Why the old man looks like he wants to git to the holler, if he could—rot his picter! It’s wuth, at the least, fifty cents—je-e-miny, how _that_ hurt!—yes, it’s wuth three-quarters of a dollar, to take that ’ere lickin’! Wonder if I’m ‘predestinated,’ as old Jed’diah says, to get the feller to it? Lord, how daddy blows! I do wish he’d bust right open, the darn’d old deer-face! If ’twan’t for Ben helpin’ him, I b’lieve I’d give the old dog a tussel when it comes for my turn. It couldn’t make the thing no wuss, if it didn’t make it no better. Drot it! what do boys have daddies for, any how? ’Taint for nuthin’ but jist to beat ’em and work ’em—There’s some use in mammies—I kin poke my finger right in the old ’oman’s eye, and keep it thar, and if I say it aint thar, she’ll say ’taint thar, too. I wish she was here to hold daddy off. If ’twan’t so fur, I’d holler for her any how. How she would cling to the old feller’s coat-tail!” Mr. Jedediah Suggs let down Bill, and untied him. Approaching Simon, whose coat was off: “Come, Simon, son,” said he, “cross them hands, I’m gwine to correct you.”