CHAPTER IV. -- PERSECUTION CONTINUES.

MOTHER'S fears were well grounded. A few days after father had returned
home, a man named Sharpe, who disgraced the small office of justice of
the peace, rode up to our house, very much the worse for liquor, and
informed mother that his errand was to "search the house for that
abolition husband of yours." The intoxicated ruffian then demanded
something to eat. While mother, with a show of hospitality, was
preparing supper for him, the amiable Mr. Sharpe killed time in
sharpening his bowie-knife on the sole of his shoe.

"That," said he to Will, who stood watching him, "that's to cut the
heart out of that Free State father of yours!" And he tested the edge
with brutally suggestive care.

Will's comment was to take down his rifle and place himself on the
staircase leading up to father's room. There was trouble in that quarter
for Mr. Sharpe, if he attempted to ascend those stairs.

But the justice, as mother surmised, had no notion that father was at
home, else he would not have come alone. He ate heartily of the supper,
which Will hoped would choke him, and passing from drowsiness to drunken
slumber, soon tumbled from his chair. This so confused him that he
forgot his pretended errand, and shambled out of the house. He was
not so drunk that he could not tell a good bit of horseflesh, and he
straightway took a fancy to Prince, the pet pony of the family. An
unwritten plank in the platform of the pro-slavery men was that the Free
Soil party had no rights they were bound to respect, and Sharpe remarked
to Will, with a malicious grin: