Dan, knowing that stretching his memory in the manner threatened, implied that his neck was to be stretched along with it, made haste to remember.

"My friends," said Penn, interrupting the poor man's forced and disconnected testimony, "let me spare him the pain of bearing witness against me. I recall perfectly well every thing I said to him that night. I said it was a shame that such outrages as had been committed on him should be tolerated in a civilized society. I told him it was partly his own fault that such a state of things existed. I said, 'It is owing to the ignorance and degradation of you poor whites that a barbarous system is allowed to flourish and tyrannize over you.' I said——"

But here Penn was interrupted by a violent outcry, the majority of the persons present coming under the head of "poor whites."

"Let him go on! let him perceed!" said Silas. "What did you mean by 'barbarous system'?"

"I meant," replied Penn, all fear vanishing in the glow of righteous indignation which filled him,—"I meant the system which makes it a crime to teach a man to read—a punishable offence to befriend the poor and down-trodden, or to bind up wounds. A system which makes it dangerous for one to utter his honest opinions, even in private, to a person towards whom he is at the same time showing the mercy which others have denied him." He looked at Dan, who groaned. "A system——"

"Wal, I reckon that'll do fur one spell," broke in Silas Ropes. "You've said more 'n enough to convict you, and to earn a halter 'stead of a mild coat of tar and feathers."

"I am well aware," said Penn, "that I can expect no mercy at your hands; so I thought I might as well be plain with you."

"And plain enough you've been, I swear to gosh!" said Silas. "Boys, strip him!"

"Wait a moment!" said Penn, putting them off with a gesture which they mistook for an appeal to some deadly weapon in his pocket. "What I have said has been to free my mind, and to save Daniel trouble. Now, allow me to speak a few words in my own defence. I have committed no crime against your laws; if I have, why not let the laws punish me?"

"We take the laws into our hands sech times as these," said the man called Gad.

"You're an abolitionist, and that's enough," said another.

"If I do not 

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