The Wigwam and the Cabin. By the Author of "The Yemassee," "Guy Rivers," &c. Second Series:
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Simms, William Gilmore, 1806-1870.
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(title page) The Wigwam and the Cabin. By the Author of "The Yemassee," "Guy Rivers," &c. Second Series
William Gilmore Simms
[v], 238 p.
New York:
Wiley and Putnam, 161 Broadway.
1845.
Call number PS2848 .W4 1845a (Rare Book Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
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Page i
THE
WIGWAM AND THE CABIN.
BY THE AUTHOR OF
"THE YEMASSEE," "GUY RIVERS," &c.
"The ancient tales
Which first I learn'd,
Will I relate."
SECOND SERIES.
NEW YORK:
WILEY AND PUTNAM, 161 BROADWAY.
1845.
Page ii
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1845, by
W. GILMORE SIMMS,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern
District of New-York.
R CRAIGHEAD'S Power Press,
112 Fulton Street.
T. B. SMITH, Stereotyper,
216 William Street.
Page iii
ADVERTISEMENT.
I HAVE but a single word to deliver in regard to this little volume. I am conscious--in one at least of the stories in the ensuing collection,--that entitled "Caloya, or the Loves of the Driver,"--of a certain Flemish freedom of touch which, in the minds of very fastidious persons, may subject me to a certain degree of censure. The materials are coarse in character, delineating the negro slave in his moments of excess, and the Indian in his condition of deepest degradation. It has not been without a purpose that I have so designed it, since, I am free to believe that, I have succeeded in showing how happily Virtue can be seen to triumph even in the worst estates, and with what loveliness of aspect Purity can make her progress, like the Lady in Milton's Comus, even through the foul rabble of lewd spirits that hang about her path. I flatter myself that, in this little story, I have wrought out the most healthful and encouraging results of virtue, even from an atmosphere wholly vicious and impure; and that the Indian woman, Caloya, is, in moral respects, such a being as might serve for the model of the purest lady in the land.
Page v
CONTENTS.
- THE GIANT'S COFFIN; OR, THE FEUD OF HOLT AND HOUSTON . . . . . 1
- SERGEANT BARNACLE; OR, THE RAFTSMAN OF THE EDISTO . . . . . 44
- THOSE OLD LUNES! OR, WHICH IS THE MADMAN? . . . . . 79
- THE LAZY CROW. A STORY OF THE CORNFIELD . . . . . 99
- CALOYA; OR, THE LOVES OF THE DRIVER . . . . . 127
- LUCAS DE AYLLON . . . . . 196
Page 1
THE WIGWAM AND THE CABIN.
THE GIANT'S COFFIN,
OR THE FEUD OF HOLT AND HOUSTON.
A TALE OF REEDY RIVER.
CHAPTER I.
IN 1766, the beautiful district of Greenville, in South Carolina,--which is said to have had its name in consequence of the verdant aspect which it bore in European eyes,--received its first white settlers from Virginia and Pennsylvania. Among these early colonists were the families of Holt and Houston,--represented by two fearless borderers, famous in their day as Indian hunters;--men ready with the tomahawk and rifle, but not less distinguished, perhaps, for the great attachment which existed between them. Long intercourse in trying periods--the habit of referring to each other in moments of peril--constant adventures in company--not to speak of similar tastes and sympathies in numerous other respects, had created between them a degree of affection, which it would be difficult, perhaps, to find among persons of more mild and gentle habits. Each had his family--his wife and little ones--and, traversing the mountain paths which lie between Virginia and the Carolinas, they came in safety to the more southern of the last-named colonies. Charmed with the appearance of the country, they squatted down upon the borders of Reedy River, not very far from the spot now occupied by the pleasant town of Greenville. Family division, for the present, there was none. Congeniality of tastes, the isolation of their
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abodes, the necessity of concentration against the neighbouring Indian nation of Cherokees, kept them together; and, continuing the life of the hunter, rather than that of the farmer, John Holt and Arthur Houston pursued the track of bear, deer, and turkey, as before, with a keenness of zest which, possibly, derived its impulse quite as much from attachment to one another, as from any great fondness for the pursuit itself.
Meanwhile, their families, taking fast hold upon the soil, began to flourish together after a fashion of their own. Flourish they did, for the boys thrived, and the girls grew apace. But tradition has preserved some qualifying circumstances in this history, by which it would seem that their prosperity was not entirely without alloy. The sympathies between Mesdames Holt and Houston were not, it appears, quite so warm and active as those which distinguished the intercourse of their respective husbands. Civil enough to one another in the presence of the latter, they were not unfrequently at "dagger-draw" in their absence. The husbands were not altogether ignorant of this condition of things at home, but they had their remedy; and there is little doubt that, like some other famous sportsmen of my acquaintance, they became happy hunters only when there was no longer any hope that they could become happy husbands. Now, as quarrels most commonly owe their spirit and excellence to the presence of spectators, we may assume that some portion of the virulence of our two wives underwent diminution from the absence of those before whom it might hope to display itself with appropriate eloquence; and the wrath of the dames, only exhibited before their respective children, was very apt to exhale in clouds, and slight flashes, and an under-current of distant thunder. Unhappily, however, the evil had consequences of which the weak mothers little thought, and the feud was entailed to the children, who, instead of assimilating, with childish propensities, in childish sports, took up the cudgels of their parents, and under fewer of the restraints,--arising from prudence, and the recognition of mutual necessities,--by which the dames were kept from extreme issues, they played the aforesaid cudgels about their mutual heads, with a degree of earnestness that very frequently rendered necessary the interposition of their superiors.
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The miserable evil of this family feud fell most heavily upon the natures of the two eldest boys, one a Holt, the other a Houston,--spoiling their childish tempers, impressing their souls with fearful passions, and embittering their whole intercourse.
At this period young Houston has reached the age of fourteen, and Holt of twelve years of age. The former was a tall, slender, and very handsome youth; the latter was short, thickset, and of rather plain, unpromising appearance. But he was modest, gentle, and subdued in temper, and rather retiring and shy. The former, on the contrary, was bold, vain, and violent--the petted boy of his mother, insolent in his demands, and reckless in his resentments--a fellow of unbending will, and of unmeasured impulses. He had already gone forth as a hunter with his father; he had proved his strength and courage; and he longed for an opportunity to exercise his youthful muscle upon his young companion, with whom, hitherto,--he himself could not say how or why--his collisions had fallen short of the extremities of personal violence. For such an encounter the soul of young Houston yearned; he knew that Holt was not wanting in strength--he had felt that in their plays together; but he did not doubt that his own strength, regularly put forth, was greatly superior.
One day the boys had gone down together to the banks of Reedy River to bathe. There they met a deformed boy of the neighbourhood, whose name was Acker. In addition to his deformity, the boy was an epileptic, and such was his nervous sensibility, that, merely to point a finger at him in mischief, was apt to produce in him the most painful sensations. Sometimes, indeed, the pranks of his playmates, carried too far, had thrown him into convulsions. This unhappy lad had but just recovered from a sickness produced by some such practices, and this fact was well known to the boys. Disregarding it, however, John Houston proceeded to amuse himself with the poor boy. Holt, however, interposed, and remonstrated with his companion, but without effect. Houston persisted, until, fairly tired of the sport, he left the diseased boy in a dreadful condition of dreadful excitement and bodily exhaustion. This done, he proceeded to bathe.
Meanwhile, with that sort of cunning and vindictiveness which often distinguishes the impaired intellect of persons subject to
Page 4
such infirmities, the epileptic boy watched his opportunity, and stole down, unobserved, to the river's edge, among the rocks, where the boys had placed their clothes. There he remained in waiting, and when John Houston appeared to dress himself, and was stooping down for his garments, the epileptic threw himself violently upon him, bore him to the ground, and, grasping a heavy rock, would have beaten out the brains of the offending lad, but for the timely assistance of Arthur Holt, who drew off the assailant, deprived him of his weapon, and gave his comrade a chance to recover, and place himself in a situation to defend himself.
But Acker, the epileptic boy, was no longer in a condition to justify the hostility of any enemy. His fit of frenzy had been succeeded by one of weeping, and, prostrate upon the ground, he lay convulsed under most violent nervous agitation. While he remained in this state, John Houston, who had now partially dressed himself, furious with rage at the indignity he had suffered, and the danger he had escaped, prepared to revenge himself upon him for this last offence; and, but for Arthur Holt, would, no doubt, have subjected the miserable victim to a severe beating. But the manly nature of Arthur resented and resisted this brutality. He stood between the victim and his persecutor.
"You shall not beat him, John--it was your own fault. You begun it."
"I will beat you then," was the reply.
"No! you shall not beat me, either."
"Ha! Take that!"
The blow followed on the instant. A first blow, and in the eye, too, is very apt to conclude an ordinary battle. But this was to be no ordinary battle. Our young hero was stunned by the blow;--the fire flashed from the injured eye;--but the unfairness of the proceeding awakened a courage which had its best sources in the moral nature of the boy; and, though thus taken at advantage, he closed in with his assailant, and, in this manner, lessened the odds at which he otherwise must have fought with one so much taller and longer in the arms than himself. In the fling that followed, John Houston was on his back. His conqueror suffered him to rise.
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"Let us fight no more, John," he said, on relaxing his hold; "I don't want to fight with you."
The answer, on the part of the other, was a renewal of the assault. Again was he thrown, and this time with a considerable increase of severity. He rose with pain. He felt his hurts. The place of battle was stony ground. Fragments of rock were at hand. Indignant and mortified at the result of the second struggle--aiming only at vengeance--the furious boy snatched up one of these fragments, and once more rushed upon his companion. But this time he was restrained by a third party--no less than his own father--who, unobserved, had emerged from the neighbouring thicket, and, unseen by the combatants, had witnessed the whole proceeding. The honourable nature of the old hunter recoiled at the conduct of his son. He suddenly took the lad by the collar, wrested the stone from him, and laying a heavy hickory rod some half dozen times over his shoulders, with no moderate emphasis, sent him home, burning with shame, and breathing nothing but revenge.
Page 6
CHAPTER II.
IN the space of five years after this event, the two fathers yielded their scalps to the Cherokees, and upon the young men, now stretching to manhood, devolved the task of providing for their families. The patriarchal sway was at an end, and, with it, all those restraining influences by which the external show of peace had been kept up. It was to be a household in common no longer. But a short time had elapsed, when a domestic storm of peculiar violence determined the dames to separate for ever; and, while the family of Holt, under the management of young Arthur, remained at the old settlement near Reedy River, the Houstons proceeded to Paris Mountain, some seven miles off,--in the neighbourhood of which may be found, at this day, some traces of their rude retreat. The settlement at Reedy River, meanwhile, had undergone increase. New families had arrived, and the first foundations were probably then laid of the flourishing village which now borders the same lovely stream. The sons grew up, but not after the fashion of their fathers. In one respect only did John Houston resemble his parent--he was a hunter. Arthur Holt, on the other hand, settled down into a methodical, hard-working farmer, who, clinging to his family fireside, made it cheerful, and diffused the happiest influences around it. He grew up strong rather than handsome, good rather than conspicuous; and, under his persevering industry and steady habits, his mother's family, now his own, reached a condition of comfort before unknown. The family of young Houston, by which we mean his mother, sister, and a younger brother, did not flourish in like degree. Yet Houston had already acquired great reputation as a hunter. In the woods he seemed literally to follow in his father's footsteps. He had his accomplishments also. He was certainly the handsomest youth in all the settlements; of a bold carriage, lofty port, free, open, expressive countenance, tall of person and graceful of movement.
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It was some qualification of these advantages that the morale of John Houston was already something more than questionable in the public opinion of the settlement. His tastes were vicious,--his indulgences in strong drink had more than once subjected him to humiliating exposures, but as yet they had produced caution rather than dislike among his associates. Among the women, however, they were not suspected to exist, or, if known or suspected, weighed very little against the graces of a fine person, a dashing, easy carriage, and a free "gift of the gab," which left him quite as unrivalled among the debaters as he was among the dancers.
Among the families settled down upon Reedy River, was that of Marcus Heywood, a Virginia cavalier, a fine hearty gentleman of the old school, polished and precise, who had seen better days, and was disposed very much to insist upon them. He brought with him into the little colony a degree of taste and refinement, of which, before his coming, the happy little neighbourhood knew nothing; but, unhappily for all parties, he survived too short a time after his arrival, to affect very favourably, or very materially, the sentiments and manners of those about him. He left his widow, a lady of fifty, and an only daughter of sixteen, to lament his loss. Mrs. Heywood was a good woman, an excellent housewife, a kind matron, and all that is exemplary at her time of life; but Leda Heywood, her daughter, was a paragon;--in such high terms is she described by still-worshiping tradition, and the story that comes down to us, seems, in some respects, to justify the warmth of its eulogium. At the period of her father's death, Leda was only sixteen; but she was tall, well-grown, and thoughtful beyond her years. The trying times in which she lived--frequent travel--the necessity of vigilance--the duties which naturally fall upon the young in new countries--conspired to bring out her character, and to hurry to maturity an intellect originally prompt and precocious. Necessity had forced thought into exercise, and she had become acute, observant, subdued in bearing, modest in reply, gentle, full of womanly solicitude, yet so calm in her deportment that, to the superficial observer, she wore an aspect,--quite false to the fact,--of great coldness and insensibility. Her tastes were excellent;
Page 8
she sang very sweetly--and when you add to the account of her merits, that she was really very lovely, a fair, blue-eyed, graceful creature,--you need not wonder that one day she became a heroine! A heroine! poor Leda! Bitterly, indeed, must she have wept, in after times, the evil fortune that doomed her to be a heroine!
But Leda was a belle before she became a heroine. This was, perhaps, the more unfortunate destiny of the two. She was the belle of Reedy River, called by hunter, and shepherd, and farmer, "the blue-eyed girl of Reedy River," to whom all paid an involuntary tribute, to whom all came as suitors, and, with the rest, who but our two acquaintances, John Houston and Arthur Holt. At first they themselves knew not that they were rivals, but the secret was one of that sort which very soon contrived to reveal itself. It was then that the ancient hate of John Houston revived, in all its fury. If Arthur Holt was not conscious of the same feelings exactly, he was yet conscious of an increased dislike of his old companion. With that forbearance which, whether the fruit of prudence or timidity, Arthur Holt had always been careful to maintain in his intercourse with his former associate, he now studiously kept aloof from him as much as possible. Not that this reserve and caution manifested itself in any unmanly weakness. On the contrary, no one could have appeared more composed, when they met, than Arthur Holt. It is true that, in the actual presence of Leda Heywood, he was rather more embarrassed than his rival. The reader will not need to be reminded that we have already described him as being naturally shy. This bashfulness showed badly in contrast with the deportment of John Houston. If the difference between the manner of the two young men, in approaching their mistress, was perceptible to herself and others, it was little likely to escape the eyes of one who, like John Houston, was rendered equally watchful both by hate and jealousy. But, unconscious of any bashfulness himself, he could not conceive the influence of this weakness in another. He committed the grievous error of ascribing the disquiet and nervous timidity of Arthur Holt to a very different origin; and fondly fancied that it a rose from a secret dread which the young man felt of his rival. We shall not say what degree
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of influence this notion might have had, in determining his own future conduct towards his rival.
Some months had passed away, since the death of Colonel Heywood, in this manner, and the crowd of suitors had gradually given way to the two to whom our own attention has been more particularly turned. Events, meanwhile, had been verging towards a very natural crisis; and the whisper, on all hands, determined that Leda Heywood was certainly engaged, and to John Houston. This whisper, as a matter of course, soon reached the ears of the man whom it was most likely to annoy.
Arthur Holt could not be said to hope, for, in truth, Leda Heywood had given him but little encouragement; still he was not willing to yield in despair, for, so far as he himself had observed, she had never given any encouragement to his rival. At all events, there was a way of settling the matter, which the stouthearted fellow determined to take at the earliest moment. He resolved to propose to Leda, a measure which he would sooner have adopted, but for a delicate scruple arising from the fact that he had made himself particularly useful to her mother, who, in her widowhood, and in straitened circumstances, was very glad to receive the help and friendly offices of the young farmer. These scruples yielded, however, to the strength of his feelings; and one evening he had already half finished his toilet with more than usual care, in order to the business of a formal declaration, when, to his own surprise and that of his family, John Houston abruptly entered the humble homestead. It was the first visit which he had paid since the separation of the two families, and Arthur saw at a glance that it had its particular object. After a few moments, in which the usual civilities were exchanged, John Houston, rising as he spoke, said abruptly to Arthur--
"You seem about to go out, and perhaps we may be walking in the same direction. If so, I can say what I have to say, while we're on the road together."
"I am about to go to see the Widow Heywood."
"Very good! our road lies the same way."
The tones of Houston were more than usually abrupt as he spoke, and there was a stern contracting of the brow, and a fierce flashing of the eye, while he looked upon the person he
Page 10
addressed, which did not escape the observation of Arthur, and excited the apprehensions of his mother. On some pretence, she drew her son into her chamber ere he went forth, and in few, but earnest words, insisted that John Houston meant harm.
"If you will go with him, Arthur, take this pistol of your father's in your bosom, and keep a sharp look-out upon him. Man never meant evil if John Houston does not mean it now."
We pass over her farther remonstrances. They made little impression upon Arthur, but, to quiet her, he put the weapon into his bosom--half ashamed--as he did so--of a concession that seemed to look like cowardice.
The two young men set out together, and the eyes of the anxious mother followed them as long as they were in sight. They took the common path, which led them down to the river, just below the falls. When they had reached the opposite shore, and before they had ascended the rocks by which it is lined, John Houston, who had led, turned suddenly upon his companion, and thus addressed him:
"Arthur Holt, you may wonder at my coming to see you today, for I very well know that there is no love lost between us. You like me as little as I like you. Nay, for that matter, I don't care how soon you hear it from my lips,--I hate you, and I shall always hate you! We were enemies while we were boys,--we are enemies now that we are men; and I suppose we shall be enemies as long as we live. Whether we are to fight upon it, is for you to say."
Here he paused and looked eagerly into the eyes of his companion. The latter regarded him steadily, but returned no answer. He evidently seemed to await some farther explanation of the purpose of one who had opened his business with an avowal so startling and ungracious. After a brief pause, Houston proceeded:
"The talk is that you're a-courting Leda Heywood--that you mean to offer yourself to her--and when I see how finely you've rigged yourself out for it to-night, I'm half inclined to believe you're foolish enough to be thinking of it. Arthur Holt, this must not be! You must have nothing to do with Leda Heywood."
He paused again--his eyes keenly searching those of his rival.
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The latter still met his glance with a quiet sort of determination, which betrayed nothing of the effect which the words of the other might have produced upon his mind. Houston was annoyed. Impatiently, again, he spoke, as follows:
"You hear me,--you hear what I say?"
"Yes, I hear you, John Houston."
"Well!--"
"Well!--you want my answer, I suppose? You shall have it! This it is. If you are a madman or a fool, that is no reason why I should not do as I please!"
The other was about to interrupt him,--but Holt persisted:
"Let me finish, John Houston. I heard you patiently--now, hear me! I am no fighting man, and as heaven is above us, I have no wish to quarrel; but I am ready to fight whenever I can't do better. As for being bullied by you, that is out of the question. I am not afraid of you, and never was, as you should have known before this, and as you may know whenever the notion suits you to try. I am now, this very moment, going to see Leda Heywood, and I mean to ask her hand."
"That you shall never do!" exclaimed the other, whose passions had been with difficulty kept down so long--"That, by the Eternal! you shall never do!"--and as he spoke, drawing a knife from his belt, he rushed upon Arthur Holt, with a promptness and fury that left the latter in no doubt of the bloody and desperate purposes of his foe. But the coolness of the young farmer was his safeguard in part, and to the weapon, so thoughtfully furnished him by his mother, he was indebted for the rest. He had kept a wary watch upon the movements of Houston's eye, and read in its glance the bloody purpose of his soul, the moment ere he struck. Retreating on one side, he was ready, when the latter turned a second time upon him, with his presented pistol.
"It is well for both of us, perhaps," said he, quietly, as he cocked and held up the weapon to the face of the approaching Houston, "that this pistol was put into my hands by one who knew you better than I did; or you might this moment have my blood upon your soul. Let us now part, John Houston. If you are bent to go from this to Widow Heywood's,--the path is open
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to you,--go! I will return home, and seek some other time, when there's no chance of our meeting; for I neither wish to kill you nor to be killed by you. Which will you do--go forward or return? Take your choice--I yield the path to you."
The fury of the baffled assassin may be imagined. It is not easy to describe it. But he was in no condition of mind to visit Leda Heywood, and, after exhausting himself in ineffectual threatenings, he dashed once more across the foaming torrents of Reedy River, leaving Arthur Holt free to pursue his way to the cottage of his mistress. This he did, with a composure which the whole exciting scene, through which he had passed, had entirely failed to disturb. Indeed, the events of this interview appeared to have the effect, only, of strengthening the resolve of the young farmer, for, to confess a truth, the good fellow was somewhat encouraged--by certain expressions which had dropped from Houston, in his fury,--to hope for a favourable answer to his suit. We may as well say, in this place, that the frenzy of the latter had been provoked by similar stories reaching his ears to those which had troubled Arthur.
When they separated, and Arthur Holt went forward to the cottage of Widow Heywood, it was with a new and most delightful hope awakened in his bosom.
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CHAPTER III.
BUT he was doomed to disappointment. He was rejected,--tenderly, but firmly. Leda Heywood was not for him; and resigning himself to the denial, with the instincts of a man by nature strong, and inured by trial to disappointments, Arthur Holt retired from the field of Love, to cultivate more certain fruits in those of Ceres and Pomona. Had the mind of the young farmer been morbidly affected, his mortification would have been heightened by subsequent events. Three days afterwards, Leda Heywood accepted the hand of his enemy, John Houston! Philosophers will continue to seek in vain for the cause of that strange perversity, by which the tastes, even of the finest women, are sometimes found to be governed. There is a mystery here beyond all solution. The tastes and sympathies of Leda Heywood and John Houston did not run together;--there was, in reality, no common ground, whether of the affections or of the sentiments, upon which they could meet. But he sought, and wooed, and won her;--they were married; and, to all but Arthur Holt, the wonder was at an end after the customary limits of the ninth day. The wonder, in this case, will be lessened to the reader if two or three things were remembered. Leda Heywood was very young, and John Houston very handsome. Of the wild passions of the latter she knew little or nothing. She found him popular--the favourite of the damsels around her, and this fact, alone, will account for the rest. But we must not digress in speculations of this nature. The parties were married, and the honeymoon, in all countries and climates, is proverbially rose-coloured. The only awkward thing is, that, in all countries, it is but a monthly moon.
The wedding took place. The honeymoon rose, but set somewhat earlier than usual. With the attainment of his object, the passion of John Houston very soon subsided, and we shall make a long story conveniently short by saying, in this place, that it was not many weeks before Leda Heywood (or as we must now
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call her,) Leda Houston, began to weep over the ill-judged precipitation with which she had joined herself to a man whose violent temper made no allowances for the feelings, the sensibilities, and tastes of others. No longer restrained by the dread of losing his object, his brutalities shocked her delicacy, while his fierce passions awoke her fears. She soon found herself neglected and abused, and learned to loathe the connection she had formed, and to weep bitter tears in secret. To all this evil may be added the pressure of poverty, which now began to be more seriously felt than ever. The hunter life, always uncertain, was still more so, in the case of one like John Houston, continually led into indulgences which unfitted him, sometimes for days together, to go into the woods. Carousing at the tavern with some congenial natures, he suffered himself to be little disturbed by home cares; and the privations to which his wife had been subjected even, before her marriage, were now considerably increased. It will be remembered that the Widow Heywood was indebted (perhaps even more than she then knew) to the generous care of Arthur Holt. Her resources from this quarter were necessarily withdrawn on the marriage of her daughter with Houston, not so much through any diminution of the young farmer's sympathy for the objects of his bounty, as from a desire to withdraw from any connexion or communion, direct or indirect, with the family of his bitterest foe. Knowing the fierce, unreasoning nature of Houston, he was unwilling to expose to his violence the innocent victims of his ill habits--a consequence which he very well knew would follow the discovery of any services secretly rendered them by Holt. But these scruples were soon compelled to give way to a sense of superior duty. It soon came to his knowledge that the unhappy women -- mother and daughter -- were frequently without food. John Houston, abandoned to vicious habits and associates, had almost entirely left his family to provide for themselves. He was sometimes absent for weeks--would return home, as it appeared, for no purpose but to vent upon his wife and mother-in-law the caprices of his ill-ordered moods, and then depart, leaving them hopeless of his aid. In this condition, the young farmer came again to their rescue. The larder was provided regularly and bountifully. But Leda knew not at first
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whence this kindly succor came. She might have suspected--nay, did suspect--but Arthur Holt proceeded so cautiously, that his supplies came to the house with the privity of Widow Heywood only.
To add to Leda's sorrows, two events now occurred within a few months of each other, and both in less than sixteen months after her marriage, which were calculated to increase her burthen, and to lessen, in some respect, her sources of consolation: the birth of a son and the death of her mother. These events drew to her the assistance of neighbours, but the most substantial help came from Arthur Holt. It was now scarcely possible to conceal from Leda, as he had hitherto done, his own direct agency in the support of her family. She was compelled to know it, and--which was still more mortifying to her spirit--conscious as she was of the past--she was compelled to receive it. Her husband's course was not materially improved by events which had so greatly increased the claims and the necessities of his wife. The child, for a time, appealed to his pride. It was a fine boy, who was supposed and said to resemble himself. This pleased him for a while, but did not long restrain him from indulgences, which, grateful to him from the first, had now acquired over him all the force of habit. He soon disappeared from his home, and again, for long and weary periods, left the poor Leda to all the cares and solitude, without the freedom, of widowhood.
But a circumstance was about to occur, which suddenly drew his attention to his home. Whether it was that some meddlesome neighbour informed him of the assistance which his wife derived from Arthur Holt, or that he himself had suddenly awakened to the inquiry as to the source of her supplies, we cannot say; but certain it is that the suspicions of his evil nature were aroused; and he who would not abandon his low and worthless associates for the sake of duty and love, was now prompted to do so by his hate. He returned secretly to the neighbourhood of his home, and put himself in a place of concealment.
The cottage of the Widow Heywood was within three quarters of a mile of Reedy River, on the opposite side of which stood the farm of Arthur Holt. This space the young farmer
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was accustomed nightly to cross, bearing with him the commodity, whether of flour, honey, milk, meat, or corn, which his benevolence prompted him to place on the threshold of his sad and suffering neighbour. There was a little grove of chestnut and other forest trees, that stood about two hundred yards from Leda's cottage. A part of this grove belonged to their dwelling; the rest was unenclosed. Through this grove ran one of the lines of fence which determined the domain of the cottage. On both sides of the fence, in the very centre of this thicket, there were steps, gradually rising, from within and without, to its top,--a mode of constructing a passage frequent in the country, which, having all the facilities of a gateway, was yet more permanent, and without its disadvantages. To this point came Arthur Holt nightly. On these steps he laid his tribute, whether of charity or a still lingering love, or both, and, retiring to the thicket, he waited, sometimes for more than an hour, until he caught a glimpse of the figure of Leda, descending through the grove, and possessing herself of the supply. This done, and she departed; the young farmer, sighing deeply, would turn away unseen, unsuspected, perhaps, and regain his own cottage.
On these occasions the two never met. The Widow Heywood, on her deathbed, had confided to her daughter the secret of her own interviews with Arthur, and he, to spare himself as well as Leda, the pain of meeting, had appointed his own and her hour of coming, differently. Whether she, at any time, suspected his propinquity, cannot be conjectured. That she was touched to the heart by his devotion, cannot well be questioned.
For five weary nights did the malignant and suspicious eyes of John Houston, from a contiguous thicket, watch these proceedings with feelings of equal hate and mortification. Filled with the most foul and loathsome anticipations--burning to find victims--to detect, expose, destroy--he beheld only a spectacle which increased his mortification. He beheld innocence superior to misfortune--love that did not take advantage of its power--a benevolence that rebuked his own worthlessness and hardness of heart--a purity on the part of both the objects of his jealousy, which mocked his comprehension, as it was so entirely above any capacity of his own, whether of mind or heart, to appreciate.
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It was now the fifth night of his watch. He began to despair of his object. He had seen nothing to give the least confirmation to his suspicions. His wife had appeared only as she was, as pure as an angel;--his ancient enemy not less so. He was furious that he could find no good cause of fury, and weary of a watch which was so much at variance with his habits. He determined that night to end it. With the night, and at the usual hour, came the unfailing Arthur. He placed his bowl of milk upon the steps, his sack of meal, a small vessel of butter, and a neat little basket of apples. For a moment he lingered by the fence, then slipping back, adroitly ensconced himself in a neighbouring thicket, from whence he could see every movement of the fair sufferer by whom they were withdrawn. This last movement of the young farmer had not been unseen by the guilty husband. Indeed, it was this part of the proceeding which, more than any thing beside, had forced upon him the conviction that the parties did not meet. She came, and she, too, lingered by the steps, before she proceeded to remove the provisions. Deep was the sigh that escaped her--deeper than usual were her emotions. She sank upon one of the steps--she clasped her hands convulsively--her lips moved--she was evidently breathing a spontaneous prayer to heaven, at the close of which she wept bitterly, the deep sobs seeming to burst from a heart that felt itself relieved by this mournful power of expression.
Was it the echo of her own sighs--her sobs--that came to her from the thicket? She started, and with wild eye gazing around her, proceeded with all haste to gather up her little stores. But in this she was prevented. The answering sigh, the sob,--coming from the lips of his hated rival and ancient enemy, had gone, hissingly, as it were, into the very brain of John Houston. He darted from his place of concealment, dashed the provisions from the hands of his wife, and, with a single blow, smote her to the earth, while he cried out to Holt in the opposite thicket, some incoherent language of insults and opprobrium. The movement of the latter was quite as prompt, though not in season to prevent the unmanly blow. He sprang forward, and, grasping the offender about the body, lifted him with powerful effort from the earth, upon which he was about to hurl him again with all the
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fury of indignant manhood, when Leda leapt to her feet, and interposed. At the sound of her voice, the very tones of which declared her wish, Arthur released his enemy, but with no easy effort. The latter, regaining his feet, and recovering in some degree his composure, turned to his wife and commanded her absence.
"I cannot go--I will not--while there is a prospect of bloodshed," was her firm reply.
"What! you would see it, would you? Doubtless, the sight of my blood would delight your eyes! But hope not for it!--Arthur Holt, are you for ever to cross my path, and with impunity? Shall there never be a settlement between us? Is the day of reckoning never to come? Speak! Shall we fight it out here, in the presence of this woman, or go elsewhere, where there will be no tell-tale witnesses? Will you follow me?"
"Go not,--follow him not,--Arthur Holt. Go to your home! I thank you, I bless you for what you have done for me and mine;--for the mother who looks on us from heaven,--for the child that still looks to me on earth. May God bless you for your charity and goodness! Go now, Arthur Holt--go to your own home--and look not again upon mine. Once more, God's blessings be upon you! May you never want them."
There was a warmth, an earnestness, almost a violence in the tone and manner of this adjuration, so new to the usually meek and calm deportment of his wife, that seemed, on a sudden, to confound the brutal husband. He turned on her a vacant look of astonishment. He was very far from looking for such boldness--such audacity--in that quarter. But his forbearance was not of long duration, and he was already beginning a fierce and almost frenzied repetition of his blasphemies, when the subdued, but firm answer of Arthur Holt again diverted his attention. The good sense of the young farmer made him at once sensible of the danger to the unhappy woman of using any language calculated to provoke the always too prompt brutality of the husband, and, stifling his own indignation with all his strength, he calmly promised compliance with her requisitions.
"There are many reasons," he added, "why there should be no strife between John Houston and myself; we were boys together,
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our fathers loved one another; we have slept in the same bed."
"That shall not be your excuse, Arthur Holt," exclaimed the other, interrupting him; "you shall not escape me by any such pretences. My father's name shall not shelter your cowardice."
"Cowardice!"
"Ay, cowardice! cowardice! What are you but an unmanly coward!"
There was a deep, but quiet struggle, in the breast of Arthur, to keep down the rising devil in his mood; but he succeeded, and turning away, he contented himself with saying simply:
"You know that I am no coward, John Houston--nobody better than yourself. You will take good heed how you approach such cowardice as mine."
"Do you dare me!"
"Yes!"
"No! no!" cried the wife, again flinging herself between them. Away, Arthur Holt, why will you remain when you see what I am doomed to suffer?"
"I go, Leda, but I dread to leave you in such hands. God have you in his holy keeping!"
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CHAPTER IV.
WE pass over a period of eighteen months. In this time John Houston had sold out the little cottage near Reedy River, and had removed his wife to the residence of his mother near Paris Mountain. Why he had not adopted this measure on the demise of Widow Heywood is matter of conjecture only. His own mother was now dead, and it was the opinion of those around, that it was only after this latter event that he could venture upon a step which might seem to divide the sceptre of household authority--a point about which despotical old ladies are apt to be very jealous. His household was as badly provided for as ever, but some good angel, whose presence might have been suspected, still watched over the wants of the suffering wife, and the hollow of an ancient chestnut now received the stores which we have formerly seen placed upon the rude blocks near the thicket fence in Greenville. Whether John Houston still suspected the interference of his hated playmate we cannot say. The prudent caution of the latter availed so that they did not often meet, and never under circumstances which could justify a quarrel. But events were ripening which were to bring them unavoidably into collision. We are now in the midst of the year 1776. The strife had already begun, of Whig and Tory, in the upper part of South Carolina. It happened-some time in 1774 that the afterwards notorious Moses Kirkland stopped one night at the dwelling of John Houston. This man was already busy in stirring up disaffection to the popular party of the State. He was a man of loose, vicious habits, and irregular propensities. He and John Houston were kindred spirits; and the hunter was soon enlisted under his banners. He was out with Kirkland in the campaign of 1775, when the Tories were dispersed and put down by the decisive measures of General Williamson and William Henry Drayton. It so happened that Arthur Holt made his appearance in the field, also for the first time, in the army of Williamson.
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The two knew that they were now opponents as they had long been enemies. But they did not meet. The designs of Kirkland were baffled, his troops dispersed, and the country settled down into a condition of seeming quiet. But it was a seeming quiet only. The old wounds festered, and when, in 1780, the metropolis of the State fell into the hands of the British, yielding to captivity nearly the whole of its military power, the Tories resumed their arms and impulses with a fury which long forbearance had heightened into perfect madness. Upon the long and melancholy history of that savage warfare which followed, we need not dwell. The story is already sufficiently well known. It is enough to say that John Houston distinguished himself by his cruelties. Arthur Holt threw by the plough, and was one of Butler's men for a season. With the decline of British power in the lower, the ascendancy in the upper country finally passed over to the Whigs. Both parties were now broken up into little squads of from ten to fifty persons;--the Tories, the better to avoid pursuit, the Whigs, the better to compass them in all their hiding-places.
It was a cold and cheerless evening in the month of November that Arthur Holt, armed to the teeth, stopped for the night, with a party of eleven men, at a cottage about fourteen miles from his own dwelling on the banks of Reedy River.
An hour had not well elapsed, before Arthur Holt found some one jerking at his shoulder. He opened his eyes and recognised the epileptic of whom mention was made in the early part of our narrative. Acker was still an epileptic, and still, to all appearance, a boy;--he was small, decrepit, pale, and still liable to the shocking disease, the effects of which were apparent equally in his withered face and shrivelled person. But he was not without intelligence, and his memory was singularly tenacious of benefits and injuries. Eagerly challenging the attention of Arthur Holt, he proceeded to tell him that John Houston had only two hours before been seen with a party of seven, on his way to the farm at Paris Mountain, where, at that very moment, he might in all probability be found. By this time the troopers, accustomed to sudden rousings, were awake and in possession of the intelligence. It was greedily listened to by all but Arthur Holt. John Houston
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was particularly odious in his own neighbourhood. Several of the inhabitants had fallen victims to his brutality and hate. To take him, living or dead,--to feed the vengeance for which they thirsted,--was at once the passion of the party. It was with some surprise that they found their leader apathetic and disposed to fling doubt upon the information.
"I know not how you could have seen John Houston, Peter Acker, with seven men, when we left him behind us, going below, and crossing at Daniel's Ford on the Ennoree, only two days ago."
"'Twas him I seed, Captain, and no other. Don't you think I knows John Houston? Oughtn't I to know him? Wasn't it he that used to beat me, and duck me in the water? I knows him. 'Twas John Houston, I tell you, and no other person."
"You are mistaken, Peter--you must be mistaken. No horse could have brought him from the Ennoree so soon."
"He's on his own horse, the great bay. 'Tis John Houston, and you must catch him and hang him."
One of the party, a spirited young man, named Fletchall, now said:
"Whether it's Houston and his men or not, Captain Holt, we should see who the fellows are. Acker ought to know Houston, and though we heard of him on the Ennoree, we may have heard wrong. It's my notion that Acker is right; and every man of Reedy River, that claims to be a man, ought to see to it."
There was a sting in this speech that made it tell. They did not understand the delicacy of their Captain's situation, nor could he explain it. He could only sigh and submit. Buckling on his armour, he obeyed the necessity, and his eager troop was soon in motion for the cottage of Houston at Paris Mountain. There, two hours before, John Houston had arrived. He had separated from his companions. It was not affection for his wife that brought Houston to his home. On the contrary, his salutation was that of scorn and suspicion. He seemed to have returned, brooding on some dark imagination or project. When his wife brought his child, and put him on his knees, saying with a mournful look of reproach, "You do not even ask for your son!" the reply, betraying the foulest of fancies--"How know I that he is!" showed
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too plainly the character of the demon that was struggling in his soul. The miserable woman shrunk back in horror, while his eyes, lightened by a cold malignant smile, pursued her as if in mockery. When she placed before him a little bread and meat, he repulsed it, exclaiming: "Would you have me fed by your Arthur?" And when she meekly replied by an assurance that the food did not come from him, his answer, "Ay, but I am not so sure of the sauce!" indicated a doubt so horrible, that the poor woman rushed from the apartment with every feeling and fibre of her frame convulsed. Without a purpose, except to escape from suspicions by which she was tortured, she had turned the corner of the enclosure, hurrying, it would seem, to a little thicket, where her sorrows would be unseen, when she suddenly encountered Arthur Holt, with a cocked pistol in his grasp. The troopers had dismounted and left their horses in the woods. They were approaching the house cautiously, on foot, and from different quarters. The object was to effect a surprise of the Tory;--since, armed and desperate, any other more open mode of approach might, even if successful, endanger valuable life. The plan had been devised by Arthur. He had taken to himself that route which brought him first to the cottage. His object was explained in the few first words with Leda Houston.
"Arthur Holt!--you here!" was her exclamation, as she started at his approach.
"Ay; and your husband is here!"
"No, no!" was the prompt reply.
"Nay, deny not! I would save him--away! let him fly at once. We shall soon be upon him!"
A mute but expressive look of gratitude rewarded him, while, forgetting the recent indignities to which she had been subjected, Leda hurried back to the cottage and put Houston in possession of the facts. He started to his feet, put the child from his knee, though still keeping his hand upon its shoulder, and glaring upon her with eyes of equal jealousy and rage, he exclaimed--
"Woman! you have brought my enemy upon me!"
To this charge the high-souled woman made no answer, but her form became more erect, and her check grew paler, while her exquisitely chiselled lips were compressed with the effort to
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keep down her stifling indignation. She approached him as if to relieve him of the child; but he repulsed her, and grasping the little fellow firmly in his hands, with no tenderness of hold, he lifted him to his shoulder, exclaiming--
"No! he shares my danger! he goes with me. He is at least your child--he shall protect me from your--"
The sentence was left unfinished as he darted through the door! With a mother's scream she bounded after him, as he took his way to the edge of the little coppice in which his horse was fastened. The agony of a mother's soul lent wings to her feet. She reached him ere he could undo the fastenings of his horse, and, seizing him by his arm, arrested his progress.
"What!" he exclaimed; "you would seize--you would deliver me!"
"My child! my child!" was her only answer, as she clung to his arm, and endeavoured to tear the infant from his grasp.
"He goes with me! He shall protect me from the shot!"
"You will not, cannot risk his precious life."
"Do I not risk mine?"
"My son--your son!"
"Were I sure of that!"
"God of heaven! help me! Save him! save him!"
But there was no time for parley. A pistol-shot was fired from the opposite quarter of the house, whether by accident, or for the purpose of alarm, is not known, but it prompted the instant movement of the ruffian, who, in order to extricate himself from the grasp of his wife, smote her to the earth, and in the midst of the child's screams hurried forward with his prize. To reach the coppice, to draw forth and mount his horse, was the work of an instant only. The life of the hunter and the partisan had made him expert enough in such performances. Mounted on a splendid bay, of the largest size and greatest speed, he lingered but a moment in sight, the child conspicuously elevated in his grasp, its head raised above his left shoulder, while one of its little arms might be seen stretching towards his mother, now rising from the earth. At this instant Arthur Holt made his appearance. From the wood, where he had remained as long as he might, he had beheld the brutal action of his enemy. It was the
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second time that he had witnessed such a deed, and his hand now convulsively grasped and cocked his pistol, as he rushed forward to revenge it. But the unhappy woman rose in time to prevent him. Her extended arms were thrown across his path. He raised the deadly weapon above them.
"Would you shoot! oh, my God! would you shoot! Do you not see my child! my child!"
The action of Arthur was suspended at the mother's words; and, lifting the child aloft with a powerful arm, as if in triumph and defiance, the brutal father, putting spurs to his horse, went off at full speed. A single bound enabled the noble animal to clear the enclosure, and, appearing but a single moment upon the hillside, the mother had one more glimpse of her child, whose screams, in another moment, were drowned in the clatter of the horse's feet. She sunk to the ground at the foot of Arthur, as his comrades leapt over the surrounding fence.
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CHAPTER V.
PURSUIT under present circumstances was pretty much out of the question--yet Arthur Holt determined upon it. John Houston was mounted upon one of the most famous horses of the country. He had enjoyed a rest of a couple of hours before the troopers came upon him. The steeds of the latter, at all times inferior, were jaded with the day's journey. Any attempt at direct pursuit would, therefore, in all probability, only end in driving the Tory out of the neighbourhood, thus increasing the chances of his final escape. This was by no means the object of the party, and when Arthur ordered the pursuit, some of his men remonstrated by showing, or endeavouring to show, that such must be the effect of it. Arthur Holt, however, had his own objects. But his commands were resisted by no less a person than Leda herself.
"Do not pursue, Arthur, for my sake, do not pursue. My child!--he will slay my child if you press him hard. He is desperate. You know him not. Press him not, for my sake,--for the child's sake,--but let him go free."
The entreaty, urged strenuously and with all those tears and prayers which can only flow from a mother's heart, was effectual--at least to prevent that direct pursuit which Arthur had meditated. But, though his companions favoured the prayers of the wife and mother, they were very far from being disposed to let the Tory go free. On the contrary, when, a little after, they drew aside to the copse for the purpose of farther consultation, Arthur Holt found, to his chagrin, that his course with regard to Houston was certainly suspected. His comrades assumed a decision in the matter which seemed to take the business out of his hands. Young Fletchall did not scruple to say, that he was not satisfied with the spirit which Arthur had shown in the pursuit; and the hints conveyed by more than one, in the course of the discussion, were of such a nature, that the mortified Arthur
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threw up his command; a proceeding which seemed to occasion no regret or dissatisfaction. Fletchall was immediately invested with it, and proceeded to exercise it with a degree of acuteness and vigour which soon satisfied the party of his peculiar fitness for its duties. His plan was simple but comprehensive. He said: "We cannot press the pursuit, or we drive him off; but we can so fix it as to keep him where he is. If we do not press him, he will keep in the woods, near abouts, till he can find some chance of getting the child to the mother again. There's no doubt an understanding between them. She knows where to find him in the woods, or he'll come back at night to the farm. We must put somebody to watch over all her movements. Who will that be?"
The question was answered by the epileptic, Acker, who, unasked, had hung upon the skirts of the party.
"I will watch her!"
"You!"
"Yes! I'm as good a one as you can get."
"Very well! but suppose you have one of your fits, Acker!"
"I won't have one now for two weeks. My time's over for this month."
"Well, in two weeks, I trust, his time will be over too. We will get some twenty more fellows and make a ring round him. That's my plan. Don't press, for I wouldn't have him hurt the child; but mark him when he aims to pass the ring."
The plan thus agreed on, with numerous details which need not be given here, was immediately entered upon by all parties. Arthur Holt alone took no share in the adventure. The design was resolved upon even without his privity, though the general object could not be concealed from his knowledge. On throwing up his commission he had withdrawn from his comrades, under a show of mortification, which was regarded as sufficiently natural by those around him to justify such a course. He returned to his farm on Reedy River, but he was no indifferent or inactive spectator of events.
Meanwhile, John Houston had found a temporary retreat some six miles distant from the dwelling of his wife. It was a spot seemingly impervious, in the density of its woods, to the steps of
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man. A small natural cavity in a hillside had been artificially deepened, in all probability, by the bear, who had left it as a heritage to the hunter to whom he had yielded up his cars. The retreat was known to the hunter only. He had added, from time to time, certain little improvements of his own. Cells were opened on one side, and then the other. These were strewn with dried leaves and rushes, and, at the remote inner extremity, a fourth hollow had been prepared so as to admit of fire, the smoke finding its way through a small and simple opening at the top. All around this rude retreat the woods were dense, the hunter being at particular pains to preserve it as a place of secrecy and concealment. Its approach was circuitous, and the very entrance upon it, one of those happy discoveries, by which nature is made to accomplish the subtlest purposes of art. Two gigantic shafts, shooting out from the same root, had run up in diverging but parallel lines, leaving between them an opening through which, at a moderate bound, a steed might make his way. On each side of this mighty tree the herbage crowded closely; the tree itself seemed to close the passage, and behind it care was taken, by freely scattering brush and leaves, to remove any traces of horse or human footsteps. In this place John Houston found refuge. To this place, in the dead of night, the unhappy Leda found her way. How she knew of the spot may be conjectured only. But, prompted by a mother's love and a mother's fears, she did not shrink from the task of exploring the dreary forest alone. Here she found her miserable husband, and was once more permitted to clasp her infant to her bosom. The little fellow slept soundly upon the rushes, in one of the recesses of the cave. The father sat at the entrance, keeping watch over him. His stern eye looked upon the embrace of mother and child with a keen and painful interest; and when the child, awakened out of sleep, shrieking with joy, clung to the neck of the mother, sobbing her name with a convulsive delight, he turned from the spectacle with a single sentence, muttered through his closed teeth, by which we may see what his meditations had been--"Had the brat but called me father!" The words were unheard by the mother, too full of joy to be conscious of any thing but her child and her child's recovery.
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When, however, before the dawn of day, she proposed to leave him and take the child with her, she was confounded to meet with denial.
"No!" said the brutal father. "He remains with me. If he is my child, he shall remain as my security and yours. Hear me, woman! Your ruffians have not pursued me; your Arthur Holt knows better than to press upon me; but I know their aims. They have covered the outlets. They would make my captivity secure. I wish but three days; in that time, Cunningham will give them employment, and I shall walk over them as I please. But, during that time, I shall want food for myself and horse--perhaps you will think there is some necessity for bringing food to the child. I do not object to that. Bring it then yourself, nightly, and remember, the first show of treachery seals his fate!"
He pointed to the child as he spoke.
"Great God!" she exclaimed. "Are you a man, John Houston! Will you keep the infant from me!"
"Ay!--you should thank heaven that I do not keep you from him also. But away! Bring the provisions! Be faithful, and you shall have the child. But, remember! if I am entrapped, he dies!"
We pass over the horror of the mother. At the dawn of day, as she was hurrying, but not unseen, along the banks of Reedy River, she was encountered by Arthur Holt.
"I went to your house at midnight, Leda, to put you on your guard," was the salutation of the farmer. "I know where you have been, and can guess what duty is before you. I must also tell you its danger."
He proceeded to explain to her the watch that was put upon her movements, and the cordon militaire by which her husband was surrounded.
"What am I to do!" was her exclamation, as, wringing her hands, the tears for the first time flowed freely from her eyes.
"I will tell you! Go not back to your cottage, till you can procure the child. Go now to the stone heap on the river bank below, which they call the 'Giant's Coffin.' There, in an hour from now, I will bring you a basket of provisions. The place
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is very secret, and before it is found out that you go there, you will have got the child. Nightly, I will fill the basket in the same place, which, at the dawn, you can procure. Go now, before we are seen, and God be with you!"
They separated--the young farmer for his home, and Leda for the gloomy vault which popular tradition had dignified with the title of the "Giant's Coffin." This was an Indian giant, by the way, whose exploits, in the erection of Table Mountain, for gymnastic purposes, would put to shame the inferior feats of the devil, under direction of Merlin or Michael Scott. But we have no space in this chapter for such descriptions. Enough if we give some idea of the sort of coffin and the place of burial which the giant selected for himself, when he could play his mountain pranks no longer. The coffin was a vaulted chamber of stone, lying at the river's edge, and liable to be overflowed in seasons of freshet. It took its name from its shape. Its area was an oblong square, something more than twelve feet in length, and something less than five in breadth. Its depth at the upper end was about six feet, but it sloped gradually down, until, at the bottom, the ends lay almost even with the surrounding rocks. The inner sides were tolerably smooth and upright--the outer presented the appearance of huge boulders, in no way differing from the ordinary shape and externals of such detached masses. The separate parts had evidently, at one period, been united. Some convulsion of nature had fractured the mass, and left the parts in a position so relative, that tradition might well be permitted to assume the labours of art in an achievement which was really that of nature alone. To complete the fancied resemblance of this chamber to a coffin, it had a lid; a thin layer of stone, detached from the rest, which, as the earth around it had been loosened and washed away by the rains, had gradually slid down from the heights above, and now in part rested upon the upper end of the vault. The boys at play, uniting their strength, had succeeded in forcing it down a foot or more, so that it now covered, securely from the weather, some four or five feet of the "Giant's Coffin." It was at this natural chamber that Arthur Holt had counselled Leda Houston to remain, until he could bring the promised supply of provisions. This he did,
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punctually, at the time appointed, and continued to do until it ceased to be necessary; to this spot did the wretched wife and mother repair before dawn of every morning, bearing her burden with all the uncomplaining meekness of a broken heart. We must suppose, in the meantime, that the cordon has been drawn around the tract of country in which it was known that Houston harboured. The news was spread, at the same time, that an attack might be expected from Bloody Bill Cunningham, or some of his men; and the consequence was, that the country was every where in arms and vigilant. A feeling of pity for Leda Houston, who was generally beloved, alone prevented the more daring young men from pressing upon the fugitive, hunting him, with dog and fire, and bringing the adventure to a fierce and final issue. Meanwhile, the epileptic, Acker, was active in the business which he had undertaken. He was partially successful--but of his proceedings we must speak at another moment.
The situation of Leda Houston was in no ways improved by the diligence, the patience, the devotion which she displayed in her servitude. She did not seem to make any progress in subduing the inexorable nature of her husband. She was permitted to be with and to feed her child; to clasp him to her bosom when she slept, and to watch over his sleep with that mixed feeling of hope and fear, which none but a mother knows. But these were all her privileges. The brutal father, still insinuating base and unworthy suspicions, declared that the child should remain, a pledge of her fidelity, and a partial guaranty for his own safety.
Four days had now elapsed in this manner. On the morning of the fifth, at a somewhat later hour than usual, she re-appeared with her basket, and, having set down her stores, proceeded to tell her husband of the arrival of a certain squad of troopers, "Butler's men," known for the fierce hostility with which they hunted the men of "Cunningham." The tidings gave him some concern. He saw in it the signs of a dogged determination of the neighbourhood to secure him at all hazards; since, from what he knew of the present condition of the war, these men could be required in that quarter only for some such purpose.
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They were wanted elsewhere. "Did you see them?" was the question, which she answered in the negative. "Who told you then of their arrival?" She was silent! Her countenance underwent a change. "Woman! you have spoken with Holt! These are his provisions!" With a blow of his foot he struck the basket from her hand, and, in his fury, trampled upon the scattered stores. It was with difficulty that the unhappy woman gathered up enough to pacify the hunger of the child. That day was passed in sullen and ferocious silence on his part--on hers in mute caresses of her boy. His darker suspicions were in full force, and darker thoughts came with them. "Could I but know!" he muttered. "The child has my mouth and nose; but the forehead, the hair, the eyes,--are his!" Convulsed with terrible fancies, the miserable man hurried to the entrance of the cavern, and throwing himself upon the earth, leaned back, and looked up through the leafy openings at the bits of sky that were suffered to appear above. In this gloomy mood and posture, hours passed by as moments. It was midnight. A change of weather was at hand. The stars were hidden--the sky overcast with clouds, while the winds, seeming to subside, were moaning through the woods as one in a deep and painful sleep. The sound, the scene, were congenial with the outlaw's soul. It was full of angry elements that only waited the signal to break forth in storm. Suddenly, he was roused from his meditations by the cessation of all sounds from within the cave. The mother slept there, she had been playing with the child, and he upon her bosom. Nature, in her case, had sunk, in spite of sorrow, under fatigue. And she slept deeply, her slumbers broken only by a plaintive moaning of those griefs that would not sleep. With a strange curiosity Houston seated himself quietly beside the pair, while his eyes keenly perused the calm and innocent features of the child. Long was the study, and productive of conflicting emotions. It was interrupted with a start, and his eyes involuntarily turned, with even a less satisfied expression, upon the features of his wife.
But it was not to watch or to enjoy the beauty which he beheld, that John Houston now bent his dark brows over the sleeping
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countenance of his wife. The expression in his looks was that of a wild and fearful curiosity suddenly aroused. She had spoken in her sleep. She had uttered a word--a name--which, of all others, was most likely, from any lips, to awaken his most angry emotions,--from her lips, most terrible. The name was that of Arthur Holt,--and she still murmured. The ears of the suspicious husband were placed close to her lips, that none of the whispered sounds might escape him. He heard enough to open to him a vista, at the extremity of which his diseased imagination saw the worst shapes of hate and jealousy. With the pressing thought in her memory of the tasks before her, she spoke of the little basket--the bread--the bottle of milk, the slender slices of ham or venison--which she had been accustomed to receive and bring. Then came the two words, "Giant's Coffin," and the quick fancy of the outlaw, stimulated by hate and other passions, immediately reached, at a bound, the whole narrative of her dependence upon Holt and her meetings with him at the "Giant's Coffin!"
A dark smile passed over his countenance. It was the smile of a demon, who is at length, after long being baffled, in possession of his prey. Leda slept on--soundly slept--for nature had at length coerced the debtor, and compelled her rights--and the hour was approaching when it was usual for her to set out on her nightly progress. The resolution came, quick as lightning, to the mind of the ruffian. He rose stealthily from the rushes,--drew his pistols from his belt, silently examined the flints, and, looking at the knife in his bosom, stole forth from the cavern. With a spirit exulting with the demoniac hope of assuring himself of a secret long suspected, and of realizing a vengeance long delayed,--and familiar, night and day, with every step in his progress, he hurried directly across the country to the banks of Reedy River. The night, by this time, had become tempestuous. Big drops of rain already began to fall; but these caused no delay to the hardy outlaw. He reached the river, and, moving now with cautious steps from rock to rock, he approached the "Giant's Coffin" with the manner of one who expects to find a victim and an enemy. One hand grasped a pistol, the other a knife!--and, stealing onward with the pace of the Indian,
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he hung over the sides of the "Coffin," and peered into its dark chamber with his keenest eyes. It was untenanted. "I am too soon," he muttered. "Well! I can wait!" And where better to await the victim--where more secure from detection--than in the vault which lay before him!--one half covered from the weather and shut in from all inspection,--that alone excepted, for which he had come prepared. The keen gusts of wind which now came across the stream laden with rain, was an additional motive to this movement. He obeyed the suggestion, passed into the mouth of the "Coffin;" and, crouching from sight, in a sitting posture, in the upper or covered part of the chamber, he sat with the anxiety of a passion which did not, however, impair its patience, awaiting for his foe.
He had not reached this position unseen or unaccompanied. We have already intimated that Acker, the epileptic, had made some progress in his discoveries. With the singular cunning, and the wonderful acuteness which distinguish some of the faculties, where others are impaired in the same individual, he had contrived, unseen and unsuspected, to track Leda Houston to the place of her husband's concealment. He had discovered the periods of her incoming and departure, and, taking his rest at all other periods, he was always prepared to renew his surveillance at those moments when the wife was to go forth. He had barely resumed his watch, on the night in question, when he was surprised to see Houston himself and not his wife emerging from the cave. He followed cautiously his footsteps. Light of foot, and keeping at convenient distance, his espionage was farther assisted by the wind, which, coming in their faces, effectually kept all sounds of pursuit from the ears of the outlaw. His progress was not so easy when the latter emerged from the woods, and stood upon the banks of the river. His approach now required more caution; but, stealing on from shrub to shrub, and rock to rock; Acker at length stood--or rather crouched--upon the brink of the river also, and at but small distance from the other. But of this distance he had ceased to be conscious. He was better informed, however, when, a moment after, he heard a dull, clattering, but low sound, which he rightly conjectured to have been caused by some pressure upon the lower lid
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of the Coffin, which, being somewhat pendulous, was apt to vibrate slightly, in spite of its great length and weight, under any pressure from above. This sound apprised Acker of the exact whereabouts of the outlaw, and his keen eyes at length detected the dim outline of the latter's form, as he stood upon the lid of the Coffin, the moment before he disappeared within its recesses. Encouraged to advance, by the disappearance of the other, the Epileptic did so with extreme caution. He was favoured by the hoarse tumbling of the water as it poured its way among the rocks, and by the increasing discords of the wind and rain, which now came down in heavy showers. As he crawled from rock to rock, with the stealthy movement of a cat along some precipitous ledge, shrinking and shivering beneath the storm, his own desire for shelter led him suddenly to the natural conclusion that Houston had found his within the vault. The ideas of Acker came to him slowly; but, gradually, as he continued to approach, he remembered the clattering of the Coffin-lid,--he remembered how, in his more youthful days, the boys, with joint strength, had forced it to its present place, and he conceived the sudden purpose of making the Coffin of the Giant, that also of the deadly enemy whose boyish persecutions he had neither forgot nor forgiven. To effect his present object, which, suddenly conceived, became for the time an absorbing thirst, a positive frenzy, in his breast,--he concentrated all his faculties, whether of mind or of body, upon his task. His pace was deliberate, and, so stealthy, that he reached the upper end of the Coffin, laid himself down beside it, and, applying his ear to one of the crevices, distinctly heard the suppressed breathings of the man within. Crawling back, he laid his hands lightly and with the greatest care upon the upper and heavier end of the stone. His simple touch, so nicely did it seem to be balanced, caused its vibration; and with the first consciousness of its movement, Houston, whom we must suppose to have been lying down, raising his pistol with one hand, laid the other on one of the sides of the vault, with the view, as it was thought, to lift himself from his recumbent position. He did so just as the huge plate of stone was set in motion, and the member was caught and closely wedged between the mass and the side of the
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Coffin upon which it rested. A slight cry broke from the outlaw. The fingers were crushed, the hand was effectually secured. But for this, so slow was the progress of the stone, that it would have been very easy for Houston to have scrambled out before the vault was entirely closed in. Slowly, but certainly, the lid went down. Ignorant of the peculiar occasion of the outlaw's groans, the Epileptic answered them with a chuckle, which, had the former been conscious, would have taught him his enemy. But he had fainted. The excruciating agony of his hurt had been too much for his strength. Acker finished his work without interruption; then piling upon the plate a mountain of smaller stones, he dashed away in the direction of Holt's cottage. Here he encountered the young farmer, busy, as was usual about that hour, in making up his little basket of provisions. A few words from the Epileptic sufficed to inform him that they were no longer necessary--that Houston was gone--fled--utterly escaped, and now, in all probability, beyond pursuit. Such was the tale he told. He had his policy in it. The characteristic malignant cunning which had prompted him to the fearful revenge which he had taken upon his enemy, was studious now to keep it from being defeated. To have told the truth, would have been to open the "Giant's Coffin," to undo all that had been done, and once more let free the hated tyrant upon whose head he had visited the meditated retribution of more than twenty years. Acker well knew the generous nature of the young farmer, and did not doubt that, if he declared the facts, Arthur would have proceeded at once to the rescue of the common enemy. He suppressed all show of exultation, made a plausible story--it matters not of what sort--by which to account for the flight of Houston; and, the consequence was, that, instead of proceeding as before to the "Giant's Coffin," Arthur Holt now prepared to set out for the "Hunter's Cave." But the day had broke in tempest. A fearful storm was raging. The windows of heaven were opened, the rain came down in torrents, and the wind went forth with equal violence, as if from the whole four quarters of the earth. The young farmer got out his little wagon, and jumping in, Acker prepared to guide him to the place of retreat.
"The river is rising fast, Peter," was the remark of Arthur
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as he caught a glimpse of the swollen stream as it foamed along its way.
"Yes!" said the other, with a sort of hiccough, by which he suppressed emotions which he did not venture to declare: "Yes! I reckon 'twon't be many hours afore it fills the 'Coffin.' "
"If it keeps on at this rate," returned the other, "one hour will be enough to do that."
"Only one, you think?"
"Yes! one will do!"
Another hiccough of the Epileptic appropriately finished the dialogue.
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CHAPTER VI.
LEDA awakened from her deep sleep to find herself alone with the child. She was startled and alarmed at the absence of her husband; but as the child was left--the great, and we may add, the only, object for which she could have borne so much--she was satisfied. On assuring herself of the departure of Houston from the cave, she would unhesitatingly have taken hers also--but the storm was now raging without, and, persuaded that her husband had taken advantage of its violence to cross the barriers, she gathered up the fragments of the last night's supper, and was busy in giving her boy his little breakfast, when roused by the voice of Arthur Holt. The story of the Epileptic was soon told--as he had related it to Arthur. In this story, as there was nothing improbable, both parties put implicit faith; and, cloaking mother and child as well as he might, the young farmer bore them through the close thicket to the place, some three hundred yards without, where, on account of the denseness of the wood, he had been compelled to leave the wagon. The horse of Houston, the "Big Bay," was next brought forth, but as Acker could neither be persuaded to mount, or take him in charge, he was restored to the covert until a better opportunity for removing him. To the surprise of the young farmer, the Epileptic was equally firm in refusing to go with him in the wagon. "I don't mind the rain," said he, "it can't hurt me." "He will get his death," said Leda. "Not he," replied Arthur, as Acker scampered through the woods; "the water always helps him in his fits." While the wagon took one course, he took another. Little did they suspect his route. A terrible feeling carried him back to Reedy River--to a pitiless watch above that natural tomb in which he had buried his living victim.
Meanwhile, what of Houston? When he recovered his consciousness, the vault had been closed upon him; the flat mass, once set in motion, had slid down the smooth edges of the
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upright sides with uninterrupted progress, and now lay above him, shutting out light almost equally with hope. But a faint glimmering reached the interior of the cell, from a crevice on one side, where, in consequence of some inequality of the edges, the lid had not settled fairly down upon it. It was the side opposite to that in which his fingers had been crushed, and where the stone still maintained its hold upon the mutilated member. He heard the whistling of the wind, the hoarse rush of the waters, and the heavy fall of the rain without, and a shuddering sense of his true situation rushed instantly upon his soul. For a moment he sank back, appalled, oppressed; but the numbing pain of his injured hand and wrist, up to his elbow, recalled him to the necessity of effort. Houston was a man of strong will and great energies. Though at the first moment of consciousness oppressed and overcome, the outlaw soon recovered himself. It was necessary that he should do something for his extrication. The light shut out, if not entirely the air, is one of those fearful facts to rouse a man in his situation and of his character, to all his energies. But the very first movement was one to awaken him still more sensibly to his dangers. Having arisen to grasp the sides of the vault, which, in the place where he had laid his hand was fully five feet high, his position when fixed there, was that of a man partially suspended in the air. His right hand could barely touch the floor of the chamber. His left was utterly useless. In this position he could not even exert the strength which he possessed; and, after an ineffectual effort, he sank back again in momentary consternation. The horror of that moment, passed in thought,--the despair which it occasioned--was the parent of new strength. He came to a terrible decision. To avail himself of his right hand, it was necessary that he should extricate the other. He had already tried to do so, by a vain effort at lifting the massive lid of his coffin. The heavy plate no longer vibrated upon a pivot. It had sunk into a natural position, which each upright evenly maintained. The hand was already lost to him. He resolved that it should not render the other useless. With a firmness which might well excite admiration, he drew the couteau de chasse from his bosom, and deliberately smote off the mutilated
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fingers at the joints; dividing the crushed parts--bone and tendon,--from the uninjured,--falling heavily back upon the stone floor the moment the hand was freed. But this time he had not fainted, though the operation tended to restore the hand, which had been deadened by the pressure and pain of its position, to something like sensibility. But such pain was now but slightly felt; and, wrapping the hand up in his handkerchief, he prepared with due courage for the difficult task before him. But the very first effort almost convinced him of its hopelessness. In vain did he apply the strength of his muscular arm, the force of his broad shoulders, his sinewy and well-supported frame. Forced to crouch in his narrow limits, it was not possible for him to apply, to advantage, the strength which he really possessed; and, from the extreme shallowness of his cell in the lower extremity, he was unable to address his efforts to that part where the stone was thinnest. At the upper part, where he could labour, the mass was greatly thicker than the rest; and it was the weight of this mass, rather than the strength of Acker,--the momentum once given it from above,--that carried the plate along to the foot of the plane. His exertions were increased as his strength diminished--the cold sweat poured from his brow,--and, toiling against conviction--in the face of his increasing terrors,--he at length sunk back in exhaustion. From time to time, at brief intervals, he renewed his toils, each time with new hope, each time with a new scheme for more successful exertion. But the result was, on each occasion, the same; and, yielding to despair, he threw himself upon the bottom of his cell and called death to his relief.
While thus prostrate, with his face prossed upon the chilling pavement, he suddenly starts, almost to his feet, and a new terror seizes upon his soul. He is made conscious of a new and pressing danger. Is it the billows of the river--the torrents swollen above their bounds--that beat against the walls of his dungeon? Is it the advancing waters that catch his eye glimmering faint at his feet, as they penetrate the lower crevice of the coffin? A terrible shudder shook his frame! He cannot doubt this new danger, and he who, a moment before, called upon death to relieve him from his terrors, now shouts, under
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worse terrors, at the prospect of his near approach in an unexpected shape. It is necessary that he should employ all his strength--that he should make other and more desperate efforts. He rises, almost erect. He applies both arms--the maimed as well as the sound,--almost unconscious of the difference, to the lid of his tomb. "Buried alive!" he cries aloud--"Buried alive!" and at each cry, his sinewy arms shoot up--his broad shoulders are raised:--his utmost powers, concentrated upon the one point, in the last effort of despair, must surely be successful. His voice shouts with his straining sinews. He feels the mass above him yielding. Once more--and once again,--and still he is encouraged. The lid vibrates--he could not be deceived,--but oh! how slightly. Another trial--he moves it as before, but as his strength fails, his efforts relax,--and it sinks down heavily in its place. Breathless, he crouches in his cell. He listens! Is it a footstep?--It is a movement!--the stones fall about the roof of his narrow dwelling. A human agency is above. "Hurrah!" he cries--"Hurrah! Throw off the stone--crush it--break it! There is no time to be lost!" For a moment he fancies that the movement above is one intended for his relief. But what mean these rolling stones? A new apprehension possesses him in the very moment of his greatest hope. He rises. Once more he extends his arms, he applies his shoulders; but he labours now in vain. His strength is not less--his efforts are not more feebler--in this than in his former endeavours. He cannot doubt the terrible truth! New stones have been piled above his head. He is doomed! His utmost powers fail to move the mass from its place. His human enemy is unrelenting. He cries to him in a voice of equal inquiry and anguish.
"Who is there? what enemy? who? Speak to me! who is above me? Who? Who!"
Can it be? He is answered by a chuckle--a fell, fiendish laugh--the most terrible sort of answer. Can it be that a mortal would so laugh at such a moment? He tries to recall those to whom he has given most occasion for vindictiveness and hate. He names "Arthur Holt!" He is again answered by a chuckle, and now he knows his enemy.
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"God of heaven!" he exclaims, in the bitter anguish of his discovery, "and can it be that I am doomed to perish by this most miserable of all my foes!"
Once more he rushes against the mass above him, but this time with his head alone. He sinks down stunned upon the floor, and is aroused by the water around him. Inch by inch it rises. He knows the character of the stream. It will be above him, unless he is relieved, in less than an hour. The proud and reckless outlaw is humbled. He condescends to entreat the wretched creature to whom he owes his situation. He implores forgiveness--he promises reward. He begs--he threatens--he execrates. He is answered by a chuckle as before; the Epileptic sits upon his coffin-lid, and the doomed man can hear his heels without, as they beat time with the winds and waters, against the sides of his tomb. Meanwhile, the water presses in upon him--he feels its advance around him--it is now about his knees--in another moment it is every where. It has gradually ascended the plane--it now spreads over the entire floor of his dungeon. He grasps his pistols, which he had laid down beside him, and applies their muzzles to his head. He is too late. They are covered with water, and refuse fire. His knife is no longer to be found. It had dropped from his right hand when he smote off the fingers of the left, and had probably rolled down the plane to the bottom, where, covered with water, it is impossible to recover it. Hope within, and hope from without, have failed him equally; and, except in prayer, there is no refuge from the pang of death. But prayer is not easy to him who has never believed in the efficacy of its virtues. How can he pray to be forgiven, who has never been taught to forgive. He tries to pray! The Epileptic without, as he stoops his ear, can catch the fragmentary plea, the spasmodic adjuration, the gasping, convulsive utterance, from a throat around which the waters are already wreathing with close and unrelaxing grasp. Suddenly the voice ceases--there is a hoarse murmur--the struggle of the strong man among the waters, which press through the crevices between the lid and the sides of the dungeon. As the convulsion ceases, the Epileptic starts to his feet, with a terror which he had not felt before; and, looking
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wildly behind him as he ran, bounded up the sides of the neighbouring hills.
Thus ends our legend of the "Giant's Coffin." Tradition does not tell us of the farther fortunes of Leda Houston. Some pages of the chronicle have dropped. It is very certain, however, that Arthur Holt, like Benedick, lived to be a married man, and died the father of several children--the descendants of some of whom still live in the same region. Of the "Coffin" itself, some fragments, and, it is thought, one of the sides, may be shown, but it was "blown up" by the very freshet which we have described, and the body of Houston drifted down to the opposite shore. It was not till long after that Acker confessed the share which he had in the manner of his death and burial.
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SERGEANT BARNACLE,
OR THE RAFTSMAN OF THE EDISTO.
Short be the shrift and sure the cord.
--SCOTT.CHAPTER I.
THE pretty little settlement of Orangeburg, in South Carolina, was an old and flourishing establishment before the Revolution. It was settled, as well as the contiguous country, by successive troops of German Palatines, who brought with them all the sober industry, and regular perseverance, characteristic of their country. They carried the cultivation of indigo in Carolina to a degree of perfection, on which they prospered, thriving, without much state, and growing great in wealth, without provoking the attention of their neighbours to the fact. To this day their descendants maintain some of these characteristics, and, in a time of much cry and little wool, when it is no longer matter of mortification for a vain people to confess a want of money, they are said to respond to the "I O U," of their more needy acquaintance, by knocking the head out of a flour barrel, and unveiling a world of specie, which would renovate the credit of many a mammoth bank. The good old people, their ancestors, were thrifty in other respects; clean and comfortable in their houses; raising abundance of pigs and poultry; rich in numerous children, whom they reared up in good works and godliness, with quite as much concern, to say no more, as they addressed to worldly objects. They lived well--knew what surprising moral benefits accrue from a due attention to creature comforts; and, if they spent little money upon foreign luxuries, it was only because they had learned to domesticate so many of their own.
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Home, indeed, was emphatically their world, and they found a world in it. Frank hospitality, and the simple sorts of merriment which delight, without impairing the unsophisticated nature, were enjoyed among them in full perfection; and, from Four Holes to Poplar Springs, they were emphatically one and the same, and a very happy people.
Our present business lies in this region, at a period which we may state in round numbers, as just five years before the Revolution. The ferment of that event, as we all know, had even then begun--the dispute and the debate, and the partial preparation--but the details and the angry feeling had been slow in reaching our quiet farmers along the Upper Edisto. The people were not good English scholars, preserving, as they did in many places, the integrity of the unbroken German. Here and there, it had suffered an English cross, and, in other places, particularly in the village, the English began to assert the ascendancy. But of newspapers they saw nothing, unless it were the venerable South Carolina Gazette, which did little more than tell them of the births, marriages and deaths in the royal family, and, at melancholy intervals, of the arrival in Charleston of some broad-bottomed lugger from Bremen, or other kindred ports in Faderland. The events which furnished materials to the village publican and politician, were of a sort not to extend their influence beyond their own ten-mile horizon. Their world was very much around them, and their most foreign thoughts and fancies still had a savour of each man's stable-yard. They never interfered in the slightest degree with the concerns of Russia or Constantinople, and I verily believe that if they had happened to have heard that the Great Mogul were on his last legs, and knew the secret of his cure, they would have hesitated so long before advising him of its nature, that the remedy would come too late to be of any service. And this, understand me, not because of any lack of Christian bowels, but simply because of a native modesty, which made them reluctant to meddle with any matters which did not obviously and immediately concern themselves. They were, certainly, sadly deficient in that spirit of modern philanthropy which seems disposed to meddle with nothing else. Their hopes and fears, strifes and excitements, were all local. At worst a
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village scandal, or farm-yard jealousy--a squabble between two neighbours touching a boundary line, or cattle pound, which ended in an arbitration and a feast, in which cherry and domestic grape--by no means the simple juice of either--did the duty of peacemakers, and were thrice blessed accordingly. Sometimes--a more serious matter--the tall lad of one household would fail to make the proper impression upon the laughing damsel of another, and this would produce a temporary family estrangement, until Time, that great consoler, would furnish to the injured heart of the sufferer, that sovereignest of all emollients--indifference! Beyond such as these, which are of occurrence in the best regulated and least sophisticated of all communities, there were precious few troubles among our people of the North Edisto, which they could not easily overcome.
But the affair which I am about to relate, was an exception to the uniform harmlessness and simplicity of events among them, and the better to make the reader understand it, I must take him with me this pleasant October evening, to a snug farm-house in the Forks of Edisto--a part of the country thus distinguished, as it lies in the crotch formed by the gradual approach of the two branches of Edisto river, a few miles above the spot of their final junction. Our farmer's name is Cole. He is not rich, but not poor--one of those substantial, comfortable men of the world, who has just enough to know what to do with it, and just little enough to fancy that if he could get more he should know what to do with that also. His farm, consisting of five or six hundred acres, is a competence, but a small part of which is cleared and in cultivation. He has but two slaves, but he has two strapping sons, one of twelve, the other of fourteen, who work with the slaves, and upon whom, equally with them, he bestows the horse-whip when needed, with as bountiful a hand as he bestows the hommony. But if he counts but precious little of gold and silver among his treasures, he has some treasures which, in those days of simplicity, were considered by many to be much more precious than any gold or silver. Like Jephthah, Judge of Israel, he has a daughter--nay, for that matter, he has two of them, and one of them, the eldest, is to be married this very evening. Philip Cole was no Judge of Israel, but he loved
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his daughters not the less, and the whole country justified his love. The eyes of the lads brightened, and their mouths watered at the bare mention of their names, and the sight of them generally produced such a commotion in the hearts of the surrounding swains, that, as I have heard averred a hundred times by tradition, they could, on such occasions, scarcely keep their feet. Keep their feet they could not, on such nights as the present, when they were not only permitted to see the lasses, but to dance it with them merrily. Dorothy Cole, the eldest, was as fine a specimen of feminine mortality, as ever blossomed in the eyes of love; rather plumpish, but so well made, so complete, so brightly eyed, and so rosily cheeked, that he must be a cold critic indeed, who should stop to look for flaws--to say, here something might be pared off, and here something might be added. Such fine women were never made for such foolish persons. But Margaret, the younger, a girl of sixteen, was unexceptionable. She was her sister in miniature. She was beautiful, and faultless in her beauty, and so graceful, so playful, so pleasantly arch, and tenderly mischievous--so delightful, in short, in all her ways, that in looking upon her you ceased to remember that Eve had fallen--you still thought of her in Eden, the queen of its world of flowers, as innocent and beautiful as the very last budding rose amongst them. At all events, this was the opinion of every body for ten miles round, from Frank Leichenstein, the foreign gentleman--a German on his travels--to Barnacle Sam, otherwise Samuel Moore, a plain raftsman of the Edisto.
The occasion, though one of gaiety, which brought the company together, was also one of gloom. On this night the fair Dorothy would cease to be a belle. All hopes, of all but one, were cut off by her lately expressed preference for a farmer from a neighbouring district, and the young men assembled to witness nuptials which many of them looked on with envy and regret. But they bore, as well as they might, with the mortification which they felt. Love does not often kill in modern periods, and some little extra phlegm may be allowed to a community with an origin such as ours. The first ebullitions of public dissatisfaction had pretty well worn off before the night of the wedding, and, if the beauty of the bride, when she stood up that
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night to receive the fatal ring, served to reawaken the ancient flame in the breasts of any present, its violence was duly overcome in the reflection that the event was now beyond recall, and regrets utterly unavailing. The frolic which succeeded, the good cheer, the uproar, and the presence of numerous other damsels, all in their best, helped in no small degree to lessen the discontent and displeasure of the disappointed. Besides, there was the remaining sister, Margaret, a host in herself, and so gay, and so good-natured, so ready to dance and sing, and so successful in the invention of new modes of passing time merrily, that, before the bride disappeared for the night, she was half chagrined to discover that nobody--unless her new-made husband--now looked to where she stood. Her sway was at an end with the hopes of her host of lovers.
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CHAPTER II.
THE revels were kept up pretty late. What with the ceremony, the supper, the dancing, and the sundry by-plays which are common to all such proceedings, time passed away without the proper consciousness of any of the parties. But all persons present were not equally successful or equally happy. It was found, after a while, that though Margaret Cole smiled, and talked, and played, and danced with every body, there was yet one young fellow who got rather the largest share of her favours. What rendered this discovery particularly distressing was the fact that he was a stranger and a citizen. His name was Wilson Hurst, a genteel looking youth, who had recently made his appearance in the neighbourhood, and was engaged in the very respectable business of a country store. He sold calicoes and ribbons, and combs, and dimity, and the thousand other neat, nice matters, in which the thoughts and affections of young damsels are supposed to be quite too much interested. He was no hobnail, no coarse unmannered clown; but carried himself with an air of decided ton, as if he knew his position, and was resolute to make it known to all around him. His manner was calculated to offend the more rustic of the assembly, who are always, in every country, rather jealous of the citizen; and the high head which he carried, the petty airs of fashion which he assumed, and his singular success with the belle of the Forks, all combined to render the conceited young fellow decidedly odious among the male part of the assembly. A little knot of these might have been seen, toward the small hours, in earnest discussion of this subject, while sitting in the piazza they observed the movements of the unconscious pair, through a half opened window. We will not listen at present to their remarks, which we may take for granted were sufficiently bitter; but turn with them to the entrance, where they have discovered a new arrival. This was a large man, seemingly rather
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beyond the season of youth, who was now seen advancing up the narrow avenue which led to the house.
"It's Barnacle Sam!" said one.
"I reckon," was the reply of another.
"It's he, by thunder!" said a third, "wonder what he'll say to see Margaret and this city chap? He's just in time for it. They're mighty close."
"Reckon he'll bile up again. Jest be quiet now, till he comes."
From all this we may gather that the person approaching is an admirer of the fair Margaret. His proximity prevented all further discussion of this delicate subject, and the speakers at once surrounded the new comer.
"Well, my lads, how goes it?" demanded this person, in a clear, manly accent, as he extended a hand to each. "Not too late, I reckon, for a fling on the floor; but I had to work hard for it, I reckon. Left Charleston yesterday when the sun was on the turn; but I swore I'd be in time for one dash with Margaret."
"Reckon you've walked for nothing, then," said one with a significant shake of the head to his fellows.
"For nothing! and why do you think so?"
"Well, I don't know, but I reckon Margaret's better satisfied to sit down jest now. She don't seem much inclined to foot it with any of us."
"That's strange for Margaret," said the new comer; "but I'll see how my chance stands, if so be the fiddle has a word to say in my behalf. She aint sick, fellows?"
"Never was better--but go in and try your luck."
"To be sure I will. It'll be bad luck, indeed, when I set my heart on a thing, and walk a matter of seventy miles after it, if I couldn't get it then, and for no reason that I can see; so here goes."
With these words, the speaker passed into the house, and was soon seen by his companions--who now resumed their places by the window--in conversation with the damsel. There was a frank, manly something in the appearance, the face, carriage and language of this fellow, that, in spite of a somewhat rude exterior and coarse clothing, insensibly commanded one's respect. It was very evident that those with whom he had spoken, had accorded
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him theirs--that he was a favourite among them--and indeed, we may say, in this place, that he was a very general favourite. He was generous and good natured, bold, yet inoffensive, and so liberal that, though one of the most industrious fellows in the world, and constantly busy, he had long since found that his resources never enabled him to lay by a copper against a rainy day. Add to these moral qualities, that he was really a fine looking fellow, large and well made, with a deep florid complexion, black hair, good forehead and fine teeth, and we shall wonder to find that he was not entirely successful with the sex. That he was not an economist, and was a little over the frontier line of forty, were perhaps objections, and then he had a plain, direct way of speaking out his mind, which was calculated, sometimes, to disturb the equanimity of the very smoothest temper.
It was perceived by his companions that Margaret answered him with some evident annoyance and embarrassment, while they beheld, with increasing aversion, the supercilious air of the stranger youth, the curl of his lips, the simpering, half-scornful smile which they wore, while their comrade was urging his claims to the hand of the capricious beauty. The application of the worthy raftsman--for such was the business of Barnacle Sam--proved unavailing. The maiden declined dancing, pleading fatigue. The poor fellow said that he too was fatigued, "tired down, Miss Margaret, with a walk of seventy miles, only to have the pleasure of dancing with you." The maiden was inexorable, and he turned off to rejoin his companions. The immoderate laughter in which Margaret and the stranger youth indulged, immediately after Barnacle Sam's withdrawal, was assumed by his companions to be at his expense. This was also the secret feeling of the disappointed suitor, but the generous fellow disclaimed any such conviction, and, though mortified to the very heart, he studiously said every thing in his power to excuse the capricious girl to those around him. She had danced with several of them, the hour was late, and her fatigue was natural enough. But the malice of his comrades determined upon a test which should invalidate all these pleas and excuses. The fiddle was again put in requisition, and a Virginia reel was resolved upon. Scarcely were the parties summoned to the floor, before Margaret
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made her appearance as the partner of young Hurst. Poor Barnacle walked out into the woods, with his big heart ready to break. It was generally understood that he was fond of Margaret, but how fond, nobody but himself could know. She, too, had been supposed willing to encourage him, and, though by no means a vain fellow, he was yet very strongly impressed with the belief that he was quite as near to her affections as any man he knew. His chagrin and disappointment may be imagined; but a lonely walk in the woods enabled him to come back to the cottage, to which he was drawn by a painful sort of fascination, with a face somewhat calmed, and with feelings, which, if not subdued, were kept in proper silence and subjection. He was a strong-souled fellow, who had no small passions. He did not flare up and make a fuss, as is the wont of a peevish nature, but the feeling and the pain were the deeper in due proportion to the degree of restraint which he put upon them. His return to the cottage was the signal to his companions to renew their assaults upon his temper. They found a singular satisfaction in making a hitherto successful suitor partake of their own frequent mortifications. But they did not confine their efforts to this single object. They were anxious that Barnacle Sam should be brought to pluck a quarrel with the stranger, whose conceited airs had so ruffled the feathers of self-esteem in all of their crests. They dilated accordingly on all the real or supposed insolences of the new comer--his obvious triumph--his certain success--and that unbearable volley of merriment, which, in conjunction with Margaret Cole, he had discharged at the retreating and baffled applicant for her hand. Poor Barnacle bore with all these attempts with great difficulty. He felt the force of their suggestions the more readily, because the same thoughts and fancies had already been traversing his own brain. He was not insensible to the seeming indignity which the unbecoming mirth of the parties had betrayed on his retiring from the field, and more than once a struggling devil in his heart rose up to encourage and enforce the suggestions made by his companions. But love was stronger in his soul than hate, and served to keep down the suggestions of anger. He truly loved the girl, and though he felt very much like trouncing the
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presumptuous stranger, he subdued this inclination entirely on her account.
"No! no! my lads," said he, finally, "Margaret's her own mistress, and may do as she pleases. She's a good girl and a kind one, and if her head's turned just now by this stranger, let's give her time to get it back in the right place. She'll come right, I reckon, before long. As for him, I see no fun in licking him, for that's a thing to be done just as soon as said. If he crosses me, it'll do then--but so long as she seems to have a liking for him, so long I'll keep my hands off him, if so be he'll let me."
"Well," said one of his comrades, "I never thought the time would come when Barnacle Sam would take so much from any man."
"Oh hush! Peter Stahlen; you know I take nothing that I don't choose to take. All that know me, know what I am, and they'll all think rightly in the matter; and those that don't know me may think just what they please. So good night, my lads. I'll take another turn in the woods to freshen me."
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CHAPTER III.
WE pass over much of the minor matter in this history. We forbear the various details, the visitings and wanderings, the doings of the several parties, and the scandal which necessarily kept all tongues busy for a season. The hope so confidently expressed by Barnacle Sam, that the head of his beauty, which had been turned by the stranger, would recover its former sensible position after certain days, did not promise to be soon realized. On the contrary, every succeeding week seemed to bring the maiden and her city lover more frequently together; to strengthen his assurance, and increase his influence over her heart. All his leisure time was consumed either at her dwelling or in rambles with her alone, hither and thither, to the equal disquieting of maid and bachelor. They, however, had eyes for nobody but one another--lived, as it were, only in each other's regards, and, after a month of the busiest idleness in which he had ever been engaged, Barnacle Sam, in very despair, resumed his labours on the river by taking charge of a very large fleet of rafts. The previous interval had been spent in a sort of gentlemanly watch upon the heart and proceedings of the fair Margaret. The result was such as to put the coup de grace to all his own fond aspirations. But this effect was not brought about but at great expense of pride and feeling. His heart was sore and soured. His temper underwent a change. He was moody and irritable--kept aloof from his companions, and discouraged and repulsed them when they approached him. It was a mutual relief to them and himself when he launched upon the river in his old vocation. But his vocation, like that of Othello, was fairly gone. He performed his duties punctually, carried his charge in safety to the city, and evinced, in its management, quite as much skill and courage as before. But his performances were now mechanical--therefore carried on doggedly, and with no portion of his former spirit. There was now no catch of song, no famous shout or whistle, to be heard by the farmer
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on the bank, as the canoe or the raft of Barnacle Sam rounded the headlands. There w