Dawsey and the negro were sprawling on the ground.
The lady was taken up senseless, and badly hurt, but breathing. The
driver was dead!
The crowd hurried across the green to the scene of disaster. Joe and I
reached the man in the road at the same instant. It was Ally! We took
him up, bore him to the edge of the pond, and bathed his forehead with
water. In a few minutes he opened his eyes.
'Are you much hurt, Ally?' asked Joe, with almost breathless eagerness.
'I reckon not, massa Joe,' said Ally; 'my head, yere, am sore, an' dis
ankle p'raps am broke. Leff me see;' and he rose to his feet, and tried
his leg. 'No, massa Joe; it'm sound's a pine knot. I hain't done fur
_dis_ time.'
'Thank God!' exclaimed Joe, with an indescribable expression of relief.
Mrs. Dawsey was borne to the mansion, the negro carried off to the
quarters, and, in a few moments, the crowd once more gathered around the
auctioneer's stand. Dawsey, by this time recovered from the sheriff's
blow, was cursing and swearing terribly over the disaster of his wife
and--his property.
'Twenty-five hundred dollars gone at a blow! D--n the woman; didn't she
know better than that?'
As he followed his wife into the house, the sheriff said to the
administrator, who was a justice of the peace:
'Make me out a warrant for that man--obstructing the execution of the
law.
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