The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times

by George Alfred Townsend

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  VAN DORN.

  A thin fur of frost was on the level farm-lands, and the saffron andorange leaves were falling almost audibly from the trees, as LevinDennis awoke on Wednesday, in the long, low house standing back in thefields from Johnson's cross-roads, and drank in the cool, stimulatingmorn, the sun already having made his first relay, and his postilionhorn was blowing from the old tavern that reared its form so broadly andyet so steeply in plain sight.

  Levin had been brought up from Twiford's wharf the night before by thepretty maid whom Jimmy Phoebus had so much frightened, and this washis first day of restful feeling, having slept off the liquor fumes ofSunday, the exciting watches of Monday, and the mingled pleasure andpain, illness and interest, love and remorse, of Tuesday.

  He had felt already the earliest twinges of youthful fondness for theyoung girl he had spent the day with at Twiford's, while lying sickthere from a disordered stomach and nervous system, and her amiabilityand charms, more than the temptation of unhallowed money, had changedhis purpose to escape at Twiford's and give information of the injuryinflicted upon Judge Custis's property.

  It hardly seemed real that he had been an accessory to a felony and awitness to a murder--the stealing of a gentleman's domestic slaves andthe braining of the smallest and most helpless of them, nearly in hissight; yet so it had happened, and he felt the danger he was in, buthesitated how to act. He had accepted the money of the trader, andpassed his mother's noblest friend on the river without recognition,while a dastardly ball had probably ended poor Phoebus's career. Toall these deeds he was the only white witness, the only one on whosetestimony redress could be meted out.

  He felt, therefore, that he was a prisoner, and his life dependent onhis cordial relations with the bloody negro-dealer and his band; andJohnson had reiterated his promise that if Levin joined them in equalfraternity he should make money fast and become a plantation proprietor.

  This night coming, a raid on free negroes in Delaware was to be made bythe band in force, and Levin had been told that he must be one of thekidnappers, and his frank co-operation that night would forever relievehim of any suspicions of defection and bad faith.

  "Steal one nigger, Levin," Joe Johnson had said, "and then if evercaught in the hock you never can snickle!"

  Levin interpreted this thieves' language to mean that he must do a crimeto get the kidnappers' confidence.

  The power of this band he had divined a little of when, at points alongthe river, especially about Vienna, there had been mysteriousintercourse between Joe Johnson and people on the shore, carried on inimitations of animal sounds; and the negro ferryman at that oldDorchester village had spoken with Johnson only half an hour before thetrader's encounter with Jimmy Phoebus in mid-stream, whereupon thegrim passenger had produced his pistol and notified Levin:

  "Now, my feller prig, honor's what I expect from you, and, to remind youof it, Levin, I'm a-goin' to pint this barking-iron at your mummer, sothat if you patter a cackle, a blue plum will go right down yourthroat."

  He had then tried to evade some one expected on the river, and, in a fitof rage at the awakening and wailing of the child, had hushed itforever, and then had shot Phoebus down.

  Poor Hominy had sincerely believed that Johnson's peculiar slang was thelanguage of the good Quakers, followers of Elias Hicks, who shelteredrunaway slaves and spoke a "thee" and "thou" and "verily," and thatstrange misapprehension in her ignorant mind the keen dealer had madeuse of to decoy her into Levin's vessel and waft her into a distantcountry.

  "We didn't steal her, Levin," Johnson said; "she wanted to mizzle from agood 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 beenasleep, 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 ofsight of the Somerset shore, and entered the Nanticoke towards night byway of Harper's Strait, and run up on the night flood; but the instinctof Jimmy Phoebus had cut him off at the forks of the Nanticoke, andpropelled another crime to Johnson's old suspected record. He had neverbeen indicted yet for murder, though murder was thought to be none tooformidable a crime for him.

  There was a zest of adventure in this guilty errand, which, but for itscrime, would have pleased Levin moderately well, the roving drop in hisblood expanding to this wild association; and he knew but littlecomparatively of the Delaware kidnappers, reading nothing, and in thosedays little was printed about Patty Cannon's band except in the distantjournals like _Niles's Register_ or _Lundy's Genius of Emancipation_.Levin had never sailed up the Nanticoke region before, and its scenerywas agreeable to his sight, while his heart was just fluttering in thefirst flight of sentiment towards the interesting creature he had sounexpectedly 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 beautifulwildflower of a young woman sitting by his pallet, looking into hislarge soft eyes with her own long-lashed orbs of humid gray, andbrushing his dark auburn ringlets with her hand. As he had looked upwonderingly, she had said to him:

  "I have never seen a man before with his hair parted in the middle, butI 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 ownbold lips. Oh, sir, I am not as wicked as she!"

  "How kin you be wicked at all," Levin asked, "when you look so good? Iwould trust your face in jail."

  "Would you? How happy that makes me, to be trusted by some one! Nobodyseems to trust me here. My mother was never kind to me. Captain Van Dornis 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 therest of her life, and we are all going there after father gets one moredrove 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 youhere hours, almost hoping you never might wake up, so beautiful and pureyou looked asleep."

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

  "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 turnedupon her beautiful bare feet, white as the river that flashed beneaththe window.

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

  "Bruinton--where did I hear that name?" Levin asked; "some tale has beentold me, I reckon, about him?"

  "Yes, everybody knows it," Hulda said, in a voice of pain; "he washanged 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 andneglected me, and Aunt Patty, my grandmother, brought me up. She waskind to me, but, oh, how cruel she can be to others!"

  "You talk as if you kin read, Huldy," said Levin, wishing to change soharsh a topic; "kin you?"

  "Yes, I can read and write as well as if I had been to school. Some onetaught me the letters around the tavern--some of the negro-dealers: Ithink it was Colonel McLane; and I had a gift for it, I think, because Ibegan to read very soon, and then Aunt Patty made me read books toher--oh, such dreadful books!"

  "What wair t
hey, Huldy?"

  "The lives of pirates and the trials of murderers--about Murrell's bandand the poisonings of Lucretia Chapman, the execution of Thistlewood,and Captain Kidd's voyages; the last I read her was the story of Burkeand Hare, who smothered people to death in the Canongate of Edinburghlast 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 looksso horribly at me, and mutters such threats, that I fear she is going tokill me, and so I hasten to get her favorite books and read to her thedark crimes of desperate men and women, and she laughs and listens likeone hearing pleasant tales. My soul grows sick, but I see she isfascinated, and I read on, trying to close my mind to the cruelnarrative."

  "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 Iever knew were negro-traders, or I should believe you too gentle to liveby that brutal work. I looked at you lying in this bed, and pity andlove came over me to see you, so young and fair, entering upon this lifeof 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 thefloody 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 huntto-morrow night. The river is watched, and you would not be let escapevery far, but in this house I am your jailer. Joe told me he would sellme if I let you get away."

  Levin listened and looked once more ardently and wonderingly at her, andfell 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 mylife, nor trampled on a worm if I could git out of his path,--so help memy poor mother's prayers! Huldy, how shall I save myself from thesewicked men and the laws I never broke till Sunday? Oh, tell me what todo!"

  "Do anything but commit their crimes," she answered. "Promise me youwill never do that! Let us begin, and be the friends I wished we mightbe, 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 somethingto cherish and protect. I am almost a woman: oh, what is my dreadfuldoom?--to become a woman here among these wolves of men, who meet aroundmy 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 sometrader whose bold and wicked eyes stared at me so coarsely, and I haveheard them talk of a price, as if I was the merchandise to betransferred--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 boatchartered 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--nothingstronger. Their brandy, which they 'still themselves, sets people onfire. I will set the table for you."

  It was after the table had been set that Jimmy Phoebus slipped in anddevoured the milk and meat, overhearing the continuance of theconversation just given; and when his awkward motions had disturbedthese new young friends, Hulda fainted on the stairs before theapparition Levin did not see, and he snatched the kiss that was likeplucking a pale-red blossom from some dragon's garden.

  That night two horses without saddles came to bring them both toJohnson's Cross-roads, and Levin awoke at Patty Cannon's old residenceon 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 upsome 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 comewith flowers in her hat."

  A mischievous blue-jay was in a large cherry-tree, apparentlydomesticated there, and he occupied himself mimicking over the woman'shead the alternate cries of a little bird in terror and a hawk's screamof 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 andtale-carriers. That's why I keeps 'em round me. They's better than awatch-dog to bark at strangers, and, caze they steals all their life, Ilove' em. Blue-jay, by Ged! is ole Pat Cannon's bird."

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

  "Purty things I always _would_ have," exclaimed the bulldog-bodiedwoman, with an oath; "bright things I loved when I was a gal, and tradedwhat 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 ofroses."

  "Florida, they say, is beautiful, grandma, and flowers are everywherethere."

  "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 'emhates me yer, and the darned lawyers tries to indict me, but I'll liveon the line till they shoves me over it, whar I've been cock of the walksence I was a gal."

  As Hulda, also barefooted, but moulded like the flowers, so that herfeet seemed natural as the naked roots, carried the boxes around to theglass beds encircling a chimney--dahlias, autumnal crocuses or saffrons,tri-colored chrysanthemums or gold-flowers, and the orange-coloredmarigolds--the elder woman, resting on her hoe, smelled the turpentineof a row of tall sunflowers and twisted one off and put it in herwide-brimmed Leghorn hat.

  "When I hornpipe it on the tight rope," Levin heard her chuckle, "one ofthese yer big flowers must die with me."

  She disappeared into the peach orchard, which tinted the garden with itspinkish boughs, and Levin improved the chance to look over the cottageand the landscape.

  It was a mere farm, level as a floor, part of a larger clearing in theprimeval woods, where only fire or age had preyed since man was come;and, although there seemed more land than belonged to this property, noother house could Levin see over all the prospect except the bold andtarnished form of Johnson's castle, sliding its long porch forward atthe base of that tall, blank, inexpressive roof which seemed suspendedlike the drab curtain of a theatre between the solemn chimney towers;the northern chimney broad and huge, and bottomed on an arch; thesouthern chimney leaner, but erect as a perpetual sentry on the King'sroad.

  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-roofgave considerable bed accommodation in the attic besides, the roomsbeing all small, as was general in that day. Around the house extended apretty garden, with some cherry and plum trees and wild peach along itsboundaries, and the fields around contained many stumps, showing thatthe clearing had been made not many years before, while here and theresome heaps of brush had been allowed to accumulate instead of beingburned.

  As Levin looked at one of those brush-heaps in a low place, a pair ofbuzzards slowly and clumsily circled up from it, and, flying low, wentround and round as if they might be rearing their young there and hatedto go far; and, for long afterwards, Levin saw them hovering high abovethe spot in parental mindfulness.

  He drew his head in the dormer casement, and was making ready to go downto the breakfast he smelled cooking below, when his own name waspronounced in the garden, and he stopped and listened.

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

  "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'shead, while a demoniac expression of rage distorted her not unpleasingfeatures.

  Levin walked at once to the window and whistled, as if to the bird i
nthe tree. The older woman immediately dropped her hoe, and cried out toLevin:

  "Heigh, son! ain't you most a-starved fur yer breakfast? It's all readyfur ye, an' Huldy's waitin' fur ye to come down."

  Levin at once went down the short, winding stairs to a table spread inthe kitchen end, and the old woman blew a tin horn towards Johnson'sCross-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 botheryou, and I don't want no harm to come to you, Levin; so you telleverybody you see yer that Levin Cannon is your name, and they'll thinkyou'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 hesaid:

  "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'spore 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 himgood."

  The breakfast was brought in by a white man with a face scratched andbitten, and one eye full of congested blood.

  "Cy," Patty Cannon cried, "them slappers, I 'spect, you had hard work toturn with that red eye Owen Daw give you."

  "I'll brown both sides of him yit, when I git the griddle ready forhim," the man exclaimed, half snivelling.

  "Before you raise gizzard enough for that, little Owen'll peck outen yereyes, Cy, like a crow; he's game enough to tackle the gallows. You maygit 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, whoalways impose on you. Please don't go there again."

  "Where else kin he go?" inquired Patty Cannon, severely; "thar ain't nochurch left nigh yer, sence Chapel Branch went to rot for want ofparsons' 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 theCaptain kin make somethin' of Cy James, an' people around yer'll respecthim. Why, Captain, honey, ain't ye hungry?"

  This was addressed to a man with several bruises on his forehead, and anenormous flaxen mustache, as soft in texture as a child's hair--a manwearing delicate boots with high Flemish leggings, that curled over andshowed full women's hose of red, over which were buckled trousers ofbuff corduroy, covering his thighs only, and fastened above his hips bya 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 allhis clothing, upon a peg in the wall, and bowed to Hulda first with asmile of welcome, to Madame Cannon cavalierly, and to Levin with agraceful reserve that attracted the boy's attention from the notoriouswoman at he head of the table, and held him interested during all themeal.

  "Pretty Hulda, I salute you! Patty, _buenos dias!_ I hope I see youwell, friend!"--the last to Levin.

  As he took up his knife and fork Levin observed a ring, with a purewhite diamond in it, flash upon the Captain's hand. He was a blue-eyedman, with a blush and a lisp at once, as of one shy, but at times hewould look straight and bold at some one of the group, and then heseemed to lose his delicacy and become coarse and cold. One such look hegave at Hulda, who bowed her eyes before it, and looked at him butlittle again.

  To Levin this man had the greatest fascination, partly from hisextraordinary dress--like costumes Levin had seen at the theatre inBaltimore, where the pirates on the stage wore a jacket and open shirtand belt similar in cut though not in material--and partly from hiscountenance, in which was something very familiar to the boy, though heracked his memory in vain for the time and place. The stranger washardly more than forty to forty-five years of age, but the mistress ofthe house treated him with all the blandishments of a husband.

  "Dear Captain! pore honey!" she said; "to have his beautiful yaller hairtored out by the nigger hawk! Honey, he fell onto me, and I thought abull had butted me in the stummick."

  "He broke no limbs, Patty," the captain lisped, feeding himself in adainty way--and Levin observed that his fork was silver, and his knifewas a clasp-knife with a silver handle, that he had taken from hispocket--"_Chis! chis!_ if he had snapped my arm, the caravan must havegone without me to-night. I am sore, though, for Senor was a valiantwrestler."

  "He'll git his pay, honey, when they sot him to work in Georgey an' floghim right smart, an' we spend the price of him fur punch. He, he! loveylad!"

  "I took this from him to-day when I searched him carefully," the captainsaid, 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 themon, spelled out the coin:

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

  She threw up her head so quickly that the spectacles dropped from hernose, and Hulda caught them, and then Mrs. Cannon turned on Hulda with aferocious 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 ofthose strong, piercing looks he sometimes afforded, right into thehostess's eyes. "It might be a coincidence: _chis! chito!_ A shilling ofa certain year is no rare thing. But, Madame Cannon, it becomes slightlycurious when six such shillings, all numbered with that significantyear, came out of the same pocket!"

  With this he passed five shillings of the same appearance over to thehostess, and she put on her spectacles again and looked at them all, anddropped them in her lap with a weary yet frightened expression, andmuttered:

  "Van Dorn, who kin he be?"

  "That is of less consequence, my dear, than whether we can afford tosell 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, unconsciousof their regard.

  "Shoo!" the woman said; "people kin scare theirselves every day if theymind to. We've got him, and, if he knows anything, it's all in thatnigger noddle. So eat and be derned!"

  "My guardian angel," the Captain remarked, with a blush and a strongerlisp, "you may not have observed that I have never ceased to eat, whileyou immediately lost your appetite. What will you do with theshillings?"

  Mrs. Cannon took them from her lap, and rose as if she meant to throwthem out of the window, her angry face bearing that interpretation.

  "Stop, remarkable woman," the Captain said, pulling his soft, flaxenmustache with the diamond-flashing hand, "let your fecund resources stopand counsel, for I am only looking to your happiness, that has soabundantly blessed my life and banished every superstition from my hearttill I believe in neither ghosts, nor God, nor devil, while you believein all of them, and give yourself many such unnecessary friends andintruders. _Chito! chito!_ as the Cubans say, and hear my suggestionbefore you throw away those shillings!"

  "Take care how you mock me!" cried Patty Cannon, with her dark, boldeyes furtive, like one both angered and troubled, and her ruddy cheeksfull 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 sinlessbosom being their safe depository, and her long-lashed eyes melting ourghosts 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 girlishdelight
:

  "Oh, grandma, how kind you are! Why do you speak so mad at me when yougive me these pretty things? They seem almost warm in my bosom as I putthem there, like things with life. Let me kiss you for them!"

  She rose from the chair and approached the mistress of the house, whosat in a strange terror, not forbidding the embrace, yet almostshuddering as Hulda stooped and pressed her pure young lips to theblanched and dissipated face of Patty Cannon.

  The Captain looked at the kiss with his peculiar strong, cold look, andsmiled at Hulda graciously and said:

  "There, ladies, repose in each other's confidence! A few shillings forsuch a kiss is shameful pay, Aunt Patty. Do you remember as well as Ido, Madame Cannon, that once you missed some money, and thought yourmother had stolen it, and hunted everywhere for it, and it never came tolight?"

  "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, forMelson and Milman are up from Twiford's with the news that Zeke's lasthide has burst her chain and fled, and all the lower Nanticoke gives notrace 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. "ThePhiladelphia woman the Senor says he set free, and that she has gone tostart an alarm against us. The Senor is a cool man: he told me that, andlaughed and roared, and says he will live to see us all in apicture-frame. _Ayme, ayme_, Patty!"

  With her face growing longer and longer, the woman heard these scarcelyintelligible sentences--wholly unintelligible to the younger people--andto Levin it seemed that she grew suddenly old and yet older, till hercheeks, but lately blooming, seemed dead and wrinkled, and, frommaintaining the appearance of hardly fifty, and fair at that, she nowlooked 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 settleddown 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 oneshall assist at these ceremonies of expiation but Van Dorn himself,whose rights in Mistress Cannon are of priority. She's dropsical, andhastening to perdition too soon, which I must arrest and let her comfortme still more. Sweet comforter! Young gentleman, you shall help me."

  Levin took hold of Patty Cannon's feet and found that she seemed made ofbone, so tough were her sinews, and Van Dorn easily lifted her broadshoulders, and so she was laid on a bed in the next room, where theelegant Captain was seen rubbing her limbs, and even handling a bottleof leeches, one of which he allowed to crawl over the hand that wore thediamond, making it look like a ruby melting or in living motion. As thisvoracious blood-lover took his fill around the straight ankles of thehostess, 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 theblood-mark on him and he's ours."

  "Great woman!" the Captain lisped, prolific of his kisses, "MariaTheresa! Semiramis! Agrippina! Cleopatra! ever fecund in great ideas andgrowing youthful by nightshade, _alto! quedo!_ but I love thee!"

  "Am I young a little yit, honey?" asked Patty Cannon. "Oh, don't deceiveme, Van Dorn! Can my eyes look love an' hate, like old times?"

  "_Si! quiza!_ More and more, dark angel, entering into black age liketorches in a cave, I see your deep eyes flame; but never do they pleaseme, Patty, as when they flash on some new wicked idea, like this ofmarking the boy for life. Who is he?"

  "He's a Cannon, one of the stock that my Delaware man belonged to. Hismother looked down on me fur coming in their family: I have rememberedher."

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

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

  The Captain reached down to the lady's feet and pulled off the leech andheld it up against his hollow palm, gorged with the blood of the fairpatient.

  "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 inthe glass seemed to splash blood.

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