The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times
With him I would speak while you give the directions! Poor coward!" Van
Dorn said, after his host had descended the stairs, "he can never be
less than a thief with that irksomeness under such fair competence."
At that moment a beautiful maid or woman, in her white night-robe, stood
in the little doorway, with eyes so like the richness of his just gone
that it must have been his daughter. She fled as she recognized a
stranger, and Van Dorn pursued till a door was closed in his face.
"Poor fool!" he said, sinking into his chair again; "I will never be
more honest than any woman can make me!"
As Levin entered the little hallway Van Dorn smiled:
"Here is a glass of real wine to inspire you, _junco_."
"No, Captain. I would rather die than drink it."
"Do you repent coming with me?"
"Oh, bitterly, Captain. I don't want to steal poor, helpless people if
they is black."
"Now, listen, lad!"--Van Dorn's face ceased to blush and the coarse
look came into his blue eyes--"this night's excursion is for your
profit. I like your gentle inclination for me, and the good acts you
have solicited from me, and the confidence you have shown me as to your
love for pretty Hulda. Join me in this work willingly, and I will give
her, for your marriage settlement, all my share."
"Never," Levin exclaimed.
Van Dorn drew his knife and rose to his feet.
"Levin," he lisped, "I promised Patty Cannon that I would bring you back
spotted with crime or dead. Now choose which it shall be."
"To die, then," cried Levin, with one hand drawing the long, silken hair
from his eyes and with the other drawing his own knife; "but I will
fight for my life."
Van Dorn seized Levin's wrist in a vise-like grip, but, as he did so,
threw his own knife upon the floor.
"Oh! _huerfano_, waif," Van Dorn murmured, while his blush returned,
"take heed thou ever sayest 'No' with courage like that, when cowardice
or weak acquiescence would extort thy 'Yes.' This moment, if thou hadst
consented, thy heart would be on my knife, young Levin!"
He drew the knife from Levin's hand and put it in his ragged coat again,
and set the boy on his knee as if he had been a little child.
"Oh, God be thanked I did not kill you, sir," sobbed Levin, his tears
quickly following his courage; "twice I have thought of doin' it
to-day."
"I never would have put you to that test, my poor lad, but that I saw
your conscience at work all this day under the stimulation of virtuous
love. Think nothing of me. Build your own character upon some good
example, and, sweet as life is, fight for it on the very frontiers of
your character. _Die_ young, but surrender only when you are old."
"Captain," Levin said, "how kin I git character? My father is dead.
Everybody twists me around his fingers."
"Then think of some plain, strong, faithful man you may know and refer
every act of your character to him. Ask yourself what he would do in
your predicament, then go and do the same."
"I do know such a man," Levin said, in another moment; "It is Jimmy
Phoebus, my poor, beautiful mother's beau."
"_El rayo ha caido!_" Van Dorn spoke, low and calm; "yes, Levin, any man
worthy of your mother will do."
"Captain, turn back with me! Is it too late?"
"Too late these many years, young _senor_. I shall lead the war on
Africa to-night again at Cowgill House."
He rose and finished the wine.
"Clark shall give you a horse, Levin. I present it to you. Ride on with
Sorden at the lead, and a mile from here, at Camden town, take your own
way. Good-night!"
Taking a single look at the miserable band of whites and blacks
collected in the barn, and revealed by a lantern's light in the
excitement of drink and avarice, or the familiarity of fear and
vice--some inspecting gags of corn-cob and bucks of hickory, others
trimming clubs of blackjack with the roots attached; others loading
their horse-pistols and greasing the dagger-slides thereon; some
whetting their hog-killing knives upon harness, others cutting rope and
cord into the lengths to bind men's feet--Levin was set on the loping
horse he had been already riding, by Clark, the host, and soon met
Sorden on the road.
"Where is Van Dorn?" Sorden asked; "I love him as I never loved A male."
"He sends me to Camden of an errand," Levin answered; "is it far?"
"About a mile. Three miles, then, to Dover. My skin! how fresh your
critter is; ain't it Dirck Molleston's? I thought so. Then he'll be
wantin' to turn in at Cooper's Corners."
"Does Derrick live there?"
"Yes. That's whar he holds the Forks of both roads from below, and
watches the law in Dover. I hope Van Dorn will git away with the loot
and not git ketched, fur I love him as I never loved A male."
Levin's horse, at his easy gait, soon left Sorden far behind, and the
strange events of the night, and his wonder what to do next, kept
Levin's brain whirling till he saw the form of a few houses rise among
the trees, and a line of arborage indicate a main road from north to
south. The scent as of cold, wide waters and marshes filled the night.
"Here is Camden," Levin thought; "where shall I go? If I turn south I
shall get no bed nor food all night, and be picked up in the mornin' fur
a kidnapper. I can't go back. The big river or the ocean, I reckon, is
before me. What would Jimmy Phoebus do?"
He held the animal in as he asked this question, and paused at the
crossing of the great State road.
The idea slowly spread upon his whole existence that James Phoebus
would, in Levin's place, ride instantly to Dover and give the alarm.
Levin tried to construct Phoebus in a mood to give some other advice,
but, as the resolute pungy captain's form seemed to bestride the young
man's mind, it rose more and more stalwart, and appeared to lead towards
Dover, where so many poor souls, in the joys of intercourse and freedom,
were like little birds unconscious of the hawks above them, and no man
in the world but Levin Dennis could save them from death or bondage.
Would James Phoebus, with his lion nature, ever hesitate in the duty
of a citizen and a Christian under such circumstances, or forgive
another man for withholding information that might be life and liberty
and mercy?
Yet there was Van Dorn to be betrayed. What would Van Dorn do in Levin's
place?
The words of Van Dorn, not a quarter of an hour old, spoke aloud in
Levin's echoing consciousness: "Think nothing of me. Refer every act to
some faithful man and go and do the same!"
Levin looked up, and the very clouds, now swollen dark in spite of
starshine, seemed hurrying on Dover. The night-birds were crying "Mercy!
mercy!" the lizards and tree-frogs seemed to cross each other's voices,
piping "Time! time! time!"
"_Huldy!_" Levin whispered, and let the reins fall loose, and his animal
darted through Camden town to the north.
He had gone by the small frame houses, the Quaker meeting, the stores,
the outskirt residences, when suddenly his horse turned out to pass a
large, dark object in the road ahead, and a horseman rode right across
Levin's course, forcing his animal back on its haunches.
"High doings, friend!" a man's voice raspingly spoke; "I'm concerned for
thee!"
"Git out of my way or I'll stab you!" Levin cried, between his new ardor
to do his duty and the idea that he had already been intercepted by
Patty Cannon's band.
"Ha, friend! I'm less concerned for myself than thee. Thou wilt not stab
a citizen of Camden town at his own door?"
"For Heaven's sake, let me go, then!" Levin pleaded. "The kidnappers is
coming to Dover in a few minutes. I want to tell Lawyer Clayton!"
Immediately the other person, a tall, lean man, wheeled and dashed after
the dark object ahead, which Levin, following also hard, found to be a
large covered wagon--something between the dearborn or farmer's and the
family carriage.
"Bill," the Quaker called to the driver, "spare not thy whip till Dover
be well past. Here is one who says kidnappers are raiding even the
capital of Delaware. I'm concerned for thee!"
The driver began to whip his horses into a gallop, and cries, as of
several persons, came out of the close-curtained vehicle.
"What's in there?" Levin asked the Quaker, who had rejoined him;
"niggers?"
"No, friend," the Quaker crisply answered, "only Christians."
They crossed a mill-stream, and soon afterwards a smaller run, without
speaking, and came to a little log-and-frame cabin in a fork of the
road, where Levin's horse tried to run in.
"Ha, friend! Is it not Derrick Molleston's loper thee has--the same that
he gets from Devil Jim Clark? What art thou, then? I feel concerned for
thee."
"A Christian, too, I hope," answered Levin, forcing his nag up the road.
"Then thee is better than a youth in this dwelling we next pass," the
Quaker said, pointing to a brick house on the left; "for there lived a
judge whose son bucked a poor negro fiddler in his father's cellar, and
delivered him to Derrick Molleston to be sold in slavery. I hear the
poor man tells it in his distant house of bondage."
"What's this?" Levin inquired, seeing a strange structure of beams on a
cape or swell to the right, in sight of the dark forms of a town on the
next crest beyond.
"A gallows," said the Quaker, "on which a horse-thief will be hanged
to-morrow. To steal a horse is death; to steal a fellow-man is nothing."
As he spoke, the mysterious carriage turned down a cross street of Dover
and stole into the obscurity of the town.
"Ha! ha!" exclaimed the Quaker; "if Joe Johnson had not stopped to feed
at Devil Jim's, he might have overtaken my brother's wagon full of
escaping slaves. I tell thee, friend, because I'm scarce concerned for
thee now."
CHAPTER XXXV.
COWGILL HOUSE.
Long after midnight, Dover was in bed, except at one large house on the
Capitol green, where light shone through the chinks and cracks of
curtains and shutters, and some watch-dog, perhaps, ran along curiously
to see why.
The stars and clouds in the somewhat troubled sky looked down through
the leafless trees upon the pretty town and St. Jones's Creek circling
past it, and hardly noticed a long band of creeping men and animals
steal up from the Meeting House branch, past the tannery and the
academy, and plunge into the back streets of the place, avoiding the
public square.
One file turned down to the creek and crossed it, to return farther
above, cutting off all escape by the northern road, while a second file
slipped silently through and around the compact little hamlet and waited
for the other to arrive, when both encompassed an old brick dwelling
standing back from the roadside in a green and venerable yard, nearly
half a mile from the settled parts of Dover.
This house was brilliantly lighted, and the rose-bushes and shade trees
were all defined as they stood above the swells of green verdure and the
ornamental paths and flower-beds.
One majestic tulip-tree extended its long branches nearly to the portal
of the quaint dwelling, and a luxuriant growth of ivy, starting between
the cellar windows, clambered to the corniced carpentry of the eaves,
and made almost solid panels of vine of the spaces between the four
large, keystoned windows in two stories, which stood to the right of the
broad, dumpy door.
This door, at the top of a flight of steps, was placed so near the gable
angle of the house that it gave the impression of but one wing of a
mansion originally designed to be twice its length and size.
Between this gable--which faced the road, and had four lines of windows
in it, besides a basement row--and the back or town door, as described,
was one squarish, roomy window, out of relation to all the rest, and
perhaps twelve feet above the ground. This, as might be guessed, was on