"
"Rise up, old friend!" cried Clayton; "your transgressions are, at
least, washed out in sincere tears. Hear the birds all around us loving
and condoning, and filling the air with praise. Come out!"
As they stepped upon Georgetown Square they saw John Randel, Jr.,
leading a party of surveyors to locate the opposition railroad to
Meshach Milburn's. These and many others were pressing towards the
whipping-post and pillory, in the rear of the court-house, where stood,
exposed by the sheriff, the cleanly mulatto woman who had entertained
Virgie in Snow Hill the first night of her flight.
"This free woman, Priscilla Hudson," cried the sheriff, "is to stand one
hour in the pillory for the crime of lending her pass to a slave. Thirty
lashes she was sentenced to, the Governor has graciously taken off. She
is to be sold, out of the state, at the end of one hour, for the term of
her natural life, to the highest bidder."
The poor woman stood there, bare armed and bare almost to the bosom,
delicate and lovely to see, and the mother of free children, her
clothing having been partly removed before the pardon of the stripes was
announced to her.
Her head and arms were thrust through the holes in one leaf of the
pillory, and thus, thrown forward, her modesty was exposed to the wanton
gaze of the crowd, while, on the other side of the same elevated
platform, pilloried in like manner, was a female chicken-thief,
impudent, indifferent, and chewing tobacco, and spitting it out upon the
pillory floor.
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