Vesta was awakened by Roxy, Virgie, and her mother all standing around her bed at once, exclaiming something unintelligible together. It was late morning, the whole family having slept long, after the several experiences of two such days, and the sun was shining through the great trees before Teackle Hall and burnishing the windows, so that Vesta could hardly see.
"The kitchen servants have run away," Mrs. Custis shrieked, on Vesta's request that her mother only should talk. "Old Hominy is gone, and has taken all her herbs and witcheries with her; and all the young children bred in the kitchen, Ned and Vince, the boys, and little Phillis, the baby, they, too, are gone."
"I heard a strange cry or howl last night, as I dropped to sleep," Vesta exclaimed, rubbing her eyes.
"Dear missy," cried Virgie, falling upon the pillow, "it was your poor dog Turk; his throat has been cut upon the lawn."
"Yes, missy," Roxy blubbered, "poor Turk lies in his blood. There is nobody to get breakfast but Virgie and me. Indeed, we did not know about it."
"That is not very likely," said the suspicious Mrs. Custis.
"I know you did not, girls," Vesta said, "you have too much intelligence and principle, I am sure; nor could Hominy have been so inhuman to my poor dog."
Vesta at once rose up and threw on her morning-gown.
"The first thing to be done is to have breakfast. Roxy, do you go at once to Mr. Milburn's and bring his man Samson here, and awake Miss Holland to take Samson's place by her uncle. Tell Samson to make the fire, and you and he get the breakfast. No person is to speak of this incident of the kitchen servants leaving us on any pretence."
"Won't you give the alarm the first thing?" cried Mrs. Custis, not very well pleased to see Vesta keep her temper. "They may be overtaken before they get far away, daughter. Those four negroes are worth twelve hundred dollars!"
"They are not worth one dollar, mamma, if they have run away from us; because I should never either sell them or keep them again if they had behaved so treacherously."
"I say, sell them and get the money," Mrs. Custis cried; "are they not ours?"
"No, mamma, they are mine. Mr. Milburn and papa are to be consulted before any steps are taken. Papa deeded them to me only last Saturday; why should they have deserted at the moment I had redeemed them? Virgie, can you guess?"
Virgie hesitated, only a moment.
"Miss Vesty, I think I can see what made Hominy go. She was afraid of Meshach Milburn and his queer hat. She believed the devil give it to him. She thought he had bought her by marrying you, and was going to christen her to the Bad Man, or do something dreadful with her and the little children."
"That's it, Miss Vessy," plump little Roxy added. "Hominy loved the little children dearly; she thought they was to become Meshach's, and she must save them."
"Poor, superstitious creature!" Vesta exclaimed.
"More misery brought about by that fool's hat!" cried Mrs. Custis. "If I ever lay hands on it, it shall end in the fire."
"No wonder," Vesta said, "that this poor, ignorant woman should do herself such an injury on account of an article of dress that disturbs liberal and enlightened minds! Now I recollect that Hominy said something about having 'got Quaker.' What did it mean?"
The two slave girls looked at each other significantly, and Virgie answered,
"Don't the Quakers help slaves to get off to a free state? Maybe she meant that."
"Do you suppose the abolitionists would tamper with a poor old woman like that, whose liberty would neither be a credit to them nor a comfort to her? I cannot think so meanly of them," Vesta reflected. "Besides, could she have killed my dog?"
"A gross, ignorant, fetich-worshipping negro would kill a dog, or a child, or anything, when she is possessed with a devil," Mrs. Custis insisted.
"I don't believe she killed Turk," Roxy remarked, as she left the room. "There was a white man in the kitchen last Saturday night: I think he slept there; master gave him leave."
"Yes, missy," Virgie continued, after Roxy had gone to obey her orders; "he was a dreadful man, and looked at me so coarse and familiar that I have dreamed of him since. It was the man Mr. Milburn knocked down for mashing his hat; he was afraid Mr. Milburn would throw him into jail, so he asked master to hide in the kitchen. But Hominy was almost crazy with fear of Mr. Milburn before that."
Vesta held up her beautiful arms with a look of despair.
"What has not that poor old hat brought upon every body?" she cried. "Oh, who dares contest the sunshine with the tailor and hatter? They are the despots that never will abdicate or die."
"The idea of your father letting a tramp like that sleep in the kitchen among the slaves!" cried Mrs. Custis. "What obligation had he incurred there, too, I should like to know? Teackle Hall is become a cave of owls and foxes; it is time for me to leave it. Here is my husband gone, riding fifty miles for his worst enemy, leaving us without a cook and without a man's assistance to discover where ours is gone. I know what I shall do: I will start this day for Cambridge, to meet my brother, and visit the Goldsboroughs there till some order is brought out of this attempt to plant wheat and tares together."
Vesta stopped a moment and kissed her mother: "That is just the thing, dear mother," she said. "Let me straighten out the difficulties here; go, and come back when all is done, and you can be yourself again."
"I shall do it, Vesta. Brother Allan gets to Cambridge to-morrow afternoon; I will go as far as Salisbury this day, and either meet him on the road to-morrow or find him at Cambridge. Oh, what a house is Teackle Hall--full of male and female foresters, abolitionists, runaways, and radicals! All made crazy by the bog ores and the fool's hat!"
Descending to the yard, Vesta found Turk lying in his blood, his mastiff jaws and shaggy sides clotted red, and, as it seemed, the howl in which he died still lingering in the air. The Virginia spirit rose in Vesta's eyes:
"Whoever killed this dog only wanted the courage to kill men!" she exclaimed. "James Phoebus, look here!"
The pungy captain had been abroad for hours, and the masts of his vessel were just visible across the marshy neck in the rear of Teackle Hall. He touched his hat and came in.
"Early mornin', Miss Vesty! Hallo! Turk dead? By smoke, yer's pangymonum!"
"He's stabbed, Jimmy!" Samson Hat remarked, coming out of the kitchen; "see whar de dagger struck him right over de heart! Dat made him howl and fall dead. His froat was not cut dat sudden; it's gashed as if wid somethin' blunt."
"Right you are, nigger! The throat-cuttin' was a make believe; the stab will tell the tale. But who's this yer, lurkin' aroun' the kitchen do'; if it ain't Jack Wonnell, I hope I may die! Sic!"
With this, active as the dog had been but yesterday, Jimmy rushed on Jack Wonnell, chased him to the fence, and brought him back by the neck. Wonnell wore a bell-crown, and his hand was full of fall blossoms. As Wonnell observed the dead dog, pretty little Roxy came out of the kitchen, and stood blushing, yet frightened, to see him.
"What yo' doin' with them rosy-posies?" Jimmy demanded. "Who're they fur? What air you sneakin' aroun' Teackle Hall fur so bright of a mornin', lazy as I know you is, Jack Wonnell?"
"They are flowers he brings every morning for me," Roxy spoke up, coming forward with a pretty simper.
"For you?" exclaimed Vesta. "You are not receiving the attentions of white men, Roxy?"
"He offered, himself, to get flowers for me, so I might give you as pretty ones as Virgie, missy. I let him bring them. He's a poor, kind man."
"I jess got 'em, Jimmy," interjected Jack Wonnell, with his peculiar wink and leer, "caze Roxy's the belle of Prencess Anne, and I'm the bell-crown. She's my little queen, and I ain't ashamed of her."
"Courtin' niggers, air you!" Jimmy exclaimed, collaring Jack again. "Now whar did you go all day Sunday with Levin Dennis and the nigger buyer? What hokey-pokey wair you up to?"
"Mr. Wonnell," Roxy had the presence of mind to say, "take care you tell the truth, for my sake! Aunt Hominy is gone, with all the kitchen children, and Mr. Phoebus suspects you!"
"Great lightnin' bugs!" Jimmy Phoebus cried. "The niggers stole, an' the dog dead, too?"
"I 'spect Jedge Custis sold 'em, Jimmy," Jack Wonnell pleaded, twisting out of the bay captain's hands. "He's gwyn to be sold out by Meshach Milburn. Maybe he jess sold 'em and skipped."
"Where is Judge Custis, Miss Vesty?" Phoebus asked.
"He has gone to Delaware, to be absent several days."
"Is what this bell-crowned fool says, true, Miss Vesty?"
"No. There was some fear among the kitchen servants of being sold; there was no such necessity when they ran away, as it had been settled."
"It is unfortunate that your father is gone. He has been seen with a negro trader. That trader and he disappear the same evening. The trader lives about Delaware, too, Miss Vesty."
Vesta's countenance fell, as she thought of the suspicion that might attach to her father. The great old trees around Teackle Hall seemed moaning together in the air, as if to say, "Ancestors, this is strange to hear!"
"Who told you, Jack Wonnell," spoke the bay sailor, "that Judge Custis was to be sold out?"
"I won't tell you, Jimmy."
"I told him," Roxy cried, after an instant's hesitation, while Jimmy Phoebus was grinding the stiff bell-crown hat down on Wonnell's suffocating muzzle. "I did think we was all going to be sold, and had nobody to pity me but that poor white man, and I told him as a friend."
"And I never told anybody in the world but Levin Dennis yisterday," Jack cried out, when he was able to get his breath.
"Whar did you go, Jack, wid the long man and Levin all day yisterday?" Samson asked.
"Yes, whar was you?" Jimmy Phoebus shouted, with one of his Greek paroxysms of temper on, as his dark skin and black-cherry eyes flamed volcanic. "Whar did you leave Ellenora's boy and that infernal soul-buyer? Speak, or I'll throttle you like this dog!"
"You let him alone, sir!" little Roxy cried, hotly, "he won't deceive anybody; he's going to tell all he knows."
"Let go, Jimmy," Samson said; "don't you see Miss Vesty heah?"
"Don't scare the man, Mr. Phoebus," Vesta added; "but I command him to tell all that he knows, or papa shall commit him to jail."
Jack Wonnell, taking his place some steps away from Phoebus, and wiping his eyes on his sleeve, whimpering a few minutes, to Roxy's great agitation, finally told his tale.
"I'm sorry, Jimmy, you accused me before this beautiful lady an' my purty leetle Roxy--bless her soul!--of stealing Jedge Custis's niggers. Thair's on'y one I ever looked sheep's eyes at, an' she's a-standin' here, listenin' to every true word I says. I'm pore trash, an' I reckon the jail's as good as the pore-house for me, ef they want to send me thair, fur it's in town, and Roxy kin come an' look through the bars at me every day."
Roxy was so much affected that she threw her apron up to her face, and Vesta and Phoebus had to smile, while Samson Hat, looking indulgently on, exclaimed,
"Dar's love all froo de woods. Doves an' crows can't help it. It's deeper down dan fedders an' claws."
"That nigger trader," continued Jack Wonnell, bell-crown in hand, "hired me an' Levin to take him a tarrapinin'. He had a bag of gold that big"--measuring with his hand in the crown of the hat--"an' he give Levin some of it, an' I took it to Levin's mother las' night, an' told her Levin wouldn't be back fur a week, maybe. I thought Mr. Johnson was gwyn to give me some gold too, so I could buy Roxy, but yer's all he give me. Everybody disappints me, Jimmy!"
Jack Wonnell showed an old silver fi'penny bit, and his countenance was so lugubrious that the sailor exclaimed,
"Jack, he paid you too well for all the sense you got. Now, whar has Levin gone with the Ellenora Dennis?"
"I don't know, Jimmy. He made Levin sail her up to the landin' down yer below town, whair Levin's father, Cap'n Dennis, launched the Idy fifteen year ago. I left Levin thar, and he said, 'Jack, I'm goin' off with the nigger trader to git some of his money fur mother!'"
"Poor miserable boy!" Phoebus exclaimed; "he's led off easy as his pore daddy. The man he's gone with, Miss Vesty, is black as hell. Joe Johnson is known to every thief on the bay, every gypsy on the shore. He steals free niggers when he can't buy slave ones, outen Delaware state. He sometimes runs away Maryland slaves to oblige their hypocritical masters that can't sell 'em publicly, an' Johnson and the bereaved owner divides the price. Go in the house, yaller gal!" Jimmy Phoebus turned to Roxy, who obeyed instantly. "Jack Wonnell, you go too; I'm done with you!" (Jack slipped around the house and made his peace with Roxy before he started.) "You needn't to go, Samson; I know you're true as steel!"
"I must go an' git de breakfast, Jimmy," the negro said, going in.
"Now, Miss Vesty"--Phoebus turned to the mistress of Teackle Hall--"Joe Johnson has got old Hominy and the little niggers, by smoke! That part of this hokey pokey is purty sure! Did he steal them an' decoy them, or wair they sold to him by Judge Custis or by Meshach Milburn?"
"By neither, I will risk my life. Mr. Milburn was taken to his bed Saturday evening, and on Sunday father went to Delaware on legal business for my husband."
"That is Meshach Milburn, I hear," the bay sailor remarked, with a penetrating look. "Shall I go and see him on this nigger business?"
"No," Vesta replied; "he is too sick, and it is a delicate subject to name to him. My girls, Virgie and Roxy, think old Hominy ran away from a superstitious fear she had of Mr. Milburn, who had become the master of Teackle Hall by marriage."
"Yes, by smoke! every nigger in town, big and little, is afraid of Milburn's hat."
"He has no ownership in those servants, nor has my father now. I will tell you, James--relying on your prudence--that Hominy belonged to me, and so did those three children, having passed from my father to my husband and thence to me and back to my father, and from him to me again in the very hour of my marriage. I fear they have been persuaded away, to be abused and sold out of Maryland."
Jimmy Phoebus looked up at the sighing trees and over the wide facade of Teackle Hall, and exclaimed "by smoke!" several times before he made his conclusions.
"Miss Vesty," he said, finally, "send for your father to come home immediately. People will not understand how Joe Johnson, outlaw as he is, dared to rob a Maryland judge of his house servants, Johnson himself bein' a Marylander, unless they had some understanding. Your sudden marriage, an' your pappy's embarrassments, will be put together, by smoke! an' thar is some blunt enough to say that when Jedge Custis is hard up, he'll git money anyhow!"
The charge, made with an honest man's want of skill, battered down all explanations.
"I confess it," said Vesta. "Papa's going away on a Sunday, and these people disappearing on Sunday night, might excite idle comment. It might be said that he endeavored to sell some of his property before his creditor could seize it."
"I have seen you about yer since you was a baby, Vesty, an' Ellenora says you're better game an' heart than these 'ristocrats, fur who I never keered! That's why I take the liberty of calling you Vesty. Now, let me tell you about your niggers. If they was a-gwyn to freedom in a white man's keer, I wouldn't stop 'em to be cap'n of a man-of-war. But Joe Johnson, supposin' that he's got of 'em, is a demon. Do you see the stab on that dog? well, it's done with one of the bagnet pistols them kidnappers carries--hoss pistols, with a spring dagger on the muzzle; and, when they come to close quarters, they stab with 'em. Johnson killed your dog; I know his marks. He sails this whole bay, and maybe he's run them niggers to Washin'ton, or to Norfolk, an' sold 'em south. It ain' no use to foller him to either of them places, if he has, with the wind an' start he's got, and your pappy's influence lost to us by his absence. But thar is one chance to overhaul the thief."
"What is that, James?" said Vesta, earnestly. "I do want to save those poor people from the abuse of a man who could kill my poor, fond dog."
"Joe Johnson keeps a hell-trap--a reg'lar Pangymonum, up near the head of Nanticoke River. It's the headquarters of his band, and a black band they air. He has had good wind"--the pungy captain looked up and noted the breeze--"to get him out of Manokin last night, and into the Sound; but he must beat up the Nanticoke all day, and we kin head him off by land, if that's his destination, before he gits to Vienna, an' make him show his cargo. Then, with a messenger to follow Jedge Custis an' turn him back, we can swear these niggers on Johnson--and, you see, we can't make no such oath till we git the evidence--an' then, by smoke! we'll bring ole Hominy an' the pore chillen back to Teackle Hall."
"Here is one you love to serve, James," said Vesta, as the Widow Dennis came in the gate.
"I came to meet you at the landing, James," said the blue-eyed, sweet-voiced widow, with the timid step and ready blush. "Levin is gone for a week with a negro trader; he sends me so much money, I fear he is under an unusual temptation, and Wonnell says the trader is giving him liquor. What shall I do?"
"Make me his father, Ellenory, and that'll give me an interest over him, and you will command me. You want a first mate in your crew. Levin kin make a fool of me if I go chase him now, and I can't measure money with a nigger trader, by smoke!"
"Oh! James," the widow spoke, "you know my heart would be yours if I could control it. When my way is clear you will have but to ask. Do go and find Levin!"
"Norah, we suspect the same trader of having taken off Hominy, our cook, and the kitchen children, in Levin's boat."
The widow listened to Vesta, and burst into tears. "He will be accessory to the crime," she sobbed. "Oh, this is what I have ever feared. James Phoebus, you have always had the best influence over Levin. If you love me, arrest him before the law takes cognizance of this wild deed. Where has he gone?"
Virgie appeared upon the lawn to say that Mrs. Custis wanted to know who should drive her as far as Salisbury, where she could get a slave of her son-in-law to continue on with her to Cambridge.
"I have been thinking all the morning where I can find a reliable man to go and bring back papa," Vesta answered; "there are a few slaves at the Furnace, but time is precious."
"Here is Samson," Virgie said, "and he has got a mule he rides all over the county. Let him go."
"Go whar, my love?" asked Samson.
"To Dover, in Delaware," Vesta answered. "You can ride to Laurel by dark, Samson, and get to Dover to-morrow afternoon."
"And I can ride with him as far as Salisbury," Jimmy Phoebus said, "and get out to the Nanticoke some way; fur I see Ellenora will cry till I go."
"You can do better than that, James," Vesta said, rapidly thinking. "Samson can take you to Spring Hill Church or Barren Creek Springs, by a little deviation, and at the Springs you will be only three miles from the Nanticoke. Even mamma might go on with the carriage to-night as far as the Springs, or to Vienna."
"If two of them are going," Virgie exclaimed, "one can drive Missy Custis and the other ride the mule."
Samson shook his head.
"Dey say a free nigger man gits cotched up in dat ar Delawaw state. Merrylin's good enough fur me. I likes de Merrylin light gals de best," looking at Virgie.
"Go now, Samson, to oblige Miss Vesty," Virgie said, "and I'll try to love you a little, black and bad as you are."
"I'se afraid of Delawaw state," Samson repeated, laughing slowly. "Joe Johnson, dat I put dat head on, will git me whar he lives if I go dar, mebbe."
"No," Phoebus put in, "I'll be a lookin' after him on the banks of the Nanticoke, Samson, while you keep right in the high-road from Laurel to Georgetown, and on to Dover. Joe Johnson's been whipped at the post, and banished from Delaware for life, and dussn't go thar no more."
"If you go, Samson," little Roxy put in, having reappeared, "Virgie'll feel complimented. Anything that obliges Miss Vesty counts with Virgie."
"If you are a free man," Virgie herself exclaimed, her slight, nervous, willowy figure expanding, "are you afraid to go into a freer state than Maryland? If I was free I would want to go to the freest state of all. Behave like a free man, Samson Hat, or what is freedom worth to you?"
"It's wuth so much, pretty gal, dat I don't want to be a-losin' of it, mind, I tell you, 'sept to my wife when she'll hab me."
Samson watched the quadroon's delicate, high-bred features, her skin almost paler than her young mistress's, her figure like the clove's after a hard winter--the more active that a little meagre--her head small, and its tresses soft as the crow blackbird's plumage, and the loyalty that lay in her large eyes, like strong passion, for her mistress, was turned to pride, and nearly scorn, when they listened to him.
"A slave, Miss Vesty says"--Virgie spoke with almost fierceness--"is not one that's owned, half as much as one that sells himself--to hard drink, or to selfishness, or to fear. You're not a free man, Samson, if you're afraid, and are like these low slave negroes who dare nothing if they can only get a little low pleasure. All that can make a black man white, in my eyes, is a white man's enterprise."
Vesta felt, as she often had done, the capable soul of her servant, and did not resent her spirit as unbecoming a slave, but rather felt responsive chords in her own nature, as if, indeed, Virgie was the more imperious of the two. Coming now into full womanhood, her race elements finding their composition, her character unrestrained by any one in Teackle Hall, Virgie was her young mistress's shield-bearer, like David to the princely Jonathan.
"Why, Virgie," Samson answered, with humility, "I never meant not to go, lady gal, after marster's wife asked me, I only wanted you to beg me hard, an' mebbe I'd git a kiss befo' I started."
"Wait till you come back, and see if you do your errand well," Virgie spoke again. "I shall not kiss you now."
"I will," cried little Roxy, to the amusement of them all, giving Samson a hearty smack from her little pouting mouth; "and now you've got it, think it's Virgie's kiss, and get your breakfast and start!"
As they went to their abodes to make ready, Jimmy Phoebus found Jack Wonnell playing marbles with the boys at the court-house corner.
"Jack," he said, "I'm a-going to find Levin an' that nigger trader. I may git in a peck of trouble up yonder on the Nanticoke. Tell all the pungy men whair I'm a-goin', an' what fur."
"Can't I do somethin' fur you, Jimmy? Can't I give you one o' my bell-crowns; thair's a-plenty of 'em left."
"Take my advice, Jack, an' tie a stone to all them hats and sink' em in the Manokin. Ole Meshach's hat has made more hokey-pokey than the Bank of Somerset. Pore an' foolish as you air, maybe your ole bell-crowns will ruin you."
The road to Salisbury--laid out in 1667, when "Cecil, Lord of Maryland and Avalon," erected a county "in honor of our dear sister, the Lady Mary Somerset"--followed the beaver-dams across the little river-heads, and pierced the flat pine-woods and open farms, and passed through two little hamlets, before our travellers saw the broad mill-ponds and poplar and mulberry lined streets of the most active town--albeit without a court-house--in the lower peninsula. Jimmy Phoebus, driving the two horses and the family carriage, and Samson, following on his mule, descended into the hollow of Salisbury at the dinner-hour, and stopped at the hotel. The snore of grist-mills, the rasp of mill-saws, the flow of pine-colored breast-water into the gorge of the village, the forest cypress-trees impudently intruding into the obliquely-radiating streets, and humidity of ivy and creeper over many of the old, gable-chimneyed houses, the long lumber-yards reflected in the swampy harbor among the canoes, pungies, and sharpies moored there, the small houses sidewise to the sandy streets, the larger ones rising up the sandy hills, the old box-bush in the silvery gardens, the bridges close together, and the smell of tar and sawdust pleasantly inhaled upon the lungs, made a combination like a caravan around some pool in the Desert of the Nile.
"If there is any chance to catch my negroes," Mrs. Custis said, "I will go right on after dinner. Samson, send Dave, my daughter's boy, to me immediately; he is working in this hotel."
Samson found Dave to be none other than the black class-leader he had failed to overcome at the beginning of our narrative, but changes were visible in that individual Samson had not expected. From having a clean, godly, modest countenance, becoming his professions, Dave now wore a sour, evil look; his eyes were blood-shotten, and his straight, manly shoulders and chest, which had once exacted Samson's admiration and envy, were stooped to conform with a cough he ever and anon made from deep in his frame.
"Dave," said Samson, "your missis's modder wants you, boy, to drive her to Vienny. What ails you, Dave, sence I larned you to box?"
"Is you de man?" Dave exclaimed, hoarsely; "den may de Lord forgive you, fur I never kin. Dat lickin' I mos' give you, made me a po', wicked, backslidin' fool."
"Why, Dave, I jess saw you was a good man; I didn't mean you no harm, boy."
"You ruined me, free nigger," repeated the huge slave, with a scowl, partly of revenge and partly remorse. "You set up my conceit dat I could box. I had never struck a chile till dat day; after dat I went aroun' pickin' quarrels wid bigger niggers, an' low white men backed me to fight. I was turned out o' my church; I turned my back on de Lord; whiskey tuk hold o' me, Samson. De debbil has entered into Class-leader Dave."
"Oh, brudder, wake up an' do better. Yer, I give you a dollar, an' want to be your friend, Davy, boy."
"I'll git drink wid it," Dave muttered, going; and, as he passed out of the stable-door he looked back at Samson fiercely, and exclaimed, "May Satan burn your body as he will burn my soul. I hate you, man, long as you live!"
Jimmy Phoebus remarked, a few moments afterwards, that Dave, dividing a pint of spirits with a lean little mulatto boy, put a piece of money in the boy's hands, who then rode rapidly out of the tavern-yard upon a fleet Chincoteague pony.
At two o'clock they again set forward, the man Dave driving the carriage and Jimmy Phoebus sitting beside him, while Samson easily kept alongside upon his old roan mule, the road becoming more sandy as they ascended the plateau between the Wicomico and Nanticoke, and the carriage drawing hard.
"If it is too late to keep on beyond Vienna to-night," said Mrs. Custis, "I will stop there with my friends, the Turpins, and start again, after coffee, in the morning, and reach Cambridge for breakfast."
"I will turn off at Spring Hill," Samson spoke, "and I kin feed my mule at sundown in Laurel an' go to sleep."
In an hour they came in sight of old Spring Hill church, a venerable relic of the colonial Established Church, at the sources of a creek called Rewastico; and before they crossed the creek the driver, Dave, called "Ho, ho!" in such an unnecessarily loud voice that Mrs. Custis reproved him sharply. Dave jumped down from the seat and appeared to be examining some part of the breeching, though Samson assured him that it was all right. As Dave finished his examination, he raised both hands above his head twice, and stretched to the height of his figure as he stood on the brow of a little hill.
"Missy Custis," he apologized, as he turned back, "I is tired mighty bad dis a'ternoon. Dat stable keeps me up half de night."
"Liquor tires you more, David," Mrs. Custis spoke, sharply; "and that tavern is no place to hire you to with your appetite for drink, as I shall tell your master."
At this moment Jimmy Phoebus observed the lean little mulatto boy who had left the hotel come up out of the swampy place in the road and exchange a look of intelligence with Dave as he rode past on the pony.
"Boy," cried Samson, "is dat de road to Laurel?"
The boy made no answer, but, looking back once, timidly, ground his heels into the pony's flank and darted into the brush towards Salisbury.
"Samson," spoke Dave, "you see dat ole woman in de cart yonder?"--he pointed to a figure ascending the rise in the ground beyond the brook--"I know her, an' she's gwyn right to Laurel. She lives dar. It's ten miles from dis yer turn-off, an' she knows all dese yer woods-roads."
"Good-bye, den, an' may you find Aunt Hominy an' de little chillen, Jimmy, an' bring dem all home to Prencess Anne from dat ar Joe Johnson!" cried Samson, and trotted his mule through the swamp and away. Jimmy Phoebus saw him overtake the old woman in the cart and begin to speak with her as the scrubby woods swallowed them in.
"What's dat he said about Joe Johnson?" observed Dave, after a bad spell of coughing, as they cleared the old church and entered the sandy pine-woods.
Mrs. Custis spoke up more promptly than Jimmy Phoebus desired, and told the negro about the escape of Hominy and the children, and the hope of Mr. Phoebus to head the party off as they ascended the Nanticoke towards the Delaware state-line.
"You don't want to git among Joe Johnson's men, boss?" said the red-eyed negro; "dey bosses all dis country heah, on boff sides o' de state-line. All dat ain't in wid dem is afraid o' dem."
"How fur is it from this road to Delaware, Dave?" asked Phoebus.
"We're right off de corner-stone o' Delawaw state dis very minute. It's hardly a mile from whar we air. De corner's squar as de stone dat sots on it, an' is cut wid a pictur o' de king's crown."
"Mason and Dixon's line they call it," interpreted Mrs. Custis.
"Do you know Joe Johnson, Dave?"
"Yes, Marster Phoebus, you bet I does. He's at Salisbury, he's at Vienna, he's up yer to Crotcher's Ferry, he's all ober de country, but he don't go to Delawaw any more in de daylight. He was whipped dar, an' banished from de state on pain o' de gallows. But he lives jess on dis side o' de Delawaw line, so dey can't git him in Delawaw. He calls his place Johnson's Cross-roads: ole Patty Cannon lives dar, too. She's afraid to stay in Delawaw now."
"Why, what is the occupation of those terrible people at present?" asked Mrs. Custis.
No answer was made for a minute, and then Dave said, in a low, frightened voice, as he stole a glance at both of his companions out of his fiery, scarred eyes:
"Kidnappin', I 'spect."
"It's everything that makes Pangymonum," Jimmy Phoebus explained; "that old woman, Patty Cannon, has spent the whole of a wicked life, by smoke!--or ever sence she came to Delaware from Cannady, as the bride of pore Alonzo Cannon--a-makin' robbers an' bloodhounds out of the young men she could git hold of. Some of' em she sets to robbin' the mails, some to makin' an' passin' of counterfeit money, but most of 'em she sets at stealin' free niggers outen the State of Delaware; and, when it's safe, they steal slaves too. She fust made a tool of Ebenezer Johnson, the pirate of Broad Creek, an' he died in his tracks a-fightin fur her. Then she took hold of his sons, Joe Johnson an' young Ebenezer, an' made 'em both outlaws an' kidnappers, an' Joe she married to her daughter, when Bruington, her first son-in-law, had been hanged. When Samson Hat, who is the whitest nigger I ever found, knocked Joe Johnson down in Princess Anne, the night before last, he struck the worst man in our peninsula."
Dave listened to this recital with such a deep interest that his breath, strong with apple whiskey, came short and hot, and his hands trembled as he guided the horses. At the last words, he exclaimed:
"Samson knocked Joe Johnson down? Den de debbil has got him, and means to pay him back!"
"What's that?" cried Jimmy Phoebus.
The sweat stood on the big slave's forehead, as if his imagination was terribly possessed, but before he could explain Mrs. Custis interrupted:
"I think it was said that old Patty Cannon corrupted Jake Purnell, who cut his throat at Snow Hill five years ago. He was a free negro who engaged slaves to steal other slaves and bring them to him, and he delivered them up to the white kidnappers for money; and nobody could account for his prosperity till a negro who had been beaten to death was found in the Pocomoke River, and three slaves who had been seen in his company were arrested for the murder. They confessed that they had stolen the dead negro and he had escaped from them, and was so beaten with clubs, to make him tractable, that when they gave him to Purnell his life was all gone. Then he was thrown in the river, but his body came up after sinking, and the confession of the wretched tools explained to the slave-owners where all their missing negroes had gone. They marched and surrounded Purnell's hut, and he was discovered burrowed beneath it. They brought the dogs, and fire to drive him out, and as he came out he cut his throat with desperate slashes from ear to ear."
During this narrative the man Dave had listened with rising nervous excitement, rolling his eyes as if in strong inward torment, till the concluding words inspired such terror in him that he dropped the reins, threw back his head, and shouted, with large beads of sweat all round his brow:
"Mercy! mercy! Have mercy! Save me, oh, my Lord!"
"He's got a fit, I reckon," cried Jimmy Phoebus, promptly grasping the reins as the horses started at the cry, and with his leg pinning Dave to the carriage-seat. At that moment the road descended into the hollow of Barren Creek, and, leaping down at the old Mineral Springs Hotel, a health resort of those days, Phoebus humanely procured water and freshened up the gasping negro's face.
"I declare, I am almost afraid to trust myself to this man," Mrs. Custis observed, with more distaste than trepidation.
"Every nigger in this region," exclaimed Jimmy Phoebus, "thinks Pangymonum's comin' down at the dreaded name of Patty Cannon; an' this nigger's gone most to ruin, any way."
"Oh, marster," exclaimed the slave, recovering his speech and glaring wildly around, "I hain't been always the pore sinner rum an' fightin' has made of me. I served the Lord all my youth; I praised his name an' kept the road to heaven; an' thinkin' of the shipwreck I'se made of a good conscience, an' hearin' missis tell of the end of Jake Purnell, it made me yell to de good Lord for mercy, mercy, oh, my soul!"
His frightful agitation increased, and Jimmy Phoebus soothed him, good-naturedly saying:
"Mrs. Custis, I reckon you'd better let him come in the tavern and take a little sperits; it'll strengthen his nerves an' make him drive better."
As they drank at the old summer-resort bar, at that time in the height of its celebrity, and the only spa on the peninsula, south of the Brandywine Springs, Phoebus spoke low to the negro:
"Dave, somethin' not squar and fair is a-workin' yer, by smoke! I've got my eye on you, nigger, an' sure as hokey-pokey thair it'll stay. You know my arrand yer, Dave: to save a pore, ignorant, deluded black woman from Joe Johnson's band. Now, you've been a-cryin 'Mercy!' I want you to show mercy by a-tellin' of me whar I'm to overtake an' sarch Levin Dennis's cat-boat if it comes up the Nanticoke to-night with them people and Joe Johnson aboard!"
Having swallowed his liquor greedily, the colored man replied, with his former lowering countenance and evasive eyes:
"You can't do nothin' as low down de river as Vienny, 'case de Nanticoke is too wide dar, and if you cross it at Vienny ferry, den you got de Norfwest Fork between you and Johnson's Cross-roads, wid one ferry over dat, at Crotcher's, an' Joe Johnson owns all dat place. But you kin keep up dis side o' de Nanticoke, Marster Phoebus, de same distance as from yer to Vienny, to de pint whar de Norfwest Fork come in. Sometimes Joe Johnson sails up dat big fork to get to his cross-roads. In gineral he keeps straight up de oder fork to Betty Twiford's wharf, right on de boundary line."
"How far is that?"
"It's five miles from yer to Vienny, and five miles from yer to a landin' opposite de Norfwest Fork. Four miles furder on you're at Sharptown, an' dar you can see Betty Twiford's house on de bank two miles acrost de Nanticoke."
"Nine miles, then, to Sharptown! He's had the tide agin him since he entered the Nanticoke, and it's not turned yit. By smoke! I'll look for a conveyance!"
"You can ride with me to the first landing," spoke up a noble-looking man, whip in hand; "and after delaying a little there, I shall go on the Sharptown ferry and cross the river."
Phoebus accepted the invitation immediately, and cautioning Mrs. Custis to speak with less freedom in that part of the country, he bade her adieu, and took the vacant seat in the stranger's buggy.
When Mrs. Custis came to Vienna ferry, and the horses and carriage went on board the scow to be rowed to the little, old, shipping settlement of that name, the negro Dave, standing at the horses' heads, exchanged a few sentences with the ferry-keeper.
"Dave," called Mrs. Custis, a little later on, "you have no love, I see, for old Samson."
"He made a boxer outen me an' a bad man, missis."
"Do you know the man he works for--Meshach Milburn?"
"No, missis. I never see him."
"He wears a peculiar hat--nothing like gentlemen's hats nowadays: it is a hat out of a thousand."
"I never did see it, missis."
"You cannot mistake it for any other hat in the world. Now, Samson is the only servant and watchman at Mr. Milburn's store, and he attends to that disgraceful hat. If you can ever get it from him, Dave, and destroy it, you will be doing a useful act, and I will reward you well."
The moody negro looked up from his remorseful, brutalized orbs, and said:
"Steal it?"
"Oh, no, I do not advise a theft, David--though such a wretched hat can have no legal value. It is an affliction to my daughter and Judge Custis and all of us, and you might find some way to destroy it--that is all."
"I'll git it some day," the negro muttered; and drove into the old tobacco-port of Vienna.
