The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times
and, seizing the meat and bread, rushed noiselessly into the night.
She hardly knew what she was doing until she had crossed a bridge and
come to the edge of a small town, around which she took a road to the
right that led into another country road, and this she followed a mile
or more, till she saw a small brick house, by a stile and pole-well, in
the edge of woods.
The light from a little dormer-window in the garret beamed so brightly
that it charmed Virgie's soul with the fascination of warmth and home,
and, without thinking, she crossed the stile, bathed her hot temples at
the well, and walked into the kitchen before the fire.
"Freedom!" said Virgie, wanderingly; "have I come to it?" She fell upon
the rag carpet before the fire, saying, "Father, dear father," and did
not move.
"Well," spoke a man of large paunch and black snake's eyes, sitting
there, "it's not often people in search of freedom walk into Devil Jim
Clark's!"
"She is white," exclaimed a woman, looking compassionately upon the
stranger, "and she is dying."
"No," retorted the man, "she is too pretty to be white. This is the
bright wench Sam Ogg was seen with. She belongs to Allan McLane, and
there's a reward of five hundred dollars for her, but she'll bring two
thousand in New Orleans for a mistress."
"Hush!" said the woman; "you may bring a judgment upon your daughters."
"Joe Johnson is about to sail," remarked Devil Jim Clark; "he shall take
her with him."
The girl had heard _that_ name through the thick chambers of oblivion.
She rose and shrieked, and rushed into the woman's arms:
"Save me, mother, save me from that man!"
The woman's heart was pierced by the cry, and she folded Virgie to her
breast and kissed her, saying:
"She shall sleep in our daughter's bed and rest her poor feet this
night--our daughter, James, that we buried."
The man's mouth puckered a little; he looked uneasy, and drew his
handkerchief to his eyes.
"You're all agin me! you're all agin me!" he bellowed, and rushed from
the room.
* * * * *
The wife of Devil Jim Clark was a pious Methodist, and, with her
rich-eyed daughter, spent the next day at Virgie's bedside, hearing her
broken mutterings for fatherly love and Vesta's cherished remembrance.
"Your father is out for mischief," Mrs. Clark said. "Jump on your
saddle-horse, my daughter, and ride to the Widow Brinkley's, just over
the Camden line. Tell her to send for this girl."
"Mamma, they say she's an abolitionist."
"That's what I send you for. It's a race between you and your father. Be
with me or with him!"
The girl tied on her hood, took her riding-whip, and departed.
In an hour she returned with a tidy black woman, whom Mrs. Clark took
into Virgie's chamber.
"My heart bleeds for this poor girl," the hostess said. "They say your
son spirits negroes North. Mr. Clark says so. I do not ask you if it is
true, but, as one mother to another, I give you this girl. She is too
white to be sold. She looks like a dead child of mine."
"Bill is not due home till sunset. If she is alive by that time, he has
just time to drive her to Mr. Zeke Hunn's vessel at the mouth of the
creek, which lies there every trip one hour--"
"To let runaways come aboard?"
"I have never been accused of helping them, Mrs. Clark."
The trader's wife slipped a bank-bill into the colored woman's hand.
"Lend to the Lord!" she said. "I depend upon you to save us the sin of
selling this girl."
* * * * *
There came to the little black house that lurked by the woods two
riding-horses, and stopped at the stile.
"Wait here!" said the voice of Devil Jim Clark. "Will you take her if
she is still delirious?"
"Bingavast! Why not? I'm delirious myself, Jim, fur it's my
wedding-night. I'll rest her at Punch Hall."
The herculean ruffian coolly proceeded to prepare some saddle-ropes to
tie his victim before him on his horse. He was interrupted by a woman:
"Come and see your work, Joe Johnson!"
Following up the short cupboard stairs, the kidnapper was pointed to an
object on the bed, with peaked face and sharpened feet, as it lay white
as lime, with eyelashes folded and the arms drawn to its sides.
"Take her to Patty Cannon now," said Mrs. Clark, "who is only fit for
dead company."
"The dell dead and undocked?" the ruffian exclaimed, slightly shrinking
from the body; "maybe she's counterfeited the cranke. I'll search her
cly. But, hark!"
A wagon and hoofs were heard.
"Joe," whispered the woman's husband, "you're only four mile from Dover.
Maybe it's warrants for both of us?"
"Hike, then!" hissed the pallid murderer; "the world's agin me," and he
slipped away with his companion.
* * * * *
"Now, Bill Brinkley," the wife of Devil Jim whispered, as a tall,
ingenuous-looking colored boy came in the room, "you are just in time.
She has had laudanum enough to keep her still; my daughter powdered her;
let me kiss her once before she goes."
As the woman departed, the black boy, looking around him, muttered:
"Whar is dat loft? I've hearn about it."
Some movements overhead in the low dwelling directed his attention to a
small trap-door, and, standing on a stool, he unbolted it and pushed it
upwards, whispering,
"Any passengers for Philadelfy? De gangplank's bein' pulled in!"
First a woolly head, then another, and next two pairs of legs appeared
above.
"Take hold yer and carry de sick woman to de dearborn," the boy said,
not a particle disturbed, as two frightened blacks dropped from the
loft, with handcuffs upon them.
* * * * *
In the clear evening a wagon sped along towards the east, through the
saffron marshes, tramping down the stickweed and ironweed and the
golden rod, and, while the people in it cowered close, the negro driver
sang, as carelessly as if he was the lord of the country:
"De people of Tuckyhoe
Dey is so lazy an' loose,
Dey sows no buttons upon deir clothes,
And goes widout deir use;
So nature she gib dem buttons,
To grow right outen deir hides,
Dat dey may take life easy,
And buy no buttons besides.
"But de people of Tuckyhoe
Refuse to button deir warts,
Unless dey's paid a salary
For practisin' of sech arts;
Like de militia sogers,
Dat runs to buttons an' pay,
De folks is truly shifless,
On Tuckyhoe side of de bay."
A sail was seen in the starlight, rising out of the marshes at an old
landing in the last elbow of Jones's Creek, and hardly had the fugitives
been put on board when the anchor was weighed and the packet stood out
for the broad Delaware, her captain a negro, her owner a Quaker.
The girl was awakened by the cold air of the bay striking her face.
"Freedom!" she murmured; "it must be this. Oh, I am faint for father's
arms to take me."
* * * * *
Was this Teackle Hall that Virgie looked upon--a square, bright room,
and her bed beside a window, and below her stretching streets of
cobblestone and brick, and roofs of houses, to green marshes filled with
cows, and a river that seemed blue as heaven, which sipped it from above
like a boy drinking head downward in a spring? How beautiful! It must be
freedom, Virgie thought, but why was she so cold? Her eyes, looking
around the room, fell upon a lady in a cap, reading a tract to a large,
shaven, square-jawed man, and this woman was of a silver kind of beauty,
as if her mind had overflowed into her heart, and, not affecting it, had
made her face of argent and lily, milk and sheen.
"What sayeth Brother Elias, Lucretia?"
"He sayeth, Thomas: 'This noble testimony, of refusing to partake of the
spoils of oppression, lies with the dearly beloved young people of this
day. We can look for but little from the aged, who have been accustomed
to these things, like second nature. Without justice there can be no
virtue. Oh, justice, justice, how art thou abused everywhere! Men make
justice, like a nose of wax, to satisfy their desires. If the soul is
possessed of love, there is quietness.'"
"Yes," said the girl, from the bed, thinking aloud; "love is quietness.
Will father come!"
She dreamed and heard and looked forth again upon the hill descending to
the river, the stately sails, the farther shore, so like her native
region, and asked with her eyes what land they might be in.
"Wilmington," said the beautiful woman. "This is the house of Thomas
Garrett, the friend of slaves. When you can be moved, it shall be to the
green hills of the Brandywine, where all are free."
"Hills? What are they?" mused Virgie, looking at her wasted hand. "Must
I climb any more? Must I wade the swamps again? I know I have a father
somewhere."
She dreamed and wept unconsciously, and told of many things at Teackle
Hall, being, indeed, a little child again, playing with her little
mistress, Vesta. The stars stood in the sky right over her pillow, and
she talked to them, and some she seemed to know, as little Vince, or
little Roxy, or Master Willy Tilghman, all playmates of her childhood;
but ever and anon these vanished, and the young Quaker woman was reading
again from the sermons of Elias Hicks, and the words were: "Love is
quietness;" "Light only can qualify the soul;" "If I go not away, the
Comforter will not come unto you."
"What Comforter?" sighed Virgie, and there seemed a great blank, and
then she heard a scream--was it she that screamed so?--and she was
trying with all her might to get somewhere, and was fainting in the
labor, but trying again and again, and then a calmness that was like
gentle awe, strange because so painless, spread into her nature, and she
only listened.
"My daughter," said a voice, "my own child! Call me 'father,' and say I
am forgiven."
"Father! forgiven!" she murmured, and felt a warm face, that yet could
not warm her own, shedding tears and kissing her, and close to it her
arms were thrown tight, as if she never could let go, and everything was
music, but wonderful.
She feared she must fall if she did not hold to him. Who was it that
called her "daughter"? Why came those cold stars so close, as if to spy
upon him?
Oh, holy purity, that held so fast and did not know, but trusted
nature's quivering embrace! She wrestled with something, like a rock of
ice, to move her eyes and see, or ere she was dashed down forever, the
eyes that gushed for her. They were her master's.
"Master," she said, "whose am I?"
"Mine before God. Pure to my heart as your white sister, Vesta! White as
young love, in fondness and trust forever!"
"And mother?" gurgled the girl's low notes; "where is she?"
"Yonder," said the Judge, "in Heaven, that will judge me, whither she
winged in bearing thee to me!"
A happy light came over Virgie's face. She kissed her father twice, as
if the second kiss was meant for her happier sister, and, raising her
arms towards the sky he pointed to, whispered, "Freedom!" and died upon
his breast.
CHAPTER XL.
HULDA BELEAGUERED.
Owen Daw brought the news of the repulse from Cowgill House and the
wounding of Captain Van Dorn.
"Where is the little tacker, Levin?" asked Patty Cannon, furiously.
"Arrested, I 'spect," cried O'Day, boldly; "Van Dorn's hit in the
throat."
"He'll not talk much, then," muttered the woman; "his time had to come.
Where will I find another lover at my age? Why, honey," she chuckled to
herself, in a looking-glass, "that son of his'n may come back. He's took
a shine to Huldy: why not to me?"
At the idea another hideous thought came to her mind: to settle Hulda's
fate in her young lover's absence, and monopolize the corrupting power