The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times

THE ENTAILED HAT OR _PATTY CANNON'S TIMES_ A Romance BY GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND "GATH"

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NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 1884 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884, by HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. _All rights reserved._ TO JUDGE GEORGE P. FISHER OF DELAWARE AND HON. JOHN A. J. CRESWELL OF MARYLAND LOVERS OF OLD TIMES WELCOMERS OF THE NEW ERA "Friends! trust not the heart of that man for whom Old Clothes are not venerable."--CARLYLE: _Sartor Resartus_ INTRODUCTION. Once the author awoke to a painful reflection that he knew no place well, though his occupation had taken him to many, and that, after twenty-five years of describing localities and society, he would be identified with none. "Where shall I begin to rove within confines?" he asked, feeling the vacant spaces in his nature: the want of all those birds, forest trees, household habits, weeds, instincts of the brooks, and tints and tones of the local species which lie in some neighborhood's compass, and complete the pastoral mind. Numerous districts rose up and contended together, each attractive from some striking scene, or bold contrast, or lovely face; and wiser policy might have led his inclinations to one of these, redundant, perhaps, in wealth or literary appreciation; yet the heart began to turn, as in first love, or vagrancy almost as sweet, to the little, lowly region where his short childhood was lived, and where the unknown generations of his people darkened the sand--the peninsula between the Chesapeake and the Delaware. Far down this peninsula lies the old town of Snow Hill, on the border of Virginia; there the pilgrim entered the court-house, and asked to see an early book of wills, and in it he turned to the name of a maternal ancestor, of whom grand tales had been told him by an aged relative. His breath was almost taken by finding the following provisions, dated February 12, 1800: "I give and bequeath to my son, Ralph Milbourn, MY BEST HAT, TO HIM AND HIS ASSIGNEES FOREVER, and no more of my estate. "I give to Thomas Milbourn my small iron kettle, my brandy still, all my hand-irons, my pot-rack, and fifteen pounds bond that he gave to my daughter, Grace Milbourn." The next day a doctor took the author on his rounds through "the Forest," as a neighboring tract was almost too invidiously called, and through a deserted iron-furnace; village almost of the date of these wills. Everywhere he went the Entailed Hat seemed, to the stranger in the land of his forefathers, to appear in the vistas, as if some odd, reverend, avoided being was wearing it down the defiles of time. Now like Hester Prynne wearing her Scarlet Letter, and now like Gaston in his Iron Mask, this being took both sexes and different characters, as the author weighed the probabilities of its existence. At last he began to know it, and started to portray it in a little tale. The story broke from its confines as his own family generation had broken from that forest, and sought a larger hemisphere; yet, wherever the mystic Hat proceeded, his truant fancy had also been led by his mother's hand. Often had she told him of old Patty Cannon and her kidnapper's den, and her death in the jail of his native town. He found the legend of that dreaded woman had strengthened instead of having faded with time, and her haunts preserved, and eye-witnesses of her deeds to be still living. Hence, this romance has much local truth in it, and is not only the narration of an episode, but the story of a large region comprehending three state jurisdictions, and also of that period when modern life arose upon the ruins of old colonial caste. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. TWO HAT WEARERS 1 II. JUDGE AND DAUGHTER 6 III. THE FORESTERS 15 IV. DISCOVERY OF THE HEIRLOOM 19 V. THE BOG-ORE TRACT 25 VI. THE CUSTISES RUINED 32 VII. JACK-O'-LANTERN IRON 40 VIII. THE HAT FINDS A RACK 45 IX. HA! HA! THE WOOING ON'T 69 X. MASTER IN THE KITCHEN 83 XI. DYING PRIDE 89 XII. PRINCESS ANNE FOLKS 100 XIII. SHADOW OF THE TILE 121 XIV. MESHACH'S HOME 129 XV. THE KIDNAPPER 154 XVI. BELL-CROWN MAN 164 XVII. SABBATH AND CANOE 179 XVIII. UNDER AN OLD BONNET 192 XIX. THE DUSKY LEVELS 210 XX. CASTE WITHOUT TONE 218 XXI. LONG SEPARATIONS 239 XXII. NANTICOKE PEOPLE 261 XXIII. TWIFORD'S ISLAND 269 XXIV. OLD CHIMNEYS 285 XXV. PATTY CANNON'S 298 XXVI. VAN DORN 318 XXVII. CANNON'S FERRY 335 XXVIII. PACIFICATION 357 XXIX. BEGINNING OF THE RAID 360 XXX. AFRICA 365 XXXI. PEACH BLUSH 373 XXXII. GARTER-SNAKES 391 XXXIII. HONEYMOON 405 XXXIV. THE ORDEAL 411 XXXV. COWGILL HOUSE 424 XXXVI. TWO WHIGS 433 XXXVII. SPIRIT OF THE PAST 441 XXXVIII. VIRGIE'S FLIGHT 456 XXXIX. VIRGIE'S FLIGHT--CONTINUED 468 XL. HULDA BELEAGUERED 486 XLI. AUNT PATTY'S LAST TRICK 496 XLII. BEAKS 510 XLIII. PLEASURE DRAINED 515 XLIV. THE DEATH OF PATTY CANNON 524 XLV. THE JUDGE REMARRIED 542 XLVI. THE CURSE OF THE HAT 554 XLVII. FAILURE AND RESTITUTION 558 * * * * * A picture of Joe Johnson's Kidnapper's Tavern, as it stood in the year 1883, is given on the title-page. THE ENTAILED HAT. CHAPTER I. TWO HAT WEARERS. Princess Anne, as its royal name implies, is an old seat of justice, and gentle-minded town on the Eastern Shore. The ancient county of Somerset having been divided many years before the revolutionary war, and its courts separated, the original court-house faded from the world, and the forest pines have concealed its site. Two new towns arose, and flourish yet, around the original records gathered into their plain brick offices, and he would be a forgetful visitor in Princess Anne who would not say it had the better society. He would get assurances of this from "the best people" living there; and yet more solemn assurances from the two venerable churches, Presbyterian and Episcopalian, whose grave-stones, upright or recumbent, or in family rows, say, in epitaphs Latinized, poetical, or pious, "_We_ belonged to the society of Princess Anne." That, at least, is the impression left on the visitor as he wanders amid their myrtle and creeper, or receives, on the wide, loamy streets, the bows of the lawyers and their clients. There were but two eccentric men living in Princess Anne in the early half of our century, and both of them were identified by their hats. The first was Jack Wonnell, a poor fellow of some remote origin who had once attended an auction, and bought a quarter gross of beaver hats. Although that happened years before our story opens, and the fashions had changed, Jack produced a new hat from the stock no oftener than when he had well worn its predecessor, and, at the rate of two hats a year, was very slowly extinguishing the store. Like most people who frequent auctions, he was not provident, except in hats, and presented a startling appearance in his patched and shrunken raiment when he mounted a bright, new tile, and took to the sidewalk. His name had become, in all grades of society, "Bell-crown." The other eccentric citizen was the subject of a real mystery, and even more burlesque. He wore a hat, apparently more than a century old, of a tall, steeple crown, and stiff, wavy brim, and nearly twice as high as the cylinders or high hats of these days. It had been rubbed and recovered and cleaned and straightened, until its grotesque appearance was infinitely increased. If the wearer had walked out of the court of King James I. directly into our times and presence, he could not have produced a more singular effect. He did not wear this hat on every occasion, nor every day, but always on Sabbaths and holidays, on funeral or corporate celebrations, on certain English church days, and whenever he wore the remainder of his extra suit, which was likewise of the genteel-shabby kind, and terminated by greenish gaiters, nearly the counterpart, in color, of the hat. To daily business he wore a cheap, common broadbrim, but sometimes, for several days, on freak or unknown method, he wore this steeple hat, and strangers in the place generally got an opportunity to see it. Meshach Milburn, or "Steeple-top," was a penurious, grasping, hardly social man of neighborhood origin, but of a family generally unsuccessful and undistinguished, which had been said to be dying out for so many years that it seemed to be always a remnant, yet never quite gone. He alone of the Milburns had lifted himself out of the forest region of Somerset, and settled in the town, and, by silence, frugality, hard bargaining, and, finally, by money-lending, had become a person of unknown means--himself almost unknown. He was, ostensibly, a merchant or storekeeper, and did deal in various kinds of things, keeping no clerk or attendant but a negro named Samson, who knew as little about his mind and affections as the rest of the town. Samson's business was to clean and produce the mysterious hat, which he knew to be required every time he saw his master shave. As soon as the lather-cup and hone were agitated, Samson, without inquiry, went into a big green chest in the bedroom over the old wooden store, and drew out of a leather hat-box the steeple-crown, where Meshach Milburn himself always sacredly replaced it. Then "Samson Hat," as the boys called him, exercised his brush vigorously, and put the