CHAPTER XXVII.

CANNON'S FERRY.

When it was announced to Levin and Hulda, who had meantime been talking

in the garden, dangerously near the subject of love, that they were to

be given a ride to Cannon's Ferry with Captain Van Dorn, at the especial

desire of Aunt Patty Cannon--who also sent them a handful of half-cents

to spend--they were both delighted, though Hulda said:

"Dear Levin, if it was only ourselves going for good, how happy we might

be! I could live with your beautiful mother and work for her, and,

knowing me to be always there, you would bring your money home instead

of wasting it."

"Can't we do so some way?" asked Levin. "Oh, I wish I had some sense! I

wish Jimmy Phoebus was yer, Huldy, to take me out thair in the garden

an' whip me like my father. But, if I hadn't come yer, how could I have

seen you, Huldy?"

"How could I have spent such a heavenly night of peace and hope if you

had not come, dear? The Good Being must have led you to me."

"Huldy," said Levin, after thinking to the range of his knowledge,

"maybe thar's a post-office at Cannon's Ferry, an' you kin write a

letter to Jack Wonnell fur me."

"Why not to your mother, Levin?"

"Oh, I am ashamed to tell her; it would kill her."

"If we should be found out, Levin, Aunt Patty would kill me. There is no

paper here, no ink that I can get, the postage on a letter is almost

nineteen cents, and, look! these half-cents are short of the sum by just

two."

"I have gold," cried Levin, thinking of the residue of Joe Johnson's

bounty.

He put his hand into his pocket, but the money was no longer there.

"Hush!" cried Hulda, "you have been robbed. Everybody is robbed who

sleeps here. Grandma can smell gold like the rat that finds yellow

cheese."

The individual who had served the breakfast was seen coming towards

them, a man in size, with a low forehead, no chin to speak of, a long,

crane neck, and a badly scratched and festered face.

"Mister," he said to Levin, "come help me hitch the horses; I'm beat so

I can't see how."

Levin started at once, suggesting to Hulda to make search for his

missing money, and, when they were in the little stable, the man

observed, in a whisper, to Levin:

"By smoke!"

Levin went on putting the bridles and breeching on the horses, when the

man said again, with an insinuating grin:

"By smoke!"

"Heigh?" exclaimed Levin.

"By smoke!" the man remarked again, with a very ardent emphasis.

"You must have been in Prencess Anne," Levin said, "to swar 'by smoke.'"

The ill-raised man, with such an inferior head and cranish neck, now

slipped around to the front of Levin and looked down on him, and

whispered:

"Hokey-pokey!"

The idea crossed Levin's mind that the scullion of Patty Cannon must

have gone crazy.

"Whair did you pick up them words, Cy?" Levin asked.

"Hokey-pokey!" answered Cy James, with a more mysterious and impressive

sufflation; "Hokey-pokey! By smoke! and Pangymonum, too!"

"Why, Cy! what do you mean? Jimmy Phoebus never swars but in them air

words. Do you know Jimmy Phoebus?"

"Pangymonum, too!" hissed Cy James, with every animation. "Hokey-pokey,

three! an' By smoke, one!"

He put his long arms on his knees, and bent down like a great goose, and

stared into Levin's eyes.

"I never had sense enough," Levin said, "to guess a riddle, Cy Jeems.

Them words I have hearn a good man--my mother's friend--use so often

that they scare me. My mind's been a-thinkin' on him night an' day. Oh,

is he dead?"

"By smoke! Hokey-pokey! an' Pangymonum, too!" the long, lean, excited

fellow whispered, with the greatest solemnity.

"They're Jimmy Phoebus's daily words, dear Cyrus. He was killed on the

river night before last; I saw him fall; it is my sin and misery."

"He ain't dead," Cy James whispered, very low and carefully. "I won't

tell you whar he is till you make Huldy _like_ me."

"How kin I do that, Cy?"

"She thinks I'm a coward and gits whipped by Owen Daw. Tell her I ain't

no coward. Tell her I'm goin' to fry all these people on my griddle--all

but Huldy. Tell her I'm only playin' coward till I gets 'em all in

batter an' the griddle greased, an' then I'll be the bully of the

Cross-roads!"

"Do you hate _me_, Cy Jeems? I ain't done nothin' to you. I'm a

prisoner here till I kin git my boat back from Joe an' go to Prencess

Anne."

"I won't hate you if you kin make Huldy love me," Cy James replied.

"Tell her I ain't no coward; that I'm goin' to be free, an' rich too."

He dropped his palms to his knees again, and whispered, "fur I know whar

ole Patty buries her gole an' silver!"

"Come with those horses, you idle lads," the lisping voice of the

Captain was heard to call. "_Ya, ya!_ there, _luego!_ the morning passes

on."

"All ready," Cy James replied, and as they left the stable door he

whispered once again, and looked significantly towards Johnson's

Cross-roads:

"By smoke! Hokey-pokey! an' Pangymonum, too!"

The Captain, looking like a gentleman of the knightly ages misplaced in

this forest lair, held the reins standing on the ground, and handed

Hulda in to the seat beside his own with a grace and a blush and a

lisping laugh that, Levin thought, were very fascinating.

"Now, Master Cannon, take your place in the tail of the vehicle," the

Captain said, bowing to Levin, and darting one of those cold, coarse

looks at him that he vouchsafed but for a moment, like a soft cat that

has all the nature of the rabbit except the tiger's glare.

The vehicle was an old wagon without springs, and Levin's seat was a

piece of board, while Hulda's had a back to it, and the Captain had

padded it with a bear's-skin robe. He looked with the most delicate

attention at Hulda, blushed when she looked at him, and, scarcely

noticing the horses, yet having them under nearly automatic control, he

drove out of Patty Cannon's lane and turned into the woods.

Levin cast one long, prying look at Johnson's tavern, wishing he might

have the gift to see through its weather-stained planking and tall blank

roof, and then he watched the road, of hard sand or piney litter, with

here and there a mud-hole or long, puddly rut in it, unravel like a

ribbon behind the wheels among the thick pines.

He also observed the skill with which the Captain threw his long cowhide

whip, a mere strip of rawhide fastened to a stick, awkward in other

hands; but Van Dorn could brush a fly from either of the short, shaggy

Delaware horses with it, and hardly look where he struck or disturb the

horse, and he could deliver a blow with it by mere sleight that made the

animal stagger and tremble with the abrupt pain.

At a little sandy rill, the only one they crossed, a long water-snake

endeavored to escape before the rapid wagon could strike it, but the

Captain rose to his feet quick and cat-like, and projected the long lash

into the roadside, and the snake writhed and bounded in the air almost

cut in two. Then, sitting again and bending so close to Hulda that his

long, downy mustache of gold touched her cheek, Van Dorn said, softly:

"_Que hermoso!_ Young wild-flower, let me take a snake out of your path

also?"

"Which one, Captain?"

"It does not matter. Name any one."

"Alas!" said Hulda, "I am of them; how can I wish harm to my stepfather

and my grand-dame? They are not what I wish, but I am commanded to honor

them."

"By whom, fair Hulda?"

"By God. I read it in the Book after I heard it from a slave."

"_Donde esta!_ What slave that we know was so God-read?"

"Poor drunken Dave. He was a good man before he knew us. He told me all

the Commandments for a drink of brandy, and I wrote them down and

afterwards I found them in a book."

"_Chis! chito!_ how graceful is your mind, Hulda! It comes out of the

absolute blank of your condition and discovers things, as the young

osprey, untaught before, knows where to dive for fish. Who that ever

comes to Johnson's Cross-roads brings the Bible?"

"Colonel McLane."

"He? the self-righteous crocodile! he gave you the Book?"

"Yes. He told me Joe and grandma were good people--'conservative good

people,' I think he called it; but he said you believed nothing, and

there was no basis, I think he called it, for 'conservative good' in

you."

"_O hala hala!_ But this is good," the Captain softly remarked, stroking

his golden mustache with the hand that carried the lustrous ring. "Patty

Cannon may be saved; I must be damned; and Allan McLane will sit in

judgment. No, I believe nothing, because such as they believe!"

"That is why nobody likes you," Hulda frankly observed, "agreeable as

you are."

"And can you believe in anything after the surroundings of your

childhood, touching crime like the pond-lily that grows among the

water-snakes?"

"The lily cannot help it, and is just as white as if it grew under

glass, because--"

"Because the lily has none of the blood of the snake?" the captain

lisped. "Do you enter that claim?"

"No," said Hulda; "I know I am born from wicked parents, a daughter of

crime, my father hanged, my mother of dreadful origin, but never have I

felt that God held me accountable for their works if I kept my heart

humble and my hands from sin; and never have I been tempted yet from

within my own nature to enjoy a single moment of such hideous

selfishness. And I thank my kind Maker that something to love and

believe in, though unhappy as myself, has come down the sad pathway I

looked along so many years, and found me waiting for him."

Without reply, the Captain kept his own thoughts for several minutes,

and finally sighed:

"I know one thing in which I might believe, pretty child."

"Oh, then embrace it," Hulda said, "and give your faith a single straw

to cling to."

Van Dorn's hand slipped around her waist, and his florid cheeks and blue

eyes bent beneath her Leghorn hat:

"I find it here, perhaps, Hulda. Shall I embrace your youth with my

strong passion? I fear I love you."

"Yes," she answered, looking up with her long-lashed eyes of such

entrancing gray; "kiss me if it will give you hope!"

The blush and high color went out of his face as he stared into those

passive, large gray orbs, wide open beneath his pouting, rich,

effeminate lips, and, as he hesitated, Hulda repeated:

"Kiss me, if it will make you hope!"

"No, no," he answered; "of all places I am most hopeless _there_."

"I knew you would not kiss me," Hulda said, with a tone above him, "if I

gave you the right for any pure object. The kiss _you_ would give me

does not see its mate in my soul."

"You hate me, then?" said Van Dorn.

"No, I pity you; I pray for you, too."

"For me? What interest have you in me?"

"I do not know," said Hulda. "I have often wondered what made me think

of you so often and, yet, never with admiration. You are the only person

here who appears to have lost something by being here; some portion of

you seems to have disappeared; I have felt that you might have been a

gentleman, though you can never be again. I shrink from you, and still I

pity you. But, with all your handsome ways, I would never love you,

while the poor boy who is riding with us I loved as soon as he came."

"_Chis! chito!_ You can shrink from me and not from a Cannon, too? Why,

girl, you have put him in my power."

"I have been in your power for a long time, Captain Van Dorn, and you

have looked at me with bold and evil eyes many a time, but never came

nearer. When I gaze at you as I did just now, you fly from me. That boy

I love is as safe as I am, in your hands."

"Why, dear presumer? Tell me."

"Because I love him, and you require my pity. As long as you protect

that poor orphan boy I shall carry your name to God for pardon; if you

ever do him harm, my prayers for you will be dumb forever."

"_Oh! ayme! ayme!_" softly laughed Van Dorn, his blush not coming now;

"you forget, Hulda, that I believe in nothing."

They had hardly gone four miles when a little, low-pitched town of small

square houses, strewn about like toy-blocks between pairs of red outside

chimneys, sat, in the soft, humid October morning, along the rim of a

marshy creek that, skirting the hamlet, flowed into the Nanticoke River

a few miles, by its course, above Twiford's wharf. Two streets, formed

by two roads, ended in a third street along the sandy, flattish river

shore, and there stood four or five larger dwellings, like their

humbler neighbors, built of wood, but with bolder, greater chimneys,

rising into the air as if in rivalry of four large ships and brigs that

lay at anchor or beside the two wharves, and threw their masts and spars

into the sailing clouds, making the low forest that closed river and

village in, stoop to its humility. But the beautiful river, with

frequent bluffs of sand and woods, flowing two hundred yards wide in

stately tide, and bearing up to Cannon's Ferry fish-boats and pungies,

Yankee schooners and woodscows, and the signs of life, however lowly,

that floated in blue smoke from many hearths, or sounded in oars,

rigging, and lading, seemed to Hulda human joy and power, and she cried

to Levin:

"Levin, oh, look! Did you ever see as big a place as this? Yonder is the

road to Seaford, just as far as we have come! The big ships are taking

corn for West Indies, and bringing sugar and molasses. That is the ferry

scow, and on the other side it is only five miles to Laurel."

"Do you like to travel that road?" asked the Captain, with his pleasing

lisp and blush returned again.

"It makes me sad," replied Hulda; "but I do not mutter when I go past

the spot, like grandma."

"What spot?" asked Levin.

"Where father killed the traveller," Hulda said. "He died shamefully for

it. You could almost see the place but for yonder woods, where the road

to Laurel climbs the sandy hill."

"What's this?" said Van Dorn, seeing a little crowd around one of the

single-story cabins, and turning his team into the parallel street.

A very tall, grand-looking man towered above the rest, and seemed unable

to stand upright in the low cottage, with his proportions, so that he

took his place on the grassy sand without and gave his directions to

some one within:

"Levy on the spinning-wheel! Simplify the equation! Stand by your _fi.

fa.!_ Don't be chicken-hearted, constable--she's had the equivalent; now

she sees the quotient, too."

Van Dorn looked on and saw a spinning-wheel come out of the door, and a

little wool in a bag after it. Jacob Cannon put his foot on the wheel

and poked his head in the door.

"I see an axe and a coffee-mill there, constable: levy onto 'em with

your _distringas. Experientia docet stultos!_ Pass out that pair of

shoes!"

A voice of a woman crying was heard, and Van Dorn and Levin both leaped

out to look.

Hulda also stepped down and disappeared.

A woman, barely able to stand up, and white as illness and anguish could

make her, had staggered to the door to beg that her shoes be given back,

and pointed to her naked feet.

"Now she's off the bed, levy on that!" cried the military figure with

the long, eloquent face and twinkling eyes; "shove it out the window.

Mind your _fi. fa._ and I'll take care of the quotient."

"Have mercy!" cried the woman; "my child was only born last week."

"Fling out that good chair there, constable. Levy on the green chest!

Don't you see a whole quilt or blanket anywhere! Allow neither tret nor

suttle when you serve a writ for Isaac and Jacob Cannon!"

"Where shall I lie with my babe?" cried the poor woman, looking around

on the naked cabin, where neither bed, nor blanket, nor chair, nor

chest, nor spinning-wheel remained.

"_Li-vari facias!_ and _fi-eri facias!_ If there's a mistake a replevin

lies, but no mistakes are made by Isaac and Jacob Cannon. Constable, I

think I see an iron pot on that crane!"

"It's got meat in it, sir--meat a-bilin'," answered the constable.

"Turn out the meat! Levy on the pot! Make the quotient accurate!

Eliminate the pot from the equation!"

Out came the pot, as the material boiling in it put out the October

fire, and it was thrown in the miscellaneous heap at Jacob Cannon's

feet.

"Now take the cradle, hard-hearted man," the woman cried, "and turn the

baby into the fire, too, since I can cook nothing to make its milk in my

breasts."

"Is the cradle worth anything, constable?" asked the magnificent-looking

man with the gray silvery lights around his horsy nose; "if it's worth

taking, I want it. People who can't pay their debts must live single

like Jacob Cannon, and not be distrained."

A boy, with his face scratched, and dissipation settled in it, bounded

suddenly into the aghast group of spectators, and made a vicious dive to

recover the effects around Jacob Cannon's feet, but that mighty worthy

took him by the collar and, holding him up, dropped him over a fence

like a bug:

"Owen Daw, here be witnesses to an assault _insultus_, actionable as a

trespass _vi_, the quotient whereof is damages or the equivalent in

Georgetown jail. Take heed, good citizens, and especially I note you,

Captain Van Dorn."

"I'll kill him," shouted the young bully of Johnson's Cross-roads, and

late distrainer on the profile of Cyrus James, Esquire, seizing an ugly

stick.

"Justifiable as _son assault demesne_," remarked the creditor,

carelessly, as he wrenched the bobbin from the spinning-wheel and

knocked the boy down with it.

His commanding manner and the ready hand operated to abash the latter,

and, deeply pained with the scene, Levin Dennis fervently and

impulsively cried to Van Dorn:

"Oh, Captain! can't you pay her debts! I'll give all Joe's going to give

me, to pay you back. See how she lays on the bare floor! Hear her child

crying for her! Oh! I think I hear my mother's voice a-callin' of me

home as I listen to it."

Van Dorn, feeling Levin's hands grasp his own with simple confidence,

heard and did not turn his head, while blushes like roses bloomed

successively upon his fresh, effeminate cheeks. He did not repel the

boy's hands, however, but looked at the scene with worldly and unpitying

curiosity.

"To pay the distraints of Isaac and Jacob Cannon," he murmured, softly,

"would keep a poor slaver poor. You must grow accustomed to such cries:

I had to do so. Learn to love money like that merchant and me, and you

will think them music."

"Oh, when we cry to God for mercy, captain, maybe our cries will sound

like that! I can't bear to hear it."

"You told mother, Jake Cannon, when she rented this ole house," the boy,

Owen Daw, exclaimed, "that she needn't pay the rent, if she didn't want

to, till the day of judgment."

"I've got the judgment," Jacob Cannon answered, his whitish eyes seeming

to chuckle to the bridge of his nose, "and this is the day it's due. All

legal days are 'judgment days' to Isaac and Jacob Cannon."

"My son, my son," the woman's voice wailed out to Owen Daw, "I see the

end of your going to Patty Cannon's: my baby to the grave, myself to the

almshouse, and you to the gallows."

"Captain, Captain," Levin cried, "oh, pay the debt for me! Mother's

never been poor as this. Pay it, and I will work fur you anywhair, dear

captain."

"How much is the debt," asked Van Dorn, lispingly.

"Ten dollars," spoke the constable, also moved to shame.

"Cannon, will you take me for it?"

"I'll take your judgment-bond or the cash, Captain Van Dorn, nothing

less."

"Put back her stuff," the captain said, slightly pressing Levin's hand,

as if to say, "This is for you"--"put back her stuff and I'll settle it

with Isaac Cannon."

"God bless you!" cried the woman, taking her babe from the cradle and

hushing its hunger at her breast; "they call you a wicked man, but

blessings on you for all the good you do!"

"_Chito! chito!_" smiled Van Dorn. "I did it for this foolish boy; I pity

none."

Hulda had resorted to the strand, or river street of Cannon's Ferry,

where there were two storehouses, and she had borrowed quill and ink,

and written a letter addressed to "Mrs. Ellenora Dennis, Princess Anne,

Somerset County, Maryland," saying:

"_Madam, Levin, your son, is near this place against his will, among

dangerous men and in great temptation, but he has found a friend. In one

week this friend will try to write again, and, if not heard from, seek

Levin Dennis at Johnson's Cross-roads_."

This letter, written with all her unproficient speed, had just been

folded, wafered, and endorsed, and she had put down one of the shillings

of 1815 to pay the postage, when a shadow fell upon the store counter,

and the letter was withdrawn from her hand; Van Dorn stood by her side.

"_Chis! chito! Es posible?_ A spy, perhaps. Now you will love Van Dorn,

or Grandma Cannon shall hear your letter read!"

"Give it to me, Captain," Hulda pleaded; "she will kill me if she reads

it."

"If it were sent, _pomarosa_, we all might die. No, you are too

dangerous."

He looked, without his blush, at the shilling she was putting back in

her bosom, and his eye was cold and fierce. Hulda's heart sank down.

"Brother Isaac," cried Jacob Cannon, to a man of fine, lean height, who

was at the desk--a man a little shorter than Jacob, and not so much of a

king in appearance but with the same whitish eyes dancing around the

bridge of his nose, and a more covert and thoughtful brow--"Brother

Isaac, Captain Van Dorn is chicken-hearted, and wants to settle the debt

of the Widow O'Day, otherwise Daw."

"By cash or judgment-note, captain?"

"Cash," answered Van Dorn, modestly; "take it out of this double-eagle,

with Madam Cannon's rent for your farm."

"There's a tree--a bee-tree, Brother Jacob, I think you said--cut down

from Mrs. Cannon's field?"

"Yes, actionable under statute made and provided, wilfully to spoil or

destroy any timber or other trees, roots, shrubs, or plants; value of

said bee-tree three dollars; _levari facias!_ The quotient is

unsatisfactory to Isaac and Jacob Cannon."

The eyes of the elder and smaller brother endeavored to have an

introduction to each other through the bridge of his nose.

"Oh, Brother Jacob," he chuckled, "what an executive help you air!

Captain, isn't he a perfect Marius?"

"Madam Cannon," observed the captain, "throws up the farm with this

payment, gentlemen. She has already moved her effects across the line to

son-in-law Johnson's. The bee-tree I know nothing about."

"Brother Jacob," spoke Isaac Cannon, "Moore takes the farm! Let him be

notified that his rent commences without day."

"Execution made, Brother Isaac," answered the Marius of the family.

"This morning, perceiving Patty Cannon about to move her effects, my

bailiff seized on her plough as security for the aforesaid bee-tree

spoiled, maimed, and destroyed, and Moore is ploughing to put in his

wheat with it already. Time is money to Isaac and Jacob Cannon."

"Ha, ha! what an executive comfort! Brother Jacob never adds an item to

profit and loss."

"Gentlemen," said Van Dorn, "I recommend you not to be charging

bee-trees to tenants in the vicinity of Johnson's Cross-roads. It's an

unusual item, and we are raising young men there who may not understand

it."

"Captain," said the elder Cannon, chuckling as if still in admiration of

Marius's subtlety, "I recollect now that our ferryman brought over a man

from Laurel this morning with some news. A woman with a broken shackle

reported there last night, and said she was the slave of Daniel Custis

of Princess Anne: she came from Broad Creek."

"Where did she go?"

"A Methodist preacher put her in his buggy and started to her master's

with her."

"Then she'll beat the wind," said Van Dorn; "these preachers are all

horse-jockeys, and can outswap the devil. _Hola! ya, ya!_ I must see to

this."

He strode out, with a cold eye glanced at Hulda.

"Come, young people," spoke the grand head of Jacob Cannon to Levin and

Hulda; "I will show you my museum."

He led the way to a warehouse overhanging the river and unlocked a door,

and told them to walk carefully till they could see in the dark of the

interior.

Levin kept Hulda's hand in his as they slowly saw emerge from the

shadows a great variety of dissimilar things heaped together, till the

house could hardly hold the vast aggregate of pots and kettles,

spinning-wheels and cradles, bedsteads and beds, harrows and ploughs,

chairs and gridirons, rakes and hoes, silhouettes and picture-frames,

hand-made quilts of calico and pillows of home-plucked geese feathers,

fishermen's nets and oars--whatever made the substance of living in an

old country without minerals and manufactures, in the early part of the

nineteenth century.

"Whare did you git' em, sir?" Levin asked.

"Executed of 'em," said the warrior head and stature of Jacob Cannon;

"pounced on 'em; satisfied judgments upon 'em. _Fi. fa.!_ We call

this Peale's Museum Number Two, or the Variegated Quotient."

"All these things taken from the poor?" asked Hulda. "How many miseries

they tell!"

"Mr. Cannon," said Levin, "what kin you do with 'em? People won't buy

'em. They're just a-rottin' to pieces."

"We keep' em to show all them who trespass on Isaac and Jacob Cannon,"

answered Marius, with easy grandeur, "that there is a judgment-day!"

Hulda's long-lashed gray eyes, with a look of more than childish

contempt, accompanied her words:

"I should think you would fear that day, Mr. Cannon, when you say the

prayer, 'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass

against us.'"

The wind from the river seemed to bend the old warehouse, and the noise

it made through the chinks and around the corners, slightly stirring the

loosely disposed pile of cottage and hut comforts, seemed to arouse low

wails among these as when they were torn from the chimney side and the

family.

"Where is my baby?" the cradle seemed to say, "that I received and

rocked warm from the womb of pain? Oh, I am hungry for his little

smile!"

"Why do I rest my busy wheel?" the spinner seemed to creak, "when I know

my children are without stockings? Who keeps me here idle while Mother

asks for me?"

"Where is the old gray head," sighed the feathers, sifting in the breeze

from a broken pillow-case, "that every night and in the afternoons dozed

on our bag of down, and picked us over once a year, and said her prayers

in us? Oh, is she sleeping on the cold, bare floor, and we so useless!"

The pot seethed to the kettle, "It is dinner-time, and the little boys

are crying for food, and still there is no one to lift me on the crane

and start the fire beneath me! What will they think of me, they gathered

around so many years and watched me boil, and poked their little fingers

in to taste the stewing meat? I want to go! I want to go!"

The kettle answered to the pot: "I never sung since the constable forced

me from grandmother's hand, and robbed her of the cup of tea."

The old quilt of many squares fluttered in the draught: "Take me to the

young wife who sewed me together and showed me so proudly, for I fear

she is a-cold since her young husband died!"

These household sounds the thrilled young lovers, standing so poor and

on the brink of what they knew not, seemed to hear in awe, and drew

closer to each other, like young Eve and Adam in the great wreck of

Paradise and at the voice of God.

Hand in hand they stepped forth into the bright light of day, and walked

along the sandy street beneath the tall locust, maple, and ailanthus

trees that grew in line along the front yards of the Cannon brothers.

Four large houses stood sidewise, end to end, here: first, Cannon's

business house; next, Isaac Cannon's comfortable home, where he dwelt, a

married man; and, third, the elegant frame mansion, with tall, airy

chimneys, of Jacob Cannon the bachelor, whose house, built for a bride,

had never yet been warmed by a fire; finally, the old, bow-roofed, low

dwelling of the mother of the Cannons, opposite which was the ferry

wharf, and Van Dorn talking to the negro ferryman.

"Levin," said pretty Hulda, not sad, but very grave, "this noble house

is like that noble-looking Mr. Cannon, hollow and cold. He lives with

his brother Isaac, and keeps his own dwelling empty and locked up,

because he loved money too much to find a wife."

"Let us love each other, Huldy," Levin said; "it is all we've got."

"It is all there is to get, my love," Hulda answered. "Yes, I do love

you, Levin. I will try to save you, if I can, because I love you, though

suffering may come to me."

"No," cried Levin, "I cannot leave you, dear. If I could now cross in

the ferry-boat, I wouldn't do it; I must go back with you."

As Captain Van Dorn came up from the wharf, blushing like a school-boy,

and tapping his white teeth together under the long flax of his

mustache, his attention was arrested by a proclamation pasted on a post:

"_Five Hundred Dollars Reward, for_

JOSEPH MOORE JOHNSON, KIDNAPPER.

"_The above reward will be paid by me to any person or

persons--and they will be exempted from detention--who

will deliver to me the body of the above-named miscreant, that

he may be brought to trial in Pennsylvania_.

"JOSEPH WATSON, _Mayor of Philadelphia_."

"_Chis! he!_" Van Dorn sighed; "the end must soon be near. Now, young

people, come!"

As they passed Cannon's place, going out of town, the familiar voice of

Jacob was heard to cry:

"Owen Daw's escaped, Brother Isaac; but we'll clap it to him on a _de

bonis non_. I'll never take my eye off him till I die."

"Brother Jacob, what an executive help you air!"

As Van Dorn drove the horses up the slight ascent in the rear of the

ferry, past an ancient double puncheon house there, with an arch in the

centre, young Hulda--who now wore shoes and stockings, and a presentable

dress of English goods, and looked quite the woman out of her sincere

and sometimes proud and eloquent eyes--said to him, as she pointed back:

"Captain, it was there my father killed the traveller, where we see the

road beyond the ferry enter the pines."

"Yes," said Van Dorn, giving her a cold look; "we might see the place

but for the woods. It is at a hill, a short mile from the Nanticoke."

"Tell Levin about it, captain."

"_Quedo, quedo!_ It would not be pleasant."

"Yes," said Hulda; "if it was true, I can hear it: I want Levin to hear

it, too, so that no deceit shall be between us."

Her smooth, moist hair, gray, humid eyes, complexion born between the

rose and dew, and straight, lithe figure, and air of dignity and truth,

impressed Van Dorn curiously:

"How bold you grow, wild-flower! Cannot you stoop to re-create me? I,

too, would live without deceit. But I will not tell you that story."

"You are afraid," spoke Hulda, feeling that nothing but this man and

three miles of level road separated her from the vengeance of Patty

Cannon, and that she must assert herself strongly over him.

"_Ya, ya!_ Are you not harsh? Remember, you may be whipped by your

grandma."

"No, you will whip me, or kill me, if it is to be done. You dare not

give me to her to punish."

"Dare not, again? Why?"

"Because you are my guardian. Between us is an instinct different from

love, but strong; I feel it. I lean towards you, but not on you. What is

it?"

"_O Dios!_" lisped Van Dorn, his blush suspended and his warm blue eyes

fascinated by her. "Is this a child or Echo?"

"Tell me of my father's crime. I want Levin to know the wretched thing

he has affection for."

"_Ayme! ah!_ Well, listen, young lovers; and see what grisly things walk

in these pines! There was a man named Brereton; they call him Bruington

here, where their noses are twisted and their chins weak. He came from

old Lewes, off to the east by Cape Henlopen, and of a stout family, in

which was a grain of evil ever smoking through the blood. Do you

sometimes feel it, Hulda?"

"No, not evil like that."

"He was apprenticed to a blacksmith, and held the iron while the master

struck. One day a man came in the shop, whose horse had thrown a shoe,

to have a shoeing, and, when he paid for it, he took a handful of money

from his pocket, and one piece--a dollar--fell in the soft soot of the

shop, unperceived but by the boy: _chis!_ he covered it with his foot."

Van Dorn's whip-lash firmly covered a huge fly on the horse's ear, and

laid it dead.

"When the man departed, the boy raised his foot and uncovered the

dollar; his master said, 'Smart boy!' They divided the stolen dollar."

"Jimmy Phoebus says the fust step is half of a journey," Levin noted.

"The blacksmith's boy looked avariciously on travellers ever after, who

might possess a dollar. He took the empty shop of Patty Cannon's first

husband, years after that saint died, and worked on hobbles, clevises,

and chains to hold the kidnapped articles of commerce. Naturally he

kidnapped, too, and, while she was yet a child, Patty's daughter became

Brereton's wife, bestowed by the fond, appreciative mother. Master

Levin, if you fall into his path, Brereton's daughter may be bestowed on

you. _Hola!_ behold her in Hulda."

"I can't see any of that sin in Hulda, Captain; she ain't even ashamed."

"No," affirmed Hulda, looking sincerely at Van Dorn; "it is too true to

make me ashamed. I feel as if God's hand covered me like the silver

dollar under my father's foot, because he let me survive such parents."

As she spoke she took one of the silver shillings of 1815 and covered it

with her hand in Van Dorn's sight. Van Dorn spoke on rapidly:

"There were two brothers named Griffin from about Cambridge, in

Maryland; spoiled boys who had taken to the flesh trade, and they stole

men and gambled the proceeds away, and Brereton was their leader. One

day a traveller came by from Carolina, hunting contraband slaves, and he

was of your boastful sort, and dropped the hint that he had fifteen

thousand dollars on his body to be invested. No later had he spoken than

he felt his folly, from the burning eyes around him and watering mouths

telling him to sleep there and slaves would be fetched; so he started in

a fright for Laurel, by way of Cannon's Ferry, intending to deposit his

money or make them deal with him there. The word was passed to Brereton

by his wife or mother-in-law, and by Brereton to the Griffins, to mount

and intercept the gold. Some say," lisped Van Dorn, "that Mistress

Cannon, dressed in man's clothes, commanded the band."

A deep, chuckling interest, like the sound of a hidden brook, attended

Van Dorn's recital, and he was blushing like a girl.

"At Slabtown, a nondescript spot a mile above Cannon's, the

light-marching band crossed in a row-boat; they piled brush and bent

down saplings in the traveller's road, where he should almost reach the

brow of the hill in his buggy, and when the fleshmonger halted at the

obstacle, _chis, hola!_ they let him have it on both sides, and sent

icicles to his heart. He drew a pistol, but in a dying hand. 'Away!'

cried the assassins; 'he is not dead.' His horse, in fright at bursting

firearms in the evening shades, leaped the brushy barriers and galloped

to Laurel, and delivered there an ashy-visaged effigy, down whose beard

the red dye of his life dripped audibly, as he sat stiff in death in the

buggy. His name was only guessed; how happy he in that!"

"And what was the fate of the murderers?" Hulda asked, with less horror

than Levin showed.

"Three of them were arrested; one of the Griffins exposed his brother

and Captain Brereton; these two died on the gallows at Georgetown, young

Brereton exerting himself under the noose to prevent his injudicious

comrade saying too much on peerless Patty Cannon and her fair sisters,

and thinking on their interests more than on this living child. Ha!

Hulda _Brereton?_"

"The other Griffin also suffered death?" suggested Hulda, with a pale,

unevasive countenance.

"Yes, your fond grandma, then in her blazing charms, drew him to her

band again with the lure of Widow Brereton's hand; he killed a constable

to recommend himself the better, and died on the gallows at his native

Cambridge. _Hala hala!_ she gave your mother, wild-flower Hulda, to Joe

Johnson next to wife."

"It is an awful story," Levin said, "but Hulda never saw it."

"I can remember my father," said Hulda; "a large, strong man, with a

slow, heavy face, but he never smiled on me."

"Well, here is the cross-roads," said Van Dorn. "What shall I do with

this letter, bad wild-flower?"

"Read it, if you will, or take this English shilling and post it."

Van Dorn shrank back, rejecting the money.

"Will you not buy it back, Hulda," he whispered, "with love?"

"Never."

"You may pay for this letter this night with your life or modesty!"

"You dare not kill me," Hulda said.

"You will see," said Van Dorn.