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474 UNCLE TOM'S CABIN; OR
dogs, " wake up, some of you, and keep me company ! " but the dogs only opened one eye at him, sleepily, and closed it again.
" I '11 have Sambo and Quimbo up here, to sing and dance one of their hell dances, and keep off these horrid notions," said Legree; and, putting on his hat, he went on to the veranda, and blew a horn, with which he commonly summoned his two sable drivers.
Legree was often wont, when in a gracious humor, to get these two worthies into his sitting-room, and, after warming them up with whiskey, amuse himself by setting them to singing, dancing, or fighting, as the humor took him.
It was between one and two o'clock at night, as Cassy was returning from her ministrations to poor Tom, that she heard the sound of wild shrieking, whooping, hallooing, and singing, from the sitting-room, mingled with the barking of dogs, and other symptoms of a general uproar.
She came up on the veranda steps, and looked in. Legree and both the drivers, in a state of furious intoxication, were singing, whooping, upsetting chairs, and making all manner of ludicrous and horrid grimaces at each other.
She rested her small, slender hand on the window-blind, and looked fixedly at them; — there was a world of anguish, scorn, and fierce bitterness, in her black eyes as she did so. " Would it be a sin to rid the world of such a wretch ? " she said to herself.
She turned hurriedly away, and, passing round to a back door, glided upstairs, and tapped at Emmeline's door. |
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