When it was announced to Levin and Hulda, who had meantime been talking in the garden, dangerously near the subject of love, that they were to be given a ride to Cannon's Ferry with Captain Van Dorn, at the especial desire of Aunt Patty Cannon--who also sent them a handful of half-cents to spend--they were both delighted, though Hulda said:
"Dear Levin, if it was only ourselves going for good, how happy we might be! I could live with your beautiful mother and work for her, and, knowing me to be always there, you would bring your money home instead of wasting it."
"Can't we do so some way?" asked Levin. "Oh, I wish I had some sense! I wish Jimmy Phoebus was yer, Huldy, to take me out thair in the garden an' whip me like my father. But, if I hadn't come yer, how could I have seen you, Huldy?"
"How could I have spent such a heavenly night of peace and hope if you had not come, dear? The Good Being must have led you to me."
"Huldy," said Levin, after thinking to the range of his knowledge, "maybe thar's a post-office at Cannon's Ferry, an' you kin write a letter to Jack Wonnell fur me."
"Why not to your mother, Levin?"
"Oh, I am ashamed to tell her; it would kill her."
"If we should be found out, Levin, Aunt Patty would kill me. There is no paper here, no ink that I can get, the postage on a letter is almost nineteen cents, and, look! these half-cents are short of the sum by just two."
"I have gold," cried Levin, thinking of the residue of Joe Johnson's bounty.
He put his hand into his pocket, but the money was no longer there.
"Hush!" cried Hulda, "you have been robbed. Everybody is robbed who sleeps here. Grandma can smell gold like the rat that finds yellow cheese."
The individual who had served the breakfast was seen coming towards them, a man in size, with a low forehead, no chin to speak of, a long, crane neck, and a badly scratched and festered face.
"Mister," he said to Levin, "come help me hitch the horses; I'm beat so I can't see how."
Levin started at once, suggesting to Hulda to make search for his missing money, and, when they were in the little stable, the man observed, in a whisper, to Levin:
"By smoke!"
Levin went on putting the bridles and breeching on the horses, when the man said again, with an insinuating grin:
"By smoke!"
"Heigh?" exclaimed Levin.
"By smoke!" the man remarked again, with a very ardent emphasis.
"You must have been in Prencess Anne," Levin said, "to swar 'by smoke.'"
The ill-raised man, with such an inferior head and cranish neck, now slipped around to the front of Levin and looked down on him, and whispered:
"Hokey-pokey!"
The idea crossed Levin's mind that the scullion of Patty Cannon must have gone crazy.
"Whair did you pick up them words, Cy?" Levin asked.
"Hokey-pokey!" answered Cy James, with a more mysterious and impressive sufflation; "Hokey-pokey! By smoke! and Pangymonum, too!"
"Why, Cy! what do you mean? Jimmy Phoebus never swars but in them air words. Do you know Jimmy Phoebus?"
"Pangymonum, too!" hissed Cy James, with every animation. "Hokey-pokey, three! an' By smoke, one!"
He put his long arms on his knees, and bent down like a great goose, and stared into Levin's eyes.
"I never had sense enough," Levin said, "to guess a riddle, Cy Jeems. Them words I have hearn a good man--my mother's friend--use so often that they scare me. My mind's been a-thinkin' on him night an' day. Oh, is he dead?"
"By smoke! Hokey-pokey! an' Pangymonum, too!" the long, lean, excited fellow whispered, with the greatest solemnity.
"They're Jimmy Phoebus's daily words, dear Cyrus. He was killed on the river night before last; I saw him fall; it is my sin and misery."
"He ain't dead," Cy James whispered, very low and carefully. "I won't tell you whar he is till you make Huldy like me."
"How kin I do that, Cy?"
"She thinks I'm a coward and gits whipped by Owen Daw. Tell her I ain't no coward. Tell her I'm goin' to fry all these people on my griddle--all but Huldy. Tell her I'm only playin' coward till I gets 'em all in batter an' the griddle greased, an' then I'll be the bully of the Cross-roads!"
"Do you hate me, Cy Jeems? I ain't done nothin' to you. I'm a prisoner here till I kin git my boat back from Joe an' go to Prencess Anne."
"I won't hate you if you kin make Huldy love me," Cy James replied. "Tell her I ain't no coward; that I'm goin' to be free, an' rich too." He dropped his palms to his knees again, and whispered, "fur I know whar ole Patty buries her gole an' silver!"
"Come with those horses, you idle lads," the lisping voice of the Captain was heard to call. "Ya, ya! there, luego! the morning passes on."
"All ready," Cy James replied, and as they left the stable door he whispered once again, and looked significantly towards Johnson's Cross-roads:
"By smoke! Hokey-pokey! an' Pangymonum, too!"
The Captain, looking like a gentleman of the knightly ages misplaced in this forest lair, held the reins standing on the ground, and handed Hulda in to the seat beside his own with a grace and a blush and a lisping laugh that, Levin thought, were very fascinating.
"Now, Master Cannon, take your place in the tail of the vehicle," the Captain said, bowing to Levin, and darting one of those cold, coarse looks at him that he vouchsafed but for a moment, like a soft cat that has all the nature of the rabbit except the tiger's glare.
The vehicle was an old wagon without springs, and Levin's seat was a piece of board, while Hulda's had a back to it, and the Captain had padded it with a bear's-skin robe. He looked with the most delicate attention at Hulda, blushed when she looked at him, and, scarcely noticing the horses, yet having them under nearly automatic control, he drove out of Patty Cannon's lane and turned into the woods.
Levin cast one long, prying look at Johnson's tavern, wishing he might have the gift to see through its weather-stained planking and tall blank roof, and then he watched the road, of hard sand or piney litter, with here and there a mud-hole or long, puddly rut in it, unravel like a ribbon behind the wheels among the thick pines.
He also observed the skill with which the Captain threw his long cowhide whip, a mere strip of rawhide fastened to a stick, awkward in other hands; but Van Dorn could brush a fly from either of the short, shaggy Delaware horses with it, and hardly look where he struck or disturb the horse, and he could deliver a blow with it by mere sleight that made the animal stagger and tremble with the abrupt pain.
At a little sandy rill, the only one they crossed, a long water-snake endeavored to escape before the rapid wagon could strike it, but the Captain rose to his feet quick and cat-like, and projected the long lash into the roadside, and the snake writhed and bounded in the air almost cut in two. Then, sitting again and bending so close to Hulda that his long, downy mustache of gold touched her cheek, Van Dorn said, softly:
"Que hermoso! Young wild-flower, let me take a snake out of your path also?"
"Which one, Captain?"
"It does not matter. Name any one."
"Alas!" said Hulda, "I am of them; how can I wish harm to my stepfather and my grand-dame? They are not what I wish, but I am commanded to honor them."
"By whom, fair Hulda?"
"By God. I read it in the Book after I heard it from a slave."
"Donde esta! What slave that we know was so God-read?"
"Poor drunken Dave. He was a good man before he knew us. He told me all the Commandments for a drink of brandy, and I wrote them down and afterwards I found them in a book."
"Chis! chito! how graceful is your mind, Hulda! It comes out of the absolute blank of your condition and discovers things, as the young osprey, untaught before, knows where to dive for fish. Who that ever comes to Johnson's Cross-roads brings the Bible?"
"Colonel McLane."
"He? the self-righteous crocodile! he gave you the Book?"
"Yes. He told me Joe and grandma were good people--'conservative good people,' I think he called it; but he said you believed nothing, and there was no basis, I think he called it, for 'conservative good' in you."
"O hala hala! But this is good," the Captain softly remarked, stroking his golden mustache with the hand that carried the lustrous ring. "Patty Cannon may be saved; I must be damned; and Allan McLane will sit in judgment. No, I believe nothing, because such as they believe!"
"That is why nobody likes you," Hulda frankly observed, "agreeable as you are."
"And can you believe in anything after the surroundings of your childhood, touching crime like the pond-lily that grows among the water-snakes?"
"The lily cannot help it, and is just as white as if it grew under glass, because--"
"Because the lily has none of the blood of the snake?" the captain lisped. "Do you enter that claim?"
"No," said Hulda; "I know I am born from wicked parents, a daughter of crime, my father hanged, my mother of dreadful origin, but never have I felt that God held me accountable for their works if I kept my heart humble and my hands from sin; and never have I been tempted yet from within my own nature to enjoy a single moment of such hideous selfishness. And I thank my kind Maker that something to love and believe in, though unhappy as myself, has come down the sad pathway I looked along so many years, and found me waiting for him."
Without reply, the Captain kept his own thoughts for several minutes, and finally sighed:
"I know one thing in which I might believe, pretty child."
"Oh, then embrace it," Hulda said, "and give your faith a single straw to cling to."
Van Dorn's hand slipped around her waist, and his florid cheeks and blue eyes bent beneath her Leghorn hat:
"I find it here, perhaps, Hulda. Shall I embrace your youth with my strong passion? I fear I love you."
"Yes," she answered, looking up with her long-lashed eyes of such entrancing gray; "kiss me if it will give you hope!"
The blush and high color went out of his face as he stared into those passive, large gray orbs, wide open beneath his pouting, rich, effeminate lips, and, as he hesitated, Hulda repeated:
"Kiss me, if it will make you hope!"
"No, no," he answered; "of all places I am most hopeless there."
"I knew you would not kiss me," Hulda said, with a tone above him, "if I gave you the right for any pure object. The kiss you would give me does not see its mate in my soul."
"You hate me, then?" said Van Dorn.
"No, I pity you; I pray for you, too."
"For me? What interest have you in me?"
"I do not know," said Hulda. "I have often wondered what made me think of you so often and, yet, never with admiration. You are the only person here who appears to have lost something by being here; some portion of you seems to have disappeared; I have felt that you might have been a gentleman, though you can never be again. I shrink from you, and still I pity you. But, with all your handsome ways, I would never love you, while the poor boy who is riding with us I loved as soon as he came."
"Chis! chito! You can shrink from me and not from a Cannon, too? Why, girl, you have put him in my power."
"I have been in your power for a long time, Captain Van Dorn, and you have looked at me with bold and evil eyes many a time, but never came nearer. When I gaze at you as I did just now, you fly from me. That boy I love is as safe as I am, in your hands."
"Why, dear presumer? Tell me."
"Because I love him, and you require my pity. As long as you protect that poor orphan boy I shall carry your name to God for pardon; if you ever do him harm, my prayers for you will be dumb forever."
"Oh! ayme! ayme!" softly laughed Van Dorn, his blush not coming now; "you forget, Hulda, that I believe in nothing."
They had hardly gone four miles when a little, low-pitched town of small square houses, strewn about like toy-blocks between pairs of red outside chimneys, sat, in the soft, humid October morning, along the rim of a marshy creek that, skirting the hamlet, flowed into the Nanticoke River a few miles, by its course, above Twiford's wharf. Two streets, formed by two roads, ended in a third street along the sandy, flattish river shore, and there stood four or five larger dwellings, like their humbler neighbors, built of wood, but with bolder, greater chimneys, rising into the air as if in rivalry of four large ships and brigs that lay at anchor or beside the two wharves, and threw their masts and spars into the sailing clouds, making the low forest that closed river and village in, stoop to its humility. But the beautiful river, with frequent bluffs of sand and woods, flowing two hundred yards wide in stately tide, and bearing up to Cannon's Ferry fish-boats and pungies, Yankee schooners and woodscows, and the signs of life, however lowly, that floated in blue smoke from many hearths, or sounded in oars, rigging, and lading, seemed to Hulda human joy and power, and she cried to Levin:
"Levin, oh, look! Did you ever see as big a place as this? Yonder is the road to Seaford, just as far as we have come! The big ships are taking corn for West Indies, and bringing sugar and molasses. That is the ferry scow, and on the other side it is only five miles to Laurel."
"Do you like to travel that road?" asked the Captain, with his pleasing lisp and blush returned again.
"It makes me sad," replied Hulda; "but I do not mutter when I go past the spot, like grandma."
"What spot?" asked Levin.
"Where father killed the traveller," Hulda said. "He died shamefully for it. You could almost see the place but for yonder woods, where the road to Laurel climbs the sandy hill."
"What's this?" said Van Dorn, seeing a little crowd around one of the single-story cabins, and turning his team into the parallel street.
A very tall, grand-looking man towered above the rest, and seemed unable to stand upright in the low cottage, with his proportions, so that he took his place on the grassy sand without and gave his directions to some one within:
"Levy on the spinning-wheel! Simplify the equation! Stand by your fi. fa.! Don't be chicken-hearted, constable--she's had the equivalent; now she sees the quotient, too."
Van Dorn looked on and saw a spinning-wheel come out of the door, and a little wool in a bag after it. Jacob Cannon put his foot on the wheel and poked his head in the door.
"I see an axe and a coffee-mill there, constable: levy onto 'em with your distringas. Experientia docet stultos! Pass out that pair of shoes!"
A voice of a woman crying was heard, and Van Dorn and Levin both leaped out to look.
Hulda also stepped down and disappeared.
A woman, barely able to stand up, and white as illness and anguish could make her, had staggered to the door to beg that her shoes be given back, and pointed to her naked feet.
"Now she's off the bed, levy on that!" cried the military figure with the long, eloquent face and twinkling eyes; "shove it out the window. Mind your fi. fa. and I'll take care of the quotient."
"Have mercy!" cried the woman; "my child was only born last week."
"Fling out that good chair there, constable. Levy on the green chest! Don't you see a whole quilt or blanket anywhere! Allow neither tret nor suttle when you serve a writ for Isaac and Jacob Cannon!"
"Where shall I lie with my babe?" cried the poor woman, looking around on the naked cabin, where neither bed, nor blanket, nor chair, nor chest, nor spinning-wheel remained.
"Li-vari facias! and fi-eri facias! If there's a mistake a replevin lies, but no mistakes are made by Isaac and Jacob Cannon. Constable, I think I see an iron pot on that crane!"
"It's got meat in it, sir--meat a-bilin'," answered the constable.
"Turn out the meat! Levy on the pot! Make the quotient accurate! Eliminate the pot from the equation!"
Out came the pot, as the material boiling in it put out the October fire, and it was thrown in the miscellaneous heap at Jacob Cannon's feet.
"Now take the cradle, hard-hearted man," the woman cried, "and turn the baby into the fire, too, since I can cook nothing to make its milk in my breasts."
"Is the cradle worth anything, constable?" asked the magnificent-looking man with the gray silvery lights around his horsy nose; "if it's worth taking, I want it. People who can't pay their debts must live single like Jacob Cannon, and not be distrained."
A boy, with his face scratched, and dissipation settled in it, bounded suddenly into the aghast group of spectators, and made a vicious dive to recover the effects around Jacob Cannon's feet, but that mighty worthy took him by the collar and, holding him up, dropped him over a fence like a bug:
"Owen Daw, here be witnesses to an assault insultus, actionable as a trespass vi, the quotient whereof is damages or the equivalent in Georgetown jail. Take heed, good citizens, and especially I note you, Captain Van Dorn."
"I'll kill him," shouted the young bully of Johnson's Cross-roads, and late distrainer on the profile of Cyrus James, Esquire, seizing an ugly stick.
"Justifiable as son assault demesne," remarked the creditor, carelessly, as he wrenched the bobbin from the spinning-wheel and knocked the boy down with it.
His commanding manner and the ready hand operated to abash the latter, and, deeply pained with the scene, Levin Dennis fervently and impulsively cried to Van Dorn:
"Oh, Captain! can't you pay her debts! I'll give all Joe's going to give me, to pay you back. See how she lays on the bare floor! Hear her child crying for her! Oh! I think I hear my mother's voice a-callin' of me home as I listen to it."
Van Dorn, feeling Levin's hands grasp his own with simple confidence, heard and did not turn his head, while blushes like roses bloomed successively upon his fresh, effeminate cheeks. He did not repel the boy's hands, however, but looked at the scene with worldly and unpitying curiosity.
"To pay the distraints of Isaac and Jacob Cannon," he murmured, softly, "would keep a poor slaver poor. You must grow accustomed to such cries: I had to do so. Learn to love money like that merchant and me, and you will think them music."
"Oh, when we cry to God for mercy, captain, maybe our cries will sound like that! I can't bear to hear it."
"You told mother, Jake Cannon, when she rented this ole house," the boy, Owen Daw, exclaimed, "that she needn't pay the rent, if she didn't want to, till the day of judgment."
"I've got the judgment," Jacob Cannon answered, his whitish eyes seeming to chuckle to the bridge of his nose, "and this is the day it's due. All legal days are 'judgment days' to Isaac and Jacob Cannon."
"My son, my son," the woman's voice wailed out to Owen Daw, "I see the end of your going to Patty Cannon's: my baby to the grave, myself to the almshouse, and you to the gallows."
"Captain, Captain," Levin cried, "oh, pay the debt for me! Mother's never been poor as this. Pay it, and I will work fur you anywhair, dear captain."
"How much is the debt," asked Van Dorn, lispingly.
"Ten dollars," spoke the constable, also moved to shame.
"Cannon, will you take me for it?"
"I'll take your judgment-bond or the cash, Captain Van Dorn, nothing less."
"Put back her stuff," the captain said, slightly pressing Levin's hand, as if to say, "This is for you"--"put back her stuff and I'll settle it with Isaac Cannon."
"God bless you!" cried the woman, taking her babe from the cradle and hushing its hunger at her breast; "they call you a wicked man, but blessings on you for all the good you do!"
"Chito! chito!" smiled Van Dorn. "I did it for this foolish boy; I pity none."
Hulda had resorted to the strand, or river street of Cannon's Ferry, where there were two storehouses, and she had borrowed quill and ink, and written a letter addressed to "Mrs. Ellenora Dennis, Princess Anne, Somerset County, Maryland," saying:
"Madam, Levin, your son, is near this place against his will, among dangerous men and in great temptation, but he has found a friend. In one week this friend will try to write again, and, if not heard from, seek Levin Dennis at Johnson's Cross-roads."
This letter, written with all her unproficient speed, had just been folded, wafered, and endorsed, and she had put down one of the shillings of 1815 to pay the postage, when a shadow fell upon the store counter, and the letter was withdrawn from her hand; Van Dorn stood by her side.
"Chis! chito! Es posible? A spy, perhaps. Now you will love Van Dorn, or Grandma Cannon shall hear your letter read!"
"Give it to me, Captain," Hulda pleaded; "she will kill me if she reads it."
"If it were sent, pomarosa, we all might die. No, you are too dangerous."
He looked, without his blush, at the shilling she was putting back in her bosom, and his eye was cold and fierce. Hulda's heart sank down.
"Brother Isaac," cried Jacob Cannon, to a man of fine, lean height, who was at the desk--a man a little shorter than Jacob, and not so much of a king in appearance but with the same whitish eyes dancing around the bridge of his nose, and a more covert and thoughtful brow--"Brother Isaac, Captain Van Dorn is chicken-hearted, and wants to settle the debt of the Widow O'Day, otherwise Daw."
"By cash or judgment-note, captain?"
"Cash," answered Van Dorn, modestly; "take it out of this double-eagle, with Madam Cannon's rent for your farm."
"There's a tree--a bee-tree, Brother Jacob, I think you said--cut down from Mrs. Cannon's field?"
"Yes, actionable under statute made and provided, wilfully to spoil or destroy any timber or other trees, roots, shrubs, or plants; value of said bee-tree three dollars; levari facias! The quotient is unsatisfactory to Isaac and Jacob Cannon."
The eyes of the elder and smaller brother endeavored to have an introduction to each other through the bridge of his nose.
"Oh, Brother Jacob," he chuckled, "what an executive help you air! Captain, isn't he a perfect Marius?"
"Madam Cannon," observed the captain, "throws up the farm with this payment, gentlemen. She has already moved her effects across the line to son-in-law Johnson's. The bee-tree I know nothing about."
"Brother Jacob," spoke Isaac Cannon, "Moore takes the farm! Let him be notified that his rent commences without day."
"Execution made, Brother Isaac," answered the Marius of the family. "This morning, perceiving Patty Cannon about to move her effects, my bailiff seized on her plough as security for the aforesaid bee-tree spoiled, maimed, and destroyed, and Moore is ploughing to put in his wheat with it already. Time is money to Isaac and Jacob Cannon."
"Ha, ha! what an executive comfort! Brother Jacob never adds an item to profit and loss."
"Gentlemen," said Van Dorn, "I recommend you not to be charging bee-trees to tenants in the vicinity of Johnson's Cross-roads. It's an unusual item, and we are raising young men there who may not understand it."
"Captain," said the elder Cannon, chuckling as if still in admiration of Marius's subtlety, "I recollect now that our ferryman brought over a man from Laurel this morning with some news. A woman with a broken shackle reported there last night, and said she was the slave of Daniel Custis of Princess Anne: she came from Broad Creek."
"Where did she go?"
"A Methodist preacher put her in his buggy and started to her master's with her."
"Then she'll beat the wind," said Van Dorn; "these preachers are all horse-jockeys, and can outswap the devil. Hola! ya, ya! I must see to this."
He strode out, with a cold eye glanced at Hulda.
"Come, young people," spoke the grand head of Jacob Cannon to Levin and Hulda; "I will show you my museum."
He led the way to a warehouse overhanging the river and unlocked a door, and told them to walk carefully till they could see in the dark of the interior.
Levin kept Hulda's hand in his as they slowly saw emerge from the shadows a great variety of dissimilar things heaped together, till the house could hardly hold the vast aggregate of pots and kettles, spinning-wheels and cradles, bedsteads and beds, harrows and ploughs, chairs and gridirons, rakes and hoes, silhouettes and picture-frames, hand-made quilts of calico and pillows of home-plucked geese feathers, fishermen's nets and oars--whatever made the substance of living in an old country without minerals and manufactures, in the early part of the nineteenth century.
"Whare did you git' em, sir?" Levin asked.
"Executed of 'em," said the warrior head and stature of Jacob Cannon; "pounced on 'em; satisfied judgments upon 'em. Fi. fa.! We call this Peale's Museum Number Two, or the Variegated Quotient."
"All these things taken from the poor?" asked Hulda. "How many miseries they tell!"
"Mr. Cannon," said Levin, "what kin you do with 'em? People won't buy 'em. They're just a-rottin' to pieces."
"We keep' em to show all them who trespass on Isaac and Jacob Cannon," answered Marius, with easy grandeur, "that there is a judgment-day!"
Hulda's long-lashed gray eyes, with a look of more than childish contempt, accompanied her words:
"I should think you would fear that day, Mr. Cannon, when you say the prayer, 'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.'"
The wind from the river seemed to bend the old warehouse, and the noise it made through the chinks and around the corners, slightly stirring the loosely disposed pile of cottage and hut comforts, seemed to arouse low wails among these as when they were torn from the chimney side and the family.
"Where is my baby?" the cradle seemed to say, "that I received and rocked warm from the womb of pain? Oh, I am hungry for his little smile!"
"Why do I rest my busy wheel?" the spinner seemed to creak, "when I know my children are without stockings? Who keeps me here idle while Mother asks for me?"
"Where is the old gray head," sighed the feathers, sifting in the breeze from a broken pillow-case, "that every night and in the afternoons dozed on our bag of down, and picked us over once a year, and said her prayers in us? Oh, is she sleeping on the cold, bare floor, and we so useless!"
The pot seethed to the kettle, "It is dinner-time, and the little boys are crying for food, and still there is no one to lift me on the crane and start the fire beneath me! What will they think of me, they gathered around so many years and watched me boil, and poked their little fingers in to taste the stewing meat? I want to go! I want to go!"
The kettle answered to the pot: "I never sung since the constable forced me from grandmother's hand, and robbed her of the cup of tea."
The old quilt of many squares fluttered in the draught: "Take me to the young wife who sewed me together and showed me so proudly, for I fear she is a-cold since her young husband died!"
These household sounds the thrilled young lovers, standing so poor and on the brink of what they knew not, seemed to hear in awe, and drew closer to each other, like young Eve and Adam in the great wreck of Paradise and at the voice of God.
Hand in hand they stepped forth into the bright light of day, and walked along the sandy street beneath the tall locust, maple, and ailanthus trees that grew in line along the front yards of the Cannon brothers. Four large houses stood sidewise, end to end, here: first, Cannon's business house; next, Isaac Cannon's comfortable home, where he dwelt, a married man; and, third, the elegant frame mansion, with tall, airy chimneys, of Jacob Cannon the bachelor, whose house, built for a bride, had never yet been warmed by a fire; finally, the old, bow-roofed, low dwelling of the mother of the Cannons, opposite which was the ferry wharf, and Van Dorn talking to the negro ferryman.
"Levin," said pretty Hulda, not sad, but very grave, "this noble house is like that noble-looking Mr. Cannon, hollow and cold. He lives with his brother Isaac, and keeps his own dwelling empty and locked up, because he loved money too much to find a wife."
"Let us love each other, Huldy," Levin said; "it is all we've got."
"It is all there is to get, my love," Hulda answered. "Yes, I do love you, Levin. I will try to save you, if I can, because I love you, though suffering may come to me."
"No," cried Levin, "I cannot leave you, dear. If I could now cross in the ferry-boat, I wouldn't do it; I must go back with you."
As Captain Van Dorn came up from the wharf, blushing like a school-boy, and tapping his white teeth together under the long flax of his mustache, his attention was arrested by a proclamation pasted on a post:
"Five Hundred Dollars Reward, for
JOSEPH MOORE JOHNSON, KIDNAPPER.
"The above reward will be paid by me to any person or persons--and they will be exempted from detention--who will deliver to me the body of the above-named miscreant, that he may be brought to trial in Pennsylvania.
"JOSEPH WATSON, Mayor of Philadelphia."
"Chis! he!" Van Dorn sighed; "the end must soon be near. Now, young people, come!"
As they passed Cannon's place, going out of town, the familiar voice of Jacob was heard to cry:
"Owen Daw's escaped, Brother Isaac; but we'll clap it to him on a de bonis non. I'll never take my eye off him till I die."
"Brother Jacob, what an executive help you air!"
As Van Dorn drove the horses up the slight ascent in the rear of the ferry, past an ancient double puncheon house there, with an arch in the centre, young Hulda--who now wore shoes and stockings, and a presentable dress of English goods, and looked quite the woman out of her sincere and sometimes proud and eloquent eyes--said to him, as she pointed back:
"Captain, it was there my father killed the traveller, where we see the road beyond the ferry enter the pines."
"Yes," said Van Dorn, giving her a cold look; "we might see the place but for the woods. It is at a hill, a short mile from the Nanticoke."
"Tell Levin about it, captain."
"Quedo, quedo! It would not be pleasant."
"Yes," said Hulda; "if it was true, I can hear it: I want Levin to hear it, too, so that no deceit shall be between us."
Her smooth, moist hair, gray, humid eyes, complexion born between the rose and dew, and straight, lithe figure, and air of dignity and truth, impressed Van Dorn curiously:
"How bold you grow, wild-flower! Cannot you stoop to re-create me? I, too, would live without deceit. But I will not tell you that story."
"You are afraid," spoke Hulda, feeling that nothing but this man and three miles of level road separated her from the vengeance of Patty Cannon, and that she must assert herself strongly over him.
"Ya, ya! Are you not harsh? Remember, you may be whipped by your grandma."
"No, you will whip me, or kill me, if it is to be done. You dare not give me to her to punish."
"Dare not, again? Why?"
"Because you are my guardian. Between us is an instinct different from love, but strong; I feel it. I lean towards you, but not on you. What is it?"
"O Dios!" lisped Van Dorn, his blush suspended and his warm blue eyes fascinated by her. "Is this a child or Echo?"
"Tell me of my father's crime. I want Levin to know the wretched thing he has affection for."
"Ayme! ah! Well, listen, young lovers; and see what grisly things walk in these pines! There was a man named Brereton; they call him Bruington here, where their noses are twisted and their chins weak. He came from old Lewes, off to the east by Cape Henlopen, and of a stout family, in which was a grain of evil ever smoking through the blood. Do you sometimes feel it, Hulda?"
"No, not evil like that."
"He was apprenticed to a blacksmith, and held the iron while the master struck. One day a man came in the shop, whose horse had thrown a shoe, to have a shoeing, and, when he paid for it, he took a handful of money from his pocket, and one piece--a dollar--fell in the soft soot of the shop, unperceived but by the boy: chis! he covered it with his foot."
Van Dorn's whip-lash firmly covered a huge fly on the horse's ear, and laid it dead.
"When the man departed, the boy raised his foot and uncovered the dollar; his master said, 'Smart boy!' They divided the stolen dollar."
"Jimmy Phoebus says the fust step is half of a journey," Levin noted.
"The blacksmith's boy looked avariciously on travellers ever after, who might possess a dollar. He took the empty shop of Patty Cannon's first husband, years after that saint died, and worked on hobbles, clevises, and chains to hold the kidnapped articles of commerce. Naturally he kidnapped, too, and, while she was yet a child, Patty's daughter became Brereton's wife, bestowed by the fond, appreciative mother. Master Levin, if you fall into his path, Brereton's daughter may be bestowed on you. Hola! behold her in Hulda."
"I can't see any of that sin in Hulda, Captain; she ain't even ashamed."
"No," affirmed Hulda, looking sincerely at Van Dorn; "it is too true to make me ashamed. I feel as if God's hand covered me like the silver dollar under my father's foot, because he let me survive such parents."
As she spoke she took one of the silver shillings of 1815 and covered it with her hand in Van Dorn's sight. Van Dorn spoke on rapidly:
"There were two brothers named Griffin from about Cambridge, in Maryland; spoiled boys who had taken to the flesh trade, and they stole men and gambled the proceeds away, and Brereton was their leader. One day a traveller came by from Carolina, hunting contraband slaves, and he was of your boastful sort, and dropped the hint that he had fifteen thousand dollars on his body to be invested. No later had he spoken than he felt his folly, from the burning eyes around him and watering mouths telling him to sleep there and slaves would be fetched; so he started in a fright for Laurel, by way of Cannon's Ferry, intending to deposit his money or make them deal with him there. The word was passed to Brereton by his wife or mother-in-law, and by Brereton to the Griffins, to mount and intercept the gold. Some say," lisped Van Dorn, "that Mistress Cannon, dressed in man's clothes, commanded the band."
A deep, chuckling interest, like the sound of a hidden brook, attended Van Dorn's recital, and he was blushing like a girl.
"At Slabtown, a nondescript spot a mile above Cannon's, the light-marching band crossed in a row-boat; they piled brush and bent down saplings in the traveller's road, where he should almost reach the brow of the hill in his buggy, and when the fleshmonger halted at the obstacle, chis, hola! they let him have it on both sides, and sent icicles to his heart. He drew a pistol, but in a dying hand. 'Away!' cried the assassins; 'he is not dead.' His horse, in fright at bursting firearms in the evening shades, leaped the brushy barriers and galloped to Laurel, and delivered there an ashy-visaged effigy, down whose beard the red dye of his life dripped audibly, as he sat stiff in death in the buggy. His name was only guessed; how happy he in that!"
"And what was the fate of the murderers?" Hulda asked, with less horror than Levin showed.
"Three of them were arrested; one of the Griffins exposed his brother and Captain Brereton; these two died on the gallows at Georgetown, young Brereton exerting himself under the noose to prevent his injudicious comrade saying too much on peerless Patty Cannon and her fair sisters, and thinking on their interests more than on this living child. Ha! Hulda Brereton?"
"The other Griffin also suffered death?" suggested Hulda, with a pale, unevasive countenance.
"Yes, your fond grandma, then in her blazing charms, drew him to her band again with the lure of Widow Brereton's hand; he killed a constable to recommend himself the better, and died on the gallows at his native Cambridge. Hala hala! she gave your mother, wild-flower Hulda, to Joe Johnson next to wife."
"It is an awful story," Levin said, "but Hulda never saw it."
"I can remember my father," said Hulda; "a large, strong man, with a slow, heavy face, but he never smiled on me."
"Well, here is the cross-roads," said Van Dorn. "What shall I do with this letter, bad wild-flower?"
"Read it, if you will, or take this English shilling and post it."
Van Dorn shrank back, rejecting the money.
"Will you not buy it back, Hulda," he whispered, "with love?"
"Never."
"You may pay for this letter this night with your life or modesty!"
