The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times

hearing in Seaford, but get horses and send them right to Georgetown jail; they are slippery as eels. Goy!" As Cy James was being taken to a secure place in the garret he turned to Levin Dennis, much wilted and crestfallen. "Oh, Levin," he said, "Huldy won't have me now, I know. Won't you stand by me, Levin? She's goin' to marry you, and I'll give ye all I've found." "Huldy!" Levin exclaimed; "oh, must I leave her yonder at the tavern another night?" "No," answered Hulda, coming forward; "we are both preserved, my friend. But I must have made my bed in the forest this night if God had not directed me to you." As they clasped each other fondly, Senator Clayton exclaimed, "What? Doves among the rattlesnakes. Goy!" CHAPTER XLIII. PLEASURE DRAINED. The dawn had not broken when that fleet traveller, Joseph Johnson, anticipating his enemies by hours, noiselessly tied his horses at the tavern he had erected, and nearly fell into the arms of Owen Daw. "Joe," said that scapegrace, "thar's queer people hanging around yer. They say a blue chist has been dug outen the field yonder, an' bones in it. I 'spect they're a-lookin' fur you, Joe." "I'll give you a job, Owen," said Johnson, quick on his feet as the boy. "Run these horses into my wagon thar while I git some duds together before I hop the twig." Slipping to the rear of the house, he entered, and looked in Patty's room--she was not there; a slight smell of gunpowder seemed to be in the hall. Passing rapidly up the stairs, Johnson saw a light shine in McLane's room, and he kicked the door wide open, exclaiming, "Bad luck everywhere; the gal's stone dead; the beaks are round us. Wake up, McLane!" "Joe!" said a voice, and Patty Cannon threw her arms around him. "To burning fire with you!" bellowed the filial son. "Take your arms away!" "Let us make up, Joe! Everybody has run away from us. Huldy is gone, too. McLane is dead." "Dead? Dead where?" "There"--she pointed to a feather-bed lying upon the floor, the outlines of which seemed unusually pointed and stiff for feathers, though it was sown up in its own blankets and quilts. Joe Johnson touched it with his foot and bounded back. "Hell-cat!" he cried, "is this one of your tricks?" "I did it fur you, Josie. He brought it on hisself. There's his portmanteau full of money to pay our travelling expenses. He's sewed up beautiful, and in the bay you can drop him to the bottom." Joe Johnson's face became almost livid pale, and, rushing upon Patty Cannon with both hands raised, he struck her to the floor and put his boot upon her. "If I had time, I'd have your life," he hissed. "But it would lose the uptucker a job. To-night I leave you forever. Margaretta, your daughter, wishes never to see you again. Take this crib and the blood you still must shed to keep your old heart warm, and take my curse to choke you on the gallows!" He rushed away and gave a low whistle at the window; Daw and Joe's brother, Ebenezer, a lower set and more sinister being, bounded up the stairs and loosened and drove before them the little band of captives. "One word from you, white nigger, in all this journey to-day, scatters your brains in the woods!" Joe Johnson drew a pistol as he spoke, and Jimmy Phoebus saw his nervous determination too clearly to provoke it. "Now, put this dab upon the wagon," Johnson said, referring to the bed, and it was carried down by the brothers, and the dead man's portmanteau thrown in beside it. "Joe! Joe!" came the voice of Patty Cannon, from the guest's room, "take the poor old woman that's raised you along." "Stow yer wid!" he answered; "we go to be gentlemen in a land where you would spot us black. Cross cove and mollisher no more; raise another Joe Johnson, if you can, to make this old hulk lush with business: I give it to you." He was gone in the vague dawn. She fell upon her face across the little bar and moaned, "A pore, pore, pore old woman!" How long she had been leaning there she did not know, till familiar sounds fell on her ears, and, looking up with a cry of recognition, she shouted, "Van Dorn! God bless you, Van Dorn! Is you alive again?" The Captain was supported in the arms of another person, who took him, ghastly pale, into the little bar and laid him upon her pallet, muttering, "I loved him as I never loved A male." * * * * * The morning was well advanced, and the sun made the gaunt and steep old tavern rise like a mammoth from the level lands, and filled its upper front rooms with golden wine of light, as Patty Cannon sat in one of them by a window near the piazza, and talked to Van Dorn, whom she had tenderly washed and re-dressed, and placed him in her own comfortable rocking-chair of rushes, with his feet raised, as all unaffected Americans like, and blanketed, upon a second chair. Her woes and his relief made Patty social, yet tender, and the instincts of her sex had returned, to be petted and beloved. "Oh, Captain," she said, fondly, "how clean and sweet you look, like my good man again. Don't be cross to me, Van Dorn! My heart is sad." "_Chito_, Patty! _chito_! Fie! _you_ sad? I like to see you saucy and defiant. Let us not repent! So Joe has left you?" "With cruel curses. My daughter hates me, he says, and means to be a lady where I can't disgrace her. Oh, honey! to raise a child and have it hate an' despise you goes hard, even if I have been bad. There's nothing left me now but you, Van Dorn; oh, do not die!" He coughed carefully, as if coughing was a luxury to be very mildly exerted, and wiped a little blood from his tongue and lip. "I'll try not to die till I comfort you some, _Marta delicioso_! The ball is at my windpipe, and, when the blood trickles in, it makes me cough, and I must beware of emotions, the surgeon says, lest it drop into my lung and break a blood-vessel by some very spasmodic cough. So do not be too beautiful or I might perish." He stroked his long yellow mustache with the diamond-fingered hand, and drew his velvet smoking-cap tight upon his silken curls, but he was too pale to blush as formerly, though he lisped as much, like a modest boy. "Captain," the woman said, pleased to crimson, "you are so much smarter than me I'm afeard of you. Am I beautiful a little yet? Do I please you? I know you mock me." "_O hala hala!_" sighed Van Dorn. "You are the star of my life. All that I am, you have made me. Patty, I worship you. When you are gone, human nature will breathe and wonder. Do you remember when first we met?" "A little, Captain. Tell it to me again. Praise me if you kin. I'm almost desolate." Her lip trembled, and she glanced at the fields across the way, she had so long inhabited, where, as it seemed to her, more life than ever was visible to-day, though she did not look carefully. "How many years it has been, Patty, we will not tell. I was coming home from Africa with an emigrant, a Briton, my capturer, indeed--that officer in the blockading squadron on that coast who seized my privateer, the _Ida_, with all her complement of Guinea slaves. His name was all I took from him--you got the rest--_Van Dorn_!" She stole a startled look at him out of her listening eyes, as if this might be unpleasant talk, but he parried it with a compliment. "_Chis! Dios!_ What a family of beauties you were! Betty, with her hoyden air, and Jane, with her wealth of charms, and Patty, with her bold, rich eyes and conquering will. We sailed into the Nanticoke by mistake for the Manokin. My friend had pitied my misfortunes and liked my company, and, when he broke me up as a slaver--having already been broken as a privateer--had said: 'Dennis, that country you praise so well has infatuated me; I'll resign my commission and buy a little vessel, and settle in America with you for the sake of my dear little daughter, Hulda Van Dorn.' _Ayme!_ that poor little wild-flower: where did she spend the chill night yesterday, Patty, can you tell?" He coughed again, very carefully, and his eye, the brighter for his fretted lungs, never left his hostess, as though he feared she might overlook some pleasing feature of his story. She trotted her foot and muttered: "You made me jealous of her: I got to hate an' fear her, lovey." "Voluptuous as two young widowers were after a long cruise, we tarried among you sirens, myself almost at the threshold of my home, where my wife believed me dead, yet waited longingly and waits this morn, dear Patty. _Dios da fe!_ My friend, entasselled with bright Betty, sooner felt remorse at the spectacle of his little child so ill-caressed, and beckoned me away; but he had shown his gold, and could better be spared than reckless I. You know the cool, deep game, dear Pat. _Hala ha!_ I was made to buy the poison you sisters gave Van Dorn, and seem the accomplice in his death: never till this week has that murder given up a testimony--the portion of the dead man's coin your mother stole and hid, which Hulda inherited at last. _Verdad es verde!_ I became afraid to leave you: I am here at the death with you, my old enchantress." A crack ran through the empty wooden house, which made her rise; Van Dorn, as he was called, enjoyed her uneasiness, like a pallid mask painted with a smile. "Captain," she said, "how many people I see out yonder in the fields! Maybe thar's to be a fox-chase." "Sit, Patty! Let me drink, in my last days of life, the wine lees of your memory. You are so dear to me! Turn in the golden sun, that I may linger on that face which autumn's ashes fall upon, though through the dead leaves I see the russet colors smoulder yet! How daring was your girlhood: the poor blacksmith farmer, whose name you will transmit forever, fretted you with his sickness and his scruples, and, _he aqui!_ you stilled him with the same cup you mixed for Betty's husband. His daughter you gave to wife to his apprentice, a strong, stolid man, capable of heroism, Patty, for he died for you, his dear misleader, on the shameful scaffold, though all the crowd knew who his instigator was; but, like a man, he died and never told." "Van Dorn, you hurt me," Patty broke out; "I cannot laugh to-day, and these tales depress me, honey. Where shall we go when you are well?" "_La gente pone, y Dios dispone!_ Stay yet, and chat awhile. I would not, for the world, see you discouraged,--you, unfathomable angel! who, in this mangy corner of the globe, looked abroad over the land like Catherine, from her sterile throne, over the mighty steppes, and levied war upon the hopes of man. How you did trouble Uncle Sam, great Patty, robbing his mails for years between Baltimore and the Brandywine! Young Nichols still serves his term for that shrewd trick you taught him, of cutting the mail-bags open as he sat, with the corrupted drivers, on the crowded stage, stealthily throwing the valuable letters in the road, to be gathered by a following horseman.[10] _Es admirable!_ Young Perry Hutton, reared by you to kidnap, then to drive the mail and filch its letters--a Delaware boy, too--perished on the gallows for killing a mail-driver more scrupulous than himself, who detected him under his mask.[11] Young Moore--was he your connection, darling?--stopping the mail-stage at the Gunpowder Forge, fell under the driver's buckshot.[12] And Hare--" "Captain," called Patty, "I see men and boys all over the fields yonder, running and digging and dragging away the bresh. Is them ole buryins of mine suspected?" "Pshaw! darling, 'tis your warm imagination, and Joe's unkindness. I would make you happy with the memory of your daring acts. _Que maravilla!_ In your little pets you stamped a life out, when another