CHAPTER XLIV.
THE DEATH OF PATTY CANNON.
As Patty Cannon came out of the tavern the cross-roads were full ofpeople, taking their last look at the spot where she had triumphed fornearly twenty years.
None thought to look at Van Dorn, nor ask what had become of him, andhis friend Sorden removed his body, unseen, to a spot in the pine woods,where his unmarked grave was dug, and standing round it were threemourners only, and Sorden said the final words with homely tears:
"I loved him as I never loved A male."
The Maryland constable marched Patty Cannon down to the little bridge ofplanks where ran the ditch nearly on the State line, and tradition stillbelieves the figment that Joe Johnson at that moment was hiding beneathit.
There, driven across the boundary like some borderer's cow, the queen ofthe kidnappers was seized by the Delaware constable, and placed in asmall country gig-wagon, and, followed by a large mounted posse, theroad was taken to the little hamlet of Seaford, five miles distant.
She watched the small funereal cedars and monumental poplar-trees risestrangled from the underbrush, the dark-brown streams flowing into inkymill-ponds, the close, small pines, scarcely large enough to moan, buttrying to do so in a baby tone, and her eyes turned to the sand, whereshe was soon to be. Not agony nor repentance nor any hope of escapefluttered her cold heart, but only a feeling of being ungratefullydeserted by her friends, and ill-treated by her equals and neighbors,who had so seldom warned or avoided her; no preacher had come to tellher the naked gospel, and some had bowed to her respectfully, and evenbegged her oats, and made subscriptions from her ill-gotten silver.
Seaford was a sandy place upon a bluff of the Nanticoke, and, as theprocession came in, a party of surveyors, working for Meshach Milburn'srailroad, paused to jeer the old kidnapper. She had grown suddenly old,and never raised her voice, that had always been so forward, to make areply.
The magistrate, Dr. John Gibbons, had been an educated young Irishmanwho landed from a ship at Lewes, and, marrying a lady in Maryland, nearPatty Cannon's, became the legal spirit of the little town. His office,a mere cabin, on a corner by his house, being too small for the purpose,the examination was adjourned to the tavern, at the foot of the hill,near where a mill-pond brook dug its way to the Nanticoke. Around thetavern some box-bush walks were made in the sand, and willow-treesbordered the cold river-side, and, at pauses in the hearing, wild-fowlwere heard to play and pipe in the falling tide.
The evidence of Cy James and other cowardly companions in her sins wasquickly given, and the procession started through the woods and sands toGeorgetown, twelve miles to the eastward, where Patty Cannon wasreceived by all the town, waiting up for her, and the jail immediatelyclosed her in.
* * * * *
"I didn't ezackly make out what that cymlin-headed feller did it fur,"Jimmy Phoebus remarked, in the hold of an old oyster pungy, where hefound himself with his mulatto friend and Aunt Hominy and the children,"but the file he fetched me has done its work at last. Yer, Whatcoat,"addressing his male fellow-prisoner, "take this knife the same fellerslipped me, an' cut these cords." Standing up free again, Mr. Phoebusfurther remarked,
"Whatcoat, thar's two of us yer. By smoke! thar's three."
The docile colored man opened his eyes.
"Him!" exclaimed the sailor, indicating the feather-bed in the hold,with its stiff, invisible contents; "Joe'll chuck him overboard down yerabout deep water somewhere. Now, for a little hokey-pokey; I think I'llgit in thar myself, an' let Joe sell t'other feller fur a nigger."
Phoebus's power over his fellow-prisoners--little children and idioticHominy included--was now perfect, and he began to explore the rotten oldhold, which contained oyster-rakes, fish-lines, and the usual utensilsof a dredging-vessel, and soon discovered that there could be made aclear passage to crawl through her from forecastle to-cabin by removinga few boards.
"Yer, Hominy," he said, "get to work with your needle, old gal; I'mgoin' to take you home."
* * * * *
With a good start, and a fair wind and slack tide, Johnson was offVienna at eight o'clock.
"Ten mile to go, an' they can't catch me with a racehorse," he said,"after I pass Chicacomico wharf, an' git abaft the marshes. I'm boozyfur sleep. Thar's two in this crew I don't know, and I must be helmsman.Bingavast! I'll make my nigger work his passage."
He walked to the hatchway over the hold, and, sliding it back, droppedin, and, with a few expert blows of the professional smithy, setWhatcoat free, merely glancing where Phoebus lay upon his face,snoring hard.
"Cool cucumber of a bloke," Johnson said, "he'll be too much fur me in atrade; I'll have to stifle him!" Then, ordering the mulatto man astern,Johnson gave him the tiller, and sat near, nodding, till the secondwharf on the starboard was passed.
"Now Gabriel can't overhaul me," Johnson exclaimed; "thar's no more roadon the Dorchester side, an' the Somerset roads is all gashed by creeksan' barred by farm-gates. I'll sink that dab an' stiffy."
He called two deck hands, and lifted the body out of the hold. Phoebusstill placidly slept upon his face, and Johnson looked at him withpeculiar envy after a hurried glance at the dead. Some ropes being putaround the bed, and drag-irons attached to them, the whole weight wasunceremoniously thrown overboard at the point of Hungry Neck, and thedealer remarked, apologetically:
"There goes a great hypocrite, gentlemen; he wasn't above piracy, ef hecould git another man to fly the black flag for him. I reckon he'll be'conservative' enough after this. And now I'll snooze. Steer her forRagged Point, yonder, Whatcoat, an' when you git thar wake me. It'sclear broad inlet all the way; an' remember, nigger, I sleep and shoot,on hair triggers!"
With his pistols in his hand, Johnson lay down in the cabin a few feetfrom the helmsman, and tried to see and sleep at once. He had beenwithout rest for many nights, and sleep soon bound him in its own clevisand manacles.
When he awoke, so deep had been his slumber that he could not recall fora moment where he was. The tiller was unmanned, the stars shone in thecabin hatchway, a cold bilge-water draft blew through the old hulk, and,as he dragged himself up the steps, he saw tall woods near by, and heardthe voice of solemn pines.
The vessel was aground; wild geese were making jubilant shrieks as theycut the water with their fleecy wings, like cameo engraving; the outlawgazed and gazed, and finally muttered:
"Deil's Island, or I'm a billy noodle! I run from it the last time I wasyer, an' my blood runs cold to be yer agin; my daddy got his curse fromthis camp-meetin'."
Taking speed from his apprehensions, Johnson slid back the hatchway andleaped into the hold, starlight and moonlight following him, and nothingdid they reveal there except one man, peacefully sleeping upon his face,as Phoebus had last been seen.
The kidnapper shook his captive, but he did not awaken. He turned theman over, and there met his eyes the cold blue stare and Roman nose andbleeding lips of Allan McLane, apparently returned from the bottom ofthe river.
With a shriek, the outlaw bounded upon the deck and ran to the bow ofthe pungy.
"Help me!" came a faint cry from the forecastle, and, peeping in, JoeJohnson recognized one of his own familiars he had shipped at Cannon'sFerry, gagged, like his companion, and tied fast. The man had just beenable to articulate.
"Now, spiflicate me!" spoke the skipper, relieving the man, "the ruffiancly you! who did this?"
"The white nigger did it all, Joe. He crawled through the stays to thecabin, and got your pistols, first; leastways, we found him an' theyaller feller at the helm on top of us, coming up the fo'castle, andnext t'other two men jined 'em. They said ole Samson had give 'em thewink. We two was tied and throwed in yer, an' ef you had awaked, tharwas a man to stab you to the heart, sot over you."
"The portmanteau?" cried Johnson.
"That's gone, I reckon. They sowed you up a feather an' oyster-shell manon a plank to heave overboard; that's what they
said. They steered forDeil's Island, an' sot the Island Parson yer to watch that you don't gitthe pungy off, an' I reckon they're half-way to Princess Anne."
Joe Johnson heard no more. He released his creatures from their bonds,took the dead body in the pungy's canoe, and gave the command:
"Row fur the open bay! We'll strike St. Mary's County or Virginny.Bingavast! Hike! Never agin will I put foot on this Eastern Shore."
* * * * *
At Georgetown Jimmy Phoebus, Samson, and Levin Dennis met again, andLevin told the mystery of his father's disappearance.
"Never tell your mother, Levin, that Captain Dennis died in thatPangymonum; it would break her heart, and she never would trust managin."
"Jimmy," spoke up Samson, "let her understand that he got wrecked on the_Ida_. It looks a little bad, but the slave-trade sounds better thankidnappin'."
"They say that Allan McLane owned that slave vessel," Phoebus put in;"but he didn't live to know his loss. He'll meet his heathens at theJudgment Seat."
"Who has fed mother?" Levin asked. "Hulda can't explain that."
"I kin, Levin," Samson Hat said, bashfully. "It was me. Good ole MeshachMilburn, that everybody's down on, pitied that pore woman, an' made meset things she needed in her window. He said if I ever told it he'ddischarge me."
"Dog my skin!" Jimmy Phoebus observed, "the next man that calls'steeple top' after ole Meshach I'll mash flat! But, come, my son, I'veburied at Broad Creek your wife's family relics. We'll hire a wagon, anddrive to ole Broad Creek 'piscopal church on the way, and there I'llhave you married to Huldy."
The sword-hilt and coins were disinterred, and in that ancient edificeof hard pine, where the worship of her English race had long beencelebrated, the naval officer's daughter became the wife of the son ofhis voluptuous and perverted friend. As Jimmy Phoebus kissed them hesaid:
"Levin, when your mother says 'Yes,' all four of us will settle in theWest. Illinois has become a free state, after a hard fight, and I reckonthat'll suit us."
* * * * *
For a while Patty Cannon, by her affability and sorrow, had easy timesin jail, and was allowed to eat with the jailer's family; but, as theexamination proceeded before the grand jury, and her menials hastened tothrow their responsibility in so many crimes upon her alone, an outeropinion demanded that she be treated more harshly, and some of the ironsshe had manacled upon her captives were riveted upon her own ankles.Very soon dropsy began to appear in her legs and feet, and, after itbecame evident to her that neither money nor friends were forthcoming inher defence, she fell into a passive despair.
The frequent conferences between Jimmy Phoebus and Cy James led to thebelief that not only had Hulda recovered portions of her father's moneyand valuables, hidden in the beehives and flower-pots old Patty had soassiduously attended, but that Phoebus had seized upon propertyindicated by the informer, and was to have whatever remained of it afterprocuring the latter's release.
This result was hastened by Patty Cannon's death, which happened, to thegreat relief of many respectably considered people in that region, whohad feared from the first that she would make a minute confession,implicating everybody who had dealt with her band.
Among these was Judge Custis, who opened his skeleton-in-the-closet toJohn M. Clayton one spring-like day. Clayton had quietly prodded on theconviction of Patty Cannon, but the jealousy of the slaveholdinginterest made him wary of any open appearance against her.
They were sitting in the little parlor of the Methodist parsonage, asmall frame house with a conical-roofed portico and big end-chimney, alittle off from the public square, whither they had gone to send thepastor to wait on the aged Chancellor, who had been taken ill in thecourt-room, and lay in the hotel.
"Clayton," said Judge Custis, in a low tone of voice, "what this womanmay do or tell, you would not think concerned me, but I will show youhow deep her influence has reached, as well as explain to you why Iwould not pursue my own servants to her den. In this I humiliate myselfbefore you, as I must do, if I am to become your client."
"You had been trading with Patty Cannon; I guessed that much."
"Such was the case. When I was a collegian at Yale, returning home oneholiday, I fell in love with a beautiful quadroon, the property of myuncle, in Northampton County. She was an elegant woman, with a goodeducation, and had been my playmate. I was ardent and good-looking, andeasily found lodgment in her heart; but the conquest of her charms waslong, and agonizing with sincere esteem. You must believe me when Ideclare that I fell dangerously ill because I was refused by her, and,making a confidant of my doctor, he told the girl that she must choosebetween my death and her surrender. Pity, then, prevailed, even overreligion. I was happy in every point but one--the injury concealmentworked upon her self-respect; for, Clayton, my mistress was my owncousin."
"Goy!"
"I never desired to marry, although no children had been born in mypatriarchal relation; but, in the course of years, my uncle becamepressed for debts, and he appealed to me to save my beautiful handmaidenfrom sale, he being in full sympathy with my relation to her, becauseshe was his daughter."
"I goy!"
"The case was urgent. I possessed some negroes, the legacy of my mother.To sell them publicly would be a stigma both upon my humanity and mycredit. I adopted the cowardly device of letting a kidnapper slip themaway, and take a large commission for his trouble. I saved my lady, butat the expense of a secret."
"And that secret Joe Johnson depended on, Custis, when he was suddenlydriven into your house, and found your old servant already demoralizedby the announcement of your son-in-law?"
"The scoundrel pressed his advantage; and he saw, besides, mydaughter--not Vesta, but her half-sister, Virgie--and, between hispersecution of her and my brother-in-law's vindictiveness, poor Virgiewas literally run to the ground and into it; she is in her grave."
Judge Custis broke into a long fit of sobbing, and Clayton, who hadnoticed his dejected mien since their separation, passed an arm aroundhim, saying:
"Never mind, now! Never mind, old friend! Johnson is fled; McLane, theywhisper, has never been seen since he entered Johnson's tavern. His willwas found there, and your daughter gets her mother's property andservants back."
"I must finish my story," Judge Custis said, stanching his tears. "Bythe decline of every family with natural feelings and refinement, underwhat Mr. Pinkney termed 'the contaminating curse of reluctant bondsmen,'we, also, became poor. To save others, it was necessary that I mustmarry, and get money by my own prostitution. My God, how we are repaid!A bride was found for me in Baltimore, the sister of Allan McLane, and abeauty.
"I began my married life with the best intentions; my poor mistressherself advised me to turn to my wife, and become a true man. She toldme so with her heart breaking. In heaven, where she dwells with my poorchild, she hears me now, and knows I speak the truth!"
Judge Custis broke down again, and leaned his convulsed head onClayton's tender breast, whose own widower's grief gushed forthresponsively.
"Children were born in Teackle Hall; my servitude was becoming adjustedto me, when Allan McLane, in his love of vindictiveness and of low,formal respectability, conceived that my poor quadroon required somechastisement for having been his sister's rival, and he set a trap tobuy her. I was forced to have her bought, to protect her, and to bringher to my care again, and thus our passion was revived, and, givingbirth to Virgie, she died. Reared together, and unconscious of theirkindred, those daughters loved each other as dearly as when, in heaven,they shall hide in the radiance of each other, and cover my sins withtheir angelic wings."
"Rise up, old friend!" cried Clayton; "your transgressions are, atleast, washed out in sincere tears. Hear the birds all around us lovingand condoning, and filling the air with praise. Come out!"
As they stepped upon Georgetown Square they saw John Randel, Jr.,leading a party of surveyors to locate the opposition railroad toMeshach Milb
urn's. These and many others were pressing towards thewhipping-post and pillory, in the rear of the court-house, where stood,exposed by the sheriff, the cleanly mulatto woman who had entertainedVirgie in Snow Hill the first night of her flight.
"This free woman, Priscilla Hudson," cried the sheriff, "is to stand onehour in the pillory for the crime of lending her pass to a slave. Thirtylashes she was sentenced to, the Governor has graciously taken off. Sheis to be sold, out of the state, at the end of one hour, for the term ofher natural life, to the highest bidder."
The poor woman stood there, bare armed and bare almost to the bosom,delicate and lovely to see, and the mother of free children, herclothing having been partly removed before the pardon of the stripes wasannounced to her.
Her head and arms were thrust through the holes in one leaf of thepillory, and thus, thrown forward, her modesty was exposed to the wantongaze of the crowd, while, on the other side of the same elevatedplatform, pilloried in like manner, was a female chicken-thief,impudent, indifferent, and chewing tobacco, and spitting it out upon thepillory floor.
As Clayton and Custis saw this scene on their way to the tavern, an egg,thrown from a window of the debtor's jail, whether meant for Mrs. Hudsonor not, struck her in the face, and its corrupt contents streamed downher white and shivering breast.
"Shame! shame!" cried the people, as they saw the woman cry, and, gazingup to the jail window, another female face appearing there, turnedtheir cries to curses:
"Hang her! hang her!"
For the last time in life Patty Cannon's bold and comely face swelledagain with passionate blood to the roots of the glossy black hair, andthe few who saw her rich, dark eyes, inflamed with anger, say theirpupils were dilated like the wild-cat's. She was gone in a moment, andthe sheriff had wiped Mrs. Hudson's face and breast with a handkerchiefpassed up by a colored woman.
Two men were now actively going around the crowd, hat in hand,soliciting contributions to buy the woman, the first a blind man, whoseeyes were bandaged, and a white man led him, calling loudly:
"The abolitionists have raised three hundred dollars to buy this woman'sfreedom. We want a hundred more, as some mean people may bid her uphigh. This man, her husband, stole her pass, to slip a friend away. Wecouldn't git the evidence in, but it's God's truth, gentlemen! Thewoman's nursed my wife, an' done a heap of good; and she come here, ofher own free will, out of Maryland, to nurse the Chancellor."
Little money was raised in that crowd, since there was little to give,and, addressing the two distinguished strangers, Sorden, the crier,exclaimed:
"What, gentlemen, will you let the Hunn brothers and Tommy Garrett andthe Motts give three hundred dollars for a woman they never saw, and we,who see her always doing good, give nothing?"
"Pity! pity!" sobbed the blind man. "I'm burned so bad nobody will buy_me_, but I stole her pass to help a slave off that I fell in lovewith."
Judge Custis left Clayton's side, and waited till the hour in thepillory was done, and, after a fierce contest, saw Sorden come offvictorious at the sale, though it took every dollar the Judge couldraise in Georgetown on his private credit.
"What is the name of the girl you gave her pass to?" asked the Judge ofthe blind mulatto.
"Virgie, marster."
"My heart told me so," exclaimed the Judge. "Your crime has beenpunished enough. I will send you to your wife."[15]
* * * * *
John Randel, Jr., observed, that evening:
"Devil Jim Clark has taken example from Patty Cannon, and squared thecircle."
"Not dead?" asked Clayton.
"Yes, dead and buried. He was cleaning up his contract on the canal, andmistook the white Irish laborers there for kidnapped niggers. They seton him, and beat him and scared him together, so that he neverrecovered. They say he was 'converted' on his death-bed; or, as thesaying is, 'he died triumphantly;' but the darkeys report that the devilcame straight down with a chariot and drove him off."
"That fellow, Whitecar, I'm reserving," said Clayton, "to punish when Ican use him to sustain an argument in favor of admitting negro testimonyin kidnapping cases.[16] Without that admission, these kidnappers cannotbe convicted: even Patty Cannon here may escape us, though she haskilled white men."
Sorden spoke up, he being of the party:
"A disease called leprosy has broke out in ole Derrick Molleston'scabin; Sam Ogg has got it, too, and they say he fetched it up from thebreakwater. Nobody will go near them. Black Dave is dead; he said hekilled a man at Prencess Anne: the young wife of Levin Dennis, whoturns out to be a lady, stayed and prayed with him to the last, and hewent off humble and happy. But, my skin! another kidnapper has rentedJohnson's tavern a'ready."
"The railroad will clear all these evils out," exclaimed Randel. "I'veput it into poetry," and he began to recite:
"To dark Naswaddox forest fled The murderer from the main, And with the otter laid his head Amid the swamp and cane: 'Here nothing can pursue my ear, From travelled paths astray; I shall forget, from year to year, The world beyond the bay!'
"The hunted man one morning heard A whistle near and strong, And in the night a fiery light The thickets flashed among: The demon of the engine rushed Along on blazing beams-- The hound the murderer had flushed, The outlaw's path was Steam's!"
* * * * *
The cry of hate from the crowd around the whipping-post, as it awokePatty Cannon's last anger, also determined her last crime.
Fear was relative in her: she had neither the fear of men nor of shame,and only of death as it involved a hereafter. Whether that hereafter wasa latent conviction in her mind, or the vivid admonition of guilt anddead men's eyes peering over her dreams and into the silent, lonelywatches of haunted midnights, who shall tell? There is no analysis of anative and ancient depravity: it was sown in the marrow, it strengthensin the bone, and, with a cunning, daring self-assertion, gambles uponthe faith of living and of dying not. Its very fears push it onward incrime, and make it cruelly tantalize its own fate, as cowards lean overgraveyard walls, and shout, with an inner trembling, "Come forth--I dareyou!"
So had this woman, conscious of her deserts, bullied eternal justicethrough its long postponements, never doubting, while ever vexing, theSpirit of God, until the number of her crimes crowded the tablet of hermemory, and out of the hideous gulf of her past life gazed faces withoutnames and deeds without memoranda; a procession the longer thatstrangers were in it, and, shrinking from her, yet pressing on,exclaimed her name or only shrieked "'Tis she!" as if her name wasnothing to her curse.
Sleeping in her chains, there were children's eyes watching her fromfar-off corners, as if to say, "Give us the whole life we would havelived but for you!"
As her swollen limbs festered to the irons, there were babies' criesfloating in the air, that seemed to draw near her breasts, as if forfood, and suddenly convulse there in screams of pain, and move away withthe sounds of suffocation she had heard as they expired.
All night there were callers on her, and whom they were no one couldtell; but the jailer's family saw her lips moving and her eyes consultthe air, as if she was faintly trying bravado upon certainbusiness-speaking ghosts who had come with bills long overdue anddemanded payment, and went out only to come again and again.
Some of these mystic visitors she would jeer at and defy, and stamp herfeet, as if they had no rights in equity against her soul, having beenon vicious errands when they met their ends, and bankrupts in the courtof pity; but suddenly a helpless something would appear, and paralyzeher with its little wail, like a babeless mother or a motherless babe,and, with her forehead wet with sweat of agony, she would affect tochuckle, and would whisper, "Nothin' but niggers! nothin' more!"
Day brought her some relief, but also other cares, and of these thechief was the care of money. She had been a spendthrift all her life,and robbed mankind of life and liberty to enjoy the selfish dissipationof spend
ing their blood-money; and what had she bought with it? Nothing,nothing. To spend it, only, she had wrecked her sex and her soul; tospend it for such trifles as children want--candy and common ornaments,a dance and a treat, a gift for some boor or forester or even negro shewas misleading, or to establish a silly reputation for generosity:generous at the expense of human happiness, and of robbing people ofliberty and life, merely for spending-money!
Now she had none to appease the all-devouring greeds of habitintensified by real necessity: no money to buy dainties or even liquor;no money to spend upon the jailer's family and keep the reputation ofkindness alive; no money for decent apparel to appear in court; none tocorrupt the law or to hire witnesses and attorneys.
The two demons she had created alternately seized the day and the night:the demon of money plagued her all day, the demon of murder pursued herall night.
Every morning she had insatiate wants; all night she had remorselessvisitors; and, close before, the gallows filled the view, with the Deviltying the noose.
That Devil she plainly saw, so busy on the gallows, fitting his ropesand shrouds and long death-caps, and he evaded her, as if he had nocommerce with her now.
He was a cool and wistful man, perfectly happy in the prospect ofgetting her, and not anxious about it, so sure was he of her soon andcomplete possession.
He was always out in the jail-yard when she looked there, fixing hisropes, sliding the nooses, examining the gallows, like a conscientiouscarpenter; and in his complacent smile was an awful terror that frozeher dumb: he seemed so impersonal, so joyous, so industrious, as if hehad waited for her like a long creditor, and compounded the interest onher sins till the infernal sum made him a millionaire in torments.
A Devil it was, real as a man--a slavemaster to whose quiet love ofcruelty eternal death was not enough; a man whose unscarred age, old asthe rising sun, still came and went in immortal youthfulness andsatisfaction, but for the nonce forgetting other debtors in the grip hehad on her, as his majestic expiation for his own shortcomings.
He looked like a storekeeper, a man of accounts, a cosmopolitankidnapper, who knew a good article and had it now. She was so terrifiedthat she wanted to cry to him, and see if he would not remit thatbusiness method and become more human, and sauce her back.
But no; the longer she watched, the less he looked towards her, thoughshe knew his smile meant no one else. To hang upon his cord was verylittle; to go with him after it was stretched, down the burning gratesof hell, and see him all so cool and busy in her misery, was the gnawingvulture at her heart.
In vain she tried to throw responsibility for her sins upon a vague,false parentage and fatherhood, and say that she was bred to robbery andvice; a something in her heart responded: "No, you had beauty and healthand chaste lovers whom you rejected or tempted, and a mind that was everclear and knew right from wrong. Conscience never gave you up, thoughdrenched in innocent blood. The often-murdered monitor revived and criedaloud like the striking of a clock, but never was obeyed!"
Thus haunted, deserted, peeped in upon from the hereafter, racked withvain needs, her outlets closed to every escape or subterfuge, revengeitself dead, and disease assisting conscience to banish sleep, thewretched woman crawled to her window one day and saw the helplesseffigy of her sex exposed there for doing an act of humanity; andinstantly an instinct she immediately obeyed exacted from her one lastfamiliar, heartless deed, to show the crowd that even she, Patty Cannonthe murderess, had "no respect for a nigger."
That doctrine long survived her, though she found it old when she cameamong them.
She aimed an egg at the breast of her sex, and, with a barefaced grin,she saw it strike and burst. The next moment the crowd had recognizedand defied her.
In the exasperation of their shout, and of being no longer praised evenfor insulting a negro, a convulsion of desperate rage overcame themurderess.
Too helpless to retort in any other way, yet in uncontrollablerecklessness, she exclaimed, "They never shall see me hang, then!" andswallowed the arsenic she had concealed in her bosom.
That night she died in awful torments.
* * * * *
The venerable Chancellor, lying in the hotel near the whipping-postcorner, watched by the released Mrs. Hudson, who must to-morrow departfrom the state forever, heard that night voices on the square, saying:
"Patty Cannon's dead. They say she's took poison."
A mighty pain seized the Chancellor's heart, and the loud groans he madecalled a stranger into the room.
"Is that dreadful woman dead?" sighed the Chancellor.
"Yes; she will never plague Delaware again, marster."
"God be thanked!" the old man groaned. "Justice and murder are kin nomore."
They said he died that instant of heart disease.
The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times Page 46