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.

As Clayton and Custis saw this scene on their way to the tavern, an egg, thrown from a window of the debtor's jail, whether meant for Mrs. Hudson or not, struck her in the face, and its corrupt contents streamed down her white and shivering breast.

"Shame! shame!" cried the people, as they saw the woman cry, and, gazing up to the jail window, another female face appearing there, turned their cries to curses:

"Hang her! hang her!"

For the last time in life Patty Cannon's bold and comely face swelled again with passionate blood to the roots of the glossy black hair, and the few who saw her rich, dark eyes, inflamed with anger, say their pupils were dilated like the wild-cat's. She was gone in a moment, and the sheriff had wiped Mrs. Hudson's face and breast with a handkerchief passed up by a colored woman.

Two men were now actively going around the crowd, hat in hand, soliciting contributions to buy the woman, the first a blind man, whose eyes were bandaged, and a white man led him, calling loudly:

"The abolitionists have raised three hundred dollars to buy this woman's freedom. We want a hundred more, as some mean people may bid her up high. This man, her husband, stole her pass, to slip a friend away. We couldn't git the evidence in, but it's God's truth, gentlemen! The woman's nursed my wife, an' done a heap of good; and she come here, of her own free will, out of Maryland, to nurse the Chancellor."

Little money was raised in that crowd, since there was little to give, and, addressing the two distinguished strangers, Sorden, the crier, exclaimed:

"What, gentlemen, will you let the Hunn brothers and Tommy Garrett and the Motts give three hundred dollars for a woman they never saw, and we, who see her always doing good, give nothing?"

"Pity! pity!" sobbed the blind man. "I'm burned so bad nobody will buy me, but I stole her pass to help a slave off that I fell in love with."

Judge Custis left Clayton's side, and waited till the hour in the pillory was done, and, after a fierce contest, saw Sorden come off victorious at the sale, though it took every dollar the Judge could raise in Georgetown on his private credit.

"What is the name of the girl you gave her pass to?" asked the Judge of the blind mulatto.

"Virgie, marster."

"My heart told me so," exclaimed the Judge. "Your crime has been punished enough. I will send you to your wife."[15]