CHAPTER XXVI.

VAN DORN.

A thin fur of frost was on the level farm-lands, and the saffron and

orange leaves were falling almost audibly from the trees, as Levin

Dennis awoke on Wednesday, in the long, low house standing back in the

fields from Johnson's cross-roads, and drank in the cool, stimulating

morn, the sun already having made his first relay, and his postilion

horn was blowing from the old tavern that reared its form so broadly and

yet so steeply in plain sight.

Levin had been brought up from Twiford's wharf the night before by the

pretty maid whom Jimmy Phoebus had so much frightened, and this was

his first day of restful feeling, having slept off the liquor fumes of

Sunday, the exciting watches of Monday, and the mingled pleasure and

pain, illness and interest, love and remorse, of Tuesday.

He had felt already the earliest twinges of youthful fondness for the

young girl he had spent the day with at Twiford's, while lying sick

there from a disordered stomach and nervous system, and her amiability

and charms, more than the temptation of unhallowed money, had changed

his purpose to escape at Twiford's and give information of the injury

inflicted upon Judge Custis's property.

It hardly seemed real that he had been an accessory to a felony and a

witness to a murder--the stealing of a gentleman's domestic slaves and

the braining of the smallest and most helpless of them, nearly in his

sight; yet so it had happened, and he felt the danger he was in, but

hesitated how to act. He had accepted the money of the trader, and

passed his mother's noblest friend on the river without recognition,

while a dastardly ball had probably ended poor Phoebus's career. To

all these deeds he was the only white witness, the only one on whose

testimony redress could be meted out.

He felt, therefore, that he was a prisoner, and his life dependent on

his cordial relations with the bloody negro-dealer and his band; and

Johnson had reiterated his promise that if Levin joined them in equal

fraternity he should make money fast and become a plantation proprietor.

This night coming, a raid on free negroes in Delaware was to be made by

the band in force, and Levin had been told that he must be one of the

kidnappers, and his frank co-operation that night would forever relieve

him of any suspicions of defection and bad faith.

"Steal one nigger, Levin," Joe Johnson had said, "and then if ever

caught in the hock you never can snickle!"

Levin interpreted this thieves' language to mean that he must do a crime

to get the kidnappers' confidence.

The power of this band he had divined a little of when, at points along

the river, especially about Vienna, there had been mysterious

intercourse between Joe Johnson and people on the shore, carried on in

imitations of animal sounds; and the negro ferryman at that old

Dorchester village had spoken with Johnson only half an hour before the

trader's encounter with Jimmy Phoebus in mid-stream, whereupon the

grim passenger had produced his pistol and notified Levin:

"Now, my feller prig, honor's what I expect from you, and, to remind you

of it, Levin, I'm a-goin' to pint this barking-iron at your mummer, so

that if you patter a cackle, a blue plum will go right down your

throat."

He had then tried to evade some one expected on the river, and, in a fit

of rage at the awakening and wailing of the child, had hushed it

forever, and then had shot Phoebus down.

Poor Hominy had sincerely believed that Johnson's peculiar slang was the

language of the good Quakers, followers of Elias Hicks, who sheltered

runaway slaves and spoke a "thee" and "thou" and "verily," and that

strange misapprehension in her ignorant mind the keen dealer had made

use of to decoy her into Levin's vessel and waft her into a distant

country.

"We didn't steal her, Levin," Johnson said; "she wanted to mizzle from a

good master, an' we jess sells the crooked moke an' makes it squar."

When Aunt Hominy, having under her protecting care the little children,

came on board the _Ellenora Dennis_ at Manokin Landing, Levin had been

asleep, and knew nothing of the theft till it was too late to protest,

and Johnson himself had sailed the cat-boat into broad water. Then,

bearing through Kedge's Strait, he had cruised up the open bay, out of

sight of the Somerset shore, and entered the Nanticoke towards night by

way of Harper's Strait, and run up on the night flood; but the instinct

of Jimmy Phoebus had cut him off at the forks of the Nanticoke, and

propelled another crime to Johnson's old suspected record. He had never

been indicted yet for murder, though murder was thought to be none too

formidable a crime for him.

There was a zest of adventure in this guilty errand, which, but for its

crime, would have pleased Levin moderately well, the roving drop in his

blood expanding to this wild association; and he knew but little

comparatively of the Delaware kidnappers, reading nothing, and in those

days little was printed about Patty Cannon's band except in the distant

journals like _Niles's Register_ or _Lundy's Genius of Emancipation_.

Levin had never sailed up the Nanticoke region before, and its scenery

was agreeable to his sight, while his heart was just fluttering in the

first flight of sentiment towards the interesting creature he had so

unexpectedly and, as he thought, so strangely discovered there.

Arriving at Twiford's in the night, Johnson had sent him to bed there,

and pushed on himself with the negro property to Johnson's Cross-roads;

and, when he awakened late the next day, Levin had found a beautiful

wildflower of a young woman sitting by his pallet, looking into his

large soft eyes with her own long-lashed orbs of humid gray, and

brushing his dark auburn ringlets with her hand. As he had looked up

wonderingly, she had said to him:

"I have never seen a man before with his hair parted in the middle, but

I think I have dreamed of one."

"Who air you?" Levin asked.

"Me! Oh, I'm Hulda. I'm Patty Cannon's granddaughter."

"That wicked woman!" Levin exclaimed. "Oh, I can't believe that!"

"Nor can I sometimes, till the sinful truth comes to me from her own

bold lips. Oh, sir, I am not as wicked as she!"

"How kin you be wicked at all," Levin asked, "when you look so good? I

would trust your face in jail."

"Would you? How happy that makes me, to be trusted by some one! Nobody

seems to trust me here. My mother was never kind to me. Captain Van Dorn

is kind, but too kind; I shrink from him."

"Where is your mother now?"

"She has gone south with her husband, to live in Florida for all the

rest of her life, and we are all going there after father gets one more

drove of slaves. You are one of father's men, I suppose?"

"Who is your father?"

"Joe Johnson."

"That man," murmured Levin. "Oh, no, it is too horrible."

"Do not hate me. Be a little kind, if you do, for I have watched you

here hours, almost hoping you never might wake up, so beautiful and pure

you looked asleep."

"And you--that's the way you look, Huldy. How kin you look so an' be his

daughter."

"I am not his child, thank God! He is my stepfather."

"What is your name, then, besides Huldy?"

The girl blushed deeply and hesitated. Her fine gray eyes were turned

upon her beautiful bare feet, white as the river that flashed beneath

the window.

"Hulda Bruinton," she said, swallowing a sigh.

"Bruinton--where did I hear that name?" Levin asked; "some tale has been

told me, I reckon, about him?"

"Yes, everybody knows it," Hulda said, in a voice of pain; "he was

hanged for murder at Georgetown when I was a little child."

Levin could not speak for astonishment.

"I might as well tell you," she said, "for others will, if I conceal it.

I can hardly remember my father. My mother soon married Joe and

neglected me, and Aunt Patty, my grandmother, brought me up. She was

kind to me, but, oh, how cruel she can be to others!"

"You talk as if you kin read, Huldy," said Levin, wishing to change so

harsh a topic; "kin you?"

"Yes, I can read and write as well as if I had been to school. Some one

taught me the letters around the tavern--some of the negro-dealers: I

think it was Colonel McLane; and I had a gift for it, I think, because I

began to read very soon, and then Aunt Patty made me read books to

her--oh, such dreadful books!"

"What wair they, Huldy?"

"The lives of pirates and the trials of murderers--about Murrell's band

and the poisonings of Lucretia Chapman, the execution of Thistlewood,

and Captain Kidd's voyages; the last I read her was the story of Burke

and Hare, who smothered people to death in the Canongate of Edinburgh

last year to sell their bodies to the doctors."

"Must you read such things to her?"

"I think that is the only influence I have over her. Sometimes she looks

so horribly at me, and mutters such threats, that I fear she is going to

kill me, and so I hasten to get her favorite books and read to her the

dark crimes of desperate men and women, and she laughs and listens like

one hearing pleasant tales. My soul grows sick, but I see she is

fascinated, and I read on, trying to close my mind to the cruel

narrative."

"Huldy, air you a purty devil drawin' me outen my heart to ruin me?"

"No, no; oh, do not believe that! I suppose all men are cruel, and all I

ever knew were negro-traders, or I should believe you too gentle to live

by that brutal work. I looked at you lying in this bed, and pity and

love came over me to see you, so young and fair, entering upon this life

of treachery and sin."

Levin gazed at her intently, and then raised up and looked around him,

and peered down through the old dormers into the green yard, and the

floody river hastening by with such nobility.

"Air we watched?" he inquired.

"By none in this house. All the men are away, making ready for the hunt

to-morrow night. The river is watched, and you would not be let escape

very far, but in this house I am your jailer. Joe told me he would sell

me if I let you get away."

Levin listened and looked once more ardently and wonderingly at her, and

fell upon his knees at her uncovered feet.

"Then, Huldy, hear me, lady with such purty eyes,--I must believe in

'em, wicked as all you look at has been! I never stole anything in my

life, nor trampled on a worm if I could git out of his path,--so help me

my poor mother's prayers! Huldy, how shall I save myself from these

wicked men and the laws I never broke till Sunday? Oh, tell me what to

do!"

"Do anything but commit their crimes," she answered. "Promise me you

will never do that! Let us begin, and be the friends I wished we might

be, before I ever heard you speak. What is your name?"

"Levin--Levin Dennis. My father's lost to me, and mother, too."

"Then Heaven has answered my many prayers, Levin, to give me something

to cherish and protect. I am almost a woman: oh, what is my dreadful

doom?--to become a woman here among these wolves of men, who meet around

my stepfather's tavern to buy the blood and souls of people born free.

Joe Johnson sells everything; he has often threatened to sell me to some

trader whose bold and wicked eyes stared at me so coarsely, and I have

heard them talk of a price, as if I was the merchandise to be

transferred--I, in whose veins every drop of blood is a white woman's."?

"I want you to watch over me, Huldy: I'm a poor drunken boy, my boat

chartered to Joe Johnson fur a week an' paid fur. Tell me what to do,

an' I'll do it."

"First," she said, "you must eat something and drink milk--nothing

stronger. Their brandy, which they 'still themselves, sets people on

fire. I will set the table for you."

It was after the table had been set that Jimmy Phoebus slipped in and

devoured the milk and meat, overhearing the continuance of the

conversation just given; and when his awkward motions had disturbed

these new young friends, Hulda fainted on the stairs before the

apparition Levin did not see, and he snatched the kiss that was like

plucking a pale-red blossom from some dragon's garden.

That night two horses without saddles came to bring them both to

Johnson's Cross-roads, and Levin awoke at Patty Cannon's old residence

on the neighboring farm.

He looked out of the small window in the low roof Upon a little garden,

where a short, stout, powerfully made woman, barefooted, was taking up

some flowers from their beds to put them into boxes of earth.

"Yer, Huldy," exclaimed this woman, "sot 'em all under the glass kivers,

honey, so grandmother will have some flowers for her hat next winter.

They wouldn't know ole Patty down at Cannon's Ferry ef she didn't come

with flowers in her hat."

A mischievous blue-jay was in a large cherry-tree, apparently

domesticated there, and he occupied himself mimicking over the woman's

head the alternate cries of a little bird in terror and a hawk's scream

of victory.

"Shet up, you thief!" spoke the woman, looking up. "Them blue-jays, gal,

the niggers is afeard of, and kills 'em, as Ole Nick's eavesdroppers and

tale-carriers. That's why I keeps 'em round me. They's better than a

watch-dog to bark at strangers, and, caze they steals all their life, I

love' em. Blue-jay, by Ged! is ole Pat Cannon's bird."

"Grandma," Hulda said, "I wish you had a large, elegant garden. You love

flowers."

"Purty things I always _would_ have," exclaimed the bulldog-bodied

woman, with an oath; "bright things I loved when I was a gal, and traded

what I had away fur 'em. Direckly I got big, I traded ugly things fur

'em, like niggers. I'd give a shipload of niggers fur an apern full of

roses."

"Florida, they say, is beautiful, grandma, and flowers are everywhere

there."

"Yes, gal, they says so; but I don't never expect to go thar.

Margaretty, your mommy, likes it thar. Delaware's my home; some of 'em

hates me yer, and the darned lawyers tries to indict me, but I'll live

on the line till they shoves me over it, whar I've been cock of the walk

sence I was a gal."

As Hulda, also barefooted, but moulded like the flowers, so that her

feet seemed natural as the naked roots, carried the boxes around to the

glass beds encircling a chimney--dahlias, autumnal crocuses or saffrons,

tri-colored chrysanthemums or gold-flowers, and the orange-colored

marigolds--the elder woman, resting on her hoe, smelled the turpentine

of a row of tall sunflowers and twisted one off and put it in her

wide-brimmed Leghorn hat.

"When I hornpipe it on the tight rope," Levin heard her chuckle, "one of

these yer big flowers must die with me."

She disappeared into the peach orchard, which tinted the garden with its

pinkish boughs, and Levin improved the chance to look over the cottage

and the landscape.

It was a mere farm, level as a floor, part of a larger clearing in the

primeval woods, where only fire or age had preyed since man was come;

and, although there seemed more land than belonged to this property, no

other house could Levin see over all the prospect except the bold and

tarnished form of Johnson's castle, sliding its long porch forward at

the base of that tall, blank, inexpressive roof which seemed suspended

like the drab curtain of a theatre between the solemn chimney towers;

the northern chimney broad and huge, and bottomed on an arch; the

southern chimney leaner, but erect as a perpetual sentry on the King's

road.

The house where Levin Dennis now looked out was a three-roomed, frame,

double cabin, with beds in every room but the kitchen, and the hip-roof

gave considerable bed accommodation in the attic besides, the rooms

being all small, as was general in that day. Around the house extended a

pretty garden, with some cherry and plum trees and wild peach along its

boundaries, and the fields around contained many stumps, showing that

the clearing had been made not many years before, while here and there

some heaps of brush had been allowed to accumulate instead of being

burned.

As Levin looked at one of those brush-heaps in a low place, a pair of

buzzards slowly and clumsily circled up from it, and, flying low, went

round and round as if they might be rearing their young there and hated

to go far; and, for long afterwards, Levin saw them hovering high above

the spot in parental mindfulness.

He drew his head in the dormer casement, and was making ready to go down

to the breakfast he smelled cooking below, when his own name was

pronounced in the garden, and he stopped and listened.

"You lie!" exclaimed the old woman's voice. "I'll mash you to the

ground!"

"He said so, grandma, indeed he did."

Levin had a peep from the depths of the garret, and he saw that Mrs.

Cannon was standing with the hoe she had been using raised over Hulda's

head, while a demoniac expression of rage distorted her not unpleasing

features.

Levin walked at once to the window and whistled, as if to the bird in

the tree. The older woman immediately dropped her hoe, and cried out to

Levin:

"Heigh, son! ain't you most a-starved fur yer breakfast? It's all ready

fur ye, an' Huldy's waitin' fur ye to come down."

Levin at once went down the short, winding stairs to a table spread in

the kitchen end, and the old woman blew a tin horn towards Johnson's

Cross-roads, as if summoning other boarders, and then she said to Levin,

with a very pleasing countenance:

"Son, these yer no-count people will be askin' you questions to bother

you, and I don't want no harm to come to you, Levin; so you tell

everybody you see yer that Levin Cannon is your name, and they'll think

you's juss one o' my people, and won't ask you no more."

Hulda slightly raised her eyes, which Levin took to mean assent, and he

said:

"Cannon's good enough for a body pore as me."

"You're a-goin' with Joe to-night, ain't you?"

"Yes'm, I b'leeves so."

"That's right, cousin. You'll git rich an' keep your chariot, yit.

Captain Van Dorn's gwyn to head the party. As Levin Cannon, ole Patty's

pore cousin, he'll look out fur you, son. Now have some o' my slappers,

an' jowl with eggs, an' the best coffee from Cannon's Ferry. Huldy, gal,

help yer Cousin Levin! He won't be your sweetheart ef you don't feed him

good."

The breakfast was brought in by a white man with a face scratched and

bitten, and one eye full of congested blood.

"Cy," Patty Cannon cried, "them slappers, I 'spect, you had hard work to

turn with that red eye Owen Daw give you."

"I'll brown both sides of him yit, when I git the griddle ready for

him," the man exclaimed, half snivelling.

"Before you raise gizzard enough for that, little Owen'll peck outen yer

eyes, Cy, like a crow; he's game enough to tackle the gallows. You may

git even with him thar, Cy."

The man turned his cowardly, serving countenance on Levin inquisitively,

and looked sullen and ashamed at Hulda, who observed:

"Cyrus, you are not fit for the rude boys around father's tavern, who

always impose on you. Please don't go there again."

"Where else kin he go?" inquired Patty Cannon, severely; "thar ain't no

church left nigh yer, sence Chapel Branch went to rot for want of

parsons' pay. Let him go to the tavern and learn to fight like a man,

an' if the boys licks him, let him kill some of 'em. Then Joe and the

Captain kin make somethin' of Cy James, an' people around yer'll respect

him. Why, Captain, honey, ain't ye hungry?"

This was addressed to a man with several bruises on his forehead, and an

enormous flaxen mustache, as soft in texture as a child's hair--a man

wearing delicate boots with high Flemish leggings, that curled over and

showed full women's hose of red, over which were buckled trousers of

buff corduroy, covering his thighs only, and fastened above his hips by

a belt of hide. His shirt was of blue figured stuff, and his loose,

unbuttoned coat was a kind of sailor's jacket of tarnished black velvet.

He hung a broad slouched hat of a yellowish-drab color, soft, like all

his clothing, upon a peg in the wall, and bowed to Hulda first with a

smile of welcome, to Madame Cannon cavalierly, and to Levin with a

graceful reserve that attracted the boy's attention from the notorious

woman at he head of the table, and held him interested during all the

meal.

"Pretty Hulda, I salute you! Patty, _buenos dias!_ I hope I see you

well, friend!"--the last to Levin.

As he took up his knife and fork Levin observed a ring, with a pure

white diamond in it, flash upon the Captain's hand. He was a blue-eyed

man, with a blush and a lisp at once, as of one shy, but at times he

would look straight and bold at some one of the group, and then he

seemed to lose his delicacy and become coarse and cold. One such look he

gave at Hulda, who bowed her eyes before it, and looked at him but

little again.

To Levin this man had the greatest fascination, partly from his

extraordinary dress--like costumes Levin had seen at the theatre in

Baltimore, where the pirates on the stage wore a jacket and open shirt

and belt similar in cut though not in material--and partly from his

countenance, in which was something very familiar to the boy, though he

racked his memory in vain for the time and place. The stranger was

hardly more than forty to forty-five years of age, but the mistress of

the house treated him with all the blandishments of a husband.

"Dear Captain! pore honey!" she said; "to have his beautiful yaller hair

tored out by the nigger hawk! Honey, he fell onto me, and I thought a

bull had butted me in the stummick."

"He broke no limbs, Patty," the captain lisped, feeding himself in a

dainty way--and Levin observed that his fork was silver, and his knife

was a clasp-knife with a silver handle, that he had taken from his

pocket--"_Chis! chis!_ if he had snapped my arm, the caravan must have

gone without me to-night. I am sore, though, for Senor was a valiant

wrestler."

"He'll git his pay, honey, when they sot him to work in Georgey an' flog

him right smart, an' we spend the price of him fur punch. He, he! lovey

lad!"

"I took this from him to-day when I searched him carefully," the captain

said, handing Patty Cannon a piece of silver coin.

The woman, though she looked to be little more than fifty years of age,

drew out spectacles of silver from an old leather case, and putting them

on, spelled out the coin:

"George--three--eighteen--eighteen hunderd-and-fifteen!"

She threw up her head so quickly that the spectacles dropped from her

nose, and Hulda caught them, and then Mrs. Cannon turned on Hulda with a

ferocious expression and snatched the spectacles from her hand.

"Whar did the devil git it?" Patty Cannon asked.

"Ah! who knows?" the Captain lisped with pale nonchalance, giving one of

those strong, piercing looks he sometimes afforded, right into the

hostess's eyes. "It might be a coincidence: _chis! chito!_ A shilling of

a certain year is no rare thing. But, Madame Cannon, it becomes slightly

curious when six such shillings, all numbered with that significant

year, came out of the same pocket!"

With this he passed five shillings of the same appearance over to the

hostess, and she put on her spectacles again and looked at them all, and

dropped them in her lap with a weary yet frightened expression, and

muttered:

"Van Dorn, who kin he be?"

"That is of less consequence, my dear, than whether we can afford to

sell him."

The Captain was now looking at Hulda with the same strong intentness,

but her eyes were in her plate; and, though Madame Cannon looked at her,

too, with both interest and dislike, Hulda quietly ate on, unconscious

of their regard.

"Shoo!" the woman said; "people kin scare theirselves every day if they

mind to. We've got him, and, if he knows anything, it's all in that

nigger noddle. So eat and be derned!"

"My guardian angel," the Captain remarked, with a blush and a stronger

lisp, "you may not have observed that I have never ceased to eat, while

you immediately lost your appetite. What will you do with the

shillings?"

Mrs. Cannon took them from her lap, and rose as if she meant to throw

them out of the window, her angry face bearing that interpretation.

"Stop, remarkable woman," the Captain said, pulling his soft, flaxen

mustache with the diamond-flashing hand, "let your fecund resources stop

and counsel, for I am only looking to your happiness, that has so

abundantly blessed my life and banished every superstition from my heart

till I believe in neither ghosts, nor God, nor devil, while you believe

in all of them, and give yourself many such unnecessary friends and

intruders. _Chito! chito!_ as the Cubans say, and hear my suggestion

before you throw away those shillings!"

"Take care how you mock me!" cried Patty Cannon, with her dark, bold

eyes furtive, like one both angered and troubled, and her ruddy cheeks

full of cloudy blood.

"Sit down! Give the shillings to pretty Hulda there."

"To her?"

"_Ya, ya!_ to pleasing Hulda; for what will trouble us then, her sinless

bosom being their safe depository, and her long-lashed eyes melting our

ghosts to gray air?"

With a look of strong dislike, the woman gave Hulda the shillings,

saying:

"If you ever show one of 'em to me, gal, I'll make you swaller it."

Hulda took the silver pieces and looked at them a moment with girlish

delight:

"Oh, grandma, how kind you are! Why do you speak so mad at me when you

give me these pretty things? They seem almost warm in my bosom as I put

them there, like things with life. Let me kiss you for them!"

She rose from the chair and approached the mistress of the house, who

sat in a strange terror, not forbidding the embrace, yet almost

shuddering as Hulda stooped and pressed her pure young lips to the

blanched and dissipated face of Patty Cannon.

The Captain looked at the kiss with his peculiar strong, cold look, and

smiled at Hulda graciously and said:

"There, ladies, repose in each other's confidence! A few shillings for

such a kiss is shameful pay, Aunt Patty. Do you remember as well as I

do, Madame Cannon, that once you missed some money, and thought your

mother had stolen it, and hunted everywhere for it, and it never came to

light?"

"Yes," cried Patty Cannon, "I do," and swore a man's oath.

"Has the Senor been in that direction, do you think? I think he has, for

Melson and Milman are up from Twiford's with the news that Zeke's last

hide has burst her chain and fled, and all the lower Nanticoke gives no

trace of her, and Zeke has passed the heavenly gates."

The Captain drew the back of his silver clasp-knife across his throat,

smilingly, and placed on the table a sailor's sheath-knife.

"Zeke only was untied; it was a too generous omission," he said. "The

Philadelphia woman the Senor says he set free, and that she has gone to

start an alarm against us. The Senor is a cool man: he told me that, and

laughed and roared, and says he will live to see us all in a

picture-frame. _Ayme, ayme_, Patty!"

With her face growing longer and longer, the woman heard these scarcely

intelligible sentences--wholly unintelligible to the younger people--and

to Levin it seemed that she grew suddenly old and yet older, till her

cheeks, but lately blooming, seemed dead and wrinkled, and, from

maintaining the appearance of hardly fifty, and fair at that, she now

looked to be more than sixty years of age, and sad and helpless.

"Van Dorn, I'm dying," she muttered, as her eyes glazed, and she settled

down in her chair like a lump of dough.

"_Ha! O hala hala_! hands off, fair Hulda," the Captain cried,

joyfully, as Hulda had been moved to relieve the poor old woman; "no one

shall assist at these ceremonies of expiation but Van Dorn himself,

whose rights in Mistress Cannon are of priority. She's dropsical, and

hastening to perdition too soon, which I must arrest and let her comfort

me still more. Sweet comforter! Young gentleman, you shall help me."

Levin took hold of Patty Cannon's feet and found that she seemed made of

bone, so tough were her sinews, and Van Dorn easily lifted her broad

shoulders, and so she was laid on a bed in the next room, where the

elegant Captain was seen rubbing her limbs, and even handling a bottle

of leeches, one of which he allowed to crawl over the hand that wore the

diamond, making it look like a ruby melting or in living motion. As this

voracious blood-lover took his fill around the straight ankles of the

hostess, the dainty Captain held her in his arms like an ardent lover.

"Honey," sighed the woman, "my rent is due, and Jake Cannon never waits.

Take Huldy and this yer new recruit, my cousin Levin Cannon, an' drive

'em to the ferry,--an' watch that boy, Van Dorn: I want him broke in!

Give him a pistol and a knife, an' have him cut somebody. Put the

blood-mark on him and he's ours."

"Great woman!" the Captain lisped, prolific of his kisses, "Maria

Theresa! Semiramis! Agrippina! Cleopatra! ever fecund in great ideas and

growing youthful by nightshade, _alto! quedo!_ but I love thee!"

"Am I young a little yit, honey?" asked Patty Cannon. "Oh, don't deceive

me, Van Dorn! Can my eyes look love an' hate, like old times?"

"_Si! quiza!_ More and more, dark angel, entering into black age like

torches in a cave, I see your deep eyes flame; but never do they please

me, Patty, as when they flash on some new wicked idea, like this of

marking the boy for life. Who is he?"

"He's a Cannon, one of the stock that my Delaware man belonged to. His

mother looked down on me fur coming in their family: I have remembered

her."

"You want your young cousin made a felon, then?"

"Yes, honey, I want him scorched, so the devil will know him fur his

own."

The Captain reached down to the lady's feet and pulled off the leech and

held it up against his hollow palm, gorged with the blood of the fair

patient.

"See, Patty! The boy shall drink blood like this, till, drunk with it,

he can hold on no more, and drops into our fate as in this vial."

As he spoke he let the leech fall in the bottle, where its reflection in

the glass seemed to splash blood.

"Ha, ha! Van Dorn, I love you!" the woman cried, and smothered him with

caresses.