The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times
but he could not remove the iron band and link around her ankle.
"God bless you!" exclaimed the woman. "It's a sin to say so, but I feel
as if I could fly since that dreadful weight is off. Oh, I want to fly,
for I dreamed of my baby, an' he smiled at me from heaven as if he said,
'I'm happy, mamma!'"
"You don't owe me nothin', Mary. I love a widder, as you air, an' she
begged me to come yer. When you git to Prencess Anne, whar I want you to
go, find Ellenory Dennis, an' tell her I've seen her boy, an' I'll bring
him back if I kin."
"Princess Anne? where is it?"
"It's maybe, forty mile from yer, Mary; half-way between sunrise and
sunset."
"Right south, sir?"
"That's it. Now I'll tell you how to git thar. Take this old woods road
along Broad Creek and walk to Laurel, five miles; it's a little town on
the creek. Keep in under the woods, but don't lose the road, fur every
foot of it's dangerous to niggers. You kin git thar, maybe, by dark. I
don't know nobody thar, Mary, an' I can't write, fur I never learned
how. But you go right to the house of some preacher of the Gospel, and
tell him a lie."
Mary opened her eyes.
"I wouldn't have you tell a lie to anybody but a good man," continued
Phoebus, "fur then it's so close to the Lord it won't git fur an'
pizen many, as lies always does. You must tell that preacher that you're
the runaway slave of Judge Custis of Prencess Anne, an' you're sorry you
run away, an' want to go home."
"Oh, sir, you are not like my wicked husband, trying to sell me too?"
"No, Mary, bad as you've been used, faith's your only sure friend. If
you was to tell the preacher you had been kidnapped, he'd, maybe, be
afraid to help you. They're a timid set down yer on any subject
concernin' niggers; these preachers will help save black folks' souls,
but never rescue their pore broken bodies. When you tell him you are the
slave of a rich man like Judge Custis, he'll jump at the chance to do
the Judge a favor, an' tell you that you do right to go back to your
master. That's whair he's a liar, Mary--so he'll scratch _your_ lie
off."
"They'll turn me back at Princess Anne, and wont know me, maybe."
"Not if you do this, Mary. Make them take you to Judge Custis's
daughter--the one that's just been married. Tell her you want to speak
to her privately. Then tell her the nigger-skinned man--I'm him--that
she sent away with her mother, found you whar you was chained in the
woods. Take this link of the chain to show her. Tell her you want to be
her cook till the one that run away is found."
"I'll do it, sir. I've got no home to go to, now."
"Tell her all you remember. Tell her not to tell Ellenory any of my
troubles. Tell her I'm a-startin' for Pangymonum, an', if I die, it's
nothin' but a bachelor keepin' his own solitary company. Yer's a gold
piece an' three silver pieces I found, Mary, to pay your way. Good-bye."
"Won't you give me your knife?" asked the woman.
"What fur, Mary?"
"To kill myself if they kidnap me again."
"I have nothin' else to fight for my life with," said Phoebus. "No,
you must not do that. Keep in the woods to Laurel."
She fell on the ground and kissed his knees, and bathed them with her
tears.
"I do have faith, master," she said, "faith enough to be your slave."
"I'd cry a little, too," said Jimmy, twitching his eyes, as the woman
disappeared in the forest, "if I knowed how to do it; but, by smoke! the
wind on the bay's dried up my tear ponds. I'll bury these curiosities
right yer, with this chain and ball, and put some old bricks around' em
outen the chimney they come from."
He dug a hole with his knife, carefully cutting out a piece of the sod,
and restoring it over the buried articles; and, after notching some
trees to mark the place, he pushed in the scow again into Broad Creek,
and descended the Nanticoke on the falling tide to Twiford's wharf.
Dragging the scow up the bed of a creek to conceal it, he discovered
another boundary stone. A beach led under the cover of a sandy bluff to
the river gate of Twiford's comfortable house, and he boldly entered the
lane and lawn, saying to himself:
"I reckon a feller can ask to buy one squar meal a day in a free
country, fur I'm hungry."
Even in that day the house was probably seventy years old, roofed by an
artistic shingler in lines like old lace-work, the short roofs over the
three pretty dormers like laced bib-aprons, the window-casements in
small checkers of dark glass, the roof capacious as an armadillo's back
or land-turtle's; but half of it was almost as straight as the walls,
and the small, foreign bricks in the gables, glazed black and dark-red
alternately, were laid by conscientious workmen, and bade fair to stand
another hundred years, as they smoked their tidy chimney pipes from
hearty stomachs of fireplaces below.
Standing beneath the honey-locust tree at the lawn-gate, the sailor
beheld an extensive prospect of the river Nanticoke, bending in a
beautiful curve, like the rim of a silver salver, towards the south, the
blue perspective of the surrounding woods fading into the azure bluffs
on the farther shore, where, as he now identified it, the hamlet of
Sharptown assumed the mystery and similitude of a city by the
enchantment of distance. A large brig was riding up the river under the
afternoon breeze, carrying the English flag at her spanker. The
wild-fowl, flying in V-formed lines, like Hyads astray, flickered on the
salver of the river like house-flies. Some fishermen distantly appeared,
human, yet nearly stationary, as if to enliven a dream, and the bees in
a row of hives kept murmuring near by, increasing the restful sense in
the heart and the ears.
"Why cannot human natur be happy yer, pertickler with its gal--some one
like Ellenory?" Phoebus thought; "why must it git cruel an' desperate
for money, lookin' out on this dancin' water, an' want to turn this
trance into a Pangymonum?"
He crossed the lane to a squatty old structure of brick by the
water-side, and peeped in.
"A still, by smoke!" he said. "If it ain't apple brandy may I forgit my
compass! No, it's peach brandy. Well, anyway, it's hot enough; an' this,
I 'spect, is what started the Pangymonum."
He took a stout drink, and it revived his weakened system, and he bathed
his head in its strong alcohol. He then returned to the lawn and walked
around the house, peeping into the lower rooms--of which there were two
in the main building, the kitchen being an appendage--but saw nobody.
The porch in the rear extended the full width of the house, unlike the
smaller shed in front, which only covered two doors, standing curiously
side by side.
Completely sheltered by the longer porch, Phoebus, looking into a
window, there saw a table already set with a clean cloth, and bread and
cold chicken, and a pitcher of creamy milk, with a piece of ice floating
in it. On either side of a large fireplace at the table-side was a door,
one open, and leading by a small winding stair to the floor above. A bed
was also in the room, which looked out by one window upon the lawn and
the river, and by the other at the farm, the corn-cribs, and the small
barns and pound-yard.
With a sailor's quiet, sliding feet, Jimmy walked into the low hall, and
a cat-bird, in a cage there, immediately started such a shrill series of
cries that his steps were unheard by himself.
"Nobody bein' yer," thought Jimmy, "an' the flies gittin 'at the
victuals, I reckon I'll do as I would be done by."
So he began to eat, and soon he heard a female voice, very close by,
sound down the stairs, as if reciting to another person.
"Aunt Patty says Aunt Betty's first husband, Captain Twiford, was a
sea-captain and a widower, and she was one of the beautiful Hanley
girls, brought up by old Ebenezer Johnson at his house across on Broad
Creek; and there Captain Twiford courted her, and brought her here to
live. He died early--all my aunties' husbands died early--and is buried
in the vault out here behind the pound, where you can go in and see him
in his shroud, lying by Aunt Betty. Her next husband, John Gillis, left
her, and then she lived with William Russell, a negro-trader. Aunt Patty
governed all her sisters and the Johnson boys, too. Oh, how I fear her
when she looks at me sometimes with her bold, black eyes: I can't help
it."
Another voice, not a woman's, yet almost as gentle, now seemed to ask a
question; but the cat-bird, behaving like a detective and a tale-bearer,
made such a furious screaming at seeing a stranger drinking the milk,
that Phoebus could not hear it well. The pleasant female voice spoke
again:
"Yes, he was killed in the room under this, before I was born, Aunt
Patty says; and sometimes she likes to tell such dark and bloody tales,
and laughs with joy to see me frightened at them. Aunt Betty got in
debt, and this house and farm were sold under executions and bought by a
Maryland man, who stole an opportunity when the men were away, and set
his goods in the house and set Aunt Betty's goods outside upon the lawn.
It's only a mile, or a little more, from here to Ebenezer Johnson's, and
the news of the seizure was sent there."
Jimmy tore off a piece of chicken with his teeth, listening voraciously.
"Did you hear anything?" continued the voice; "I thought I did. The dogs
are chained up in the smoke-house, and bad people are often coming here;
I will go turn the dogs loose."
"Be dogged if you do!" Jimmy reflected. "That's the meanest cat-bird
ever I see, fur now it's shut up a-purpose."
There sounded something familiar to the uninvited guest in the voice
which seemed to delay this intention; but the cat-bird, with his
unaccommodating mood, broke right in again. Then the female continued:
"While the men--who had come armed, expecting trouble--were removing
Aunt Betty's goods out of the room, throwing many of them out of the
windows, so as to be themselves in sole possession, a sound was heard in
the room below, where your meal is now ready, like a panther skipping
and lashing his tail; and, before the men could breathe, old Ebenezer
Johnson was up the stairs and laying about him. His eyes were full of
murder. One man jumped right through that window and rolled off the
porch; another he pitched down the stairs; the third was a boy, Joe
King, barely grown--he lives not far from this house now--and Ebenezer
Johnson dashed him down the stairs, too, and started after him. All his
life the boy had been taught to dread that terrible man, and now he was
in his hands, or flying before him; and, as he reeled through the room
below, out of the door that opens on the back porch, the boy's eyes, in
the agony of the fear of death, beheld a rifle leaning there."
"Mighty good thing if it was thar now!" Jimmy inwardly remarked,
finishing the chicken, and still hungry.
"Oh, there _is_ a noise somewhere in this house," the voice exclaimed;
"I never tell this story but it makes me startled at every sound. The
boy, as he whirled past, grasped the long rifle, drew it to his
shoulder, and, with a young volunteer's skill--for he had been drilling
to fight the British--he put the two balls in that old man's brain. Both
balls entered over the left eyebrow, and one passed through the head and
was found in the wall; the other never was found.[3] The lawless giant
gave a trembling motion through his frame, his eyes glazed, and he sank
dead upon the floor without a sound--the wicked had ceased from
troubling! Aunt Betty, Aunt Patty, and Aunt Jane, three sisters shaped
by him in soul, fell on his body and wept and almost prayed, but it was
too late. They buried him near Aunt Betty, in the field behind the
pound."
Undertaking to rise from his chair, Jimmy Phoebus made a loud scraping