CHAPTER Nineteenth.
"Revenge at first though sweet, Bitter ere long, back on itself recoils." -- MILTON.
George Boyd, who was of most vindictive temper, had laid his plans for the night of the raid upon Ion, to wreak his vengeance not upon Travilla only, but also upon the woman on whose clothing he had left the impress of his bloody hand.
With this in view, he went first to the kitchen department where, as he had learned through the gossip of the servants, she now passed the night, intending afterward to have a hand in the brutal flogging to be meted out to Mr.Travilla.He headed the attacking party there, and it was he who received upon his person the full broadside from Aunt Dicey's battery of soap ladles.
The pain was horrible, the scorching mass clinging to the flesh and burning deeper and deeper as he was borne shrieking away in the arms of his comrades.
"Oh take it off! take it off! I'm burning up, I tell you!" he yelled as they carried him swiftly down the avenue; but they hurried on, seemingly unmindful of his cries, mingled though they were with oaths and imprecations, nor paused till they had reached the shelter of the woods at some little distance on the opposite side of the road.
"Curse you!" he said between his clenched teeth, as they laid him down at the foot of a tree, "curse you! for keeping me in this agony.

Help me off with these--duds.

Unbutton it, quick! quick! I'm burning up, I tell you; and my hands are nearly as bad as my face.

Oh! oh! you fiends! do you want to murder me outright?
you're bringing all the skin with it!" he roared, writhing in unendurable torture, as they dragged off the disguise.

"Oh kill me! Bill, shoot me through the head and put me out of this torment, will you ?" "No, no, I daren't.