Three quarters of a century ago, when Sag Harbor was an important
whaling port, and before railroads were even dreamed of on that remote
part of Long Island, there were dotted along the eastern shore only a few
quaint little villages, already old, with a small population scattered in
their vicinity, consisting almost entirely of a hardy race, who, though professedly
cultivators of the soil, in reality drew most of their subsistence
from arduous and often perilous toil upon the sea. Among the curiously
inscribed tombstones in the graveyards, where even then six generations
were lying, were not at all unfrequent those that bore the legend "killed
by a whale." Of the younger men in the community, there were few who
did not aspire to go abroad as whalers, and their elders, though settled
agriculturists nominally, or even petty tradesmen, had generally "been
a-whaling," loved to spin yarns about their cruises, and were still more
than semi-nautical in speech, manners, and industries. They naturally
spoke of "the bow" of a horse, or his "port-quarter," as occasion might
require; belonged to shore whaling companies; fished for the New York
market to a limited extent, and perhaps did some smuggling; as shore-living
people, in those days, generally seemed to think they had an inherent
right to. In their little "sitting-rooms" were many curious and interesting
things, brought from far distant lands, such as broad branches of fan
coral, stuffed birds of brilliant plumage, strange shells and sperm whales'
teeth adorned with queer rude pictures scratched upon them by sailors
whose thoughts of loved ones at home had prompted them to such artistic
endeavor.
Between the villages were long reaches of woodland, or perhaps it would
be more correct to say thicket--broken here and there, where the sandy soil
seemed to give most promise, by tilled fields. Fierce gales, through the
long hard winter months, dealt cruelly with the scrubby cedars and knotty
little oaks in those woods, gnarling their boughs, twisting their trunks, and
stunting their growth, so that not all the genial breath of spring, nor the
ardent summer's sun could quite repair the damage wrought them in the
season of ice and storm. But the hardy trees stood close together, as if
seeking support and consolation from each other in their hours of trial,
when they creaked and ground complaint to one another; so close that
their interlaced foliage kept always damp the leaf-strewn ground beneath,
where the fragrant trailing arbutus bloomed in earliest spring, and the
tangled whortleberry bushes later bore their clusters of bluish-purple fruit.
Here and there the dwarfed forest sloped gently down to broad expanses
of salt meadow, where snipe and plover found their favorite feeding grounds
among the rank rushes and long grass, or the soft marshy slime, except when
the full moon tides came rushing through the little inlets between the white
round sand dunes on the beach and, whelming the lowland, snatched brown-leaf
trophies from the very edges of the wood. On the knolls between
these meadows were favorite places for the location of the homes of the
earlier settlers, among whom were the Van Deusts.
The Van Deust homestead was one of the oldest dwellings on that portion
of the island, and those who at this time inhabited it were the direct
descendants of other Van Deusts, whose remote existence and remarkable
longevity were alike attested by the quaintly graven tombstones in the
ancient graveyard of the village, a mile away.
It was a rambling one-story house, built of small logs covered with boards
now warped and rusty from age, but both roomy and comfortable as well
as picturesque. Those by whom it was erected loved better the sea than
the land, for they had not only sought out this, the most commanding site
they could obtain for its location, but had turned its back upon the forest
and the lane, and reared its broad porch upon the side facing the ocean.
Here, in the ample shade, the two old bachelor brothers, its present occupants,
inheriting as well the feeling as the property of their ancestors,
loved to linger. The ceaseless roar of the waves was in their ears a wild
tumultuous music, and their eyes were never weary of the ever-changing
beauty and glory of the world of billows, blushing with the dawn, laughing
with the noon, and frowning beneath storm and night. Three broad and
rugged elm trees shaded the porch, and one gable of the house was rasped by
the boughs of the nearest tree of a thickly grown and badly cared for little
orchard. Bats and swallows flitted undisturbed in the summer evenings
to and from the low loft of the old homestead, through its various chinks and
refts; native song-birds build their nests and reared their young under the
eaves, and in the swinging branches of the venerable elms; bees buzzed among
the thick honeysuckle, and clematis vines that twined about the pillar of
the porch, and threw their long sprays in flowery festoons between; and
when the busy hum of those industrious little toilers ceased at nightfall,
the crickets' cheery chirp, from among the rough stones of the old-fashioned
fireplace within, took up the refrain of insect melody. Neither insect, bird,
nor beast feared the two kindly old men who inhabited that home. One of
the brothers loved all living things, and was at peace with all, and the
other was like unto him, with the sole exception that he liked not women,
nor was willing to be at peace with them. Yet he had never been married!
Peter, the elder by a couple of years, was the woman hater, and to such
an extent did he carry his antipathy toward the sex, that he would tolerate
no other female servant about the house than old black Betsy, who was
the daughter of a couple of slaves his grandfather had owned, and who
thoroughly considered herself one of the family, as indeed her indulgent
masters regarded her. The three old people occupied the house alone.
Brother Jacob once hinted to Peter that perhaps it might be as well to get
a young woman to assist old Betsy in her work, and his so doing brought
on what was more like a quarrel between him and Peter than anything
that had disturbed the monotony of their uneventful lives up to that time.
A compromise was finally effected, by virtue of which a neighbor was engaged
to come over for a couple of hours daily to do such chores about the
house as the brothers felt beyond their strength, and to bring his wife along
on Tuesdays to do the week's washing and scrubbing. But on Tuesdays
Peter always went a-fishing, regardless of the weather, and was gone all
day, so avoiding sight of the neighbor's wife. Whatever the secret cause
for his bitter and contemptuous aversion to women may have been, he
kept it to himself. That they were fair to look upon, he denied not.
"But," said he, "they are wrecker lights, and the truer and better a man
is, the brighter they shine to lure him to the breakers. And look at yourself,
Jacob," he would add, when his brother ventured to mildly expostulate
against the vigor of his denunciations of the sex; whereupon Jacob
would turn away with a sigh, and the discussion would be at an end.
Back of the house a narrow lane, bordered by a neglected garden and a
cornfield beyond, led out to the distant highway. The Van Deust brothers
were not poor, as the humble style of their home might seem to indicate;
indeed they had the reputation, in all the country around, of being wealthy,
and were, at least, well off. The neglect and indifference of age in its owners
was the sole cause that the surroundings of the old homestead, which
might easily have been made charming, presented such a picture of disorder
and decay.
Up the little lane, at a very early hour one bright summer morning, two
men might have been seen, driving in a light gig, approaching the Van
Deust mansion. One of them was a stout, ruddy-faced gentleman, of fifty,
or thereabouts, known to everybody in the county as Squire Bodley. His
companion, who held the reins, was a handsome young fellow of twenty-four
or twenty-five years, rustic in personal appearance and garb, with a
good frank open countenance that bore a pleasing expression of intelligence
and good nature.
"Of course it's only a form, my going to be your security," said the
older man, as they jogged along, "for the Van Deusts know you as well as
I do, and knew your father, Dave Pawlett, before you, and a good man he
was. But still, Lem, I don't know any young fellow in all the country
round about that I'd take more pleasure in serving, even in a matter of
form, than you."
"Thank you, sir," replied the young man warmly, with a grateful flush
upon his sun-burnt cheeks. "It's very kind of you, I'm sure, and I
can't tell you how much I feel it so. You know I want the lease of that
lower farm, but you don't know how almightily much I want it; and nobody
does but me and—one other person, perhaps."
"Aha!" responded the Squire, with a chuckle, "I can make a guess about
who the other person is. And some day you and that other person will be
coming to me for a little business in my line, I reckon,—a sort of mutual
life lease, eh?"
"Well, maybe so, Squire. I hope so," answered Lem, confusedly, and
with a little deeper flush, "But here we are at the gate. Wait a moment,
while I jibe the bow wheels and make the horse fast."
As he spoke, he jumped lightly out of the vehicle, turned the horse a
little to one side, so as to make the descent of his companion more convenient,
and, after hitching the reins to a fence-post, accompanied the Squire to the
door of the house. There was no sound, or sign, as yet, of any of the inmates
of the old homestead being astir.
"Well, they must be late risers here," soliloquized the Squire, as Lem
rapped and called at the door.
At the end of a few minutes, a voice answered indistinctly from within:
"Who's there? What d'ye want?" And almost immediately after, the
shutters on the window of a little extension of the house, at the end
farthest from the orchard, were pushed open, and the head of an aged
black woman appeared with the echoing query, "Who dah? Wha' dy'e
wan'?"
"It's me—Squire Bodley," responded that gentleman, answering the
first inquirer.
Presently the door opened and Peter Van Deust appeared in it; a weazened,
thin little man, with a fringe of gray hair surrounding a big white
bald place on the top of his head, with a well-formed nose and eyes still
bright enough to suggest that he had been a good-looking young fellow in
his day; with lips that quivered, and long lean fingers that trembled with
the weakness of old age; but, withal, a pleasant smile and a cheery ring,
even yet, in his cracked old voice.
"Why, Squire!" he exclaimed, as he threw open the door, "I'm real
glad to see you. And Lem! You, too? Well, this is a pleasant surprise-party
for us early in the morning!"
"It's not so very early, Peter," answered the Squire. "It is almost seven
o'clock."
"Is that so? Well, I declare! I wonder why Jacob isn't up. He's
mostly an early riser, and as he's the boy amongst us, why we old folks—Betsy
and me—rely on him to wake us up in the mornings. Old people,
you know, get back to being like babies again for wanting their good sleep.
But Jacob has overslept himself this morning, sure. I'll soon roust him
out, though."
As he spoke he went to a closed door at one side of the central sitting-room,
which was flanked by the separate apartments of the brothers, and
pounding upon it with his bony knuckles, called:
"Come, Jacob, bounce out, boy! You're late! It's breakfast time, and
we've got visitors. Get up!"
There was no answering sound from within. He waited a moment, then
knocked again, shouting: "Hello, Jacob! Jake! I say, get up! What'
the matter with you?"
Still there was no response. The three men waiting, held their breath
to listen, and a vague sense of uneasiness crept over them. The songs of
the blue-birds, and the chirp of the martens; the humming of the bees;
the stamping of the horse hitched to the gig, and the clatter old Betsy
made in opening her door, were all sharply distinct in the quiet summer
morning air; but from the closed room there was no sound whatever.
Peter tried the door, but it did not yield.
"He's locked his door!" exclaimed the old man, with an intonation of
surprise in his voice.
"Maybe something has happened to him," suggested Lem.
"What could happen to him? He was all right last night; never better
in his life. And he's younger than me. But it's queer he should have locked
his door. He don't mostly." He continued rapping and shouting "Jacob,
wake up!" in a more and more anxious tone.
"The key isn't in the keyhole, I guess," he muttered half to himself,
fumbling at the lock with a bit of stick he picked up from the floor, "but,"
stooping down and trying to peer through, "I can't see anything, because
it's all dark inside."
"Haven't you some other key about the house that will fit the lock?"
asked the Squire.
"Yes. Mine does, I guess. But I didn't think of it at first. I'll
try it."
It fitted: the bolt was thrown back, and the door pushed open. The
sunshine darted in and fell, broad and clear, upon a still and ghastly
thing that laid in the middle of the floor—the corpse of an old man, surrounded
by a pool of blood.
Peter gave a wild cry of horror, and fell back senseless into the arms of
Lem Pawlett, who was close behind him. They laid him on the old hair-cloth
sofa in the sitting-room, called Betsy to attend to him, and then
passed into the chamber he had opened.
Murder had been done. Jacob Van Deust's skull had been beaten in by
some heavy instrument. One terrible crushing blow had mashed in his left
temple, and let out his little weak old life; but, as if for very lust of killing
the assassin had struck again and again, and the skull was fractured in
several places. The old man, it appeared, had risen from his bed to meet
his murderer, and had been struck down before he could utter a cry of
alarm. The window curtains were down, so that the room was as yet only
lighted from the door; but when those in front were opened, and a flood of
sunlight poured in, there were no evidences apparent that there had been
any struggle between the slayer and his victim, nor were there at once
visible any indications that robbery, the only cause readily conceivable for
the brutal murder of such an inoffensive old man, had been the purpose
instigating the crime. The contents of the bureau drawers were much
tumbled and disordered, but it was presumable that they were so usually,
through the careless habits of the occupant of the apartment. There were
no marks of blood upon anything they contained, but it was evident that
the murderer had made some attempt at least to wipe his crimsoned hands
upon the old man's shirt after killing him, and that was probably before
he searched the bureau, if indeed he had troubled himself to ransack it at
all. On one pillow of the bed they found the mark of a bloody hand.
Perhaps the assassin was in such haste for plunder that he groped where
the old man's head had lain before thinking of his bloody hand. Beyond
that nothing appeared to them to show that robbery had been done.
But when Peter Van Deust had sufficiently recovered to be able to speak
coherently, he said that his brother habitually kept, somewhere in his
room, a wallet containing something over three thousand dollars, and a bag
of coin; how much he did not know. These were nowhere to be found.
Lem Pawlett was hastily dispatched by the Squire, soon after the discovery
of the crime, to summon some near neighbors; and as he drove rapidly
along the road, shouting to every person he saw—"Jacob Van Deust has
been murdered!"—it was but a very little while before a dozen or more
men were assembled at the scene of the crime. They were all innocent,
simple-minded folks, who had never seen a murdered man before, had even
been a little skeptical that such an awful thing as murder was ever really
done, except in the big cities where extreme wickedness was naturally to be
expected, and were actually stunned by the shock of finding themselves in
the presence of the evidences of the perpetration of such a deed. From
them, of course, no aid in finding a clue to the perpetrator of the crime, or
divining its real motive, could have been expected. Yet every man of
them was wise in his own conceit, and among them were furtively exchanged
whispers of such hideous significance that the Squire, when they
reached his ears, felt himself compelled to take notice of and reply to
them.
"The old men have been all the time quarrelling for two months past,"
said one to another.
"Yes," replied he who was addressed. "I've heard 'em myself, cussing
each other over the fortune that was left them."
"Sam Folsom," added a third, "told me that he'd heard that Peter had
threatened to knock Jake's head off more than once."
"Oh! I've heard that myself," chimed in another. "And I did hear
that they'd had a regular fight and Jake got the best of it."
"It's awful that two old men like them, on the edge of the grave, as you
may say, and brothers at that, should quarrel about money."
"And one for to go and kill the other."
At this point the Squire, who had overheard much of the preceding conversation,
interposed: "How do you know," he demanded abruptly, turning
on the last speaker, "who killed him?"
"Well, I dunno exactly, of course," whined the fellow, hesitatingly,
"but it looks mighty like it."
"Ah! And that pimpled nose of yours, Rufe Stevens, looks mightily
like you were a hard drinker; but you are ready to take your Bible oath it's
nothing but bad humors in your blood."
There were a few suppressed chuckles at the Squire's retort from those in
the vicinity—for men will laugh even at the smallest things, and in the very
presence of the King of Terrors—and Rufe moved away, muttering indistinctly.
But the Squire's interference and well-intended reproof had only a
momentary effect in diverting the attention of the neighbors from the evil
bent of suspicion their minds had taken; and they continued exchanging,
and possibly augmenting, the rumors they had heard of differences between
the Van Deust brothers, until the sentiment was general among
them that Peter Van Deust should be at once arrested for the murder of
his brother.
That the reader may be properly informed of certain antecedent events
which, as will hereafter be seen, were intimately connected with, and indeed
leading directly to the murder of Jacob Van Deust, it will be
necessary for us to make a brief retrogression in our narrative and to introduce
various other members of that little seaside community who bore
their several important parts in the eventful drama of real life here in
progress of recital.
Near the close of a day in earliest spring, when the sun, that had not yet
sufficient power to melt the lingering patches of snow that still laid here
and there among the thickets and on northern slopes, was throwing its last
red rays upon the lowering, leaden-tinted masses of the western sky, two
young girls wandered, with their arms about each other's waists, in the
shadows of the woods not far distant from the village of Easthampton.
One of them, somewhat above the medium height of women, possessed a
slender and graceful figure, and a face that, seen under the large, crimson-lined
hood of the cloak with which her head was covered, appeared almost
pure Grecian in its regularity of feature and delicacy of outline. Her
complexion was pale, but the clear roseate flush of her cheeks, and the
brilliancy of youth and health sparkling in her eyes, demonstrated sufficiently
that that pallidity was simply the added charm with which kindly
nature at times enhances the loveliness of the most beautiful brunettes.
The sentiment expressed by her countenance was serious and earnest, but
not sad, for a faint smile, like the blossoming of some sweet hope, rested
upon her small red lips. Her companion, who seemed to be of about the
same age—not more than eighteen or nineteen years—was of a different
mould; possibly less beautiful, but hardly less bewitching. She was somewhat
shorter of stature and rounder of form, with a face in which vivacity
and determination were happily blended. Her laughing lips were red and
full, a merry mischievous light danced in her blue eyes, and her hood
thrown back upon her neck, left bare a round head covered with a wavy
wealth of brown hair.
"Now, Mary," said the brown-haired maid, bending forward and looking
up archly in the face of her friend, "let us drop this nonsense of pretending
to look for trailing arbutus, when you know, just as well as I do,
that it will be a week, if not two, before there will be a sprig of it in
bloom; and I know, just as well as you do, that you called me out for
this walk to tell me something about Dorn Hackett, and for nothing else.
Isn't that so, now?"
"Yes, you sharp little thing. You have guessed rightly, as usual. I
have received another letter from Dorn."
"A letter from Dorn? The first for over a year, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"Well, dear, it must seem almost like getting one from a stranger."
"Whalers have so few chances to write home."
"He has been gone a great while, hasn't he?"
"It seems so to me, I confess. And three years really is a long time,
isn't it?"
"Dear me, yes. I wouldn't let Lem go away from me that way. Who
knows but what he might marry somebody else while he was gone? Have
you never been afraid that Dorn would?"
"Oh, no, Ruth. Never. He loves me too well for that, I know."
"And you felt just as sure of that when you did not hear from him for
nearly two years?"
"Yes," replied Mary, with a little hesitation, however: "for I know the
girl whose lover goes a-whaling must have patience; and I have heard
Uncle Thatcher tell a good deal about the countries to which the whalers
go, and I hardly think—"
"That he would be likely to meet anybody there who would be able to
cut you out. Well, there's some comfort in that reflection, anyway. But
the letter! What does he say for himself?"
"That he is coming home, Ruth; coming home at last. He is on the
way now. A fast sailing packet-ship brought the letter on ahead, and he
supposed that he would arrive a couple of weeks after I received it."
"And when he comes you'll get married?"
"I—hope so," replied Mary, in a little lower tone and with tears gathering
in her eyes. "But you know we are poor; and besides, Uncle
Thatcher—"
"That, for Uncle Thatcher," exclaimed little Ruth, snapping her fingers
defiantly. "What has he to say about whom you shall marry? That is a
matter which concerns nobody but you and Dorn."
"My mother, when she was dying in the big city, leaving me all alone,
put me in his charge, you know."
"Well, what of it? It would be as much as I'd do to let my father and
mother interfere with my marrying any nice young man I liked, and I don't
believe parents can transfer that right—if it is a right—to anybody. Uncle
Thatcher, indeed!" she ejaculated scornfully, with a toss of her little resolute
round head. "What does he want you to do, anyway? To live and
die an old maid, to please him?"
"No, I have been ashamed to tell anybody heretofore—even you, Ruth—but
he wants me to marry Cousin Silas."
"That ugly, good-for-nothing cub of his?"
"Yes; Silas asked me to once, and when I refused him, said that I was
only a pauper living on his father's charity, and threatened to tell such stories
about me that nobody else would have me. He hurt and frightened me
terribly, and Dorn found me in the woods crying about it. In the fullness
of my heart I told him all. I couldn't keep it to myself when he asked me
why I cried. And do you know what he did? He went right off and gave
Silas such an awful pounding that he was laid up for two weeks."
"Good! I like Dorn Hackett better than I ever did before. That's just
what I should expect of Lem in such a case."
"That was the time Silas was reported to be so sick, just before Dorn
went away. He never dared to talk about me as he said he would, I
guess, but as soon as he got well went right off to New York. Uncle
Thatcher blamed Dorn for hurting Silas, and has hated the thought of
him ever since. And oh, Ruth! you don't know what I've had to suffer
from Aunt Thatcher!"
"Now you just take my advice and put your back right up at her; and
as soon as Dorn comes home, you two go right off and get married, and if
Uncle Thatcher tries to interfere, have Dorn pound him, too—worse than
he did Silas."
Mary smiled through her tears and replied: "Dorn says he has done
well and talks about buying a share in a coasting schooner—and a house—and—furniture—and
I think he said something about getting married right
away."
In sympathetic exuberance of joy the two girls embraced and kissed each
other, Ruth exclaiming:
"And we'll get married on the same day, won't we? And in spite of
Uncle Thatcher, or anybody else, Mary Wallace will be Mrs. Dorman
Hackett, and Ruth Lenox will be Mrs. Lemuel Pawlett. But I wish Lem's
name didn't rhyme with 'pullet' and 'gullet.'"
The two charming young friends were so busy with their theme that not
until they were close before him, in the little bridle path through which
they wandered, did they notice the presence of a third person: a smoothly-shaven,
little, elderly gentleman, primly dressed in black and wearing a
band of crape upon his tall silk hat. He was upon horseback, sitting silent
and motionless. He had seen the girls slowly strolling toward him, waited
until they almost collided with his horse's nose and had executed a little
concerted scream of surprise, and then addressed them in a slow, measured
and precise manner, saying:
"I am endeavoring to find the residence, or residences, of two persons
known as Peter and Jacob Van Deust, supposed to be brothers, who, according
to my present information and belief, reside somewhere in this
vicinity. Can either of you young ladies direct me definitely upon my
way, and if able, will you be so kind as to do so?"
"Follow the path you are on," answered Ruth, "until you enter the
main road; turn to your right about a quarter of a mile, then go up a lane
that you will see on your left—the first that has an elm tree on each side of
its entrance—and it will lead you straight up to the Van Deust homestead."
"I am very much obliged to you for your apparent courtesy and the
seeming accuracy of the details of your information," responded the little
gentleman, with grave deliberation, bending almost to the horse's mane as
he spoke. Then straightening himself, and shaking the reins, he urged his
steed into a gentle trot and soon disappeared in the gathering evening
shades at a bend of the path.
"'Supposed to be brothers'—indeed!" exclaimed Ruth, when he was
out of sight. "I'm sure their faces will afford him sufficient 'information
and belief' on that score when he sees them."
The Van Deust brothers sat smoking their pipes in the twilight on the
wide porch of the old homestead overlooking the sea.
"I met Thatcher to-day when I was over at the village," said the younger
brother, Jacob, "and he wanted to put the ten acre lot in corn on shares."
"Well," responded Peter, "I suppose he might as well have it as anybody.
Somebody will have to work it. We are getting too old, Jacob, for
ploughing and such-like hard toil ourselves, and a third will be all we'll
want. What did you tell him?"
"I didn't give him any definite answer. I wish somebody else would
offer to take the lot. I don't like that Thatcher."
"Why?"
"He is a hard, severe-looking old fellow, and I'm sure he treats that
pretty niece of his badly."
"Oh! He does, eh? And now, Jacob, what the mischief is that to you?
And what has it to do with his putting the ten-acre lot in corn on shares?"
"I've seen her crying."
"Bah! Girls are always crying. They like it. They do it for practice."
"Peter, you'd kick a boy for throwing stones at a wild bird, wouldn't
you?"
"That's another matter. Birds are birds, and they're God's creatures;
but women are the devil's creatures, and you'll never see Peter Van Deust
trouble himself to lift his foot to a boy that throws stones at them. If
the girl don't like the treatment her uncle gives her, I suppose she can find
some fellow fool enough to marry her. 'Most any of 'em can do that."
"Peter, you shouldn't talk that way. A poor girl has her feelings about
marrying where her liking goes, just as much as a man has."
"Yah!" snarled Peter, contemptuously, vigorously puffing his pipe, and
for some minutes both men were silent. The younger of the two sank
into a reverie, and awoke from it with a start, when his brother resumed
the conversation, saying:
"I tell you what it is, Jacob. You were spooney on Mary Wallace's
mother forty years ago, and I'm blessed if I think you have got over it yet.
She threw you overboard then, not for a better looking man—for you were
a fine, trim, sailor-built young fellow in those days—but for a richer one.
She thought—"
"No, no, Peter! No, no! Don't say that! Don't say that! She
didn't want to marry Wallace. I know she didn't. But her father and
mother compelled her to it. She loved me best, I know she did. But you
are right in saying I haven't got over it, Peter. I never shall. I'll love
her just the same still, if I meet her in heaven. And when I see Mary's
sweet young face, the love that is in my heart for her mother's memory
cries out like a voice from the grave of all my hopes and joys, and I can
hardly keep from taking poor Lottie's child in my arms and weeping over
her."
"Which, if you were to do, she would think you were crazy, and right
she would be," commented Peter, snarlingly.
"Hello!" sounded shortly, in a sharp wiry voice, from the little lane at
the back of the house.
Peter, rising from his bench and going to the end of the porch, replied
with a sailor-like "Aye, aye, sir," to the hail of the stranger, who was
none other than the little elderly gentleman already encountered by Ruth
and Mary in the woods. Without dismounting, the visitor asked, in a
slow and cautious manner,
"Am I justified in presuming that I am upon the premises of the parties
known as Peter and Jacob Van Deust?"
"This is where we live," replied Peter, a little puzzled by the stranger's
manner.
"Pardon me, sir, but your reply is not an answer to my question. Am
I to understand that you are one of the said parties?"
"I'm Peter, and this is Jacob," responded the elder brother, pointing
with the stem of his pipe at the younger. "But come alongside before you
get off any more of that lingo."
Methodically and carefully the rider dismounted, fastened his nag to the
fence, and pushing open the little gate, stepped upon the low porch-floor,
where, after an elaborate bow to each of the brothers separately, he continued:
"Assuming your affirmation to be correct and capable of substantiation
by documentary evidence, and believing that you are, as you represent
yourselves—or, rather, as one of you has represented—Peter and Jacob
Van Deust, permit me, gentlemen, to have the pleasure of offering you my
congratulations."
So saying, he raised his tall hat with old-time courtesy, repeated his
bows to the brothers severally, and replaced his beaver with such exactitude
that not a hair of his nicely-brushed wig was disarranged.
"Congratulations upon what? Upon being Peter and Jacob Van Deust?"
demanded Peter, who began to look upon his visitor as a probably harmless
lunatic.
"Naturally, sir. For reasons which you shall presently apprehend.
Have you, or have you had, sir, to your knowledge, an uncle named Dietrich
Van Deust?"
"Yes. It was Uncle Dietrich who went away to the Indies when we
were boys, wasn't it, Peter?" said the younger brother.
"Yes, and settled somewhere there; I forget where. Batavia, I think,
was the name of the place; but I ain't sure, for it is an age since I heard
from him."
"Your remembrance is correct, nevertheless, sir," responded the
stranger. "It was in Batavia that he took up his residence, and in Batavia
that he died, at an advanced age, an old bachelor, possessed of large
wealth, as I have been given to understand; and I offer my congratulations
to you, gentlemen, for the reason that you are his fortunate heirs to the
extent of one hundred thousand dollars."
The mere mention of that stupendous sum, as it seemed to them, fairly,
stunned the two simple-minded old men who received this intelligence.
"Oh, Peter! It can't be there's so much money," gasped Jacob.
"Let me turn it over in my mind. Take a seat, sir," said Peter, pushing
forward a stool for the visitor, reseating himself on his bench and
slowly rubbing his forehead. Jacob went out to put away the little gentleman's
horse, and while he was gone Peter relighted his pipe and smoked
in silence. When the younger brother returned, the visitor resumed the
conversation.
"My name," said he, "is Pelatiah Holden, and my profession that of
counsellor-at-law. Here is my card," presenting one to each of the Van
Deusts, and then continuing: "Four months and fourteen days since, I
received from the firm of Van Gulden & Dropp, of Amsterdam, Holland,
information to the effect that a client of theirs named William Van Deust
was joint heir in the estate of Dietrich Van Deust, deceased, of Batavia;
and they desired me, in order to facilitate the partition of the estate, to
discover two other heirs, nephews of the deceased Dietrich Van Deust,
named respectively Peter and Jacob Van Deust, sons of Jan Van Deust.
"That was father's name," interpolated Jacob in an undertone.
"As I have been already informed, sir, and do not doubt your ability
to establish by legal proof," replied Mr. Holden, bowing gravely to him
and going on with his narration. "Since that time, until three weeks ago,
I have been seeking you, and it has only been during four days past that
I have been satisfied that your claim to be the sons of Jan Van Deust, and
nephews of Dietrich—and consequently inheritors under the will of the latter—could
be legally established. Hence the apparent delay. But you will
perceive, gentlemen, from my explanation, that I have notified you of the
gratifying fact of the bequest, at the earliest practicable and proper
moment."
Peter nodded silently, not having yet completed, seemingly, the serious
task of "turning it over in his mind." But Jacob effusively stammered:
"Oh, we were not in any hurry, sir."
The lawyer resumed, speaking with the deliberate precision of one who reads
an indictment: "Under the terms of the will, you are to enjoy this inheritance
jointly while you both live, and expend it all, if you please, but by
mutual consent. And should any of it remain at the time of the demise
of either of you, it must descend to the survivor, untrammelled by any right
of bequest on the part of the first decedent. And no contract, bargain,
agreement, stipulation, or understanding whatever between you, concerning
its disposal shall be made, by which the one surviving may be bound, or
influenced in its administration; and to the fact that he is in no wise so
bound, the survivor must make oath when entering into sole possession,
else the sum so remaining must lapse to residuary legatees belonging
to a remote branch of your family in Holland. What your uncle's intentions
may have been in framing his will in this unusual manner, I do not
pretend to say; nor is it, indeed, my province to inquire; but the facts are—as
I know from an attested copy of the will in my possession—as I have
had the honor of presenting them to you. And now, gentlemen, permit
me to renew my congratulations and express the hope that you may long
be joint possessors of this handsome inheritance."
"The winds are fair, the sky is bright,
The sails are drawing free,
And loud I sing, my heart is light,
My loves returns to me.
To the no'nothe east and the sou'sou' west,
And every other way,
He's sailed from the girl that loved him best,
But he comes back to-day.
"Land ho!" "Land ho!"
"Land on the starboard bow!"
"Land ho!" "Land ho!"
He's in the offing now.
The nights were dark, the days were drear,
When he was on the deep,
Now night is gone, the day is clear,
And I no more shall weep.
To the no'nothe east and the sou'sou' west,
And every other way,
He's sailed from the girl that loves him best,
But he comes back to-day.
"Land ho!" "Land ho!"
"Land on the starboard bow!"
"Land ho!" "Land ho!"
He's in the offing now."
So sung pretty Mary Wallace, as, sitting at the foot of a little tree, her
favorite haunt and old time trysting-place in the woods, she abandoned
herself to happy anticipations of her lover's return. Each hour might
bring him now. Her bonnet was thrown aside and her black curls rippled
down loosely over her shoulders. Her head was thrown back into the
palms of her hands interlocked behind it, and her beautiful face, thus
upraised, beamed with innocent gladness. And she sang, as the birds sing,
from sheer happiness.
"He's in the offing now," sang a full, rich, manly voice, joining hers
in the last line of her song, and with a little inarticulate cry of surprise
and joy she sprang to her feet, to be the next moment enfolded in the
strong arms of her sailor lover, back from the sea.
Dorn Hackett was a fine-looking young fellow, of a size worthy of a
woman's liking, with a handsome, expressive face, hazel eyes, brown hair,
broad and well-balanced head, square shoulders, deep chest, and such powerful
arms as might have served for the model of a Hercules.
"Why, darling, you are crying!" he exclaimed, as with gentle force
he raised her face from his breast and looked into her eyes.
"Ah, Dorn, they are happy tears. Do you not know that a woman
weeps when her heart is full, just because it is full, whether it be filled
with joy or sorrow?"
"Well, you shall never cry for sorrow again, if I can prevent it."
"Then you will never again leave me for so long a time. Oh, Dorn, it
seemed as if you never would come back; and my heart ached so with
longing for you. You don't know how unhappy I have been sometimes,
while you were away."
"Why? Has that rascal Silas been making you any more trouble?" demanded
the young man, his eyes blazing, and his hands involuntarily
clenching in sudden anger.
"No, no, Dorn. He went away very soon after you did, and has not
returned since."
"Then that uncle of yours, I suppose—"
"He has been no worse than before; rather better, perhaps as Silas was not
here to be urged upon me and you were gone—none but I knew where—and,
as he no doubt hoped, never to come back. But I begin to think, sir,
that you didn't love me at all as much as you professed, or you would have
felt something of the loneliness that I suffered and understand better why
I was unhappy."
"Darling, I—"
"What a foolish girl I have been! Crying my eyes out for one who was
no doubt very merry without me and well contented."
"Ah! You only say that to make me tell you again how much I love
you, little Mollie. I've felt lonely enough, sometimes, it is true; but never
enough to cry about it, I must confess; and I rather think the fellow is soft-headed
as well as soft-hearted who pipes his eye and gets down in the
mouth when he can say to himself that every day that passes, and every
new exertion he makes, brings him nearer to the girl he loves. Why,
instead of getting blue with thoughts of my far-away little Mollie, they
gave me courage, and strength, and happiness. They warmed me as I lay
along the yard furling sail in the icy gale; they made short the long hours
of the night when I took my trick at the wheel; they nerved my arm
when I struck for the life of a whale."
"I find myself beginning to believe again that you really did love me."
"Love you? Why, I couldn't live without loving you."
"And you never thought that while you were so long away I might learn
to love somebody else?"
"No. Never even dreamed of such a thing," he replied simply.
"Ah! Now I know you loved me, for only perfect love, knowing but its
own fullness and truth, is so trustful. And you were right, dear Dorn. I
could love no one but you."
"Well, my pet," continued Dorn, after the natural ceremonial of due
recognition of such a sweet avowal—the form and manner of which youthful
readers may readily figure to themselves, and older ones perhaps find
suggested by memory—"we'll not have much longer to wait now. Our
cruise was a good one, and when the shares are figured up and paid off, I'll
have a handsome little sum coming to me. Then an owner in New Haven,
Mr. Merriwether, wants me to take immediate command of a schooner
trading between that port and the West Indies, and has offered me such a
pretty share of the profits that I have agreed to make a few trips for him.
Then I shall have enough to build a cage for my bird, and to buy, not simply
a share in a schooner, but a whole schooner—all by myself, I hope, and we
will be made folks for life."
"Oh! You're going away again, Dorn?"
"Yes, but only for short voyages of a month or so at a time, and I'll be
over to see my little Mollie every time I'm in home port; and in the fall, if
not before, we'll be married. No more long voyages for me."
"I'm so glad to hear you say that, dear; and I can wait patiently, even
happily, when I may see you sometimes." And, possibly for happiness
still, the girl began crying softly again.
"Come, come, little Mollie," said her sailor lover, consoling her with
a kiss, "there's no occasion to rig the pumps in such fair weather as this."
Mary smiled through her tears, and dried her eyes.
"Now," he continued, "let me hear your voice, darling. Tell me something."
"What shall I tell you?"
"Tell me again if you still love me."
For answer she put her arm around his neck, drew his face down to hers,
and kissed him. What words could have been so complete and eloquent
an assurance as that chaste and tender caress?
"My own dear little wife," he exclaimed, embracing her passionately.
"Don't call me 'wife' until I am one," she said, with assumed earnestness,
"for I'm told it's unlucky."
"Well, maybe it may be," he answered slowly and doubtingly. "There's
no denying that there is something in luck. Every sailorman knows there
are unlucky things, such as sailing on a Friday, and drowning a cat, and
lots more, and that may be so. Well, I won't take any chances on it.
But I've thought of you for eleven hundred days and nights as my little
wife, and the words sprang naturally to my lips. Still I'll try not to call
you so any more until we are married."
"And to prevent any harm from your indiscretion I suppose I must
use the counter-charm."
"And that is—?"
"To call you," and winding her arms again about his neck she whispered
in his ear, "my big husband."
And then, of course, there were more suitable ceremonials, endearments
and caresses, and mutual protestations of undying affection, such as
young people so circumstanced have always made, make yet, and doubtless
will make to the end of time.
How very short the time seemed to the lovers from the moment of
their meeting until by a glance at the stars, the true sailor's clock,
Dorn saw that it was near the hour for him to leave Elysium and hasten
to join a shipmate, who was waiting for him in a light sail-boat off
Napeague Inlet, to take him back to New London and the stern realities
of life. And so, after a final settlement as to the probable time of his return
from his first West Indian voyage; and a little more previsionary
talk about the happiness of which they were so well assured the enjoyment
in the coming autumn; and consequently more love-making and caressing,
all of which could have no interest for anybody but themselves, the lovers
parted.
There was no difficulty whatever in establishing the identity of the Van
Deust brothers, and no obstacles were interposed to prevent their entering
into possession of their fortune as speedily as the forms of law and the
time requisite for communication with Holland would permit; for in those
days it had not yet become a branch of the legal business to stir up vexatious
will contests, based upon the fictitious claims of presumptive heirs,
in order that lawyers might fleece the real inheritors. Even before the
money arrived from Holland Peter wanted a few thousand dollars of it in
the house as a tangible evidence of the reality of their wealth; and Mr.
Holden very cheerfully humored his whim by making him an advance of
the required amount. The old man had no idea of investing the money,
or buying anything with it; but he loved to run his fingers through the
glittering coins from time to time and listen to the mellifluous music of
their chinking; to count, and recount, and pile the yellow discs, and think
what he could do with them if he had a mind to. The unhappy fact was
that this sudden acquisition of wealth had developed a really miserly disposition
in the elder brother. As is very common, especially among those
who only acquire large fortunes late in life, possession begat in him a longing
to possess. He even felt it an injury that he had been all those years
without that money, the existence even of which he had not known, and
for which, now that he clutched it, he really had not the slightest use.
He had never been one at whom the tongue of scandal might have wagged
the reproach of prodigality, even in his youth; but his jealously careful
economy was greater now than it had ever before been.
Jacob proposed one day that they should purchase two black broadcloth
suits and crape-bound hats, to be worn as mourning for Uncle Dietrich;
but was completely discomfited by the look of pained surprise with
which Peter regarded him, and the tone in which he replied:
"Now, Jacob, would you go to making ducks and drakes of our little
money in that way, and at your time of life?"
No, Jacob resigned his idea of a tribute to Uncle Dietrich's memory,
and penitently declared he really had no notion of becoming a spendthrift;
and thereafter he uncomplainingly and unquestioningly left his elder brother
to the sole administration of their joint wealth.
When the bulk of their inheritance arrived and was placed in the hands
of Mr. Holden for investment on bond and mortgage in New York, that it
might yield more dollars to covetous Peter's longings, then the old man's
troubles indeed began. When he heard of a fire, he trembled to think
that perhaps it was property mortgaged to the Van Deust Fund that was
burned. When he read of a bankruptcy he shuddered for fear that the
delinquent might have been indebted to the Van Deust Fund. When he
had no bad news, then his anxiety was even greater, for at times he was
capable of thinking it possible that worthy little Mr. Holden might have
run away with the Van Deust Fund bodily. All this made him a very
uneasy and unhappy old man. Jacob's kinder and more trustful nature
gave place to none of those anxieties, and Peter resented his seeming indifference
to the Van Deust Fund.
"Jacob," said he, one day, "we might live to see the Fund doubled."
"Well, Peter, if it were, what more good would it do us?"
The elder brother felt almost sick with disgust at that unambitious reply,
and said that he felt so.
Thus it was that Peter's temper, never a remarkably sweet one, became
so sour that meek old Jacob grew to look upon him with actual dread and
would shun him, or sit looking askance and timidly at him, when they
smoked together on the porch in the evenings, in the habit but not the
content of former days. And, seeing this, a new suspicion entered Peter's
soul to plague him.
"I suppose," said he, one day, with a grim smile, "that you think because
I'm the oldest, I'll die first."
"Now, now, Peter, my dear Peter! I assure you I never had such
a thought," protested horrified Jacob.
"Oh, it's only natural you should. I don't blame you. But I'm good
for a good many years yet, Jacob; a good many years yet."
"I trust and fervently hope and pray, brother Peter, that you may be
good for very many years to come." And the tender-hearted old man's
voice trembled, and his eyes were moist as he spoke. "Why," said he,
"to think of your dying, Peter, gives me a—a—a—"
"An idea, eh?"
"No, no, Peter, not at all that. No. A cold shudder, I meant; but
you startled me so I couldn't think of the word. After all the many years
we have lived together, all by ourselves, with no other companions and
hardly any other friends than each other! Why, Peter, if I were to lose
you, I'd want to die myself, right off."
"Humph. Not you. I know what you'd want to do a heap more.
And I don't blame you. Oh, no. It's natural for you. But I know."
"Know what?"
"I know what you'd do with the Fund if I was out of the way."
"Then you know much more, Peter, than I should know, even if I had
it in my hands, to do what I pleased with this blessed minute."
"Why, you'd be a special Providence for the women. That's what you'd
be, you soft old noodle. You'd give it away to the young ones that wanted
to marry, like Mary Wallace; to the middle-aged ones who were sorry
they had married, like Mrs. Richards. Oh, you don't think I've noticed
and understood your hinting 'how poor she was,' and 'how hard she
must find it to get along with her five small children and deserted by her
worthless husband;' and I've no doubt, if the truth were known, he had
some good reasons for leaving her. And you'd give it to the old ones,
just because they were old women. You'd give a lot of it to Mary Wallace,
for her mother's sake, I've no doubt. Oh, yes. Beautiful ideas
you'd have, and fine things you'd do with the Fund if I was out of the
road."
"If I should do all that you have said, brother, I think the Fund would
be doing a great deal more good than it does now."
"Aha! There! You admit it! I knew it! But you needn't think you'll
ever get the chance. I'll live to bury you yet."
By this time he had worked himself up into a veritable passion; his
lean old fingers trembled with the agitation of his wrath, and his perverted
senses were deaf and blind to the loving kindness of Jacob's meek and
gentle response, "And I hope, Peter, that you may."
"You don't. You're a hypocrite," he retorted, furiously. Jacob looked
at him sadly, shook his head, and after lighting his pipe in silence, strolled
away for his evening smoke to the woods, where he was wont to retire
when Peter made the house too warm for him.
But the crushed worm, proverbially at least, eventually turns; and one
day the younger brother, badgered beyond endurance by those oft-repeated
taunts and reproaches, which were always accompanied by cruel
raspings of the old wound in his heart, faced his tormentor and replied:
"Well," he said, "take it by and large, and I think if I should do all
that you have said with the money I'd make a better use of it than you'd
be likely to."
"What do you know about what I'd do with it?"
"No more than you know what I would; but I've got just as good a
right to guess as you have."
"Well, what do you 'guess'?" retorted Peter, with a sneering wicked
grin.
"Why, I imagine that as long as you lived you would hang on to every
penny of it, like an old miser as you are, and when Death loosed the
greedy clutch of your avaricious fingers from it, it would be discovered
that you had left it all to found a home for worn-out, dried-up, useless,
ill-natured old animals such as we are, creatures who have outlived all
love but that of self, and deserve no other; men
who, like you,
have no
without a blush for what they are, and a sigh for what they might have
been."
"Jacob, you're a chuckle-headed ass."
"Peter, you're a soulless old curmudgeon, and a brute."
"Don't you talk to me like that. For two cents I'd knock your head
off."
"For a money consideration I've no doubt you'd try it; but I'll bet you
a thousand dollars you can't knock one side of it off."
"You'll bet a thousand dollars! I'd like to know where you'd get 'em."
"Right in the house. Half the money that's there belongs to me. It
all belongs to me just as much as to you."
"Oh, indeed! And you'd like to knock me in the head and get possession
of it, wouldn't you?"
"No. But I'd like to jam some sense into your thick skull, and bleed
out some of the meanness and selfishness that fills your heart."
"Faw de Lo'd's sake. Is you boys a qwa'lin'?" demanded old black
Betsy, coming up on the porch; and they slunk away ashamed before her.
But when Jacob had once "read the Declaration of Independence," as
he styled his self-assertion against Peter's domineering disposition, he
soon fell into the habit of repeating the precedent, and as Peter did not
willingly or easily relinquish his sovereignty—the prerogative of seniority
in his opinion—they had many a wordy wrangle, and not infrequently
uttered to each other such threats as might well have seemed ominous if
overheard by strangers. And they were overheard, and their quarrels
were repeated and magnified in circulation from mouth to mouth; so that
it was not long before it became matter of common notoriety in the community
that the two old men had actually had knock-down fights; and
once, when Peter was laid up with the rheumatism, and Jacob was nursing
him most tenderly and assiduously—notwithstanding the invalid's
temper was just then even worse than usual—it was popularly believed
that the elder brother had been almost killed by the younger in a bloody
combat, and there were those who even talked of "speaking to the squire
about it." But the brothers never did come to blows, and the only immediate
result of their quarrels was a formal division between them of the
money on hand in the house, after which it was allowed to lie in two parts,
as useless as it before was in one. Jacob indeed had some idea of giving
his share to Mary Wallace, but could not exactly make up his mind upon
what pretence or with what excuse to offer it, and feared to offend her.
One day he sat on a little mossy bank by the roadside when she passed
him, coming from the woods with a bunch of wild flowers in her hands
and going toward her uncle's house. She was close to him, but did not
see him. Her thoughts were upon her absent lover, and in the exaltation
of her happiness she was oblivious to all about her but her own joy. The
old man's eyes were upon her, however, reading her secret in her countenance
transfigured by love and hope. Ah! how her look brought back her
mother's face to his remembrance.
"Little she would care," he said softly to himself, "for the money now.
She has love; and that is better than gold."
But when approaching her home, Mary controlled her countenance and
was quite demure. The happy ones do well to hide their felicity, lest the
envy it would beget should make the world intolerable. And about Uncle
Thatcher's house there was an atmosphere that made very easy the repression
of joyous emotion. It was a square frame dwelling, two stories
high, in a bare sandy yard surrounded on three sides by a rickety fence
of rails and on the forth—the front—by palings, with a gate in the middle
of them. There were no shutters on the windows, that looked like great
staring dead eyes, sometimes with a blaze of fury in them when the sun,
low in the west, glared upon them; and there was no porch, but only a
big stone for a step at the door. There were no vines trailing against the
walls; no flowers in the yard, but only weeds in the fence corners; and
no trees. Everything that might have adorned or softened the expression
of the place was lacking. The birds always flew swiftly by it and never
stopped there to sing.
At one end of this cheerless home was a crumbling well-curb, to which
came often, to draw water, a tall, gaunt, sallow and slatternly woman,
who continually wore a sun-bonnet and had her sleeves rolled up on her
lean sinewy arms. A tangled wisp of unkempt sandy hair never failed to
dangle below the curtain of the sun-bonnet on the back of her neck. That
woman was Aunt Thatcher.
Behind the house, and separated from it by a stable-yard, knee-deep in
time of rain, with muck and foul green water, stood an old barn, from
which was diffused a dull but quite perceptible odor of animal decomposition,
arising out of a great pile of crude whalebone, or "ballein", and
some barrels of whale oil. Uncle Thatcher was captain of a shore whaling
company, and in his barn those articles were generally stored until they
could be sent to market. The "ballein" needed to be kept some time, for
cleaning, scraping, and splitting before it could be sold.
As Mary reached the gate, she stood still for a few minutes, contemplating
the scene of thriftlessness and apparent poverty before her; a picture
for which, as she well knew, no good reason existed in fact, for Uncle
Thatcher was by no means a poor man. As captain of the whaling crew,
his annual gains were considerable. Then he owned a fishing smack and
a large share in a big coasting schooner that plied from Sag Harbor, both of
which paid him well. But better than either of those to him was an industry,
the nature and importance of which Mary little understood, although
she suspected something of its mysteries. At certain times each month
Uncle Thatcher and one particular neighbor used to go fishing in a stout
whaleboat rigged with a sail, on moonlit nights, and upon those occasions
they were almost always lucky enough to find one or two casks of
rum—doubtless washed overboard from some vessel homeward-bound to
New Haven from the West Indies. (It was wonderful how many casks
of rum were thus lost overboard in those days, just off Napeague Inlet.)
Or, by the accidental use of a grapnel, they would chance to fish up some
bottles of valuable "bay-oil" from the bottom. Uncle Thatcher used to
bury that treasure-trove in the sand, back of his barn, and it always mysteriously
disappeared at night, when nobody was watching it. Yet he
never seemed to take those losses to heart, but would find and bury more
rum and bay oil, in the same place, to be lost in just the same way.
"Smuggling, eh?" Well, yes. But they didn't call it that. They spoke
of it as "finding and saving things."
While Mary stood at the gate, Uncle Thatcher himself sat upon the stone
door-step, sharpening with a whetstone the edge of a "blubber-spade"—a
sort of huge long-handled chisel, used to cut a whale's blubber from his
carcass and into strips. He was a tall man, wirily and powerfully built,
past middle-age, but still bearing well his years. His gray eyes were overhung
by exceedingly bushy iron-gray brows; his nose was large and beak-shaped;
his lips, thin and straight; his ears wide and thick; and his
hands big and bony, with thick fingers, flat at the ends and having great
joints.
Looking up from his work, he demanded of the young girl, in a tone of
querulous surprise, "Where on earth have you been? I've been looking
everywhere for you to turn the grindstone."
"I'm ready to do it now, uncle," responded Mary, evading a reply to his
question by the prompt proffer of her services.
"Oh, I don't need you now. Your aunt turned it."
He gave a few rubs of the whetstone on the shining blade, in an absent-minded
way, and then laying the long spade across his knees, and looking
sharply at Mary, said slowly, as if carefully choosing his words:
"You don't get used to our way of living out here on the beach, do you,
Mary? You'd rather be back in the city, where you lived when you were
a little girl, wouldn't you?"
"Oh, no, uncle. My memories of the city do not make me wish to
return to it. Papa and mamma died there, and after we lost papa we had
to live in a very poor part of the city, where the tall houses hid the
sunshine, and the air was always bad, and there was so much misery,
and dirt, and sickness all about us. Oh, I loathed it as a child, and it
makes me almost sick to think of it now. No, I do not wish to go back
to the city. I like best the bright sunlight and the pure ocean breezes.
I love even the storms."
"But if you could live in a nice place in the city?"
"No. I think I would be afraid to go back there now." While talking
she had advanced from the gate, and now stood near her uncle.
"Sit down here beside me, Mary. I want to talk to you a little,"
said he.
She obeyed, trembling slightly, for she felt a vague presentiment that
he proposed pressing a subject that she dreaded. But he was slow to begin,
seemed to hesitate, and relapsed into thought while he pared his already
stubby nails upon the sharp edge of the blubber-spade. At length, he
"made out his bearings" and opened the attack.
"You know," he said, "that Silas has been a little wild, perhaps, in days
gone by, as a young man of spirit is most likely to be; but I hope you
have no hard feelings against him on account of his foolishness that time.
You know he was only a boy, then; and he was, as you may say, carried
away with you, and all struck of a heap when you gave him the mitten so
plainly. Maybe he deserved all he got that time, and I guess it done
him good; so we'll call that square and let by-gones be by-gones. Is that
your idea?"
"Yes, uncle," answered Mary timidly, in a low voice.
"Give us your hand on it."
With a little smile the girl extended her hand, which Uncle Thatcher
took very seriously, and treated to a solemn pump-handle-like shake.
"And now here's the point," he went on, still holding her fingers;
"Silas is going to settle down and be steady. He wrote to me about three
months ago, from Boston, and said he'd got work there as a ship-carpenter,
and had quit his wild ways, and wasn't going to call on me for any more
money. Well, he has kept his own word about the money, and by that I
judge he's all right, earning an honest living, and doing as he said. But
he likes living in the city better than down here on the beach. And now
do you know what would do more than anything else to keep him steady?"
Mary shook her head. She had an idea of what he meant, but did not
wish to encourage him in the direction he was tending.
"A good wife would," said Uncle Thatcher very decidedly.
"Then I hope he will succeed in finding one in Boston," replied the girl,
with purposeful evasion of the direct attack.
"That's not my idea. I don't want him to marry a Boston girl. I've got
my eye on a girl who I know is all that a good wife should be, the very
one that Silas ought to have. You know who I mean. It's you, Mary."
"A girl should never marry a man she doesn't love, uncle, and I don't
love Silas."
He bit his lips, was silent for a moment, and then resumed: "You're
only a girl, yet, and can't rightly be expected to know your own mind; and
besides, it's three years since you have seen Silas. You don't know how
you might feel towards him if you were to see him again now."
She shook her head, for she thought she did know very well, as she
mentally put Silas and Dorn in contrast, but did not answer.
"I hope," he continued, viewing her with a little growing suspicion,
"that you've got over that childish notion you had once about that young
Hackett chap. He's gone, the Lord knows where, and I'll be bound, never
thinks of you any more. Now, if you marry Silas, I can give you a good
start in life. I'm not poor, and if you and Silas prefer to live in the city,
why I'll furnish a house for you there nicely, and start him in some business,
and—"
"Oh, no, no, uncle! Please do not talk any more about it. I can't
marry Silas. Indeed, I can't."
Uncle Thatcher's face crimsoned with anger, but he restrained himself,
and said: "Ah, I suppose you still think that young Hackett will come
back of the same mind that he went away. Aha! Not he! Those young
sailor chaps have a wife in every port. And he'd better not come snooping
around here, if he does come back, or I'll—"
Suddenly breaking off his speech, he sprang to his feet, clutched his hat
from the ground, and started off for the beach, running at the top of his
speed. His quick eye had seen, afar off upon the bluff overlooking the
sea, a man on horseback, who waved, with excited gestures, a small red
flag.
As Uncle Thatcher ran, so ran his neighbors. Bounding across fields,
leaping fences, rolling down the sandy face of the bluff, they arrived
breathlessly before a small wooden hut at the foot of a sand dune, a little
distance up from the edge of the beach—the boat-house of the whaling company.
Their captain, having good legs and wind, timely notice and the
shortest distance to travel, was, as usual, first to reach the goal, and by the
time the crew arrived, had already thrown open the large double doors
which constituted the entire front of the hut, revealing within a completely
fitted whale-boat that stood chocked upon ways that ran down into
the surf. There was too much excitement, and too little breath among the
eager men who joined him, for waste of words. Each knew his place and
busied himself with the duties pertaining to it. One looked to the harpoons.
Another saw that the lance was in its place, and the lashing of its wooden
cap thrown off. A third was careful to see that the long line, nicely coiled
in its tub, was free from loops or kinks in the coil. By this time all the
crew were assembled, and grasping the thwarts of the boat, from beneath
which the chocks were kicked out, ran her swiftly down to the water's
edge and launched her, springing in over her sides as she rode out upon a
receding wave. Uncle Thatcher sat in the stern. The bow oar was held
by Lem Pawlett, a sturdy young fellow who had earned by his strength,
skill, and courage the envied post of harpooner.
Once launched, the men rested on their oars a few moments, and looked
up inquiringly to the man on horseback, as if awaiting a signal from him.
During this brief period of inaction, a little good-natured chaffing passed
between the younger men in the boat and their disappointed neighbors
who came too late to take places at the oars. All belonged to the same
company, but only the first comers were, by their rules, allowed to man
the boat. The crew would have fatigue, peril, possibly death to encounter,
but they would also have the excitement of the chase and a somewhat
greater share of the profits, in the event of success, than those who remained
behind; so there was always a great effort made by every man to be first
to catch the signal of the mounted lookout, who was on the bluffs all day
long—and first, if possible, to reach the boat-house.
"Aha! There's Dan!" exclaimed one in the boat. "This is the third
time, hand-running, that he has missed going out. It looks as if he was
afraid since we tackled that finback."
"If you couldn't run any better than you can row, I'd beat you here
every time," retorted Dan.
"I dreamed last night of rolling a bar'l of oil," remarked a middle-aged
man in the crew, "and I'd a swore this morning that I'd be after a
whale before the day was over. I never knowed it to fail."
"And then," answered one on shore, "you came down and sat on the
beach all day, waiting for the signal. It isn't fair to play dreams on the
rest of us that way, is it boys?"
"No. We've got to pull him out of bed at daylight hereafter, and
swear him on what he dreamed the night before."
"You'd better not try it. I keep a gun."
"But you don't know how to load it. You want to come right out of
that boat now, and start fair, Billy."
"I'll run you fifty yards on the beach for your place, Billy."
"That wasn't what the dream meant, Billy."
"What did it mean then?"
"Why, that you were going to find a bar'l of rum in the Napeague sedge
next light of the moon."
There was a general laugh, for Billy's operations against the peace and
dignity of the customs authorities were, like those of Uncle Thatcher, an
open secret among his neighbors.
Suddenly Uncle Thatcher raised his hand, and all were silent, turning
their eyes to the man on the bluff, who was looking through a glass out
upon the sea, while holding his little red flag extended at arm's length and
still. After a few moments he raised the bit of bunting twice above his
head, held it motionless for an instant, pointing toward the east, then waved
it once.
"She blows and breaches two points south of east, and a mile away,"
exclaimed Uncle Thatcher, translating the language of the flag. "Pull,
boys! Pull away!"
With arrow-like swiftness the boat darted from the shore; but hardly a
sound, as the oars plied rapidly in the rowlocks and the ashen blades bent
in the heaving billows, could have been heard a half-dozen yards away.
Nearer and nearer they drew to the whale, and by this time the rowers
were panting with their exertions; but not a man lost his stroke, and not
a word was uttered save the captain's low and earnest caution: "Harder
a port." Although so close to the monster that they could hear it blow,
not one of the crew turned his head.
"Up bow!" commanded the captain.
In an instant Lem Pawlett, throwing his oar into the boat, was upon
his feet, with a harpoon poised in both hands above his head, his face
toward the bow. He was within four or five fathoms of the whale.
Another stroke of the oars reduced the distance to two; and then, with a
mighty effort, he launched the keen-pointed iron into the huge, black,
shining mass that lay before him. Quick as thought the harpooner was in
his seat, oar in hand, ready to respond to the instantaneously given order,
"Back all!" And the boat seemed to spring away from its dangerous proximity
to the whale, almost as if its motion was a recoil from Lem's powerful
stroke. The huge creature, thus rudely startled, leaped clear of the
water, in sudden fright and pain; then darted straight downward toward
the bottom. And now ensued the most anxious moments of the chase.
The line attached to the harpoon ran out from its coil in the tub abaft of
'midships, around the logger-head astern, and thence forward, between
the men as they sat at their oars, and over a roller in the bow, following
the fleeing whale so fast that it fairly hissed. Lem sat ready with a
hatchet in his hand to cut it, if necessary, as it might at any moment
be, to save a man's life. For, should a kink or loop occur in that
swift speeding rope, and catch one of the crew by arm, or leg, or neck, it
would either kill him at once or hurl him, like a stone from a sling, into
the sea, were it not quickly severed.
Fortunately for his hunters, nature has placed the whale under two
serious disadvantages. His field of vision is so limited, owing to the
position of his eyes, that it is not difficult to approach him closely if his
pursuers are cautious to keep back of his flukes; and he must, from time
to time, come to the surface to breathe. However deep and far he may
plough his way beneath the waves, his enemies know that it is only a
question of time when he will have to come up and subject himself to
another attack; and however mighty his energies, he must eventually
succumb, if the harpoon holds and the line is not cut.
Down, down went the tortured animal, until the men began to cast
anxious glances at the supply of line remaining in the tub. But presently
the speed slackened. The whale was coming up again. Having once
more taken breath, and made a violent but vain effort to shake himself
free by beating the waves with his huge flukes and tail, the leviathan
started off at his highest speed, swimming near the surface. The boat,
following in his wake, dragged along with such velocity that great sheets
of water and crests of foam leaped from her bows, and the crew were
drenched with spray. Suddenly he again "sounded," as his diving toward
the bottom is technically termed by whalers. But this time his stay
beneath the surface was less prolonged. He was becoming exhausted.
Still he continued to make prodigious struggles to escape.
At length he lay quivering upon the surface, resting. Swiftly, once
more, the boat approached him, and Uncle Thatcher, jumping from his
place at the stern, stepped lightly forward upon the seats, carrying the
lance, a long, keen-edged and pointed blade of steel. It is the post of
honor, which belongs of right to the officer in command of a whale-boat, to
give the coup-de-grace to the whale, to launch this steel "into his life."
With strong and practiced arms Uncle Thatcher drove the weapon deep
into the monster's vitals, and so quick was he that he was enabled to
strike with effect a second time before the "flurry," or death-struggle,
began, and the boat again backed away. As if mad with agony and
despair, the dying mountain of flesh beat the water about him into foam;
rushed frantically to and fro, seeming to seek his enemies; rolled over and
over; all the while, whenever he spouted, throwing crimson torrents of his
life-blood into the air. Gradually he became weaker and weaker; at last
was still. The victory was won.
Slowly and laboriously the crew towed the enormous carcass to the
beach, followed closely by the back fins of several large sharks, attracted
to the place by the scent of the whale's blood.
A novel and animated scene was presented at the beach the night after
the capture of the whale. On a grassy little plateau that sloped gently
down between two low sand-dunes toward the sea, was erected a rude
shed, beneath which, set in brick-work furnaces over bright wood fires,
were two huge kettles for the "trying out" of the oil from the whale's
blubber. Aboard whaling ships it is customary to leave the blubber to
"ripen" for several days, in close rooms, before it is put into the kettles,
as this, it has been ascertained, increases the yield of oil; but the shore
whalemen rarely do this. They simply begin at once with the tenderest
and most easily treated portions, and by the time they get through, unaccustomed
olfactories in the vicinity generally attest that the "ripening"
process has been perfected.
Half-a-dozen boys fed the furnaces—first with wood, and later with
blubber "scraps," or "cracklings." When not doing that, they scuffled
with each other, wrestled on the grass, shouted with gleeful excitement,
and unceasingly munched corn and doughnuts cooked in the boiling oil.
By the ruddy light of a bonfire before the shed, men cut in strips, with
blubber-spades, the enormous masses and slabs of fat, stripped off the
whale's carcass down in the surf, and dragged up here on a low, broad-wheeled
wagon, drawn by two scraggy horses. Other men carried those
strips inside the shed, where one who sat at a raised bench, with a two-handled
knife, "minced" them for the kettles. Still others tended the
kettles; skimming out, from time to time, the crisp, brown "cracklings,"
and adding other masses of fat in their stead; sometimes ladling the oil
into barrels. When not otherwise busy, they chewed cracklings. Several
women came with panfuls of sweet dough, twisted in curious shapes,
which, when thrown into the seething oil, were quickly converted into the
toothsome doughnuts in which the boys so much delighted.
At one side laid a great pile of black, fibrous, ragged-looking material,
dug from the mouth of the whale, the "ballein," which, when carefully
cleaned, dried, split, and otherwise prepared, is known as the whalebone
of commerce and corsets.
The work went on with unabated vigor all that night, and all the next
day, and gave promise of continuing even three or four days longer, for
the "trying out" of the oil from a big whale, as this one was, is no light
task.
On the evening of the second day a well-dressed stranger appeared at
the scene of operations, inquiring for Mr. Thatcher; and upon finding the
grim old veteran—who had as yet taken no rest since starting in pursuit
of the whale—introduced himself as a friend of Silas's, from Boston, and
expressed an earnest desire to meet the young man.
"Why, he is in Boston," said Uncle Thatcher.
"He was, but has left there, and I expected to meet him here," replied
the stranger.
"Here?"
"Yes. I was out of town when he went away, rather suddenly, and
so did not see him, unfortunately. But he left word for me that he was
going to New York to look for a better job, and would pay a visit to his
father's on the way."
"So you knew him well in Boston, did you?"
"Yes; oh, yes; knew him very well. He was quite a friend of mine."
"He was doing well, I suppose? Working and keeping steady?"
The father's voice faltered slightly; he hesitated a little, and picked up
a bit of crackling, which he munched as a cover to his anxiety, while he
looked wistfully at the stranger.
The man from Boston seemed just a little embarrassed, but only for an
instant, when he answered very reassuringly: "Steady? Oh, yes. Steady
as a deacon." Muttering to himself, "some deacons, at least."
"Working at ship-carpentering, I believe?"
"Oh, yes. Certainly. A fine ship-carpenter he is, too."
"When did you see him last?"
"H'm. Well, let me see. It must have been—yes, it was two weeks
ago yesterday. I'm quite disappointed not to find him here."
"He may have stopped over somewhere on the road a day or two; and
if you're in no hurry, and will wait for him, you are welcome to stop with
me. I'll give you Silas's own room."
"Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Thatcher; but I have already
made other arrangements. I have promised to go over and stop with a
friend in the village, and after I have looked on a little while at your very
interesting industry here, I think I'll go back there, and return to-morrow.
Silas may have come by that time."
"Very well. Suit yourself, sir, Mr. ——; I didn't rightly catch your
name—Mr. ——?"
"Ketchum, Mr. Thatcher, Ketchum."
"Mr. Ketchum. Glad to know you, Mr. Ketchum. Glad to know any
friend of my son Silas's."
"Thank you, sir."
"Make yourself as comfortable as you can, and will you have a little
something to take, to keep the cold out?"
Mr. Ketchum said he would not object to having "a little of something
to take," and Uncle Thatcher brought it out of a fence corner, from among
the weeds, in a stone jug, with a corn-cob stopper. But Silas's friend
from Boston was surprised to find that the jug contained delicious
"double-canned" St. Croix rum, old and of magnificent flavor, and very
accurately and shrewdly thought to himself, "These beach-combers never
paid the duty on liquor like that; smugglers here, I'd bet my life."
He went over and stood near the kettles.
"Was this considered a very large whale?" he asked the man who was
stirring the oil.
"Well, pretty fair-sized."
"What do you call pretty fair-sized?"
"Well, a whale eighty feet long is a pretty fair size."
"Was this one eighty feet long?"
"No."
"How long was he, then?"
"About sixty-five feet."
"Do you ever really get them eighty feet long?"
"Oh, yes. I've killed whales ninety feet long."
"I've seen 'em a hundred feet long," volunteered the man who was
mincing the blubber.
"I've know'd 'em to be a hundred and twenty feet long in the Indian
Ocean," put in another, lifting a pile of minced blubber on a four-tined
fork, and tossing it into a kettle.
"Whales is ketched a hundred and fifty feet long," said a solemn-looking
man, who stood leaning on the handle of his blubber-spade just
outside the shed.
A little silence fell upon the group, which Mr. Ketchum was the first to
break, again addressing the man at the kettle, asking him:
"How much oil will you get out of this one?"
"About eighty bar'ls, I guess."
"He must have been pretty fat."
"Well, so-so."
"How much have you obtained from one whale?"
"I've seen a hundred bar'ls took."
"I've helped to 'try out' one hundred and fifty bar'ls from one whale,"
said the mincer.
"Right whales, full-grown, not uncommon gives one hundred and
seventy-five bar'ls, and sperms has been known to give as high as two
hundred and twenty," spoke up the man with the fork.
The solemn blubber cutter once more came to the front, leaning on his
spade, and said oracularly: "I've know'd 'em yield two hundred and fifty
bar'ls."
The relators of solid facts inside the shed perceived that they had no
chance as long as that untrammelled person with the blubber-spade had
the advantage of the last call every time, and so relapsed into taciturnity.
Uncle Thatcher did not somehow like the look of Silas's Boston friend,
though he could not tell why, and felt relieved when Mr. Ketchum at
length took his departure for the village. But when he went home at
midnight to take a little much-needed rest, he was almost convinced that
he saw the figure of the stranger near a clump of bushes a little distance
from the doorway.
The next morning Mr. Ketchum came, again, with seemingly unabated
interest in the process of trying out whale's blubber, and remained about
the shed all day, waiting with inexhaustible patience for his friend Silas.
That third evening, at an early hour, Uncle Thatcher said that he felt
worn out and believed he would go home to bed, as the little sleep he
had caught the night before had not done him any good. Thereupon Mr.
Ketchum said that he, too, felt tired, and would go back to the village at
once. Yet two hours afterward Mary Wallace saw, near her uncle's house,
a man who, from his description, seemed to be Silas's Boston friend. Uncle
Thatcher became very uneasy. A feeling like a presentiment of some impending
calamity oppressed him and kept him awake.
While he lay thus, silent and watchful, by the side of his snoring spouse,
he heard a slight rasping noise, as of a window being cautiously raised, in
an adjoining room at the back of the house. Rising noiselessly, and passing
to the apartment whence the sound proceeded, he reached it just in
time to encounter a man who had that moment entered by the window and,
clutching the intruder, was about to deal him a blow, when his hand was
stayed by the man saying in a hoarsely suppressed, yet familiar voice:
"Look out, dad, it's me!"
Silas had come home. The unhappy father sank down upon a chair and
was silent for a few moments, mastering his agitation before he could control
his voice to demand:
"Why do you come in this way, like a thief in the night?"
"I didn't want to wake the family up," answered Silas, in a sulky
tone.
"Where do you come from?"
"Boston."
"Why did you leave there?"
"I heard of a chance for a better job in New York, and am going down
there."
"Have you been working steadily in Boston, and behaving yourself as
you promised me you would?"
"Of course."
There was a ring of insincerity in the young man's voice that did not
escape his father's notice.
"Did you expect to meet a friend here?"
"Why of course, dad; I always expect to meet you as a friend."
"I mean a friend of yours from Boston."
"From Boston? No. Why?"
"There is a man here looking for you; has been here two days; says he
is a friend of yours."
Silas dropped into a chair and in a low voice muttered an oath.
"Sit still there until I get a light. I want to have a look at you," said
Uncle Thatcher, rising.
"No, no, dad. Don't get a light, or—wait a bit. I'll fix it."
Silas quickly stripped of its blankets a spare bed that stood in the room
and carefully hung them up over the window upon the shade-roller, so as
to prevent any ray of light straggling through to the outside. His father
waited patiently until this preparation was complete and then went to the
kitchen, whence he returned in a few moments with a lighted candle.
"Silas, you've been lying to me," was his first exclamation at sight of
his son.
"Well, what do you want to ask a feller so many questions for?" was
the scapegrace's dogged reply.
"You have, you young scoundrel. Your face isn't that of an honest
working-man, and your hands—let me see them! Yes, as I expected.
Honest toil makes hands hard, and rough, and big, as mine are. Yours
are not so. Now tell me the truth about what you've been doing, and
what you are up to now—if you can tell the truth—or I'll break your back,
you scamp."
"Well. There's no use a-makin' a fuss about it. I was at work. Not
at ship-carpentering, but at tending bar. I couldn't get anything else to
do. And I got into a little bit of trouble. That's all."
"'That's all,' eh? What sort of trouble?"
Silas hesitated; the old man, as he well knew by experience, was almost
certain to look through his most adroitly constructed lies, and he did not
dare to tell the truth.
"I didn't do nothin'," said he at length, sullenly. "It was some of
the rest of the boys, and I was mixed up with them, as they were friends
of mine—and—I was afraid of being arrested—by mistake. That's all."
"Ah! And 'that's all,' eh? And what did your friends, 'the boys,'
do?"
"I dunno."
Uncle Thatcher gripped his son by the shoulder and stood silently regarding
him for a few moments, as if debating with himself whether to
carry out his threat or not. Then his hand dropped, and he said:
"Something tells me not to ask you. You'll either lie to me, or you'll
tell me some truth that, coming from your lips, would sicken my heart with
shame that you are my son."
"I didn't do nothin', I tell you."
"No more uncalled-for falsehoods, Silas. You have come here for
money, haven't you?"
"If you have a few dollars to spare, I'd like to have some. I'm
broke."
"I don't know why I should waste any more money on you."
"I've always acted like a friend to you, dad. I could have made a good
stake turnin' up your smugglin' business here, but I never did," replied
Silas in a suggestive tone.
His father looked at him with a countenance full of disgust, and answered
grimly: "Oh, it's hush-money you're after, is it?"
"Well, no; I didn't exactly mean that, dad. But I want to borrow a
few dollars."
"And when you get them, you'll leave?"
"Yes."
Uncle Thatcher left the room. As soon as he was alone Silas proceeded
to make a strange toilette. Drawing a bottle of some fluid from his pocket,
he poured its contents sparingly upon a comb that he found on the bureau
and vigorously combed his hair with it. From sandy brown his head
quickly became an intense black. Then hunting up his father's razor,
which he knew was kept in that room, he speedily removed his red moustache
and goatee. While doing this before the mirror, he noticed his eyebrows
and carefully blackened them. Last of all, he put a false black
beard, which he drew from one of his pockets, upon his chin.
His father, returning with a roll of bank-notes in his hand, started with
surprise at sight of Silas's transformation, and the look of disgust deepened
on his face; but he made no remark upon it and Silas wasted no time in
offering any explanation. Greedily the young man clutched the pile of
money that was silently extended to him, saying as he did so:
"If that friend of mine from Boston turns up again, try to keep him
hanging around here for a few days, if you can, and don't tell anybody that
I've been here. And now I'll be off."
"Do you wish to see your mother?"
"No. It's no use. She needn't know I've been here. She'd be sure to
chatter about it. Women are never to be trusted."
"How are you going?"
"The way I came."
"Through the window?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Well, it's the most direct road to the boat I've left lying in the cove,
and I don't care about going out at the front door, which my dear friend
from Boston, if he's the man I think he is, will probably be watching at
this moment."
He made a movement towards the candle to extinguish it.
"Stop!" said the old man. "Before you go I have a few words to say
to you. This may be the last time I shall ever see you. I am almost
tempted to say that I hope it may be, for fear I may next have to see you
in a felon's cell, or perhaps on the gallows, as I can only expect a dark and
terrible fate for you. I have done all that lay in my power to make a
decent man of you, and what are you? A hunted fugitive, disguised to
evade an officer who seeks to arrest you for some crime, for such I understand
now to be the mission of the man who has been here inquiring for
you. Now, I never want you to come back here, or remind me of your
existence until you can do so in open day, with a clear conscience and
without fear of any man. I have given you there two hundred dollars,
and it's all you'll ever get from me, alive or dead, if your life does not entirely
change. Nor will you ever be able to squeeze any hush-money from
me again. I smuggled, because I was eager to amass money to leave to
my son. I will never do so any more. That source of income gone will
still leave me enough for my lifetime, which will be sufficient, since I have
no hope of you; but I will have none to waste on a criminal profligate—not
another dollar. I'm not a poor man, it is true, but neither am I rich one,
with thousands that I don't know what to do with, like the Van Deusts.
All I have—"
"Like the Van Deusts?" interrupted Silas. "Have they got so much
money?"
"All I have," continued the old man without noticing the interruption,
"has been gained by hard work and risk, and you have squandered viciously
enough of my earnings."
"Where did the Van Deusts get their money?"
"A distant relative left them a fortune of I don't know how many
thousands. But that is nothing to you. Pay attention to what I am telling
you. Hereafter you will have to provide for yourself. Choose your
own way to do it, but I warn you that you will find an honest way the
best. I did hope to see you marry Mary Wallace. She has a little money
coming to her, that I managed to get saved for her out of the wreck of her
father's estate, of which she knows nothing. I thought it might as well
be kept in the family. But she is a good girl and I can never again have
the face to urge her to take the hand of my son until he proves to me that
he is worthy of a decent man's, or woman's regard. And now, there's
your way. Take it, and go."
"No hard feelin's I hope, dad," growled the young man sullenly, offering
his hand.
"'Hard feelings,' no. Grief and shame, yes. Go! And the best
blessing I can give you is, may God save you from the gallows."
Silas shuddered, dropped the extended hand which his father had not
taken, turned to the light and blew it out. Then he took down the blankets
from the window, carefully and noiselessly raised the sash, jumped out
into the darkness and disappeared.
Uncle Thatcher stood for a long time at the window listening, waiting,
fearing; but no unusual sound reached his ears.
The next morning he found Silas's friend from Boston already at the trying-out
shed when he arrived there, although it was yet only dawn; and
leading him a little to one side, put to him the direct question:
"What did you wish to arrest my son for?"
Mr. Ketchum started slightly, looked sharply at his questioner, and then
as if comprehending that, however the old man's knowledge of his errand
was obtained, further attempts at concealment would be useless, replied:
"Burglary."
The days grew long and hot; bees came humming in at open windows;
wild roses bloomed along the roadsides; the blackberries were turning
from red to their riper hue; and the smell of new-mown hay was in the
air. But still, though weeks had passed since Silas's disappearance in the
darkness, no one but Uncle Thatcher knew aught of his son's visit, not
even his lean, hard-visaged wife, who sometimes wondered "why the boy
didn't write," but to whom, on that subject, he made no reply. He
seemed to grow older and more careworn, day by day, but locked his pain
and grief in his own breast closely. Not only did he cease from all attempts
to influence Mary in his son's behalf, but even, one day, when he
overheard her aunt chiding her sharply for her repulsion of Silas's suit, he
said roughly:
"Let the girl alone. She is old enough to choose for herself."
Mary could not understand the change that had come over him, but was
very glad of it, from whatever cause it sprang.
Dorn had been back twice from West Indian voyages and was again
away. After probably two more voyages they were to be married. It
was all arranged. He had picked out the schooner he intended to buy and
knew her price. He had selected the place he proposed purchasing to
build their home, and already—through Lem Pawlett, who acted under
Ruth's directions, at Mary's instigation—knew what it would cost him; a
modest sum sufficiently within his means. And he even confessed that he
had already bought a lot of furniture and stored it in New Haven, in one
of Mr. Merriwether's lofts. Yet in all these negotiations and preparations,
Dorn had not once been seen in the vicinity of Easthampton by anybody
but his betrothed. Her years of struggle with Uncle and Aunt
Thatcher on the subject of Silas had inspired her with an overpowering
dread of what they might say or do, if they knew that she actually contemplated
the definitely conclusive step of marrying somebody else than
their boy; and yielding to her earnest petitions, Dorn had consented to
keep himself carefully out of sight, until such time as he was ready to come
for her with a pair of fleet horses and carry her off to Sag Harbor, to make
her his wife.
"But I'm sure I don't know what to make of Uncle Thatcher," said
Mary to her friend Ruth, in the course of one of their little confidential
evening chats in the woods, "for he is kinder to me than he ever was
before, and never once speaks to me about Silas. Sometimes I even think he
might not make much fuss about it if I were to marry Dorn right under
his nose."
"Don't you trust him for that, Mary. There's no telling how these men
will act, especially the old ones. As a rule, the quieter a man is the slyer
he is, and the more he means mischief. Oh, I tell you, I've studied Lem,
and—But I haven't told you what Lem is going to do. You know, I
suppose, that poor Mrs. Richards has heard at last from her brother in
Philadelphia, and he has sent for her to come to him and bring her children,
and she's going away."
"Yes. I heard Uncle Thatcher talking about it to-day."
"Well, that will leave the Van Deust's lower farm without a tenant;
though it hasn't had one, as you may say, since Richards ran away; but
then the Van Deusts let her live along on it and do the best she could; and
I guess that must have been Jacob's doings that she was allowed to, for I
believe that old curmudgeon Peter would have turned her out when she
couldn't pay the rent, if he'd had his own way about it; and I never did
like his looks, anyway, for I never heard of his having a good word or a
pleasant face for any woman yet; and I think when a man always looks
savage when he sees a woman he—"
"Oh, Ruth! Do go a little slower! You are the wildest talker. And
you do get a person so mixed up."
"And I get mixed myself sometimes, too. Where was I? Oh, I was
saying that Mrs. Richards was going away, and the Van Deust's lower farm
would be to let. Well, Lem is going up to the Van Deust's to-morrow
morning to get the lease of it, if he can, and Squire Bodley is going to be
his security; and as soon as he gets it, you must try to be ready, dear, so
that we can all get married at the same time, for Lem is in an awful hurry—and
maybe I don't care about waiting a great while longer myself,
either."
"And neither do we," exclaimed a cheery, hearty voice at her elbow,
as Dorn stepped forward and put his arm around Mary's waist.
"Oh, you, Dorn Hackett!" cried Ruth, with a little scream. "How you
do frighten a person!"
"So you've been eaves-dropping, have you, sir?" said Mary, looking up
archly at her lover.
"No. I was just standing here waiting, in hope of seeing you, and you
girls were so busy talking that you walked right up to me."
"And how do you come to be at my elbow when I thought you were far
away at sea?"
"We sailed three days ahead of time, and made a much quicker trip
than usual, so that I am over a week ahead of the time Mr. Merriwether
looked for me. As I was in port, of course I embraced the first opportunity,
when I could leave the schooner in charge of the mate, and came
to see my Mary."
"How good you are, Dorn," whispered the happy girl, pressing his
hands, and with the love-light in her eyes.
"And how much I love you!" he whispered in reply.
"I guess I'd better be getting along home," suggested Ruth, stopping in
the path, in readiness to turn back.
"Don't let me drive you away," replied Dorn, gallantly. "It has been a
long time since we have met, and I have not yet even asked how you are."
"Oh, you see I'm quite well, and you haven't really appeared to me to be
gone away at all, so far as I was concerned, for I've heard so much about
you all the time."
"Now, Ruth, are you going to tell tales?" protested Mary.
"Oh, no. I'm no chatterer. Not the least bit. But I know when I'm
in the road, and I know it now. Two are company and three are not.
And I see signs of its getting too warm here for me. So good night, good
folks. I'll leave you to make your arrangements."
"So as not to keep you waiting a great while," retorted Dorn, mischievously.
The merry little maiden blushed and laughed as she turned and ran
away down the path.
"What a lucky chance that I have found you, darling!" said the young
man low and tenderly, drawing his beloved closely to his side and walking
slowly with her. "And it was only a chance; for of course you didn't expect
me. But if I had not met you here I think I should have stormed
Castle Thatcher to get sight of you. I do not believe I could have waited
until another evening."
"I wonder if you were so impatient all the three long years you were
away?"
"No, of course I was not, for I knew just how long a time I had to look
forward to of separation from you, and made my mind up to it. A man
should always be able to make his mind up to bear philosophically what
he knows is inevitable. It is only when he is disappointed in what he has
every reason to expect, that he has any right to growl. I've always had a
great deal of sympathy with the old prophet who got so mad about the
worm. He had made up his mind, no doubt, to stand like a philosopher
the heat of the sun when he hadn't any shelter, though he did feel the
heat mighty bad. But when he got a good shade over him, and was comfortable,
it was enough to make a saint mad to have a malicious grub come
along and cut down his vine."
"Yes, dear; I think you've got the story fixed up your own way, and
are, maybe, not altogether sound upon its moral. But no matter now.
When do you go away again?"
"We will not sail for a week or ten days, probably, so that I'll have a
chance to come over and see you again, once at least, before we go. The
owner wants me to wait for the completion of a cargo, and they can't be
got together before about the time he expected me back, which, as I have
already told you, I have forestalled by a week."
"What is the cargo that you speak of as 'they'?"
"Mules. And I hate 'em," he replied savagely.
"You hate them? Why?"
"Well, of all the satanic brutes, the mule is the worst. He has the cunning
and the malice of an imp. Every minute he is awake he is either
planning or executing some mischief, and he's always awake. My crew
will need a barrel of arnica and an acre of sticking-plaster to cure them of
the bites and kicks they'll get from those mules before they are landed in
the West Indies. And I suppose we'll have to wear out a wagon-load of
hoop-poles on the brutes to keep them from rolling the schooner upside
down."
"Why, Dorn! How could they do that?"
"Easily enough. When we are loading them we have to run lines from
the mast-heads to the wharf, to keep them from rolling her over there.
When they are shipped, they have to be tied, head to head, along a beam
running fore and aft, as close as they can well stand. By a concerted arrangement
among themselves, those on one side will sway their bodies as
far back as they can, and those on the opposite will sway forward. Then
they will reverse the motion; and so they'll go alternately—singing with
their sweet voices while they are at it—backward and forward, giving their
motion to the vessel, and rolling her more and more every moment; and
they would very soon have her on her beam ends if we didn't wade in
among them with hoop-poles to divert them from their fun. And they are
liable to play that game any minute, day or night. Oh, I've taken out one
load of mules and know what to expect of them."
"Dorn, 'a man should always be able to make his mind up to bear
philosophically what he knows is inevitable.'"
"Come, I give up. Let's don't talk about mules any more, little Mollie.
I get mad when I think about them—even if they do pay well. But I
have a pleasanter topic. Something to tell you."
"And that is?"
"That immediately upon my next return home, which will be in about
six weeks, or seven, at the farthest, we will be married."
When at length Mary's lover left her that evening and she returned home,
she was surprised to find Aunt Thatcher sitting on the front door step.
"Mary Wallace, I want to know where you've been all this night?" demanded
the shrewish woman in a shrill key.
"I—met Ruth Lenox—and—we talked and walked," answered Mary
hesitatingly, and with very natural evasion of the searching inquiry.
"And you've got the face to stand there and tell me that? Well, I expected
it of you, and made an errand over to Mrs. Lenox's myself, and
Ruth was at home, where a decent young girl should be at night, with Lem
Pawlett sitting beside her on the porch. So I've caught you in one story,
have I? Now I ask you again where you've been, and I want to hear
what you've got to say for yourself. Not that I expect to believe a word
you say, but I want to hear what kind of a story a young woman can make
up for herself after being out all night, nobody knows where, or who with."
"Oh, aunt! I have not been out all night. It is only nine o'clock."
"It's ten minutes past nine," retorted the shrew, craning her long neck
around over her shoulder to see the face of the tall clock that stood against
the wall near the bureau, upon which a solitary tallow candle gave a
smoky yellow light.
"Where have you been? I want to know," she demanded again. "Gallivanting
around with some young man, I suppose. I shouldn't wonder if
that Dorn Hackett that you were so much took up with three years ago,
had come snooping around again. Has he? Eh? Why don't you answer
me?"
"I—I—have nothing to say, aunt."
"Oho! you've 'nothing to say,'" sneered Aunt Thatcher, mimicking the
girl. "Well, I shouldn't think you would have, after such goings on. I
believe in my soul you've been with that fellow to-night. Can you look
me in the face and tell me you haven't?"
No, Mary could not look her in the face, or anywhere else, and lie about
it, for she was not accustomed to falsehood, so she held her peace.
"Yes, I thought so," continued the termagent, with a snarl of malicious
triumph. "I thought so. And I know what will come of it. Oh, yes.
But you needn't think to stay in my house when everybody comes to know
of your disgrace. You can trapse after your lover, who'll be gone far
enough by that time, no doubt. And what would Silas think of you if he
knew of your conduct? Do you suppose my boy would ever look at a girl
that get's herself talked about as you will? You shameless—"
"Shut up! There's been enough of this jaw and too much," suddenly
interrupted Uncle Thatcher's rough voice, as he himself appeared in the
door, looking in his night-dress of close-fitting shirt and drawers even
bonier, longer, and more angular than ordinarily; like the silhouette of a
skeleton almost.
"I don't care! I will speak!" snapped his vixenish wife, turning to
face him.
"And ef you do I'll choke you."
"You would? You'd raise your hand to the mother of Silas?"
"Yes, and wring your blasted neck if you don't mind me when I tell
you to shut up."
Whether Uncle Thatcher had ever found force necessary to maintain his
authority in the household or not, was best known to him and his wife;
but at all events she did not seem to regard his threat as an idle one, for with
a snort of baffled rage she sprang up and rushed into the house, without
uttering another word.
Mary was standing with her back toward the door, with her hands covering
her face, and crying. Uncle Thatcher laid one of his big hands on
her shoulder and patting it gently, as he would have soothed a horse, said
to her:
"Come, little girl. Don't cry any more. I ain't a going to have you
plagued out of your life about that cuss. Go to bed now. And just tell
me if she tries to worry you any more."
He disappeared inside the door, and Mary, wiping her eyes, followed
him, passing to her little room, but sleep was slow in coming to her hot
eyes and her last waking thought was:
"Who did uncle mean by 'that cuss'? Was it Dorn or Silas?"
But at length the weary lids closed and in happy dreamland, far away
from care, and fear, and strife, she wandered with her lover.
The night wore slowly on. Incoming billows of the rising tide moaned
sullenly upon the sandy beach and sent a rustling hiss through the shivering
reeds and rushes in marshy inlets; whippoorwills piped from the cover
of the leafy wood and drowsy cocks, awaking at the midnight hour, called
to each other from their barn-yard roosts. All other sounds of motion
and of life were hushed, save that an owl darted in sudden fright from one
of the Van Deust elms, at sight of a pale-faced man who sprang out of a
back window of the old homestead and ran down the lane, looking back
over his shoulder and wiping blood from his hands, as he ran.
It was on the morning succeeding that night, that Lem Pawlett and
Squire Bodley made the discovery of the murder of Jacob Van Deust, as
has already been described. As the reader will remember, the neighbors
assembled about the corpse of the murdered man, believed that they had
grounds for suspecting Peter Van Deust of the assassination of his brother,
and even discussed the advisability of his arrest. He, unconscious of the
ugly rumors afloat about him, and regardless of the dark looks of those
by whom he was surrounded, lay upon his face in his room, weeping as one
without hope for the lifelong companion so cruelly reft from his side. He
had never known, until death parted them, how dear to him was his gentle-hearted
brother and how very lonely the world would be without him. And
every unkind passionate word he had uttered, and every selfish thought
to which the evil promptings of avarice had given birth in his heart, since
that unlucky fortune came them, seemed now to rise up before him like
an accusing ghost, so that the old man, burying his face in his hands,
sobbed aloud:
"Oh, Jacob, Jacob! I am so sorry for it all."
Perhaps the spirit freed from that weak lump of clay in the crimson pool,
might have heard the cry and, knowing the true meaning and the penitence
of the sorrowing heart, have well forgiven; but a neighbor, leaning against
the door-post and peering curiously in at the grief-stricken old man, turned
quickly to his comrade without the threshold and exclaimed in a low excited
whisper:
"Gosh! Joe. He's just as good as owned up that he did it, and says
he's 'sorry for it' now, 'cause he's scared of being found out."
And then by the time this had been repeated to a half-dozen—as it was
in little more than as many minutes—those who heard the story last,
learned that Peter had just made to somebody a full confession of having
murdered his brother. But in the very height of the excitement to
which this gave rise, Lem Pawlett, who was still prying about the room,
with something of an instinctive detective genius guiding his movements,
made an important discovery.
Drawing aside the figured chintz curtains that hung close over the back
window of the dead man's room, he noticed that a mud-wasp's nest of
clay had fallen to the sill, from the place where the insect had stuck it in
the angle of the sash and frame of the window, two or three feet above.
Knowing how firmly the ingenious little builders of those houses are accustomed
to place them, he recognized that some unusual violence must have
been employed to break it loose. That it had not been intentionally
knocked down was probable, else the clay would not have been left littering
the window sill. That the mischief had been freshly done, was manifest.
He tried the sash, and found that it could easily be lifted. Its only
fastening had been a nail, thrust into a hole in the frame above the sash; but
rust had corroded the nail to merely a thin rotten wire. The head of it came
off in his fingers, when he felt it, and he observed that it had been broken,
with what seemed a fresh fracture, just where it entered the frame. It
must, he thought, have been broken by some one lifting the sash from
without, as a person opening the window from the inside would have been
likely to pull it out first, as a matter of convenience. He raised the sash
fully, and uttered an exclamation of surprise, the first sound that had
called anybody's attention to his investigations.
There, plain to be seen in the soft black wood of the old sill, were two
deep dents that appeared to have been made by some flat, square-edged
metal instrument, an inch wide. The one beneath that side of the sash
upon which the nail was broken off, was a little the deepest. Upon the
bottom of the sash, on the outer side, were two deep impressions corresponding
with the dents in the sill, and seemingly made by the same
instrument, which, as Lem judged, was some sort of a stout chisel, used as
a lever. All the marks were fresh.
The loose earth of the little garden just beneath the window, where the
drip of the eaves had kept it soft and damp, showed the treading there of
feet shod in high-heeled and square-toed shoes, or boots, such as might
have been made for city wear, and not at all like those worn in the
country. Following those tracks, they led Lem, and the crowd now at his
elbow, to a point where the weight of a person crossing the rickety old
"worm" fence had broken a rotten rail; and, near by, one of the high-heeled
shoes had trodden down the stem of a lily that was in its path.
The fracture of the rail was fresh, and the lily, broken from its stem and
lying on the humid earth, was not yet withered. But the high heel had
crushed one of its snowy petals.
In the lane, outside the fence, the tracks were lost.
The importance of these discoveries was at once apparent, even to the
dullest of comprehension; and there was no longer a question in the minds
of any but that the murder had been committed by some burglar who had
entered through the window, and that old Peter was innocent. The reflection
that there was in the community some one capable of such an awful
deed, or that somebody from the wicked world outside had come among
them to strike so terrible a blow, sent a thrill of mingled horror and fear
through all present.
"Gracious alive!" exclaimed a very old man, whose hollow cheeks,
sunken and bleary eyes, white hair, and tottering limbs suggested that
the least possible thing of which he could be robbed was his remnant of
life, "we are none of us safe in our beds with such goings on!"
"No. But the man who did this must be found and punished," responded
Lem Pawlett, excitedly.
"Sake's a mercy! Who can ever find out such things? The man that
did it isn't going to tell on hisself!"
"God's finger will point him out," said Squire Bodley, solemnly.
"Well, maybe so. But—I dunno," murmured the old man, whose faith
in Providence seemed somewhat shaky.
Squire Bodley picked out a jury, and announced to all assembled that
he would hold the inquest at his office in the village one week from that
date, at six o'clock in the afternoon, at which time he hoped any person
who might meanwhile become cognizant of any new facts that might have
even the smallest possible bearing upon the subject to be investigated, would
come before him and make them known. And—as it is always the theory
among country people that a crime among them must have been perpetrated
by some one from the nearest city—he exhorted all to use their
utmost diligence to learn whether any suspicious strangers had lately been
seen in the neighborhood.
That afternoon he despatched a message to New York, requesting the
assistance of an experienced professional detective, to aid in dissipating
the mystery that seemed to overhang the murder of poor old Jacob Van
Deust, who, on the second day after his death, was laid away among the
dust of many other Van Deusts in the village graveyard.
During the week preceding the inquest, the Van Deust murder was the
constant theme of conversation through all the country-side; and when
the important day arrived upon which Squire Bodley proposed to begin the
official investigation into the affair, people came thronging into Easthampton
from all directions; on horseback, afoot, in old-fashioned carryalls,
and upon rough farm-wagons; as if every homestead within ten or
fifteen miles around had been emptied for the occasion. It was not mere
curiosity by which they were actuated, but an earnest and widely-spread
desire to aid in the discovery and procure the punishment of the assassin;
for in those days there was no community on Long Island, as there has
since appeared to be, in which murder would be popularly winked at and
condoned, and its perpetrators, though known, permitted to go unscathed
of justice.
Squire Bodley's office was a small, one-story building, without any other
partitions than a railing that shut in about one-third of it, where his table
customarily stood. The sign "Lumber" over its one door, indicated that
the worthy magistrate did not confine his energies to his judicial duties.
There were three windows—one opposite the door and one in each
end—of such a good convenient height from the ground that a man
standing outside could rest his elbows on either of the sills, and witness
comfortably all that transpired within. Long before the hour for
the commencement of the proceedings, the space outside the railing was
densely packed; the lower halves of the windows were filled with elbows
and heads; and as many people as could find standing room within sight or
hearing, upon wagons drawn up near the windows and door, were already
perched and waiting, while many late comers wandered uneasily about,
watching for some one in the front racks to give out through sheer
exhaustion, and resign his advantageous place.
As a preliminary proceeding, the Squire had his sashes removed entirely
from their frames, and carried away to a place of safety; but even yet the
little room was oppressively hot and close. Then candles had to be brought
and lighted, for although it was midsummer, when the days are long, this
evening was cloudy, and but little of the dull light could penetrate through
the crowded windows. So it was that it was almost seven o'clock when
the Squire finally got himself seated at his table, with three candles, pen,
ink and paper before him, that he might write down the evidence, and
called the first witness.
That first witness was Lemuel Pawlett, who was somewhat abashed by
his position, and had a little difficulty, at first, in understanding that he
was required to give a circumstantial account of the finding of the body of
the murdered man, and what followed thereupon.
"Why, you know all about it, Squire, as well as I do. You were with
me. What's the use of telling you?"
"But I have to write down your statement, as your evidence, Lem, not
simply for my own knowledge, but for others, to promote the ends of
justice. Go ahead and tell your story as if you were telling it to these
people here, and never mind what I know about it."
"All right, Squire;" and Lem, turning his back upon the Squire, began
reciting the affair to the audience. "Him and I went up to Van Deust's
a week ago to-day—"
"Who do you mean by 'him?' Who accompanied you?"
"Why, you! You yourself, Squire, you know you did!"
But at length the little difficulty of starting him aright was overcome, and
then Lem went ahead, telling his story in a plain, straightforward way,
and the Squire duly wrote it all down.
Two neighbors corroborated Lem's narration of the finding of the traces
of the burglarious entry and the flight of the assassin.
Deacon Harkins volunteered testimony as to having overheard quarrels
and interchange of threats of violence between the Van Deust brothers
more than once. At this old Peter, who sat near the Squire, became
greatly excited. Springing to his feet, trembling with emotion, and with
his voice pitched to a high, unnatural key, he cried:
"Yes, it is true. I did threaten my brother—God forgive me!—more
than once. I was mean enough, cruel enough, wicked enough to say
harsh, spiteful things to wound that gentle soul; but I never meant him
harm. No. The One above, who reads all hearts, knows well that I would
rather my right hand withered, rather put it into the fire and burn it off
than raise it against Jacob's life. We wrangled sometimes, as old men
will—no, he didn't, the fault was all mine. And oh, to think that he is
gone, without my being able to ask him to forgive me!"
His voice broke, and he dropped exhausted upon a chair, letting his face
fall forward upon his arms, on the end of the Squire's table, where he wept
bitterly.
"Arthur Wiltsey!" called the Squire.
A stout, plainly dressed, and honest looking countryman took the stand,
and, having been sworn, testified:
"Last Thursday afternoon—"
"The day succeeding the discovery of the murder of Jacob Van Deust?"
interrupted Squire Bodley.
"Yes, sir. The day after the murder. I was passing through the neck
of woods on the lower end of my place—"
"How far is your place from the Van Deusts'?" asked the Squire.
"Why, you know, Squire, as well as I do! I bought the place off you."
"Never mind about what I know. Tell us what you know. How far is
your place from the Van Deusts'?"
"About a mile and a half."
"Very well. About a mile and a half. Go on."
"When near a path that makes a short cut to the Babylon road, I found
these things. They were lying among some huckleberry bushes, and the
white bag was the first thing that caught my eye. Afterwards I saw the
other."
As he spoke he drew from his pocket and deposited upon the Squire's
table, two objects: an old worn-out sheepskin wallet, and an empty canvas
bag about nine inches long by three in width, and tied around with a
bit of fishing line.
"The bit of string," continued the witness, "was a few feet away from
the other things; but I judged it might belong to them, and fetched it
along."
"Have you ever seen these things before, Mr. Van Deust?" asked Squire
Bodley.
The old man who, buried in his freshly-awakened grief and remorse, had
paid no attention to what was going on until he was called by name, looked
up dazedly. The Squire pushed before him the objects found by the
witness. He looked at them for a few moments, silently and without
moving, as if fascinated by them; then slowly reached out his trembling
hands, and took them up.
"Yes," he said, with an effort, after having carefully examined them,
"I recognize them. They belonged to my brother Jacob—his wallet and
coin bag. And I know that the wallet, at least, was in his possession the
day before he was found dead."
Absolute stillness reigned in the dense crowd from the commencement of
Farmer Wiltsey's testimony until the conclusion of Peter Van Deust's identification
of his brother's property; and then such a buzz of exclamations,
and remarks, and conjectures broke out that the Squire was compelled
to rap vigorously on his table, and call "Order!" and "Silence!" more
than once before he could proceed with the business. But there was little
more to be offered.
One man thought he had heard a horse galloping down the Babylon
road about one o'clock on the morning of the discovery of the murder,
but he did not know if anybody was on the horse, and was not even positive
that it was a horse he heard; it might have been a cow. So his evidence
went for nothing.
Peter Van Deust testified, very briefly, that the last time he saw his
brother alive was about half-past nine o'clock on the night of his death.
An old gentleman, a friend from New York—their lawyer in fact—had
visited them in the afternoon on business, and had gone away a little while
after supper. Then they sat up somewhat later than usual, talking over
what they would do with their lower farm, which would be left without
a tenant when the Richards family moved away. He had looked at the
clock when he went to bed, and knew it was half-past nine. Jacob was
then in his usual health and spirits, except that he complained a little of a
slight cough, and it was the witness's impression that his brother, after
going to bed, had called old Betsy to prepare him something to alleviate
that. But he was not very sure about that, as he was almost asleep at the
time, and had not thought to speak to Betsy about it since.
Squire Bodley hesitated as to whether he should press any inquiry about
the friend from New York, and cast an inquiring look at a stranger who
sat near him. But the stranger, who seemed to understand perfectly what
he would have asked, made a slight negative sign. Still the Squire was
not satisfied and, leaning over to him, whispered:
"That New Yorker must have been there nearer the time of the murder
than anybody else outside the family; most likely knew the old man had
money in the house, and just where it was kept; may have laid around
until all was quiet, and then gone back to—"
"It's quite possible he did," interrupted the stranger, in a tone audible
only to the Squire, "and I'm not losing sight of it; but it won't do to bring
out too much on the inquest. He might get wind of the suspicion against
him and skip. Never show your hand if you want to win."
"All right," assented the Squire, doubtfully, "if you say so."
"Oh, yes, it's all right. Keep it shady, and I promise you the man
from New York will be turned up in good time."
Peter Van Deust's evidence was closed.
Black Betsy was the last witness. She said that on the night of the
murder, at about half-past ten o'clock, Jacob called her up to prepare
him something for his cough. She was lying down at the time, but not
asleep, as rheumatism mostly troubled her a good deal in the early part of
the night, and went to him as soon as he called. Having made for him a
cough mixture of honey, vinegar, and rum, she gave it to him; he bade her
good-night, and she went back to bed. Being asked how she knew it was
half-past ten when he called her, she said that she knew it by the line of
the full moonshine on her floor, and was positive that she could not have
been more than ten minutes wrong at farthest. After returning to her
bed the rheumatism kept her awake about an hour, she supposed, or maybe
an hour and a half. Then she dropped asleep, and did not awake until
called up by Squire Bodley and Mr. Pawlett. Her hearing, she affirmed,
was very good, and she was sure that from the time she gave Jacob his
medicine until she went to sleep there were no unusual noises about the
house.
Squire Bodley adjourned the inquest for another week, in the hope
that there might be discovered in the interim some further evidence, and
his sweltering office was quickly cleared of jury, witnesses, and auditors,
all save one man, the stranger to whom he had whispered while Peter
Van Deust was on the stand. That person, a ruddy, smooth-faced man of
medium height, and probably forty or forty-five years of age, with nothing
distinctive about his appearance except, perhaps, a pair of very keen gray
eyes, was the detective who had been sent from New York to apply his
sagacity to ferreting out, if possible, the robber and assassin of Jacob
Van Deust.
"Well, Mr. Turner," said the Squire, lighting his one remaining candle
by the flickering flame of the last surviving of the three that had melted
and guttered down to the sockets of the candlesticks, "I guess this will be
light enough for us to see to talk a little by. What do you think of the
case?"
"It isn't so blind as some I've had hold of, and cleared up, too; but it
is dark enough, nevertheless. All I can see that we may say we think
we know is, that the old man was killed, probably after 11:30 or 12
o'clock at night, by a burglar who got into his window by means of a
jimmy and who, after killing him and robbing the premises, escaped by
the Babylon road, most likely."
"I neglected to bring it out when he was on the stand, but Peter has
told me that some other articles besides the money are missing; a set of
garnet jewellery belonging to his mother that Jacob always kept in his room;
an old silver watch and a heavy square onyx seal, with a foul anchor cut on
one side of it. None of them of any great value."
"It's just as well you didn't mention them; just as well or better. Such
things, if looked for quietly, and nothing said about them, are sometimes
valuable clues. And it is well you didn't ask about the lawyer from New
York. All these are things we will have to look into quietly. There's
nothing like doing things quietly. The great trouble about inquests, generally
is, that they bring out the very things which put criminals on their
guard, and so make the detective's work all the harder—sometimes even
baffle him altogether."
"Squire, are you busy?" demanded a sharp nasal voice.
The two men looking up, and shading the candlelight from their eyes
with their hands, saw standing in the door a tall, thin, scraggy-looking
woman, wearing a sun-bonnet.
"No, not particularly. Walk in, Mrs. Thatcher, walk in. What can I
do for you?" replied the Squire.
The woman came forward with shuffling, hesitating steps; paused, made
a furtive attempt to poke up out of sight the wisp of unkempt sandy hair,
dangling in its accustomed place on the back of her neck; and finally answered,
with a doubtful look at the stranger:
"Well, I had something to tell you, private-like, about that murder."
"Indeed! Well, you can speak right out before this gentleman. He is
helping me to inquire into it. But why, if you have anything to tell, did
you not come up to the inquest?"
"I didn't care to speak before so many folks; and I thought it would
be better to tell you quietly."
"And what is it you have to tell me?"
"I expect, Squire, I know who killed Jake Van Deust."
"The deuce you do!" exclaimed the detective, bouncing in his seat.
"Yes, sir; I was told what the Squire said a week ago to-day about
suspicious strangers in the neighborhood, and I thought to myself, I know
of one, and I ought to tell him."
"Well?"
"Well, it's a young man who used to live in this neighborhood, but who
disappeared—ran away, I guess, for some reason best known to himself—about
three years ago or a little better. He's been back lately, hiding
around in the woods and meeting a foolish girl—"
"Aha!" interrupted the detective, with a chuckle, and rubbing his
hands; "if there's a girl in the case, we'll have him, sure."
"Yes, sir, a foolish girl, who don't know the sin and the shame of what
she's a-doing. And as far as I can find out, he has kept himself out of
sight of everybody but her. But he was about the neighborhood late on
the night that Jake Van Deust was killed—that I'm sure of; and met the
girl that night—I know he did."
"And who is the girl?"
"My niece, Mary Wallace, sir. The more's the pity!"
"And the young man?"
"His name is Dorman Hackett."
Squire Bodley gave a gasp of surprise. He remembered Dorn Hackett
as a strong, handsome orphan lad who had grown up almost to manhood
in the neighborhood; a young fellow with a fine, frank, courageous face,
and of whom he had never before heard an evil word; but he remembered,
too, now that he came to think of it, that he had not seen the young fellow
for a long time; and sighed to think that even the best boys sometimes
grow up to be very wicked men when exposed to the temptations of vicious
life in the great cities, and it was possible that Dorn Hackett, like many
others, "had gone to the bad."
"You say that this young man has been away for three years?" asked
the detective.
"He hasn't dared to let anybody here, except that girl, see his face for
that long."
"And of course you know nothing of where he has been, and what he
has been doing all that time?"
"No; how should I? Loafing around New York, I dare say. Such characters
mostly goes there."
"Around New York, eh? If he's a New York thief, I'll be sure to know
him. If we only knew what he's been doing."
"What would a fellow be likely to be doing who has no trade, and no
money, and no home, and no respectable friends, and nobody to see to
him?" snapped Aunt Thatcher.
"He might have told your niece."
"If he did, she wouldn't be likely to tell me. It's as much as I could
do to find out that he was sneaking around here in the woods, late on the
night Jake Van Deust was killed."
"She met him that night, did she?"
"Yes, she did."
"What kind of a looking person in this Hackett?"
"A big, ugly, red-headed fellow, with a face like a bull-dog."
Squire Bodley smiled gently to himself, thinking how such a description
would be apt to assist the detective. He had penetration enough to
discern that there was some animus in the woman's mind stronger than a
mere desire to aid the ends of justice; but said nothing about it at the
time, feeling a little timid about seeming to interfere in the work of the
professional detective.
When Mr. Turner and the squire had both thanked Mrs. Thatcher for
her "valuable information," she took her departure, and the two men
were left alone to discuss the course to be pursued. Squire Bodley had a
very good opinion of Mary Wallace; and if he had had his own way would
have directly questioned her about her lover; but against that course the
detective strenuously protested. Direct ways are never the chosen methods
of the professional fishers of men.
"By no means," said he. "Let the girl know that her lover is suspected
and she will be sure to get word to him somehow and he'll be off. Not a
word about it to anybody. Leave me to work it out my own way, and my
name isn't Richard Turner if I don't soon lay my hand on the shoulder of
Dorman Hackett."
"The Whaler's Haven" was in those days a place of no small pretensions
and of no mean fame among the sailormen of New London, which was
then quite an important shipping town, especially for the whaling interest.
Railroad tracks now cover the ground it then occupied, and the cutting
away of the bluff in that vicinity, to give place for some heavy industries
that require to be near the water and the iron road, has completely changed
the appearance of all the surroundings, even, of that once favorite
resort of the marine element of the population of the town, so that not one
trace of it remains, save in memory. But it is not of the present we have
to treat, or the many changes—some of them very sad ones—that have been
wrought in the maritime interests of our coast. Our story dates back to
a time when a big American flag floated above a long and wide two-story
frame building where those railroad tracks now lie; a building that was
further adorned, as to its peak, by a carved and painted wooden statue of
the goddess of liberty, that seemed to have been the figurehead of some
vessel; and as to its front, by a very widely-spread and gayly-gilded American
eagle, holding in its beak, over the door, a huge and brilliantly red
scroll, upon the flaming convolutions of which, in brightest blue, one might
read the legend "The Whaler's Haven."
By day, there was little, except its size, to distinguish the Haven, to
the eye of the casual observer, from several other establishments of kindred
character in the vicinity; but at night, in the figurative language of
Jonathan Schoolcraft, its proprietor, "the eagle screamed." Then, until
hours that were at once late and early—late for revel and early for labor—the
fiddle squeaked out jigs and reels; the thumps and shuffles of dancing
feet made the walls vibrate and the windows jingle; glasses clinked
merrily; noisy laughter, cheers, and sometimes—but not often—sounds of
quarrel, broke upon the night. It was Schoolcraft's boast "that a sailor
never was robbed in this house;" and, truth to tell, he made the claim good,
farther than most men do who keep such establishments and make like
affirmations. Over the little bar, near the front door was a sign in letters
so prominent that they might have been regarded as a sort of painted
shout, commanding patrons of the house: "Have your fun in a decent
way;" and Jonathan was never weary of repeating that counsel to his
guests. He would not let a sailor in his house get too drunk—that is, too
drunk to be able to find his money, when the liquor was to be paid for—and
he was sternly opposed to fights in the Haven; for, as he said, "they
break the peace, and break heads, and sometimes break glasses, which is
worst of all."
One sultry evening in July, when it was too hot to dance and almost too
warm to drink rum, a cloud of dullness seemed to settle down upon the
Whaler's Haven. Jonathan himself went out for a walk, to get cool; the
barkeeper languidly leaned over the bar and yawned; only four or five
sailors—boarders in the Haven when on shore—lounged between the door
and the bar, "swapping yarns" concerning their seagoing experiences, and
all feeling so depressed and spiritless, through the heat, that they almost
stuck to the truth in their narrations; and two or three of them were talking
of going to bed, when a stranger, who was evidently not a sailor,
entered, called for a drink, and invited all present to join him. A stranger
who was not a sailor was always the object of a little suspicion in the Haven;
still none present cared about offending one who introduced himself so
courteously, and the waiting sailors took their rum just as naturally as if
liking, and not simply complaisance, gave it its relish. Then one of them
returned the stranger's treat and soon another; and another, so that in a
little while the heat was forgotten, tongues began to wag freely, the yarns
became much more spirited, and the impression gained ground that the
stranger was a right good fellow.
And so it was that, without his ever being able to tell exactly how it
came about, Billy Prangle, a stout old sailor, found himself in almost confidential
conversation with the pleasant stranger—a smooth-shaven, gray-eyed,
ruddy man of forty or forty-five years—upon the subject of his
friend and ex-shipmate, Dorn Hackett.
"A nobler, braver lad never signed articles," said he, "nor a better
sailorman. We messed together for three years; and take him by and
large, alow and aloft, I make bold to say that of the sixteen men in the
fo'cas'le,—and all good men, too, mind you—he was the best."
"I'm delighted to hear you speak so highly of him," replied the stranger,
with apparent heartiness, "How long is it since you sailed with him?"
"Only a little better than four months ago. We came off the cruise
together, fishing in the North Pacific."
"Fishing? I thought you said he was in a whaling vessel?"
"Well, so I did, my hearty. We calls whales fishes. When we speak
of taking a whale we always says taking a fish."
"Ah, excuse me. I didn't understand. And where is your friend
now?"
At this moment one of the old sailors called him aside and said to him
in an undertone:
"Mind your eye, Billy. I've been a listenin' to you and that lubber that
doesn't know a whale's a fish, and it looks squally to me. As I make him
out, he's been a leadin' you on to talk about Dorn Hackett, and maybe it
ain't for Dorn's good he means it."
"If I thought he meant the boy any harm he'd get his nose rove foul
in the shake of a fluke."
"Well, just keep your weather eye skinned on him."
"But, shipmate, it's as good as saying that Dorn may be in some sort of a
scrape to be afraid to talk about him."
"And so he may; and small blame to him, either, bein' a likely young
fellow as he is. Shore is a mighty dangersome place for a good-looking
young fellow like him."
"Right you are, shipmate," assented Billy, solemnly shaking hands
before returning to his conversation with the stranger. From that time
he did watch carefully; and having a little natural cunning of his own,
managed to evade the numerous and artfully-put inquiries with which he
was plied, and still to draw the stranger on, with hope of information,
until he satisfied himself that his comrade's warning was not uncalled for.
While this was going on the drinks were call on freely, and the stranger
unconsciously was falling a victim to the fiery potency of the rum—a beverage
to which he was not accustomed. He had tried to evade anything
more than a mere show of drinking it, but believed that this was looked
upon with such suspicion by all about him, that it was better for him to
drink and trust to the hardness of his head to carry the liquor off safely.
Little he knew how much he lacked of being a match for that tough old tar,
Billy Prangle, in the consumption of that seductive but treacherous fluid.
Gradually he lost his customary caution; and finding himself baffled in all
his attempts to "pump" the old sailor, conceived that it would be a good
idea to offer Billy a hundred dollars if he would conduct him to and
point out Dorn Hackett. "That sum," he thought to himself, "would
tempt a man like him to do almost anything to gain it." So he made the
proffer. Billy heard the proposition gravely, and even feigned to view it
favorably; but manifested a great deal of curiosity as to why his ex-shipmate
was in such demand.
The stranger felt that he had gone too far for any reticence to be of service,
now, and that perhaps a confidence might make him more secure of
this valuable ally; so he replied: "I'll tell you; but mind you're not to say
a word about it to any living soul until we have captured him."
"Would I be likely to throw away a chance to make a hundred dollars?"
exclaimed Billy.
That answer, critically considered, could hardly have been deemed a
promise; but the stranger took it for one, and continued in a confidential
tone:
"He's wanted for murder and robbery."
"Murder and robbery! Dorn Hackett?"
"Yes, the murder and robbery of an old man near Easthampton, Long
Island, where he has been going to see his sweetheart, a girl named Mary
Wallace."
"And you tell me that Dorn Hackett is suspected of a thing like that?"
"Yes, indeed, he is. He was in the neighborhood on the night of the
murder, and everything points to him; and I bet my head—"
"That you are a lying, landlubberly—" broke out Billy Prangle, in a
torrent of quite unreportable expletives, the unregenerate lingo of the
fo'cas'le; and before the stranger recovered from his astonishment, the
indignant tar had commenced to make good that threat with reference to
his nose.
Mr. Turner—for the stranger, now rolling on the floor with Billy, was
no other than that experienced professional detective—was a sturdy fellow,
well able, ordinarily, to take care of himself, and made as good a fight as
he could; but even had he been entirely sober he would hardly have been
able to cope with this sinewy son of the sea who smote him so suddenly.
While they struggled on the floor, Billy's friends looked on with placid interest;
interfering not, nor questioning, and seemingly cheerfully confident
of the result. The barkeeper—Schoolcraft being away—seemed to
enjoy the excitement, and leaned over the bar to get a better view, while he
shouted encouragingly: "Go in, Billy! Wade in, old man!"
And Billy followed the advice so well that it was not long until the detective
cried "enough," and was allowed to get up; when Billy led him to
the door and dismissed him with a parting kick.
Self-reproachfully, and much humbled in spirit by his defeat, Richard
Turner left the Haven. But it was not in his nature to give up a chase for
one defeat. If he had not genius, he at least had that which is sometimes
almost as good—persistence. He did not even waste time in thinking about
the whipping and the kicking he had received, but he did reflect that it
was something singular that a poor old chap like that sailor should have
thrown a chance away whereby he might have gained one hundred dollars
so easily—merely by selling a friend, perhaps to the gallows. Would he,
Richard Turner, have been so stupid? "Hardly," he said to himself. But
he had to accept facts as he found them, however strange they might seem,
and the two most prominent ones claiming his attention were: first, that
he had made a blunder; second, that he must work all the more rapidly to
forestall the possible chances of his indiscretion leading to the escape of
the man he hunted. Fortunately, the whipping had sobered him completely;
and having repaired as well as he could the damages he had sustained
in person and raiment, he continued until late at night, in other
sailor's haunts, his pursuit of information, but took care to give a wide
berth to the "Whaler's Haven." Before daylight he left the place in a
fast sloop and with a fair wind, bound for New Haven. There fickle fortune
made him amends for her unkind humor at New London, and facts
that seemed to go far toward establishing Dorn Hackett's guilt came
readily to his knowledge. The most important were these:
On the afternoon preceding the murder of Jacob Van Deust the young
man went over to Long Island on Mr. Hollis's sloop. Nobody but himself
knew why he went. The men on the sloop expected him to return to New
Haven with them that night, but he did not do so. They left the Long
Island shore about the hour that it was supposed the murder was perpetrated
and, presumably, before he could have run from Van Deusts' to the
cove where the sloop laid. When he re-appeared in New Haven the next
morning his clothing was dabbled with blood; and his hands, though he
had evidently tried to wash them, still showed sanguinary stains. He said
that the blood was his own; that he had a severe fall while running through
the woods on Long Island. That he had fallen seemed probable, since he
had a bad cut on his head and one ankle was lame; but that the blood was
all his own, at least admitted of question. Why he had been running
through the woods he did not say; but it was natural to suppose that he
had been trying to reach the sloop and get to New Haven as quickly as
possible, to make ground for claiming an alibi in case he should be suspected
of the murder.
The other significant discoveries that the detective made, and what he did
in New Haven, will be noted in their proper place. Suffice it here to say,
that the agent of justice felt that he had reason to congratulate himself
upon a triumph.
Billy Prangle, when he had kicked out the tempter, lost no time in fully
imparting to his comrades the excellent cause he had for his suddenly violent
conduct, and was heartily censured by all for not hammering the
stranger twice as much.
"What?—Dorn Hackett guilty of murder and robbery?"
They who had known him for years; sailed with him; messed with him;
faced death by his side in the tempest and the perilous chase of the monsters
of the deep, knew how absurd such a charge must be. Every man
of them had belonged to the same crew with Dorn for three years, and
there was not one of them who did not groan to think that he had not had
Billy's chance at the stranger. In consultation among them, it was unanimously
resolved that it was plainly their duty to take the matter in hand.
"Jerry Slate has got a fast little sloop," said Billy Prangle, "that I can
borrow to take me over to Napeague. I'll go there and see that girl of
Dorn's that he spoke of—Mary Wallace, he called her. Here, you barkeep',
log that on a bit of paper for me, so that I won't let it go adrift. You,
Sam, go down by Wainright's packet in the morning to New Haven, which
it was the last place I heard of Dorn hailing from, and see that you find
him and tell him all about it."
Thus the jolly tars arranged it among themselves to serve their friend as
best they could. And so it was that, on the afternoon of the succeeding day,
a weather-beaten old sailor—Billy Prangle himself—after various inquiries
in the neighborhood, "ranged alongside" of Uncle Thatcher's house, asking
for "a gal by the name of Mary Wallace."
"What do you want?" demanded Aunt Thatcher, who happened to
"answer his hail."
"Be you Mary Wallace?" asked Billy, with an affectation of profound
astonishment.
"No, I ain't. But I'm her aunt, and you can tell me your business."
"Right you are, old gal, I can; but I'll see you furder, first," replied
the unabashed veteran, who had already been told by some neighbor that
she was a "snorter."
"What do you mean, you impudent fellow?"
"I always does my business with the principals, mum."
Mrs. Thatcher slammed the door in his face and retired. But half an
hour afterward, when she happened to be out in the yard, she saw that the
sailor had lighted his pipe, seated himself on the stone step at the door,
and literally laid siege to the house. She reflected that Uncle Thatcher
would soon be home to his supper; and in view of the strange way he had
acted of late, did not know how he might take it into his head to look
upon her treatment of the visitor. Tartar as she was, she had a wholesome
respect for him when he chose to assert himself, and deemed it most prudent
to avoid an encounter.
With an ill-grace she went to Mary, who was sewing in her room, and
said snarlingly:
"There's an old vagabond at the door who wants to see you."
Mary went out and found Billy calmly puffing his pipe and waiting. He
looked up at the sound of the opening of the door, and seeing the tall
handsome girl who stood there, sprang to his feet, with a beaming smile
and outstretched hand, saying:
"Ah! You're the right one. I thought I'd fetch you."
Mary gave him her hand, smilingly asking:
"Did you wish to see me, sir?"
"Yes; the mate has been out here trying to rig the pump on me, but it
wouldn't draw. What I'm here for concerns nobody but you and Dorn.
Come out to the gate, for she's a listening beside that window. I just see
the curtain shake."
Mary started at mention of her lover's name by this stranger, and unhesitatingly
accompanied him as he requested; while Aunt Thatcher, who was
indeed listening by the window, could almost have torn her sun-bonnet
strings with vexation and rage when they passed beyond range of her
hearing.
Billy, like many other maladroits, flattered himself that he had no little
skill in conducting a delicate mission, and thought it was rather a neat
way of sparing the girl's feelings to affect to be very busy refilling his pipe,
without looking at her, as he put the blunt question:
"Be you Dorn Hackett's sweetheart?"
Mary blushed and stammered, not knowing what to reply.
"'Cause," continued Billy, "he's maybe in some trouble."
Trouble! Trouble for Dorn! That thought swept away in an instant
her timidity and maiden bashfulness, and anxiously she replied:
"Yes, yes; he is very dear to me. What is it? What has happened to
him? Tell me quickly!"
"Don't get excited. It ain't no great matter. But they are looking for
him to arrest him."
"Arrest Dorn? For what?"
"Murder and robbery."
Mary gave a little cry and would have fallen, had not Billy caught her;
and holding her against the fence, awkwardly enough, but firmly, adjured
her:
"Steady, steady! Brace up! Hold hard!"
In a few moments she regained sufficient control over herself to listen
while the old sailor related to her, with characteristic circumstantiality of
detail, all the events of the preceding evening leading up to his visit to
her. She did not for an instant imagine that Dorn could possibly have
been guilty of such crimes, but the mere idea of his being suspected of
them so horrified her as almost to deprive her of the power of reasoning.
How could he have fallen under suspicion? How could it come to be
known that he was in the neighborhood on that fatal night? There was
but one person, she believed, besides herself who knew of his visit, and
that was Ruth Lenox. Ah, yes! There was her aunt, who suspected it
at least, and who had questioned her so sharply about him. Ruth Lenox
would never have breathed such a foul calumny against Dorn. But her
aunt? "Yes, it would be just like her," thought Mary.
Billy had no further information to impart, no advice to give, and no
consolations to offer. The latter would have been especially out of his line.
It seemed to him enough to give a person warning to look out for him or
herself, as the case might be; which, he reasoned, would be all he would
require under any circumstances; and so, having discharged his errand to
the best of his ability in the manner we have seen, he relighted his pipe
and "got under way," with a clear conscience as to having done his duty
by a shipmate.
Ruth Lenox was, just at this time, on a brief visit to the house of a
married brother, who lived near Babylon; so that Mary was not able to
consult with her only confidante until the second day after Billy Prangle's
visit. Who could tell the agony of mind she felt during that time as the
leaden hours dragged slowly by? It seemed to her fearful and excited
imagination as if at any moment she was liable to hear of her lover's
capture and imprisonment, and she was powerless to do aught to save him.
One hope only suggested itself to her mind: that he might have sailed
away from New Haven before his pursuers could reach him, and that by
the time of his return from the West Indies the real murderer might be discovered,
and the foul suspicion against Dorn entirely dissipated. But she
was not left to cherish in peace even that small germ of comfort, for Aunt
Thatcher, with the astuteness and malice of a feminine fiend—and if there
is a distinction of sex among the devils, the female ones must surely be far the
worst—divined that the sailor who visited Mary had come from Dorn, or in
his interest, and embittered every hour of the poor girl's life by the wagging
of her venomous tongue. As soon as Billy had gone away she demanded
to know what his business was; and receiving no reply—for Mary felt that
she would rather have died than give her aunt the satisfaction of knowing
the hideous intelligence he brought—proceeded to treat the subject in her
own lively fashion.
"Oho! So you don't want to tell! Well, I don't wonder at it. I'd be
ashamed, too, if I was in your place. But I can guess without your telling
me. It's some word from Dorn Hackett, I'll be bound. Wants you to go
and take up with him while he's in port, maybe. If you do, you needn't
think to come back here with your disgrace. I s'pose he thinks he's got a
heap of money now. Did he let you know how much he got by killing old
Jake Van Deust?"
"Oh, aunt!" exclaimed Mary. "You know that is a wicked falsehood!
You know Dorn never would have done such a thing!"
"Don't tell me I lie, you impudent, deceitful, good-for-nothing hussy!
Don't you dare to talk back to me! I know what I know! Oh, I'll have
the satisfaction of seeing him hanged yet!"
Mary burst into tears and left the house. That bit of dialogue was a
sample of what the heart-sick miserable girl had to endure constantly
when Uncle Thatcher was not present. When he was by, the vixen did
not dare to torment her victim, and Mary might have had a stop put
to the woman's malignant attacks had she appealed to him; but from that
extreme measure she revolted.
When Ruth returned home Mary hastened to her with her load of
troubles, and was not disappointed in her expectation of sympathy and
consolation.
"Don't you be afraid, dear," said little Ruth, in a very confident and
protecting tone. "It will be all right. You'll see that it will. I'll make
Lem fix it."
"Lem?"
"Yes. He shall go and find out who did kill Mr. Van Deust, and then
I'm sure there can't be any more talk about Dorn. And I know, just as
well as anything, that it was all started by that spiteful, wicked old aunt of
yours. Lem told me, the night before I went away, that he saw her go
into the Squire's office the evening of the inquest, after everybody else was
gone but a strange man, and she stayed a long time; and I'd just risk my
neck on it that that was the time she put him up to the notion of Dorn
doing it. And I think he might have had more sense—a man like him, who
has known him from he was a boy, and no stranger to what she is. But
don't be afraid, dear. I'll start Lem right out to catch the real murderer,
and I'll tell him I won't marry him until he finds him; and that'll bring
him to his senses, I guess, for he's getting in an awful hurry about it."
Ruth was very earnest and emphatic, and her friend understood and
was comforted by her, although it was not always easy to comprehend the
breathless torrent of words that the energetic little maid poured forth,
with reckless disregard alike of punctuation and of pronouns, when she
became excited, as she now was.
Lem was very reluctant to undertake the task that Ruth sought to impose
upon him.
"It ain't my business," he protested, "and I don't know anything about
it. I wouldn't even know how to begin. How would I look going around
the country asking people, 'who killed Jake Van Deust?' And I swon I
don't know any other way to tackle the job. Squire Bodley told me he's
got a real sharp fellow from New York at work—a chap that makes a business
of catching thieves and murderers, and knows all about it. And I
might do no end of mischief if I went to meddling."
"Now don't talk to me that way, Lem Pawlett. I won't have it. You've
got a heap more sense than you give yourself credit for, and more than
most people would think, to look at you, I must say. Wasn't it you that
found the marks on the window, and tracked the murderer out to the
lane? Of course it was. None of them gawks standing around saw anything
until you showed it to them. And as for that smart chap from
New York—why, he's the very one that went and bleated out his business
to a lot of sailors in New London,—Dorn's friends all of them,—and they
thrashed him, and served him right, too. And that's how we come to know
about his being after Dorn, which, if he had any sense, he wouldn't be.
And you've got to find some way to clear Dorn for Mary's sake, or I'll
never forgive you, and I won't marry you until Dorn and Mary can stand
up with us, and—so there, now."
Lem started home that evening, after his interview with Ruth, in a very
despondent mood, and at a much earlier hour than usual, almost inclined
to rebel against her authority, yet feeling that he must eventually succumb
to her will. As he strolled moodily down the village street, wondering
"what on earth" he should do, and thinking, as he subsequently confessed,
that perhaps it might be as well to amuse Ruth by letting her imagine
him very busy in Dorn's affairs, while he simply left matters to take
their own course, confiding in Dorn coming out all right somehow, at last,
his attention was attracted to the presence of an unwonted number of
persons in the principal store, and the prevalence among them of some
unusual excitement. Entering to learn what was going on he was just
in time to hear the mail-rider, who had arrived but a little before, conclude
a sentence with the words "and so he's in Sag Harbor jail already."
"Who's in jail?" Lem demanded, with a sinking at the heart, for he
well knew that no idle putting off would do for Ruth if her friend's lover
were really locked up.
"Dorn Hackett," replied the mail-rider, proud of his news, and glad to
have the opportunity of repetition to a new auditor,—"for the murder
and robbery of Jacob Van Deust."
"Nonsense!" exclaimed Lem.
"It's so, I tell you. They caught him in New Haven last night. If
they'd missed him until to-day, he'd have been off for the West Indies; but
a New York officer, who got on his track in New London, caught him. And
they say he fought like a tiger. Both the officer's eyes are blacked; but
one of 'em is a little staler color than the other, and I guess he must have
been in two musses lately. Anyhow, he had two New Haven constables
to help him to put handcuffs on Dorn, and then they brought him over in
a sloop; and so he's in Sag Harbor jail already."
"Him that sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. The
Lord wouldn't let him escape," snuffled Deacon Harkins from his perch
on the sugar barrel.
"That's what comes of young men leaving their homes where they were
brought up, and going off to the big cities to make their fortunes and get
into evil ways," sagely observed the store-keeper, reflectively, chipping off
a bit of cheese for himself.
"Yes." "That's so." "Just what a body might have expected,"
murmured several voices.
"How do they know he did it?" asked Lem, in an aggressive tone,
resenting the willing acceptance of Dorn's probable guilt, which was manifestly
the disposition of the group about him.
"Ain't he arrested? What more d'ye want?" retorted Deacon Harkins.
"Oh! That's reason enough for you, is it? That's the sort of a Christian
you are! Condemn a man before he's tried! Hang him on suspicion!
As if the law never got hold of the wrong person! Well, I don't
believe Dorn Hackett was the chap that ever would have done such a deed,
and I don't care if he was arrested a hundred times, I'd bet my life no
jury but a jury of Deacon Harkins's would ever find him guilty."
"There goes another young man I don't never expect any good of,"
remarked Deacon Harkins, in a self-satisfied tone, as though his condemnation
quite settled the here and the hereafter of Lem Pawlett, as that
young man, having "said his say," strode out angrily, and went on his
way.
But Lem heard him not, and would have cared little if he had, for just
then his mind was busy with a new and firm resolve.
"I'll do it," he muttered to himself, "to spite that consarned old deacon,
who never was known to have a good word for anybody, as much as
to please Ruth! I'll save Dorn Hackett; by the great horn spoon, I will!"
Dorn Hackett sat moodily upon his low bed in a little cell of Sag Harbor
jail. His elbows rested upon his knees, and his aching brow was supported
by his palms pressed against his temples. He might, had he wished
to do so, have caught a glimpse of sunshine through the narrow window
high up in the wall; might have seen the green branches of the venerable
elm that, swayed by the wind, swept its foliage from time to time across
that little space of sky; might have heard the blithe carols of the song-birds
that flitted among the old tree's boughs, and even perched and sang upon
the stone window ledge; but he had no heart to look anywhere but on the
ground; no thought for aught but his own misery and shame. It seemed
to him a terrible thing that he should be locked in a jail. What would
Mary say when she learned of it, as she inevitably must? Ah! She would
not believe that he could be guilty, certainly not; but the shame of him
would break her heart.
His life had hitherto been one singularly free from reproach, and of the
many things to which even passably good men become accustomed and
hardened, by contact with the world, he was almost as innocent as his
sweetheart herself. He had not gone off to a big city to make his fortune
and fall into evil ways, as the Easthampton storekeeper had said. Out of
the three years and some months since he quitted the village, he had spent,
altogether, but a few weeks on shore. He had been out at sea, doing
bravely and well the manly work to which he had dedicated himself, and
from even the ruder and, to some natures, demoralizing influences by
which he was there surrounded, he had been protected by the purifying
charm of his ever-faithful love. A retrospective view of his whole life
brought to his memory no thought of regret or shame for aught that he
had done, no remembrance of anything he would have wished to hide
from the knowledge of her he loved best, and in whose regard he had most
desire to stand well.
But there was one thing that, were it to do over again, he would not
have repeated. He would not have knocked down the officer who came to
arrest him, as he did in his first natural heat of indignation at hearing
himself charged with being an assassin and a thief. No, he would not do
that over again, for after he was ironed he had heard men say that he did
it in a desperate hope of escape, and that he would not have done it if he
had not been guilty. And yet it seemed to him the most natural thing for
an innocent man to do under the circumstances. Could he have imagined
that such a construction would be put upon it? And now what had he to
look forward to? He knew nothing, absolutely, of the murder, of the inquest,
or of the grounds upon which he was suspected, save that he had a
vague remembrance of hearing it said, amid the excitement attendant
upon his arrest, that he had been in the vicinity of where Mr. Van Deust
was murdered, on the night that the old man was killed. Yes, that was
probably true; and how could he prove, or even state, the innocent purpose
of his presence there. Could he ask Mary to come into court and testify
to their love-meeting in the woods? No. Not even to save his life.
His reflections were broken by the sound of footsteps in the corridor
without, and the sound of the jailor's voice saying:
"This is his cell."
The prisoner looked up and met the frank, kindly face and outstretched
hand of Lem Pawlett.
"Well, Dorn, old fellow, I'm mightily sorry to see you here," he said
cordially, as the jailor walked away, leaving him standing in front of the
grated iron door of the cell, through which his hand was thrust to grasp
that of Mary's lover.
"Does—do they know of it?" stammered Dorn.
"Does Mary, you mean. Well, yes, I guess she does. Uncle Thatcher
was at the store last night when the mail-rider brought the news, and he
has most probably mentioned it at home. But, Lord bless you man! she
don't think anything of it. Cheer up. Don't get down in the mouth.
She won't believe a word against you, you may be sure. And it don't
come on her like a shock, as it were, because she has been expecting it."
"She expected it?"
"Yes. She has known for two or three days that they were after you,
but had no way of getting any word to you."
"But how did they come to be after me?"
"That was Aunt Thatcher's doings, I believe; but I'll tell you all about
it, as far as I know."
Thereupon the good fellow proceeded to give as full and correct an account,
as his information enabled, of the facts already better known to the
reader, beginning his narrative with the discovery of the murder and
concluding it with an expression of his determination of the night before,
to "try to straighten out the tangle."
"God bless you, old fellow," responded Dorn, with tears of gratitude in
his eyes. "I can't tell you how it warms my heart to have one friend
stand by me in a time like this. But little did I ever think, when we
were boys playing together, that you would ever have to do such a thing for
me."
"That's all right, Dorn. Don't say any more about it. I'll be glad
if I can do anything, and so will Ruth and Mary. And now, let's see
what is to be done. The first thing is for you to tell me, as clearly and exactly
as you can, every incident you can remember of where you were
and what you did that night."
"Everything is as clear in my mind as the occurrences of yesterday.
Let me begin at the beginning. I reached New Haven in the forenoon of
that day, and, having made a much quicker voyage than was expected,
found that I would have several days at my disposal. Of course my first
thought was of going to see Mary. I left the schooner in charge of the
mate, to see to the taking out of her cargo while I was gone, and got a man
named Hollis to bring me over to Napeague in a little fishing smack.
He had to come, any way, to get a couple of pipes of rum that had rolled
off a trader's deck one night. I left him at the beach, telling him that
if I did not meet him there at half past nine o'clock that evening he need
not wait for me, as I might have to remain over a day, or even two; for
you know, as Mary would not be expecting me, I did not know whether I
should meet her at the usual place that evening or not, and I couldn't go
to her uncle's to see her."
"No. I know all about that."
"Well, I was fortunate enough to meet her, walking with Ruth, and
naturally remained with her as long as I could. It was nine o'clock, as
near as I could judge by the rise of the moon, when we parted, and I set
out for the beach to meet Hollis. I was a little afraid of being late, and
took a short cut through the woods that I thought I knew just as well as
when we used to go huckleberrying in them when we were boys. But
there had been at least one change that I knew nothing of—a new road."
"Ah, yes. The new one across from Amagansett."
"I suppose so. Whatever it is, I found it very suddenly. I was running
at the time, along a little path that I knew well, and all at once went
plunging down, head foremost, nine or ten feet into a cut. It's a wonder—and,
as I then thought, a mercy—that I didn't break my neck. Lately
I've had my doubts as to whether it wouldn't have been better for me if
I had."
"Stow that, and pay out your yarn."
"When I could collect my scattered senses, I found that I had cut two
ugly gashes in my head, upon sharp pointed roots or stubs of some sort,
and had sprained my left ankle so that it was exceedingly painful for me to
attempt to walk. While I sat there, thinking what I should do, a little
elderly gentleman, on horseback, came along upon the new road into
which I had fallen. I told him I was hurt, and he very kindly assisted
me, first to fix up my head—giving me his handkerchief to use with my own
for the purpose,—and then to get over to the beach. Hollis was gone. The
accident had delayed me far beyond my time, and he, of course, supposed
that I was not coming. When I got my ankle in the cool sea-water it felt
better, but still I could not walk any distance on it. Just then a small
smack came along, with an old man and a boy in it—strangers to me—probably
out on some smuggling errand, and I offered the old man ten dollars
to take me over to New Haven, which he accepted gladly. The kind little
gentleman helped me into the boat and bade me good-night, saying that
he had yet to ride to Sag Harbor. We had very little wind, and it was
daylight when the old man landed me in New Haven. I had lost a good
deal of blood from the cuts on my head, and felt half sick and drowsy
from it, so that I slept nearly all the time I was in the boat. And that's
all I can tell you about that night."
"Well, man alive, that's enough. All we've got to do is to find the
little gentleman and the old man to prove that you left the island before
eleven o'clock, for it was after that hour that Jacob Van Deust was murdered.
That will show clearly enough that whoever did kill him, at all
events, you didn't; and that's all we care about just at present."
"Ah! If I had the slightest idea of who they were. But I never thought
to ask their names, and indeed didn't take much notice of anything; for,
as I said, I was dizzy, and half-sick, and drowsy, with the loss of blood;
so that even if they had told me who they were, I don't know that I should
have been able to remember. If the old man was, as I suppose, a smuggler,
he would hardly be likely to willingly expose himself to inconvenient
questioning in court. Old men are cautious about taking such chances,
especially for people who are nothing to them."
"Can you give me a description of the little gentleman on horseback?
or tell me anything about him that might lead to his identification?"
"No. Only I remember he said he was a stranger, and knew nobody in
the neighborhood except the Van Deusts. The way he came to mention
that was in talking of taking me somewhere."
"Well, as he mentioned the Van Deusts, old Peter doubtless knows who
he is. Ah! Come to think about it, he said at the inquest that his lawyer
from New York had called on him that evening. Why, it's all plain sailing
now. I'll go to the old man right away and ask him, and he'll tell me who
his lawyer is, and I'll go and see him, and we'll have you out in a jiffy."
"Lem, I can't tell you how I appreciate your kindness and the trouble
you are taking in my behalf."
"Don't try to. It's all right, I tell you. You'd do the same for me;
I know you would. And I rather think I begin to like the job, knowing
how it will spite that old cuss, Deacon Harkins."
The remainder of the young men's chat at the cell door had no especial
significance or bearing upon the progress of the events of our story, and
may as well, therefore, be omitted. Suffice it to say, that when they separated,
Dorn felt infinitely more hopeful and cheerful than he had before
since his arrest, and Lem had far greater confidence in the result of his
novel undertaking of detective work. Of course Lem carried away with
him many loving messages to Mary, which were, in due time, faithfully
delivered through Ruth.
It was too late that evening when the young man reached his home for
him to call upon Peter Van Deust, but he went up to the homestead under
the elms the next morning, at as early an hour as he dared hoped to find
anybody astir. He found the lonely old man, already seated upon the long
bench on the porch, in his accustomed place, with his pipe in his mouth,
and his gaze turned toward the sea; but the pipe had gone out unnoticed,
and the eyes saw nothing of the glory of the dawn upon the ocean, for they
were blinded by tears that unconsciously filled them. Lem stood silently
looking at him for some moments, hesitating to speak, and hoping to be
noticed; but the old man did not seem to know that he was not alone, until
Lem's voice, bidding him "Good-morning," awoke him with a start from
his reverie. Then the start, with which he had been recalled, extended
itself in a long fit of nervous trembling, and it was with a weak and quavering
voice that he responded to his visitor's salutation. It was painful to
see how the unhappy man had broken down in the little time that had
passed since the death of his brother. It seemed to have added at least
ten years to his age.
"I suppose, Mr. Van Deust, that you have heard of Dorn Hackett's
arrest," began the young man, after a failure to find any other way than
a direct plunge to arrive at his subject.
"Yes, yes, I was told of it yesterday. Dorn Hackett? Dorn Hackett?
They say he used to live around here, but I don't remember him. I suppose
I used to know him, though. And he was raised in the neighborhood?
It seems strange that any one who was raised near him, and knew him,
could ever have had the heart to kill Jacob, don't it?"
"But, Mr. Van Deust, maybe he didn't do it at all."
"Somebody did it; somebody climbed into his window and murdered
him for the sake of a little money. Beat in his skull and cut short his
little remnant of life, just to get a few dollars. Oh! it was a cruel thing to
do, to kill that poor, harmless, gentle, good old man. I wish we had never
heard of that cursed fortune. Jacob would be alive to-day, if we hadn't."
His agitation while he spoke was extreme. He trembled like a leaf in
the wind; tears ran down his withered cheeks; his voice was broken by
sobs, and at length his emotion so obstructed his utterance that Lem could
not understand him as he went rambling on about his brother's untimely
end. After a little time, during which Lem silently waited for him
to regain a little calm, his mood seemed to change to one of suspicion and
fear for himself.
"I suppose they'll come to kill me next," he exclaimed. "They'll think
there's more money; but there isn't—there isn't a dollar in the house. I'll
never have a dollar in the house again; and I'll get a dog, a savage big dog,
and I'll load the gun. Oh, I've got a gun, though it hasn't been loaded in
forty years."
"Mr. Van Deust, a little elderly gentleman on horseback was in this
neighborhood the night your brother was murdered, and he said he knew
you. Who was he?"
"Why, he's my lawyer, the man who brought us the intelligence of—But
what do you want to know for? What right have you to come here
asking me questions about my private affairs—about my lawyer? Do you
think he brings money here? No, he don't! he don't! there isn't a dollar
in the house. It's none of your business! Go away from here. I won't answer
any more of your questions. I was a fool to tell you so much! Begone!
begone! Betsy! Betsy! Help! help!"
The old man's excitement seemed to have crazed him, temporarily, at
least. He continued raving, and Lem, finding it impossible to get in a word
of explanation, went away, no little disgusted with the rebuff he had encountered
at the very commencement of his task of hunting up an alibi for
Dorn. Returning to Sag Harbor, he succeeded in finding the man who
had hired a horse to the little elderly gentleman on several occasions,
but could learn nothing from him beyond that fact. The gentleman, according
to the man's statement, always arrived by boat from New York,
got the horse, rode away, came back, paid, and disappeared, probably
by boat again. And that was all that the owner of the horse knew about
him.
Then Lem went to New York, saying to himself that he "would ask
every little elderly lawyer in New York if he was the man," before he would
give up the pursuit. Little did the unsophisticated young fellow, who had
never before been away from home, imagine the magnitude of the job he
had cut out for himself.
The closing of the inquest upon the body of Jacob Van Deust was a
mere formality. It was generally understood that there was within reach,
if not in actual possession, some evidence that would go far to connect
Dorn Hackett with the crime, and Squire Bodley even hinted as much in a
few remarks that he made to the jury; but it was deemed injudicious to
make it known at this juncture, and the jury, by the Squire's direction,
returned a verdict of "death by violence at the hands of some person
unknown."
Mary Wallace, ignorant of the slow, serpentine, and deadly ways of the
thing men amuse themselves by calling "justice," when the finding of the
jury was told to her that night found it difficult to understand why Dorn
should be kept in jail, when there seemed to be no evidence which the
coroner's jury has found sufficient to connect him with the crime.
"Uncle," said she, timidly approaching grim Mr. Thatcher, as he sat on
the stone door-step, surrounded by a litter of fine shavings that he had
scraped from a whale-lance handle that he was finishing by the last
light of day, "why is it that, if the jury gave their verdict that the murder
was done by some unknown person, they don't let Mr. Hackett out of
jail?"
"Did you ever see a cat playing with a live mouse that she had caught?"
"Yes, uncle."
"How she lets it go a little way off, making it think it is going to escape,
and then pounces on it again? How she pretends she isn't paying any attention
to it, and has no notion of hurting it, and then suddenly tears it
to pieces?"
"Yes, uncle," repeated Mary with a shudder.
"Well, that's the way the law does with a man."
Mary covered her face with her hands, and wept softly, while he went on:
"If they still hold on to Dorn Hackett, it is because they hope to get
proof enough against him to make him out guilty. I have heard lawyers
say that the law presumes every man to be innocent until he is proved
guilty; and when I was a younger man, I actually believed that; but as I
have got older, I have learned that practically, in the administration of the
law, when a crime is committed somebody has got to suffer for it, for the
sake of the moral effect on the community; and it don't really make much
difference who it is, so long as the poor devil who is caught cannot prove
himself innocent, which is sometimes a mighty hard thing to do. He may
not be guilty, but they will try to make him out so. Better hang him than
admit having made a blunder in his arrest."
"Oh, but uncle! you don't believe Dorn could be guilty, do you?"
He looked at her pale anxious face with a feeling of deep pity,—for his
eyes were keen enough to see that it was of her lover she spoke,—and replied
with unwonted tenderness:
"No, my poor child. No, I don't; and I wouldn't if I knew nothing
more about him than your trust in him."
Two low sounds mingled softly, and were doubtless duly noted by the
recording angel on duty: a sigh from Uncle Thatcher, and a sniff of disgust
from his lean and rancorous wife in the dark room behind him. He
sighed to think, as he looked at Mary, and appreciated the worth of her
full and perfect love, what a treasure his profligate son had lost in her,
among all the good he had recklessly cast from him. Aunt Thatcher
sniffed because she did not dare to express openly her contempt for his
weakness in manifesting sympathy for the poor orphan who had won her
hearty and unextinguishable hatred by rejection of Silas's advances.
"And if Dorn cannot, as you say it is difficult to do, prove himself innocent,
what will they do with him?"
"They'll hang him," exclaimed Aunt Thatcher, in a tone of malicious
triumph, unable longer to contain herself, and now appearing in the door
to enjoy Mary's horror.
Uncle Thatcher turned upon her with a look of disgust and retorted:
"Sallie Thatcher, if the devil himself ain't ashamed of you, he's meaner
than I take him for."
"Oh, indeed! I'm so bad, am I? Thank you, Mr. Thatcher. Just because
I don't choose to take up for a murderer and a thief. I'm sure any
body might have known what he'd come to when he commenced by nearly
killing my poor boy."
"Your 'poor boy' deserved all he got, and more, too; and I've good
reasons of my own for thinking that we'll both see the day we'll have to
regret that Dorn Hackett didn't finish him then."
Aunt Thatcher's surprise and rage at hearing those words deprived her
for a moment of the power of articulation, and she could only give vent to
her feelings by a sort of wild beast howl of fury. But very soon her ready
tongue loosened itself again, and she poured forth a torrent of reproach,
vituperation, and malediction directed at random against her husband,
against Mary, against Dorn, against the world, indeed, excepting only her
"poor injured boy."
When Uncle Thatcher had had enough of this, he straightened himself
up before her, and she, as if fearing the weight of his heavy hand, retreated
into the dark room. But he did not seem to have any intention of personal
violence. He simply pulled the door to, locked it on the outside, and
sat down again. A moment afterward the door was tried and rattled
from the inside.
"Stay in there and keep quiet, if you know what's good for you,"
growled Uncle Thatcher.
The rattling ceased, and all was again quiet.
"Uncle," said Mary, after a little pause, "I want to go and see Dorn."
"In jail?"
"Yes."
"Well," he replied, a little doubtfully, "people might talk."
"Let them, if they will. I don't care—or, at least, I don't care enough
to prevent my going to him when he is in trouble. What can they say,
but that we are lovers. Well, yes, we are, and it is no time for me to
seek to hide it when others look coldly and cruelly on him. He loves me—I
know he does; and I love him—with all my heart. And we were going
to be married very soon, uncle. I would have told you before, but I was
afraid. Now you are so kind to me that I'm not afraid to tell you any
more. And oh, Uncle, I must go to him!"
"Forgive me, little Mary—and may God forgive me for having made
poor Lottie's orphan child afraid to put confidence in me. You say you
want to go and see him. You shall. I'll hitch up early to-morrow morning
and take you over to Sag Harbor myself."
Long before daylight the next morning Mary, who had not closed her
eyes during the seemingly interminable night, was up and had breakfast
prepared. Whether Aunt Thatcher was still under the influence of the
sullen fury that possessed her when the door was closed upon her the
night before, or had fresh fuel added to the fire of her temper by overhearing
the arrangement between her husband and niece, did not appear.
At all events she spoke no word of question or remark, and was still abed
when they took their departure.
The sun was not risen above the sea when Uncle Thatcher's old carryall
creaked through the one long rambling street of the little village, and entered
upon the Sag Harbor road; but his upward glinting beams already
spread with gold and crimson the lower edges of the fleecy clouds on the
eastern horizon. Diamonds of dew still clung to the long grass blades,
and the points of the forest leaves and the morning breeze, heavy with
the salt smell of the sea, was fresh and bracing. Robins flitted across the
road with sharp notes, as of query why folks should be abroad so early,
and a belated rabbit, homeward bound to his burrow in the brush, sat up-reared
upon his haunches and seemed paralyzed by astonishment until the
horses were almost upon him, when he bounded swiftly away. Higher
and higher rose the sun, and as his ardent rays licked up the dew, light
clouds of yellow dust swirled and spread behind the rapidly-moving wheels.
Past orchards, where red winter apples glowed in the sunshine like balls of
blood amid the foliage of the trees; past fields still golden with the stubble
of the early ripened grain; past fallow lands, where the blue-bird
carolled gayly on the hollow stump in which he and his mate had reared
their springtime brood; past leafy woods, where nuts were ripening, the
wheels rolled fast until they reached the quaint old town—their journey's
end—and halted beneath the old-time tavern's venerable elms.
Leaving the horses hitched, after having carefully watered them, Uncle
Thatcher accompanied his niece to the jail and asked permission for her to
see Dorn Hackett, which the jailor, having no orders to the contrary,
readily accorded. Mr. Thatcher did not enter. Though far from being a
nervous man, he felt as if the close clammy atmosphere of that stone
warehouse of sin and sorrow sent a chill to his heart. Besides, he had
no business with Dorn Hackett. With a great breath of relief he turned
his back upon the jail and wandered off down to the wharf to look at the
shipping—for Sag Harbor had shipping in those days—to learn if there
was any change in the oil and whalebone markets, and perhaps to ascertain
what was coming to his share of that schooner in which he was part
owner.
Dorn was just bidding adieu to his lawyer, when Mary appeared in the
corridor.
"By jove! Here's a pretty girl come to see some prisoner!" exclaimed
the lawyer at sight of her.
Dorn paid no attention to the remark. There was but one pretty girl
in the world about whom he cared to think, and he did not expect her to
come there. What, then, was his surprise when, the lawyer having stepped
aside to give place to the visitor at his cell-door, he looked out and beheld
the beautiful face of his own true-love, Mary. With a cry of surprise and
joy he thrust his arms through between the bars, catching her in an embrace,
and their lips met in a long and ardent kiss. The lawyer, who was
a young man, and possessed of a very lively appreciation of feminine
beauty, lingered a few moments and then quietly took his departure.
"I hardly know whether I am most glad or ashamed to see you here,
darling," said Dorn, looking tenderly at his beloved.
"Glad, I hope, dearest. Should you feel ashamed of being unfortunate?
It is only guilt of which one need be ashamed; and that, I well
know, my dear Dorn has not."
"True. But it is very hard to wash the prison taint off, even from an
innocent man."
"Do not think so, my love. Everybody will know yet how true and
good you are, and will be all the kinder to you for the mistake that has
given us so much pain and trouble."
"Ah, my dear girl, it is your love and not your reason that tells me so.
Even people who have no other reason for hating the man who has been
the victim of such a mistake, will find sufficient the consciousness that
they have erred in supposing him guilty, and will always profess to view
him with suspicion, whether they feel it or not. There is nothing that
people generally abhor so much as a confession of fallibility. But, no
matter. I have your love and confidence, dear Mary; I'm sure I have, or
you would not be here; and for all beyond that I'd ask small odds from
the world if I were free again."
"And you will be, dearest, I am sure of it. It can never be possible
that a man should be punished by law for that of which he is not guilty."
"Ah, you think so? Then you have not read much about people who
have been convicted upon circumstantial evidence. I have read a whole
book about such cases, and I tell you it takes very little real proof to hang
a man sometimes."
"Oh, Dorn! Don't talk so! You make me wild with horror and fear!"
"Well, there,—there,—darling. I won't say any more about it. I
shouldn't have said so much, but somehow I have got into a bad way of
talking back since I have had to make the acquaintance of a lawyer."
And kissing her tenderly, he sought to remove the terror that he had
unthinkingly given her, making light even of what he had just said, and
forcing himself to speak much more hopefully than he dared to feel.
"Lem, you know," he said, "has gone to New York to find a witness
who will certainly clear me if we can bring him into court."
"Ruth told me that he had gone, and the object of his going, as far as
she knew, but he did not give her any particulars."
"No? Then I'll tell you all about it."
Thereupon he proceeded to inform her of all the untoward events that
had happened to him after his leaving her on the last night they were together;
his running through the woods and falling into the new road; the
aid given him by the little elderly gentleman; the missing of the boat he
had hoped to catch; the opportune arrival of the old man, probably a
smuggler, etc., etc., just as has already been narrated in his interview
with Lem, but much more slowly, as this time the story was much broken
by affectionate condolences and consequent digressions to love-making.
He told her also of Lem's unsuccessful attempt to learn from Peter Van
Deust who the little gentleman was.
"What a pity it is," she said, "that you did not think to ask him his
name! Was there nothing about him that you can remember that might
help to his identification—no personal peculiarity of look, or dress, or
manner of speech?"
He shook his head regretfully, saying, "I was not much in the humor to
notice peculiarities just then. But yes, come to think about it, there was
one little incident that rather amused me at the time, badly as I felt; but
I have not thought of it since until now. The little gentleman had a
very slow, cautious, and precise way of speaking. I asked him what time
it was, when we were down at the beach. He pulled out his watch and
replied very deliberately: 'Without desiring to be understood as committing
myself to an affirmation of the absolute accuracy of my time-piece, I
may say that, to the best of my information and belief, it is now eleven
minutes past ten o'clock.'"
"Ah, I have seen him! I recognize his phrase, 'information and belief'!"
exclaimed Mary, "and know just how he said it. Ruth and I met
him the first time he came into the neighborhood, looking for the Van
Deusts, 'supposed to be brothers' as he then said. Ruth imitates him,
sometimes, and does it very well. When we come to match together our
remembrances of him, I am sure we will be able to give Lem some information
that will help him to find the man."
"I certainly hope you may," answered Dorn, "for I can do nothing
more. I have got to resign myself to play the passive part of a football
for other people to bounce about, without being able to help myself,
whether I am going into the goal or the ditch. I have a lawyer, but he
seems to look rather blue over the prospect."
"Then get another."
"And have two of them looking blue? No, no. That would be more
than I could stand. One is enough. Sailors don't take very kindly to
lawyers, any way, you know."
At the end of an hour—a very short time as it seemed to them, but the
limit set by the jailor, who now appeared, looking in at the corridor door
from time to time, with an air of expectation—Mary said she would have
to be going.
"How did you come over?" asked Dorn.
"Uncle Thatcher brought me."
"The—mischief he did! And did he know you were coming to see
me?"
"Yes, he brought me for the purpose. Oh, Dorn, he has turned to be
ever so kind and good to me! I told him I loved you—"
"God bless you, my darling!" exclaimed her lover, interrupting her
with a kiss.
"—and that we were going to be married. And he did not say one
word against it. He even said that he did not believe you were guilty; and
when I told him I wanted to come and see you, he answered that he would
hitch up early this morning and bring me; and so he did."
"Mary, if I've ever said a word against Uncle Thatcher I want to take
it all back. A man who does me as good a turn as he has this day, I can
never after hold any grudge against."
Mary went home that night with a much lightened heart, and looked
so nearly happy that Aunt Thatcher would have liked to have bitten her,
for sheer vexation and spite.
Dorn Hackett's preliminary examination by a committing magistrate
took place before Squire Bodley, and was even a more important event, for
all the country around, than the inquest had been. As upon the former
occasion, the Squire's little office was crowded densely, and apparently
by exactly the same persons who filled it then,—with the exception that
the small space within the railing was somewhat more jammed by the addition
of five more persons than were there at the time of the inquest;
the prisoner, Dorn Hackett; his lawyer, Mr. Dunn; the prosecuting attorney;
the officer who brought Dorn from Sag Harbor jail, and a reporter
from New York. Peter Van Deust was seated where he sat before,
looking fearfully worn and old, as was remarked by all who knew him and
viewed with surprise the great change that had been wrought in him
within the few weeks since his brother's murder. He had more command
over himself now, however, than he showed on the first day of the inquest;
and instead of bowing his head and weeping, leaned upon the end of the
table and fixed his eyes with a hungrily keen gaze upon the witnesses and
the prisoner, as if he would fain have penetrated their hearts to know the
truth.
Lem Pawlett was called, but did not respond, and in his absence another
witness formally testified as to the facts of the discovery of the
murder. Peter Van Deust repeated his former testimony. Then the
prosecuting attorney called the name of Mary Wallace.
"Stop a moment," interposed the prisoner's counsel. "I desire to know
the object of the prosecution in calling this witness?"
"It is neither customary nor requisite," responded the prosecutor, "for
the State to give such information. At the same time, I have no objection,
under the existing circumstances, to inform the counsel that we intend
to prove, by this witness, that the prisoner was in the vicinity of
where this murder was perpetrated upon the night of its perpetration;
keeping himself in the woods, evading the sight of former friends and
neighbors, though he had not re-visited them or made himself known
among them for three years or more, and that he parted from the person
we have just called as a witness a little while before the hour at which the
murder, as we have reason to believe, was committed."
"We are ready to admit," replied Mr. Dunn, "that the prisoner was in
the woods within a half, or possibly a quarter, of a mile of the Van Deust
homestead on the night of the murder; that for what seemed to him
good and sufficient reasons, yet very innocent ones—which the younger
portion of my hearers will possibly imagine and appreciate more readily
than the old ones—he did seek to avoid meeting any inquisitive and gossiping
friends; and that he parted from the person whom the State has just
called before the hour at which the murder was committed. I believe
those admissions cover all the State desires to show by this witness, and
consequently, I do not see that there can be any necessity, at this time, for
placing her on the stand."
"None at all. We are satisfied with the admissions," assented the prosecutor
cheerfully, not at all dissatisfied with expediting business in the
close and heated quarters in which he found himself.
A look of relief, almost of pleasure, passed over Dorn's face. He had his
Mary spared the embarrassment and unhappiness of appearing as a witness
against him, for that time at least.
A man named Schooly, from New Haven, testified that he saw Dorn in
his boarding-house in that city two days after the date of the murder,
and he was then suffering from some cuts, bruises, and sprains which he
claimed to have received while running through the Long Island woods at
night.
Detective Turner bore witness to the finding in the prisoner's room in
New Haven of a pair of pantaloons and a jacket stained with blood, and a
shirt which, though it had been washed, still bore blood stains. He further
narrated that the prisoner had stoutly resisted arrest; had, indeed,
fought hard to effect an escape; and upon being overcome and searched,
had been found to have, in a belt about his body, some three hundred dollars
in gold coins—which the witness here produced for inspection by the
magistrate, and possible identification by Mr. Peter Van Deust.
The old man looked them over a little, and then pushed them away with
a weary sigh, saying simply:
"Jacob had gold in his bag; I don't know how much. Minted coins
are all alike."
The case looked very weak for the prosecution. There was really nothing
beyond mere suspicion to connect the prisoner with the crime. The prosecuting
attorney, with a discontented look, whispered to the detective,—who
was evidently uneasy,—and shuffled over again the pages of the testimony
taken at the inquest, with a faint hope that he might find there some previously
overlooked clue to be of service now. But there was nothing.
The prisoner's counsel leaned back to his client and whispered exultantly:
"I defy any jury, or magistrate, to find on that evidence anything
worse than the Scotch verdict of 'Not Proven.'"
"'Not Proven'?" exclaimed Dorn, "I don't want such a verdict as that.
Cast a cloud of suspicion and doubt over my whole life! No, I'd rather be
hanged at once and done with it. What I demand is a verdict of 'Not
Guilty.'"
"Better be satisfied with what you can get. 'Not Proven' would be
just as good."
"Not for me. I want to tell the Squire, and everybody, just what happened
to me that night. I'm sure that they will see I am telling the truth,
and I'll clear away this suspicion."
An older and shrewder practitioner than Mr. Dunn would have positively
refused to permit his client to imperil, by a word, the present promising
condition of his case; but he could not help entering into the feeling
of the brave, handsome and earnest young fellow who pleaded so hard to
be permitted to defend himself with the truth, and yielded.
"If your honor pleases," he said simply, "my client requests to be permitted
to make his own statement of the events of the night in question
affecting him, or in which he had a part."
"I shall be happy to hear him," answered Squire Bodley, who was conscious
of feeling prepossessed in Dorn's favor, and desirous of seeing him
clear himself from suspicion.
The prosecuting attorney looked up with a new light of hope in his eyes.
Well he knew how even innocent persons sometimes tangle themselves up
in trying to tell a straight story, and how their unpractised and unguarded
utterances can be garbled, warped, and misconstrued. But Dorn's manner
gave him very little encouragement. In a plain, straight-forward
way, that went home with the force of truth to the hearts of all who heard
him, the young man told his brief tale of mal-adventure on that luckless
night.
Why he had come to Long Island that evening and tried to avoid being
seen by anybody but the person he came to see was, he said, his own business—had
no bearing on this affair—and he did not propose to make any
statement about that. He did not need to. Already it had in some way
become matter of public knowledge all over that end of Long Island that
he had come to see Mary Wallace, his sweetheart, who stuck to him so
well in his trouble that she had been to see him in jail. And nobody
thought the worse of him for that, certainly.
Having disposed of that matter so simply, he retold his story, from the
time of his starting to run through the woods to catch Mr. Hollis's sloop up
to his final arrival at his home in New Haven the next morning. "Deeply
I regret," he said, in concluding the narrative, "that I do not know the
two persons who assisted me; the gentleman on horseback and the old man
in the smack; and beyond measure grateful I would be to them if they,
learning of the trouble into which I have innocently fallen, would come forward
to corroborate my statement of what happened that night."
"And you know of absolutely nothing," said the prosecuting attorney,
after a little whispering with old Peter Van Deust, who was seen to violently
shake his head, "which might lead to the discovery of the real existence
of either of those persons who, according to your very romantic
story, came so opportunely to give you their aid?" He spoke with an affectation
of incredulity, which in his heart he was very far from feeling.
"Nothing whatever, sir," replied Dorn. "The only trace I have left
of either of them, except the memory of their kindness to me, is the handkerchief
which the little gentleman bound around my head. It has been
washed, with the rest of my clothing over which the blood flowed from my
scalp wounds, and was sent to me yesterday in the valise which was forwarded
to me from my boarding house in New Haven. I have it with me.
Here it is."
So saying he drew from one of his pockets a large white linen handkerchief,
clean and neatly folded, which he handed to the prosecuting attorney.
That official took it in an absent-minded way, looked at it negligently,
and—his mind busy with some trap he was minded to set for the
young man—then tossed the light fabric carelessly from him upon the
table. It fell before old Peter Van Deust, who snatched it up and, after
turning it from one corner to another for close examination, suddenly
startled everybody by a loud cry and the exclamations:
"It was his! It was Jacob's! I can swear to it!"
The old man was immediately recalled to the witness-stand, and testified
with much demonstration of excitement:
"I felt that it was his as soon as I saw it, and when I examined it I
was sure of it. Jacob had some harmless, womanish ways about him.
He could sew, and knit, and embroider a little. He marked all his clothing
himself—every article of it I believe—in a very modest way; hardly discernible
at a casual glance, but very plain when you come to look for it,
as you can see on that handkerchief. Look in that corner and you'll see
his initials 'J. V. D.' worked with a single white thread. You can hardly
see it without you hold it so that the light will show the lines of the letters
lying across the threads of the fabric. There! That way it shows plainly."
It was as he said. The letters "J. V. D." were unquestionably there.
Dorn sank back in his seat aghast and terrified by this astonishing discovery.
Who now believed his story of the little gentleman and the old
man in the smack? Nobody. Everybody saw that it was an artfully concocted
lie, and was indignant with him for duping them, by his apparently
ingenuous and honest manner, into momentarily believing him. An audible
murmur about the "finger of Providence" ran through the throng,
and Mr. Dunn groaned, half to himself and half to his client:
"Oh, I was afraid you'd play the devil somehow! Why couldn't you
have let well enough alone?"
Squire Bodley, having carefully examined for himself the marked handkerchief,
said solemnly to the accused:
"Young man, you have, I fear, placed the noose about your own neck.
You will stand committed to await the action of the Grand Jury. Without
bail, of course," he added, seeing that the prisoner's counsel had risen
and seemed about to say something.
Whatever it was that Mr. Dunn had an idea of saying or doing when he
got upon his feet, he changed his mind and sat down again. The fact was
that he was as completely stunned as was his client by the revelation that
had been made. Dorn had sworn to him that he was innocent, and he
had believed it. But now—? He, even, began to have his doubts.
At this moment a sharp-featured woman, wearing a sun-bonnet and
with a tangled lock of sandy hair hanging down her back, having literally
fought her way to the railing, leaned over it and asked the magistrate
in an acidulous whisper:
"Squire, can't I swear to something against him?"
"It would be useless, now, Mrs. Thatcher," replied the Squire, "as he
has already been committed. But your evidence might be desired by the
Grand Jury. What can you testify to?"
"I can swear," answered the woman, with eager spite, "that he's a
hardened villain, and that I believe he killed Jake Van Deust, and that
he's been keeping that fool niece of mine out in the woods to the latest
and most indecent hours of the night."
"Madam," said the Squire, with mingled dignity and contempt, "you
will excuse my saying that you are simply disgusting! Go away!"
Nobody could devote himself with greater assiduity to an almost hopeless
task than Lem Pawlett did to his pursuit of the unknown lawyer.
The weather was exceedingly hot in the city, and he, accustomed to breathing
the pure fresh breezes of the sea-shore, felt it terribly oppressive. The
pavements were very hard to his feet, used to the soft earth and sand of
the country, and he was actually lame most of the time. The interminable
streets and the multitude of people confused him and gave him a horrible
sense of isolation among them all. Then he very much missed little Ruth's
affectionate despotism, and her practical good sense and encouragement,
for he had so many disappointments and discouragements to encounter
that he was fairly heart-sick almost all the while. Still the good fellow
did not give up his chase. He had come to town for a purpose, he said
to himself, and he would succeed in it or die trying. Day after day he
haunted the courts and the streets where there were most lawyer's offices,
and it was not long before he became actually a terror to all the little
elderly gentlemen who practised law in New York—and there were a great
many of them, as there are even yet. Seeing one who, it seemed to him,
might come within the somewhat wide specifications he alone had for his
guidance, of being small and past middle age, it was his habit to buttonhole
the suspected person and put to him directly the question:
"Do you know the Van Deusts of Easthampton?"
They all said "No." A very few of them, at first, had curiosity enough
to add "why?" But upon his commencing his story which from his manner
promised to be long, they would always exclaim, "Ah! One moment—excuse
me. I see a man—" and would dart away. Generally they did
not even ask "why?" but darted away about their own business all the
same.
His frequent repetitions of the same question were overheard by other
members of the bar than those to whom it was addressed, and it was observed
that the interrogation was always directed to little, elderly gentlemen.
So very speedily it became a stock-joke among the profession for
waggish counsellors to ask of his selected class of victims, at the most inopportune
times and unexpected places, "Do you know the Van Deusts of
Easthampton?" until they were almost maddened by the iteration.
One jocose attorney christened Lem "The Mad Avenger," and by that
title he was soon generally known. The poor fellow was much puzzled to
account for the hilarity that his appearance in court sometimes seemed to
occasion; for the general interest that appeared to be awakened among the
lawyers when he approached one of whom he thought he should ask his
question; and for the angry haste with which the person so approached
would reply, oft-times before he said more than "Do you—" with an emphatic
"No. Never heard of them in my life." Sometimes he asked the
same person, twice or thrice even, on different days, for he could not be
expected to remember them all.
There are always haunting the courts a few poor, harmless mad people,—wrecks
whose hearts and minds have been at some time crushed by the
Juggernaut of the law. The mercy of forgetfulness has wiped away the
memory of ruinous defeat and made place for ever-springing hope in their
breasts. They imagine always that their cases are "coming on very soon—to-morrow,
perhaps;" for the bitter, heart-sickening lesson of legal procrastination
is deepest graven, and survives all else in their blighted brains.
Lem got to be regarded as one of those unfortunate beings. And then,
even if he had got an opportunity to tell his story to anybody, the chances
are that it would have been taken for a fiction of his imagination. Still
he plodded on indefatigably, with his eyes always open for the wanted
witness, and his one question ever trembling on his lips. His manner of
operation was certainly not the best,—not the one that a skilful detective
would have adopted,—but it was the best he knew; and sooner or later
Providence is pretty certain to help those who endeavor for themselves as
earnestly and well as they know how.
Once only he sought to make a divergence from the path upon which he
had set out. He went to the police, thinking to ask their aid. The superintendent
received him brusquely, demanding as soon as he put his foot
over the threshold of the office:—
"Well, my man, what do you want?"
"I have come, sir, to ask some help here in finding out about the murder
of Jacob Van Deust, of Easthampton, Long Island."
The superintendent referred to a book at his elbow, and replied curtly,
"Man on that case now."
"Yes, I know there is," answered Lem, "but it seems to me that he's
on the wrong tack, and—"
The superintendent did not trouble himself to hide his contempt for the
criticism of an unprofessional, and a countryman at that, upon one of his
force of detectives, and interrupted with the abrupt retort:
"Very probably. But I guess you are not likely to teach him his business.
Martin!"—turning to his messenger—"Tell the captain I'll see him
now."
Lem accepted this discourteous dismissal, and found his way into the
street without anybody seeming to have noticed that he said, "Good-day,
sir."
Singularly enough as it might appear, in view of the notoriety that Lem's
question had obtained among the lawyers, but for a very excellent reason,
nevertheless, the one man of all of them who could have responded "yes;"
the one man of whom he was in search, had not in all this time heard
that anybody was hunting an acquaintance of the Van Deusts and, though
he was the only person in New York who had any direct business interest
in the Van Deusts, knew anything about them or would have been likely
to know of any important event happening to them, he had not even heard
that Jacob Van Deust had been murdered. That one man was Mr. Pelatiah
Holden. Of late years he had practiced very little in the courts. He
had amassed a considerable fortune—one so regarded in those days, at
least—by the exercise of his profession; and as he grew older and attained
a high and deserved reputation by his ability, gradually drifted into the
comparatively quiet, easy, and lucrative life of an office lawyer—one who
gives counsel to other lawyers in difficult and important cases. His deep
learning in the law, his wide knowledge of rulings and precedents, and his
great caution in forming and framing opinions, gave weight and value to
his advice, and put him in the position of a general who plans battles for
others to fight, but seldom finds himself directly engaged in combat.
It was his custom to go to his office at an early hour every week-day
morning; lock himself in a little inner room, the walls of which were covered
with a magnificent legal library; receive there only persons who came
on such important business as could not be attended to by Mr. Anderson,
his old and able confidential clerk; have a lunch handed into him at noon
precisely; and, at four o'clock to leave for his home somewhere in the
upper part of the city. During his seclusion in that inner room, he was
constantly busy, poring over law books, reading points submitted by counsel,
and writing opinions. When a person was admitted to see him, the
very atmosphere by which he was surrounded, was a warning against
waste of time in idle conversation. Not one, of even his most intimate
friends, would have dreamed of taking up his time with mention of a new
lunatic haunting the courts.
So it was that Lem met him and passed him by in the street, unconsciously,
over and over again, not even knowing that he was a lawyer.
The young man was so uneasy, restless and unhappy, as the days flew
rapidly by, and the time for Dorn's trial was drawing nearer—for the
grand jury had found an indictment against him within a week after his
commitment by the magistrate, and he was to be tried for his life at the
next session of the court—that he could no more sleep at night than rest
in the daytime, and was almost constantly strolling aimlessly about the
streets, growing thinner, more careworn and despondent daily.
One evening, as he was passing the front of the old Chatham Street
theatre, he was surprised to hear himself called by name, and turning,
found himself face to face with Silas Thatcher. He had not seen the
scapegrace for more than three years, had never been at all intimate with
him, and hardly recognized him now, so greatly had his appearance
changed. Silas was dressed in black cloth, wore a silk hat, flashing breast-pin
and shining boots, had a moustache and goatee, and was smoking a
long cigar. In all respects he was a good sample of the lot of a dozen or
more fellows lounging near the theatre door, every one of whom was known
to the police as a gambler or a thief, and most of them as deserving official
notice in both characters. The vulgar affectation with which he sought to
impress his rustic acquaintance, did not lacquer over the coarse blackguardism
of his customary manners, and Lem, without well knowing why,
felt an instinctive dislike for, and distrust of, him. Still, he stood and
talked a little while, telling the last news he had from home; that Uncle
and Aunt Thatcher and Mary were all well; that Eben Stebbins had gone
a-whaling; that the schooner "Pretty Polly," with Captain Marsh and
three men, had been lost in a gale; that Dorn Hackett had come back and
been arrested on suspicion of having murdered Jacob Van Deust—
"Murdered old Jake Van Deust! You don't mean to say that you folks
down in that dead-alive little village, have had the sensation of a real
murder!"
"Ah! yes. A terrible sensation, too, the killing and robbery of a poor,
weak, old man, and the arrest of an innocent person for the crime."
"Let's go and get a drink, while you tell me all about it."
"No, thank you. I don't drink. But I can tell you all about it here,
all the same." And he told the whole story, at least, as far as it was
known to the public, instinctively suppressing, however, all mention of the
evidence he hoped to find in the city.
"That handkerchief business will be likely to hang him, won't it?"
asked Silas.
"It seems very serious to his friends."
"Mighty queer that he should have had the thing!—if he isn't guilty."
"And yet I am as sure as that I am alive this moment, that if they
hang Dorn Hackett for that murder, they will hang an innocent man for
the crime of another."
"Come, let's go and take a drink, just one. Take something light if
you like. And then we'll go around and see some life. Come on. I want
a drink."
"No, you'll have to excuse me, Silas. I never drink, and I feel pretty
tired; and, I think I'll go to bed."
"Go to bed! now! Why, a man isn't a hen. Night is the only time to
see life in New York. I've only been up a couple of hours or so. Come
along, and I'll show you the elephant."
"No, thank you. I have no desire to see him. I'd rather go to bed.
Good-night."
"Well, good-night,—if you will go."
Silas, when left alone, hastily entered the bar-room attached to the
theatre, and called for a glass of brandy. While he was pouring out the
fiery beverage, an acquaintance entered, and, looking at him with surprise,
exclaimed:—
"Why, Sile! What the deuce is the matter with you? You look as if
you'd seen a ghost!"
"Maybe I have. What'll you take?" answered Silas, dryly.
"Brandy," replied his friend, and the young man's looks were no more
commented on.
When Lem reached the humble hotel on Pearl Street, at which he put
up, he found a letter addressed to him in the clerk's rack. It had arrived
while he was out that afternoon. No need for him to open it to know
who it came from. One glance at the superscription was enough for him
to see that Ruth's chubby little hand had guided the pen. Retiring to his
little room he opened the missive, trimmed his solitary candle, and with a
countenance of happy anticipation sat himself down to read.
"Dear old Lem," she wrote, "I'm beginning to think that you are
away an awful long time, and I'm getting real anxious about you sometimes.
Perhaps you have found some handsome city lady that you think
you like ever so much better than me, and have no idea of coming back to
the village. If so, just mention the fact while I have some chance left.
I hear that Deacon Harkins is looking out for a fourth wife, and who
knows—But there, I won't plague you any more, you big, good-hearted,
stupid dear. I know you won't fall in love with anybody but your little
Ruth, any more than she will with somebody else than her big Lem, and I
can answer for her. But there! I haven't much time to write about you and
I, for I've got something real serious to tell you, something that may be a
great deal of help to you in what you are trying to do; that is, supposing you
are trying what you started for, and not just to capture the handsome city
lady. Mary has been to see Dorn in jail, and had a talk with him about the
little elderly gentleman, and he has remembered something more than he
told you that makes us both sure we have seen him, and would know him
again; and it's a wonder to me that he didn't think of telling you, for he's
a man you couldn't mistake. But then you men are all so flighty and slow to
think about things, and you never get them right until a woman takes them
in hand."
Lem scratched his head, looked perplexed, reread the long sentence, and
then muttered to himself:
"Ah, yes! I see. Dorn has remembered something more—and it's the
little elderly gentleman she and Mary have seen—and it's a wonder Dorn
didn't think of telling me that something he has remembered—and the little
elderly gentleman is a man I couldn't mistake. Yes, it's all clear
now." And he read on:
"I remember him just as well as if I saw him only yesterday, and I'll
tell you exactly how he looked. He wore a wig, very dark brown, nearly
black, and very neatly brushed; and he had a shirt bosom with a frill—like
those queer old heroes of the revolution in our pictorial book of American
History; and his tall silk hat had a very wide crape around it; and he had
a funny little breast-pin in his frill that looked like a square of glass with
gray hair under it, and little pearls around it, like grandmother's brooch.
He had on a stock, a very wide, stiff stock, that kept his head up very
straight; and when he bowed he moved as if he was only hinged in the
middle. He spoke very deliberately, and seemed to be afraid somebody
would snap him up right off if he didn't say exactly the right word, and he
appeared to be too cautious ever to say anything positive. He spoke of the
Van Deusts as 'supposed to be brothers,' and when Dorn asked him what
time it was, he looked at his watch and replied that, 'according to his information
and belief it was eleven minutes past ten.'"
"Now I'm sure, Lem, that such peculiarities as his must mark him out;
so that when you know them you will have little difficulty in finding him.
Do your best, darling, and make haste, for the time is getting terribly
short for poor Dorn and dear Mary,—and yet it seems awful long to
"Your own little
"Ruth."
"This is serious. This merits consideration and dissection," said Lem
to himself, spreading the letter on the table before him, and squaring himself
to go at it as a study. It was nearly morning when he felt that he
had fully mastered all its contents, and threw himself on his bed for a short
and troubled sleep.
But the earliest lawyers on the street—those who snatch a subsistence
from the dregs and scum of humanity thrown up daily by the currents of
misfortune and vice, upon the strands of the police courts—saw "the Mad
Avenger" already prowling about the vicinity of their offices long before
the hour at which the civil and principal criminal courts would be opened
for business. When the judicial mills commenced their grinding, he was
within sound of their clatter, and from one to another he wandered, anxiously
and wearily, as was his custom. When the day's grist was completed,
and the grinders hurried away to their respective offices to prepare
more grain for the morrow's grinding, he mechanically followed them.
It was getting late in the afternoon; he had not yet seen anybody approximating
to the picture he had in his mind's eye—the portrait drawn by
Ruth—and he was just arrived at that period of the day when he always
felt most sick with disappointment, and most sorely tempted to give up
the seemingly useless pursuit and go home. He stopped before the little
hand-cart of a street fruit vender, which was drawn up to the curbstone,
to buy an apple. While he made the purchase he heard the voice of a
man, who halted just behind him, saying quickly:
"Ah! I was just coming up to see you. Are you in Fordyce vs.
Baxter?"
"Not having been advised by my clerk," said a precise and deliberate
speaker in reply, "that any papers in an action so entitled had been deposited
in his hands, and having no other knowledge of such action than
your present mention of its title, I believe that I am justified in saying,
sir, that to the best of my information and belief—"
"Aha!" shouted Lem, wheeling around and seeing before him the living
original of Ruth's very exact sketch—"You're the man I'm looking for!"
"What the—the—the—mischief do you mean, sir," exclaimed the little
gentleman, warding off the hand that Lem stretched out to clutch his collar.
"It's the Mad Avenger," said, laughingly, the gentleman interested in
Fordyce vs. Baxter. "He will ask you, in a moment, if you know the Van
Deusts of Easthampton."
"Of course I will," retorted Lem, growing hot and angry, "I don't
know why you call me the Mad Avenger—my name is Lemuel Pawlett, and
I do want to know, for very serious reasons, if this gentleman is acquainted
with the Van Deusts of Easthampton."
"And I reply that I am," answered Mr. Holden, sufficiently perturbed
by the immediate excitement to forget his customary caution and make a
positive statement without qualification.
"Oh! The deuce you are! Then there really are Van Deusts of Easthampton!"
exclaimed the other lawyer, with genuine surprise and beginning
to feel an interest in the affair.
"Thank God! I have found you, sir. Thank God!" ejaculated Lem, fervently,
"for I believe you can be the means of saving an innocent man's life."
"Bless my soul!" gasped Mr. Holden—"But, here! This is no place
for a consultation. Come up to my office;" and he began elbowing his way
through the crowd that had already gathered.
"But are you in Fordyce vs. Baxter?" called after him the gentleman
whose lucky inquiry had brought to Lem the good fortune of this meeting.
"No," Mr. Holden answered, still moving off.
"Then remember that you are retained for the plaintiff!"
"See Anderson about it," shouted back the little gentleman, disappearing
with Lem in the big doorway of the stairs leading to his office.
It was with profound astonishment and genuine sorrow that the worthy
lawyer heard of the murder of Jacob Van Deust, for he had achieved quite
a liking for the younger of the two brothers.
"But," said he, "I am tempted to say that it seems to me somewhat
strange that I have not been notified of the fact by the surviving brother."
"Old Peter is greatly broken down, sir; more shaken by the loss of his
brother than any one would have believed he could be, seeing how hard
and selfish he always used to seem."
"Ah!" replied Mr. Holden, meditatively, his eyes resting upon the mourning
band of his hat on the table before him. "The rupture of life-long ties
gives deep pain. We are such creatures of habit, if nothing more. We
miss a face to which we have long been accustomed; a voice that we had
thought was only in our ears, when it was in our hearts all the while.
When the grave covers that face and there is only silence, or the sadness
of its own echoes in the lonely heart, the world is no longer the same—But,
there!—Don't talk about it any more. You have not yet told me how I
can, as you said in the street, save the life of an innocent man."
"The man arrested for that murder, perpetrated at or about midnight,
as is supposed, is the one you found in the road suffering from the consequences
of a severe fall, and whom you helped to leave Long Island, in a
disabled condition, nearly two hours earlier that night than Mr. Van
Deust was killed."
"Ah! If I did not know of what the police are capable, I should be
surprised at it."
"You know he is innocent, sir; and I know it, and Ruth, and Mary,
his sweetheart; we all know it. But they would hang him if we couldn't
prove it."
The reaction from his long sustained anxiety, the present excitement and
his joyful emotion over finding the man upon whom he looked as Dorn's
saviour, so affected the poor fellow that he cried like a schoolboy.
"Yes," assented Mr. Holden reflectively, "that is practically what the
law seems to require sometimes—and it is hardly ever an easy thing to do.
But, come, my good fellow! Leave that crying for the girls you mentioned
and give me all the facts you possess bearing on the case."
"I—I—can't help it, sir. Don't mind me—I'll be over it directly. I
know it's weak, and foolish,—but I've been worked up so, fearing I
wouldn't find you in time."
In a few minutes Lem recovered his self-control, and then it took but a
very short time for the skilful lawyer to elicit every detail of the progress
of Dorn's case. Lem was surprised at seeing him smile when the discovery
of the handkerchief, the strongest point against the accused, as it was
deemed, was mentioned, but did not dare to ask him why he did so. When
the narration was concluded, Mr. Holden asked:
"When is his trial to come off?"
"On Tuesday next, sir."
"Tuesday next. H'm. Prosecution will take up first day; defence not
be reached before Wednesday—and this is Thursday—leaves me four days
to get through what I have on hand. Oh, Mr. Anderson!"
The door opened noiselessly in response to his loud summons, and the
old clerk poked in his head.
"If Mr. Sarcher comes to retain me in Fordyce vs. Baxter, you will decline
to take his papers unless he can wait for an opinion until after next week."
"Yes, sir."
"That is all, Mr. Anderson."
"Thank you."
The clerk bowed and retired his head, again carefully closing the door.
Mr. Holden turned to Lem and said, cheerily:
"With Heaven's help, young man, we will save your friend's neck."
"Oh! I'm quite satisfied you will, sir, I'm easy in my mind about it, now
that I've seen you. Did you know there's a schooner goes to Sag Harbor,
Tuesdays and Fridays, starting at five o'clock in the evening from Coenties
Slip?"
"Yes, I know. I have taken it before, and will again, God willing,
next Tuesday evening. Go home, see your friend and his sweetheart, and
cheer them up, especially the girl. Tell them I'll—well, no; on second
thoughts, you'd better say nothing about my evidence that you can avoid;—he
would tell his counsel who must be, metaphorically speaking, an ass,
or he would have kept his client quiet at the preliminary examination—and
it might get to the other side. That might do harm. It is always unwise
to let your antagonist in law know your weapons."
On the day that Dorn Hackett's trial commenced, the little court-house
of Sag Harbor was by no means large enough to contain half the people
who came from all the country around to attend it. From the neighborhood
in which the murder had been committed, they seemed to have
come in a body. Old acquaintances, neighbors, friends of the prisoner—who
had known him since he was a child; who had heard as fresh the news
that his father, William Hackett, had been swept overboard from a whaler's
yard-arm and lost in a gale, and who had seen the drowned man's little
orphan boy grow up to young manhood among them—were present by
dozens; yet among them all one could hardly hear a few faint expressions
of sympathy for him, or hope for the demonstration of his innocence.
There is nothing for which ignorant people, particularly rustics, are so
ready as the acceptance of the guilt of a person accused legally of a crime;
nothing they resent so deeply as what they believe to be an attempt to
deceive them by a false assumption of innocence. The discovery of the
marked handkerchief in his possession, had been, to their narrow minds,
conclusive evidence of Dorn's guilt and each man of them felt it an insult
to what he deemed his intelligence, that Dorn had, just before that discovery,
betrayed him into a temporary fear that they might not have the right
man after all.
Deacon Harkins, who, by the way, had tried to have Dorn, as a child,
indentured to him by the county overseer of the poor, as soon as he heard
of the drowning of the lad's father—a slavery from which the boy was
saved by the kindness of a good old man, long since dead—was prominent
in the crowd about the court-house, quoting texts and vaunting the foresight
with which he had "always looked forward to seeing that young
man come to a bad end." Aunt Thatcher, was of course, present, and—as
might have been expected—vindictively exultant. Mary Wallace, having
been summoned as a witness by the prosecution, was compelled to attend,
and made her way through the throng to the county clerk's office, beneath
the court-room, where she was given a seat to wait until she should be
called. Happily there was still humanity enough among the rough people
who were eagerly awaiting the conviction of her lover, to prompt some
little sympathetic feeling for her; and, as she went by, they at least refrained
from saying, in her hearing, that they hoped Dorn Hackett would be
hanged. Aunt Thatcher was incapable of such delicacy and reserve. She
had been saying that daily, and almost hourly, since she had heard of his
arrest, and she continued to say it now, loudly too, until the disgusted
county clerk ordered her to keep quiet or get out of his office, to which
she had forced her way with Mary.
There was little difficulty in getting a jury, for in those days fewer newspapers
were read than now are; fewer people sought to escape jury duty
by deliberately "forming and expressing opinions relative to the guilt
or innocence of the accused" in advance of the trial; and, above all, lawyers
had not yet developed, as they since have, the science of delay at
that point of the proceedings. Twelve "good men and true" were selected—perhaps
a sample dozen as juries go. One of them heard with great difficulty;
two kept yawning and dropping asleep from time to time; a fourth
belied his looks, if he was not at least semi-idiotic; three were manifestly
weak, simple-minded persons, devoid of moral force and easy to be influenced
by a stronger will, and the remaining five were evidently men who
doubtless meant to do right, but were obstinate to the verge of pig-headedness,
and showed, by the countenances with which they regarded the prisoner,
that they were already inimical to him. And before this "jury of
his peers" Dorn Hackett stood, to be tried for his life.
It would be time and space lost to recite the thrilling opening speech of
the prosecuting attorney; to tell how vividly he depicted the horrors of
the crime that had been perpetrated; how artfully he seemed, by word and
gesture, to connect the prisoner with the crime at every stage of its progress;
how scornfully he dwelt upon "the absurd story by which the murderer
had sought to explain away the damning proofs against him, and
which his counsel might have the audacity to ask this intelligent jury to
believe," etc. It was more like a closing than an opening speech, and
when it was ended, five of the jury looked as if they were satisfied that the
proper thing to do would be to take the prisoner right out and hang him to
one of the big elms beside the court-house.
Mr. Dunn's heart sank within him. What had he to make headway
with against that speech, before those five men and with that fatal marked
handkerchief ever fluttering before his eyes?
The hearing of the witnesses for the State continued slowly all the first
day. All that had been sworn to before the committing magistrate, was
repeated now, and there was really very little more, but that little was
adroitly handled, and the temper of the jury was to make the most of it.
Peter Van Deust produced a great effect when he gave his testimony as to
the identification of the handkerchief belonging to his murdered brother,
which was, in the language of the prosecutor, cunningly woven into questions
"voluntarily, confidently, and impudently exhibited by the prisoner
to sustain his preposterous story." Poor Mary Wallace had to go on the
stand and testify that Dorn had been with her, walking and conversing, in
the edge of the woods, less than half a mile from the Van Deust homestead,
on the night of the murder, and that he left her about nine o'clock.
Witnesses were brought from New Haven to testify to Dorn's arrival in
that city, the morning after the murder, with his clothes bloody, head cut,
and one ankle sprained; and to his admissions that he had received those
injuries while running through the woods on Long Island the night before.
"Not," exclaimed the prosecuting-attorney, "as he would have it believed,
long before the murder, but when he was fleeing red-handed, conscious
that the brand of Cain was on his brow!"
The prisoner's counsel protested against this sort of interpolation of comments,
as irregular and unfair, and the court sustained him in that view,
but the majority of the jury looked as if they would have thanked the prosecutor
for expressing their sentiments so forcibly.
Then other witnesses were called to prove, as experts, that a man would
have time after the hour at which it was believed the murder was committed,—say,
at midnight—to run to the Napeague Inlet, take a sail-boat
and reach New Haven early the next morning. One, indeed, testified that
he had tried and accomplished the feat.
And that was all the State had to offer. Still, the popular feeling was
that it was sufficient.
"It would hardly amount to much before a city jury," said the prosecuting-attorney,
in confidential chat with some other lawyers at the close of
the day's proceedings, "but I guess it will be enough down here."
The jury, at the adjournment of the court for the day, gravely heard
the injunction of the judge, that they "should refrain from talking to anybody
about the case," and then went out and discussed the evidence with
their friends and neighbors.
"The handkerchief must hang him; that's clear," said everybody.
"How could he have had it if he hadn't killed the old man?"
Dorn was remanded back to the jail, where Mary had a little interview
with him, during which she wept almost constantly, and he spent all his
time in trying to console her with loving words and foolish hopes, so that
neither of them said or did anything particularly reasonable or worthy of
the telling here. And then Mary went back to the room that had been
assigned her in the tavern, and cried so all night, that in the morning her
eyes were red and swollen almost sufficiently to justify in some measure
the gratified assurance of Aunt Thatcher, that she "looked like a
fright."
As for Lem Pawlett, it must be admitted that he acted in what seemed
to his friends a most reprehensible and unaccountable manner. Following
even too strictly the injunctions of Mr. Pelatiah Holden about saying
nothing to anybody, he would not even give them the satisfaction of knowing
positively that he had found his man, and that the much needed evidence
would be forthcoming in due time. He did go so far, under Ruth's
most severe pressure, as to assure her that it would "be all right," but
beyond that the little maiden found that for once her power was set at
naught. He felt resting upon him a responsibility that temporarily out-weighted
his love, and the gravity of his stubborn silence awed the girl,
and made her look upon him with a new respect. But how he suffered!
Bearing alone and in silence his weighty secret, made him feel that virtually
Dorn's salvation depended upon him, and should anything happen by
which that evidence would not be forthcoming, and Dorn be hanged in
consequence of its failure, he would be neither more nor less than the executioner
of his friend. The next most unhappy man in the town that
night, after the prisoner himself, was Lem Pawlett. When, from sheer exhaustion,
he fell asleep, nearly at daylight, he had a horrid dream that he
was tied hand and foot, and powerless to speak, while his witness was
fleeing swiftly away from him on horseback, and that Dorn was standing
before him, under the gallows-tree, with a noose about his neck and a horrible
look of haunting reproach in his eyes. From that dream he awoke
with a howl of fright, and, fearing to go to sleep again, sprang up, dressed
himself and hurried out into the deserted main street of the still slumbering
town.
He took his way toward the wharf. "Sometimes," he said to himself,
"the packet from New York gets in early; hardly so early as this, but
then she might have had an extraordinary good breeze last night." His
road led him by the jail. He shuddered as he passed the grim, gray building,
for never before had it seemed to him so big, so strong, so terrible.
Not one living thing did he meet in his lonely walk, and when he reached
the wharf the most profound silence surrounded him. The tide was rising,
but without the sound of its accustomed swash on the piles. Its influx
was indicated only by a slight ripple around the obstacles it met. As far
out as he could see the surface of the bay was as smooth as a mirror.
Going down some slimy green steps to a boat-landing, he dipped one hand
into the water, and held it above his head. There was not even a breath
of air moving. With sullen resignation he seated himself upon a pile of
lumber and waited.
The dawn appeared, then suddenly the sun rose up behind the town,
casting upon the glassy surface of the water before him long shadows of
the tall warehouses, and of the people who now began to busy themselves
in the vicinity. Not the smallest ripple broke the outlines of those shadows.
He looked anxiously up at the sky. Ah! with what joy he would have
seen, in the direction of New York, a myriad of those ragged fleecy clouds
which sailors call "mare's tails," and believe to be sure harbingers of wind.
But there was not one to give him hope. The sky looked like a monster
dome of unflecked, burnished brass. It was high tide, and a dead calm.
With a groan he turned away and retraced his steps to the tavern. An
unwonted excitement began to be perceptible in the streets, the continuation
of that of the preceding day. Already people were flocking in from
the country, determined to be nearest the court-room doors when they
were thrown open. The tavern bar-room was crowded, even before the
sleepy bar-keeper had his eyes well rubbed open, and a sort of general picnic
scene was presented by the people breakfasting on cold lunches in
the shade of the elms.
When the court was opened that morning, at the usual hour, and the
expectant multitude rushed, scrambled, and tumbled in, to fight first for
front places and then for any place at all; the lawyers—who had entered
by the judge's private stairway—were already seated inside the railing,
chatting and laughing with cheerful indifference; the prisoner, looking
worn and haggard, was seated in his place, and the two drowsy jurymen
were already commencing to yawn.
The defence began the presentation of its evidence immediately. Mary
Wallace was recalled to the stand to testify that when her lover was leaving
her on the evening of the night of the murder he told her that he was
going back to New Haven in Mr. Hollis's sloop. But the prosecuting attorney
objected, and the court ruled that the prisoner's statements at that
time were not admissible. Mr. Hollis, of New Haven, bore witness that
Dorn had come over from New Haven with him that evening, had said
that he might not return that night, and did not return to the beach at the
appointed hour to accompany him back. Altogether, Mr. Hollis's evidence
was rather injurious than otherwise, and the prosecuting attorney looked
pleased as he made a note of it. Lem Pawlett was called to testify that
the tracks left by the murderer in the soft earth of Mr. Van Deust's garden
were those of a man wearing high-heeled, fashionable boots or shoes, and
having much smaller feet than Dorn Hackett; but as he had taken no
measurements of them, and only judged from memory, and didn't know the
size of Dorn's feet, and was, as he readily admitted, a friend of the prisoner,
the prosecuting attorney in cross-examination made it to be inferred
from his manner, that there was no doubt in his mind that the witness was
deliberately perjuring himself in the hope of helping the case of the accused.
And at least five of the jury responsively looked as if that was
the way they felt about it.
Then witnesses were put forward as sea-faring experts to prove that on
the night of the murder there was almost a dead calm on the water, such
as would have made it impossible for a sail-boat to go from Napeague
Inlet to New Haven in the time that it was claimed by the prosecution Dorn
had gone. But when the prosecuting-attorney got to bullying and confusing
them in cross-examination, he made them say that they could not
really swear whether the calm was that night, or the night before, or the
night after, or two or three nights distant either way; and one of them
even admitted that perhaps it might have blown a gale on that particular
night, for all he was now prepared to make oath to about it. Simple-minded
people, who do not know how much more lawyers bark than bite,
when going through the ordeal of cross-examination are apt to feel much
as the toad proverbially does when he finds himself under the harrow.
Things were going swimmingly for the prosecution. The defence was
forced to fall back upon its last and always weakest intrenchment—proof
of previous good character and reputation. A few persons were found to
swear that they had known Dorn Hackett from his boyhood, and had
always considered him honest, industrious, truthful and kind-hearted, and
they were confident that such was his general reputation. Uncle Thatcher
was one of those witnesses, at his own request, and the prosecuting attorney,
who had, in some mysterious way, learned much more than he should
have been permitted to know about the witnesses for the defence, asked
him sneeringly:
"Did not this excellent young man, about three years ago, perpetrate
an unprovoked and brutal assault on your son?"
"No, sir," replied, the old man sternly. "He thrashed him, as he
deserved, for a contemptible action."
But all those witnesses to good character had to admit that they had
known nothing of Dorn for three years past, during which time he had
been away from the village—whaling, it was said, but for all they knew to
the contrary he might have been living the most vicious and ill-regulated
life in some big city. Then a stronger witness in that direction took the
stand, Mr. Merriwether, of New Haven, owner of the schooner of which
Dorn was master, and he could, and did, swear positively that he knew
Dorn had been on a three years' whaling voyage, had since been steadily
in his employ, and was in all respects moral, sober, and an entirely trustworthy
young man of irreproachable character. The prosecuting attorney
seeing that this witness was one who could not be easily bluffed or confused,
contented himself with asking:
"You are his employer, are you not?"
"Yes, sir."
"And interested in getting him back to work for you, as you deem him
a good sailor?"
"Yes, sir. But—"
"Never mind. That will do, sir. I am through with this witness."
And the prosecutor sat down, looking with a scornful smile toward the
jury, as if he would have said to them confidentially: "You see this man
cares nothing whether the prisoner is guilty, or not, of all the crimes forbidden
by the Decalogue, if he only serves him well."
In those days, a person accused was not permitted to go upon the stand
in his own behalf and give his testimony, under the sanctity of an oath,
as is now allowed him by the law. Then, he might be granted the privilege
of making his statement, but it would be merely a statement, and
the prosecution was very careful always, when a prisoner thus spoke for
himself, to impress upon the jury that his unsworn affirmation of innocence
was of no value whatever, when weighed in the balance against
other men's affidavits. Stress would be laid upon the time and knowledge
the accused had had to enable his preparation of his own version of the
affair, and undue prominence and importance given to the fact that he
could not be cross-examined. In this way an artful prosecutor could generally
neutralize all good effect the accused might otherwise produce, if
not, indeed, make the poor wretch's asseverations of innocence absolutely
harmful to him, by stirring up the suspicion, antagonism, and secret consciousness
of infallibility in the minds of the jury, who resent attempts
to deceive them.
Dorn was duly warned of this, yet he persisted in demanding to be allowed
to tell his own story, and the court granted him permission to do
so. He told it simply, clearly, and truthfully, as he had told it before to
Lem, to Mary, to his lawyer, and to the magistrate who committed him,
but he made no new converts to his innocence now—unless it might have
been the clear-sighted and experienced old judge on the bench, who believed
that he heard the ring of truth in the young man's voice, and saw
honesty in his frank, manly face.
But at the conclusion of the statement, as Dorn left the stand and returned
to his seat by his counsel, the prosecuting attorney silently held
aloft before the jury the marked and identified handkerchief, and that
action was more conclusive in its effect upon their minds than all that the
prisoner had said. Looking upon their faces, the lawyer for the defence
murmured to himself, "We are lost!"
As the day wore on Lem Pawlett was in agony, for his witness did not
appear. It made him dizzy and sick to see one witness after another
leaving the stand in such rapid succession, for he did not know how soon
the supply of them would run out, and the weak defence be compelled to
close before the one upon whom all depended should make his appearance.
"Why had he not come? The boat was due many hours ago, and
had not yet arrived! Becalmed, doubtless, on this one day of all the days
in the year. Perhaps he might not be aboard. He might be sick. What
if he should be a cunning villain, the real criminal, for all his smooth exterior,
who had purposely given that handkerchief to Dorn to cast the
guilt apparently on him? He smiled when it was mentioned. And now
he might be flying far away." These thoughts almost maddened Lem.
Bitterly he reproached himself that he had not staid in New York and
kept his witness under his eye until the last moment, and brought him
along by force, if necessary. Again and again he was tempted to make
his way to Mr. Dunn, and urge him to fight the day through by all means;
but each time he remembered what Mr. Holden had said the prisoner's
counsel must be, and refrained. Parched with thirst, and blazing with
fever, yet with a cold perspiration breaking out all over him, poor Lem
could hardly understand half that was going on. But when Dorn's
lawyer arose and said, "May it please the court, the defence rests," the
words came to his ears like a clap of thunder. It seemed to him
that that was the last moment of grace, and he staggered to his feet, trying
to say something; to cry a halt; to appeal to the judge for time; to
do, he did not know what. But his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth,
and a deputy sheriff, seeing him standing there, waving his arms and looking
as if he was about to speak, shouted at him with such an awful voice,
"Silence in the court," that he sank down, stunned and speechless in
his place, as helpless as he had been in that awful dream of the night
before.
The prosecuting attorney began summing up to the jury. If he was
forcible in the opening, he was terrible now. Of course he assumed that
a clear case had been made out, as prosecutors always do; that "there
was no moral doubt of the guilt of the accused, any more than if the jury
had actually beheld him battering in the skull of his aged victim, wiping
the dripping blood from his hands upon the raiment of the corpse, and
clutching the gold, for lust of which he had done this hideous deed."
[Five of the jury looked as if they quite agreed with him; three others
glanced timidly and furtively at the faces of the five, as if to read there
what they too should think about it; the sleepy men were very wide awake
now, having had a good nap while the evidence as to character was being
introduced; and the deaf man had both hands up to his ears to enable him
to hear better, for if there is anything that country people do love, it is a
good strong speech.]
In the midst of one of his most vigorous declamatory efforts the eye of
the prosecutor caught sight of the judge, who was sitting with upraised
gavel and a look as if he was only waiting for the end of a sentence to
arrest his progress. The speaker stopped, and the judge, laying down his
gavel, held up a note and said:
"I am in receipt of a communication which is, if written in good faith—that
is, by the person whose name is signed to it—of so very important
a character, and has such a decided bearing upon the interests of justice
in this case, that I feel it would be in the highest degree unwise to ignore
it. I will therefore ask the prosecuting attorney to have the kindness to
at least postpone for a short time the continuation of his address to the
jury. The court will now take a recess for half an hour."
The densely packed and excited audience hardly waited the conclusion
of the sheriff's formal repetition of the formal order of the court, to break
out into a loud murmur of exclamations, conjecture, and discussion as to
what the important communication might be. The judge, upon rising
from his seat, made a sign to the prosecuting attorney and the counsel for
the defence to accompany him to his room, and the trio went out by the
private door, which they closed behind them.
"What is it, Lem? What do you suppose they are going to do now?"
Ruth asked anxiously of the young man, who sat in a semi-inanimate
condition at her side, and who actually had not heard a word of what the
judge had said. He started from his dream, into which reality had again
plunged him, and replied miserably:
"I don't know. Hang him, I suppose."
"Don't talk nonsense, Lem. What's the matter with you? Wake up.
Didn't you hear what the judge said about his receiving an important
communication that had a decided bearing, and all that?"
"Did he?"
"Yes, 'a decided bearing upon the interests of justice in this case.'
Those were his very words; and he held up a letter."
"Then it's all right now, Ruth! All right at last! He has come! He
has come!"
"Who has come?"
"The man who will save Dorn Hackett."
It seems a little strange to some people that a prosecuting attorney
should so hungrily devote himself to the conviction of an accused person,
even when, as is sometimes beyond question, he feels in his heart that the
individual against whom he is exerting all the force of his trained legal ingenuity,
eloquence, and mental power is, in fact, guiltless of the crime
alleged against him. If his gains depended upon his success in obtaining
a conviction, many who are accustomed to look upon pecuniary interest as
a sufficient excuse for almost anything not absolutely prohibited by law,
would understand him better. But such is not the case. His salary is the
same, whether he succeeds in hanging a guiltless unfortunate or not. Success,
in many cases, may help him to re-election: but that is not always a
serious consideration. Why, then, when he cannot convict by clear proof
of guilt, does he call to his aid the technicalities of law, the power of precedent,
and all that may enable him to even prevent the prisoner accomplishing
that herculean task—the proving of his innocence? Simply because
of the development in him—and the conscious possession of the widest
license in its exercise—of the hunting instinct that is inherent in all carnivorous
animals, man included. He hunts the accused down to death,
with not even the cannibal's excuse of wishing to eat him, but that he may
have the joy of triumph in the achievement, and that his reputation as a
hunter may be enhanced,—as some men used to kill buffaloes on the plains,
as long as there were any, simply for the sake of the killing. In other
circumstances and relations of life he may be gentle and kind-hearted;
but put him in the chase, and he knows no pity. Perhaps there are times
when, after a conviction, he secretly says to himself:
"Thank God it was the jury's work, not mine! I did not convict
him!"
But he deceives himself. The average juryman, even one who is without
prejudice and means to do rightly, is but a tool of the most cunning
and able of the two lawyers pitted against each other before him. Some
drops of the innocent blood the jury sheds must cling to the hands of the
prosecutor.
When the court resumed its session, after the brief recess, another person
sat within the railing among the lawyers, a little elderly gentleman, at
sight of whom Lem Pawlett almost wept for joy, and the prisoner's heart
felt a thrill of hope.
Dorn's counsel formally announced to the court that since the closing of
the defence new and most important evidence, completely demonstrating
the innocence of the prisoner at the bar, had been put in his possession,
and he asked that the court grant permission for the reopening of the defence
and the admission of this testimony.
The prosecuting attorney argued long and earnestly against the introduction
of any further evidence at the present stage of the proceedings.
In view of the high character and standing in the profession of the proposed
witness, who had been made known to him in the judge's private
room, and with whose reputation he was well acquainted, he did not dare
to cast a shadow of suspicion upon the proposed evidence as manufactured
and unworthy of belief or consideration. Evading that issue, he confined
himself to opposing as informal, irregular, and liable to be viewed as a
dangerous and evil precedent, the reopening of the case. Even if improperly
convicted for lack of this evidence, the prisoner, he argued, would
still have his relief in a new trial, which the Court of Appeals would be
sure to grant if the new testimony was indeed material.
Mr. Dunn made a strong plea for the accused against the injustice of
condemning an innocent man to await in prison, under the shadow of a
sentence of death, and in an agony of suspense, the slow action of the
Court of Appeals, rather than disturb the mere formality of a trial.
Finally, the judge ruled—as he had intended to before either of the lawyers
said a word—that the new evidence should be admitted.
The little elderly gentleman, responding promptly to the crier's call for
"Pelatiah Holden," took the stand, was sworn, and testified:
"My name is Pelatiah Holden; I reside in New York, and am a lawyer
by profession. I have been the legal adviser of the brothers Peter and
Jacob Van Deust in certain money matters; and, upon business connected
with their affairs, visited their house on the evening of the 19th of July,
coming from New York by boat to Sag Harbor and thence riding over on
horseback."
"That was the night upon which Jacob Van Deust was murdered, was
it not?" the prisoner's counsel interposed.
"To the best of my present information and belief the murder was perpetrated
on the night of the 19th, or morning of the 20th."
"Yes, sir. Proceed, sir."
"I remained with the Van Deust brothers, taking supper with them, receiving
their signatures to some papers, and holding a consultation with
them in regard to the investment of certain monies belonging to them
jointly, until, as nearly as I can now remember, about fifteen minutes before
nine o'clock in the evening. They pressed me to remain all night, which
I declined to do, as I had business of importance to attend to in New York,
for other clients, and was desirous of returning as speedily as possible to
the city. When I took my departure Jacob Van Deust accompanied me
to where my horse was hitched in the lane, and we stood there talking a
few minutes. There was no wind stirring, and the mosquitoes annoyed
me very much. In switching them from the back of my neck with my
handkerchief I dropped it accidentally, and the horse chanced to step upon
it, trampling it into the dirt of the lane. Seeing that it had been rendered
unfit for present use, Mr. Jacob Van Deust was kind enough to offer me
the loan of a clean one which he had in his pocket, and I thankfully accepted
it. I mounted my horse, said good-by, and set out upon a new
road that Mr. Van Deust—the younger brother, I mean—had recommended
to me as shortening considerably the distance I had to travel.
"I had ridden, as nearly as I can judge, about a mile, or perhaps only
seven-eighths of a mile, when, in passing through a cutting that depressed
the roadway to a depth of nine or ten feet below the surface of the ground
on either side, I found, lying upon the ground and groaning, a young
man."
"Do you recognize that man among those here present?"
"I do, sir. It was the prisoner at the bar. He informed me that having
been unacquainted with the existence of that new road, he had just
sustained a severe fall into it. His injuries seemed to corroborate his
statement, at least so far as the severity of his fall was concerned. His
scalp was badly cut in at least two places, and he was bleeding profusely.
"When I assisted him to rise he found that one of his ankles—the left, I
believe—was so seriously sprained that he could not bear to rest his
weight upon it, and could not walk a step without assistance. I used the
clean handkerchief which was in my possession, together with one he had,
to bind up his head and stanch the flow of blood, after which I supported
him to the beach, where he hoped, he said, to find a small vessel to take
him to New Haven, where he resided. But he was only able to move
very slowly, and when we arrived at the water's edge no vessel was in
sight. While we were debating what was best to be done with him, under
the circumstances, a small fishing-boat came within a short distance of the
shore, and the person directing its movements responded to his call. He
offered the person in the boat—who appeared to be an old man, accompanied
by a boy—the sum of ten dollars to take him over to New Haven,
which offer was accepted. I assisted him to enter the boat, and, when it
had sailed away returned to where I had left my horse tied to tree, remounted
him, and prosecuted my journey homeward."
During the giving of this evidence, a stillness prevailed in the court-room
as if the speaker had been alone, and when his voice ceased there
was such an enormous sigh from the crowded audience as if all were at once
exhaling the pent-up breath they had not dared to free before for fear of
losing a word of what he said. Five jurymen and the prosecuting attorney
looked equally disgusted.
"At what hour that night did you last see the prisoner?" asked Mr.
Dunn.
"At twenty-seven minutes past ten o'clock."
"In a small boat, sailing from the shore?"
"Yes, sir. Very slowly, however, as there was very little wind."
"From your knowledge of his condition at that time, do you believe it
would have been possible for him to have returned that night to Mr. Van
Deust's, entered that house, perpetrated the murder with which he is
charged and made his escape?"
"No, sir. He was very weak from loss of blood, and I know, from personal
examination, that his ankle was so severely sprained that it would
have been a physical impossibility for him to have done what you said."
"Ah! you say that you examined his ankle. Did you notice at the
time what kind of shoes he wore?"
"I did. He had on the low, broad, soft shoes, with hardly any heels,
which sailors customarily wear."
"That is enough, sir. Thank you. Take the witness," said Mr. Dunn,
with an air of triumph, to the prosecuting attorney.
That official did not seem to care about taking the witness. He knew
that it was a master in the art of cross-examination who was thus lightly
turned over to him, and had no hope of entrapping him or shaking his
testimony. Still, he had to make some show.
Indifferently he asked: "Of course you have no idea of who the old man
in the boat was?"
"To the best of my information and belief, his name was Jabez Sanborn.
I asked him and that was what he told me."
Jabez Sanborn! Why, everybody around Sag Harbor knew about him;
a shy old man, reputed a miser, who lived with a lad, his grandson, in a
hut in the woods and was known to be addicted to wandering all along
the coast at night, in a little fishing-smack, on errands best known to
himself. Yes, the most likely man in the world to be met under just
such circumstances was old Jabez Sanborn. And the least likely man to
hear that a murder trial was going on in which he might be an important
witness—or perhaps to care if he had heard it—was also old Jabez Sanborn.
The prosecuting attorney felt that he had not drawn a trump that
time at least. While he cast about mentally for something else that he
might ask the witness, with at least the minimum of harm to his side of
the case, a startling diversion occurred to interrupt the proceedings.
Old Peter Van Deust, who had been sitting near the prosecuting attorney
and directly in front of the witness, suddenly sprang to his feet, walked up
to Mr. Holden, clutched with trembling fingers the seal that dangled from
his watchguard and, after examining it a moment, cried shrilly:
"It's all a lie! All a cunningly made up story! He is an accomplice
of the assassin! This was Jacob's seal. I'll swear to it!"
Almost everybody had jumped up in the excitement of this interruption,
even the sedate judge was standing, leaning over his desk to get a better
view of what was going on before him but below his range of vision, and
there was a deafening chorus of exclamations from all sides; but above all
arose the sharp voice of Peter Van Deust, crying:
"Arrest him! arrest him! I demand the arrest of this man as an accomplice!"
The only tranquil person in the assemblage was Mr. Pelatiah Holden.
He was surprised at his client's outbreak, but only for a moment. Then,
blandly saying to the almost mad old man who stood before him, shaking a
long, lean finger in his face, "Mr. Peter Van Deust, you seem to be excited."
He very calmly drew his watch from his fob-pocket and with the seal attached
to it, passed it up to the judge. The seal was a heavy, square onyx,
with a foul anchor engraved on one side.
"I'd swear to it among a thousand," shrieked old Peter. "It belonged
to my father when he was in the navy. He left it to brother Jacob. It
was stolen by the thief who murdered him."
The judge rapped his gavel until order was restored in the court-room,
and old Peter had been fairly dragged down into a seat by the prosecuting
attorney, who was nearest him—after which, addressing the witness, he
asked:
"How did this seal come into your possession, Mr. Holden?"
"Very simply, your Honor. But before I relate how, permit me to request
your Honor to issue strict injunctions to the officers at the door to
permit no exit from this court-room or communication by those within to
persons on the outside."
The judge was evidently surprised, but his respect for the well-known
and honored Mr. Holden was sufficient to induce him to comply with the
request without asking its reasons. When the necessary instructions had
been issued to the court officers, Mr. Holden resumed:
"About three weeks ago, while I was taking lunch one afternoon at
Windust's—a very popular and well conducted restaurant on Park Row,
New York—a young man came to the box in which I was seated and offered
this seal for sale. I am, as a rule, averse to the purchase of personal
property from unknown persons and in an irregular way, but this young
man told a melancholy story of his present need for money for the sake of
a widowed mother and sister, said that the seal had belonged to his father
who was a naval officer and asked for the article a price that was at least its
full value. That influenced me to purchase it. I reflected that if it had
been stolen it would have been, in all probability, offered at a cheap price
to effect ready disposal of it, whereas if he really needed money, as he
said, for his mother and sister and the thing honestly belonged to him,
he would naturally try to get as much as he could. So I gave him seventeen
dollars for it and have since worn it."
"What," asked the judge, "was your reason for requesting the careful
tyling of the doors before making that statement, Mr. Holden?"
"Because I recognized to-day, in the court-yard without, as I was entering
this building, the young man from whom I purchased this seal."
"You believe so!"
"I am certain of it. If your Honor will permit an officer to accompany
me, I believe that I will be able to bring him before you in a few moments.
When I saw him he was seated at the root of an elm tree near the door,
and alone."
An officer was directed to accompany Mr. Holden and they went out together
by the private staircase. The curious throng in the court-room,
unwilling to lose a single incident of the eventful drama unfolding itself
before them, struggled hard to get out and follow the officer and his guide,
but were not allowed to do so, and returned to their seats with a sense of
injury. Everybody was intensely excited. The prosecuting attorney leaning
over the judge's bench held a long and earnest conversation with him.
The prisoner and his counsel whispered together. The jury jabbered to
each other so that even the idiotic-looking one among them seemed to
awake to an interest in the proceedings.
Suddenly the little door behind the judge was flung open, and Mr. Holden
entered, followed by the officer and a third person—a young man, attired
in a flashy sort of vulgar fashion, and wearing a dyed mustache and
goatee. Many audible exclamations of astonishment were uttered among
the audience, numbers of whom recognized this new actor thus brought
upon the scene.
"That, your honor," said Mr. Holden, "is the young man who sold to
me the seal which you now have before you."
"What is your name?" demanded the judge of the young man thus
brought before him.
The fellow hesitated an instant, and a lie trembled on his lips; but then
looking around and seeing many who could identify him, he knew that
falsehood would be useless, and sullenly replied:
"Silas Thatcher."
"Where do you live?"
"On Hester Street, near the Bowery, in New York."
"What is your business?"
"Haint got none."
"What have you to say in reply to the statement which you have just
heard made by this gentleman, to the effect that you sold this seal to him?"
"Nothin'," answered Silas after a little hesitation.
"Nothing? But do you not understand, young man, that this may be
a very serious matter? I do not ask you that you may criminate yourself
in any way, but with the hope that if you have any reasonable explanation
to offer you will not withhold it. How did this seal come into your possession?"
Silas paled, was visibly perturbed, and hesitated longer than before;
then responded doggedly:
"I haint got nothin' to say. I want a lawyer, I do." The judge was
silent for a moment, then replied drily.
"Of course you are entitled to counsel. You will stand committed for
further examination. Mr. Sheriff, adjourn court until the usual hour to-morrow
morning."
It was a loving and a hopeful interview that Dorn and Mary had at his
cell door that evening, and Mr. Holden had the pleasure of being present
during at least a part of it, when he received the heartfelt thanks of both
for his opportune aid in their darkest hour. Peter Van Deust, whose wits
were manifestly failing, had not seemed to comprehend what was done in
the court-room after he had sustained the violent mental shock of recognizing
his murdered brother's seal, and had clamored, at the adjournment of
the court, for the arrest of the New York lawyer. But the judge smilingly
replied, that he would himself be responsible for the attendance of Mr.
Holden, whenever it might be required, and had gone away down the main
street to the tavern, arm in arm with that gentleman; a sight that had
fairly stunned poor old Peter. After dinner Mr. Holden paid his visit to
Dorn's cell, and the judge said he, too, would like to go along "but
for the looks of it," as he "considered Dorn now virtually a free man, and
had all along suspected that he was an innocent one."
The prosecuting attorney was alone in his office that evening, looking
over a resumé of another case, that of a mere horse-thief, which would
succeed Dorn Hackett's in order of trial—for he had already given up all
hope of hanging Dorn—when the sheriff entered, with an air of mingled
eagerness and caution, to inform him, in a sort of melodramatic whisper:
"Silas Thatcher's father has asked permission to see his son in his cell,
and I have had him delayed until I could tell you. Do you wish to overhear
their interview?"
"I—rather think—I'd like to," answered the prosecutor, meditatively.
"I shall have him in hand before long, no doubt, and might as well know
beforehand what he has to say for himself."
The men passed together through the sheriff's office, and by a private
entrance therefrom into the rear part of the jail, first taking off their boots
that their steps might not be heard on the stone floor.
When they entered the corridor, along one side of which the cells were
located, they moved with caution, and noiselessly entered a dark and unoccupied
cell adjoining that in which Silas was confined. After a little
quiet fumbling along the wall, the sheriff found the end of a string, which
he pulled, thus conveying to his assistant in the front office of the jail,
where Uncle Thatcher was waiting, a private signal that all was ready.
In a few minutes more the grim old man was shown in by the jailor, and
permitted to enter his son's cell, the door of which was locked upon him.
Every sound made there was clearly audible where the prosecutor and
sheriff were.
Silas, to whom the interior of a prison was not altogether a novelty,
had laid down with a sort of philosophical content upon his little cot bed,
but sat up, somewhat surprised, when his father appeared. The jailor put
upon the stone floor the tin candlestick holding a tallow candle which he
had carried in, and went away.
For some moments neither father nor son spoke a word. The old man
was the first to break the oppressive silence.
"So," said he, "this is where I find you at last."
"Yes, it is, and what of it?" retorted Silas sullenly.
"My God! How I have dreaded this shame!—this horror! How the
fear of it has haunted me, day and night, for years!"
"If you've come here for to preach to me, why, you might as well drop
it; that's all. I ain't no chicken. I'm a man, I am, and game for all
there is in the pot. I ain't afraid. I don't want no snivellins around me!"
"Silas, I haven't come here either to preach or snivel. I have come to
learn, if I can, whether the agony and blighting shame of seeing a son
hanged is likely to be mine or not."
The young reprobate winced visibly at his father's plain speech, and it
was with a violent effort, belied by his pallid lips and quavering voice, that
he assumed sufficient bravado to reply:
"What's the use of making a fuss about a feller's getting into a little
scrape? I'll get out of it all right. All I want is a good lawyer. It might
happen to any feller to get into a hole. Fellers get into 'em all the time
and get out of 'em again. This morning everybody thought Dorn Hackett
was in the worst kind of a hole, but to-night the jailor tells me everybody
says he's bound to get out of it."
"Dorn Hackett was innocent. Are you?"
Silas hesitated a moment before he replied:
"Course I am! Every fellow's innocent until he's proved guilty."
"Where did you get that seal?"
"A—a—feller gave it to me."
"Who was he?"
"I dunno—never saw him before."
"Silas, you are lying to me."
"Well, what business have you got to come here pestering me with
questions, as if you was trying to catch me?"
It was hard work for the old man, who was naturally of rather a violent
temper, to keep his hands off his rebellious son; nevertheless, he restrained
himself.
"Silas," he exclaimed after a brief pause, "there is blood upon your
hands."
"Where? No, there isn't! They're clean!" ejaculated the young man
in a tone of fright, starting to his feet and nervously examining his hands.
"Fool!" said the old man, with contempt, "did you think I meant red
drops that human eyes could see? No. But in the sight of God they are
dripping with the stains of a foul murder. I read your guilt in your
skulking eyes, your impudent assumption of brazen effrontery, your falsehoods.
Ah, you will not get out of this hole as easily as you pretend to
think. There is but one road open from here before you."
"What is that, father?" asked Silas, tremblingly, for he had already
begun to lose the fictitious nerve that had hitherto sustained him.
"The gallows!" responded the grim old man, sternly.
"Oh, for the Lord's sake, don't talk like that!" pleaded the young
wretch, with a piteous howl. "It's all your fault, anyway. You wouldn't
let me have any more money, and I was hard up. You told me the Van
Deusts had a mint of money. I didn't mean to harm anybody, but he
jumped out of bed and clinched me; the jimmy was in my hand, and I was
afraid of being caught, and I—Oh! my God! what have I said? You've
got me all unnerved, with your cursed croaking. I didn't know what I
was saying. It wasn't true. I haven't been in a mile of Van Deusts' for
more'n three years. I don't know who killed Jake Van Deust any more'n
you do. Dorn Hackett did it. Why don't they hang him, curse him!
and be done with it!"
He was crying, trembling. The unhappy father bowed his face in his
hands and was silent a long time, while Silas went rambling on:
"I can prove I was in New York that night. There's lots of the fellers
will swear me out of it. What if I did have the seal? Didn't Dorn have
the handkerchief? I know where I got it. I buy'ed it one night from a
stranger that got broke in a faro bank. I can get fellers to swear they
see me buy it. All I want is a lawyer. You've got to get me one—a good
one. You will, won't you? I'm broke or I wouldn't ask you. I've had
awful bad luck lately. But I'll pay you back when I get out. And you
wouldn't see your son h—h—hanged, would you?"
Uncle Thatcher raised his head and, looking fixedly at his son, asked
slowly:
"Why did you come here to-day?"
"I don't know," answered Silas, almost with desperation. "Because I
am a damned fool, I suppose. I met Lem Pawlett in the city, and he told
me about the trial, and—somehow—I had to come. I couldn't keep
away."
"And you still think that a lawyer could get you out?"
"Oh, yes. A good, sharp lawyer, from New York. I know of one
that's up to all the dodges. He gets lots of the fellers off. He'd clear
me, I'm sure of it."
"And you do not see God's hand driving you here and giving you up to
man's justice? You think to contend against His will? To employ a lawyer
who shall shield you from the fate He has decreed? Foolish and unhappy
boy! you have sown and the day of harvest is nigh; the harvest for
both of us: for you the full sheaf of ripe dishonor and death; for me the
gleaning of bitter shame and grief. And to the Lord of this harvest we
may neither of us say 'nay.'"
As he spoke he arose from the cot, where he had taken a seat early in
the interview, stood before his son, and continued:
"It is not probable that I shall ever see you again. In due course of
time you will be tried, convicted, and hanged, and I shall hear of it all:
that will be enough for me. As far as other people will allow me to, I
shall endeavor to forget that I ever had a son. You have simply to continue,
as for years past, so far as affection or respect for his counsels were
concerned, in forgetting that you have a father. Send me no gallows-tree
messages of penitence and love. Carry your penitence, if you have any,
to your God; and may He, in his infinite knowledge and justice, grant you
such mercy and pardon as you deserve."
With this farewell, the wretched father took his departure, preserving
his sternness of demeanor as long as he was in his son's sight; but in the
jail office without, he gave way to his natural grief, which he could repress
no longer, and much time elapsed ere he recovered himself sufficiently to
go home. Silas, left alone in his cell, threw himself upon his bed, on his
face, alternately weeping, cursing, and praying, in a delirium of remorse
and fear, and no sound of stealthy footsteps leaving the adjoining dungeon
reached his ears.
Immediately upon the opening of the court, the morning after Silas
Thatcher's arrest, the prosecuting attorney arose and made a neat little
speech, in which he admitted his conviction that an error had been made
in the accusation of Dorn Hackett, expressed his gratification at the discovery
of the new and unimpeachable evidence of the innocence of the accused
afforded by his learned brother from New York, and, in conclusion,
desired to move the entry of a nolle prosequi in the case of the People vs.
Dorman Hackett. In short, never did hunter retire with better grace from
a hopeless chase. The motion was promptly granted by the court, and
Dorn Hackett was a free man once again.
Lem Pawlett shouted and hurrahed at the top of his voice, defying two
sedate officers of the court who sought to hush him; and many others
joined in his cheers—almost all, indeed, for so fickle are the multitude, so
worshipful of success, and so easily influenced by impulse, that their purposes
and the currents of their feelings vary like the shifting winds. How
many there were who now said that they "had always looked upon Dorn
Hackett as a noble fellow, one who could not be guilty of a crime!" How
many who declared they had "thought his arrest a great mistake from
the first!" And they found it the easier to forgive Dorn for escaping since
they had another victim in prospect, in his stead. Not even Deacon
Harkins was altogether unhappy, for he still had a horrid example at whom
to aim his homilies and texts. All that was necessary was to substitute
the name of Silas for that of Dorn, and his stream of malignant cant
flowed steadily on.
Dorn was conducted into the judge's private room, where he found Mary
awaiting him with open arms, glad smiles, and tears of joy in her bright
eyes. How happy and how beautiful she looked. He pressed her to his
breast, again and again, with rapture: but the lovers' hearts were too full
for speech. The greatest joys, like the deepest griefs, are voiceless; mere
words humble, even profane them. Could those two loving ones have
phrased the gratitude, to the Giver of all Good, that thrilled their souls?
Ah, no! They could only kiss and be happy.
In the court-room without it was very evident that, for a time at least,
there need not be any hope of doing business. Even after Lem had been
silenced,—thanks not to the two sedate officers but to little Ruth, who
had by this time regained all her authority—there was still kept up such
a buzz of conversation, interchange of ejaculations and comments, breaking
out afresh in one place as soon as quelled in another, lulling for an
instant and then recommencing with even greater vigor, that the judge
and prosecuting attorney pantomimed to each other that there might just
as well be an adjournment until the afternoon. And after the prosecutor
had laid his little sacrifice upon the altar of form, in a statement, audible
only to those at his elbows, that he would not be ready until afternoon to
go on with the next case upon the docket, the judge ordered an adjournment
and retired to his room.
"Well, young folks," he said cheerily, finding the lovers in each other's
arms, of course, "you seem to be enjoying yourselves!"
Mary blushed and hung her head, but Dorn looked up manfully and
replied, with a glad ring in his voice:
"Ah, yes, sir! I cannot tell you how happy we feel! But you, sir, may
be able to know what is in the heart of a man who has been very close to
a shameful death, for a crime of which he was innocent, and who is suddenly
restored to life, and hope, and the love of the woman who is dearer
to him than all the world beside."
"Yes, my boy," responded the good-hearted judge warmly, shaking his
hand. "Yes, I do appreciate your feelings; and while congratulating you on
the fortunate end of your trial, join you most heartily in thanking God that
another has not been added to the already too long list of melancholy
proofs of the fallibility of human wisdom in the administration of justice.
But it was a providential thing for you that Mr. Holden arrived when he
did, just in the nick of time."
"Indeed it was, sir. I had ceased to hope for his coming. I would
like to see him before he goes away, to offer him my thanks."
"So you shall. Right away, if you wish." And stepping to the door
the judge called in the little elderly gentleman, who came looking as radiant
with pleasure, almost, as if it had been himself who had just escaped the
gallows.
After shaking hands with Dorn, congratulating him, and receiving his
thanks, Mr. Holden addressed himself to Mary and, with old-time courtesy
and gallantry, made her a pretty little speech of compliment.
"You young folks intend to get married, don't you?" suddenly and
bluntly asked the judge.
Mary flushed red as a peony, but smiled, and Dorn, too, felt the color
rising in his cheeks as he replied, half laughingly:
"Yes, sir, if Mary doesn't change her mind."
"How is that, Mary?" demanded the judge. "Have you any notion of
changing your mind?"
"Oh, no, sir," answered the girl timidly, and with an affectionate glance
at Dorn.
"I should think not, from the way I found you when I came in," added
the judge mischievously. "Well, you know what Franklin says, 'never
put off until to-morrow what can be done to-day.' Why not get the business
over right away, and complete the happiness of your day. Stand
right out there before me and I'll soon—"
"Oh, no, sir," exclaimed Mary, in a half-frightened way, "Please, no,
sir. I promised Ruth that we would wait for her and Lem, and we are all
to stand up together."
"Ah, indeed! Well where are your friends Ruth and her lover? They
ought to be here."
"I think they are in the court-room outside," volunteered Mr. Holden.
"At least they were there a few moments ago, when I came in here. I
have the pleasure of knowing Mr. Pawlett, and can guess the relations between
him and a very pretty little girl sitting beside him."
"You know Lem?" exclaimed Dorn.
"Yes, he hunted me up in New York, and it was at his instance that I
came here to give my testimony."
"And he didn't tell me a word about it when he came back; did not
even come to see me—left me to imagine that he had not succeeded in
finding you!"
"Ah, he followed my instructions somewhat too literally. I advised
him not to tell anybody, but I did not exactly mean that he should not
mention it to you. Still, the fault, if any exists, is mine. And it's all
right now."
"All right? Oh, sir, how can I ever sufficiently thank you and him for
what you have done?"
"You need not mind thanking me any more; and as for him, I guess he
will consider the obligation squared if you facilitate his matrimonial projects
by calling in him and his sweetheart, and carrying out the judge's
suggestion for immediate action."
"Yes, by all means," urged the judge, "call them in, and let us have a
wholesale hymenial tournament at once."
Mr. Holden looked out into the court-room, which was by this time
almost emptied. Lem and Ruth were still there, however, and sturdy Mr.
Merriwether, of New Haven, who was talking to Mr. Dunn; and three or
four loiterers near the door; and a man who sat at the prosecutor's table,
and bent over it, his head resting upon his arms.
"Come in here, Mr. Pawlett, and bring the young lady with you!"
called Mr. Holden. "And step this way, if you please, Mr. Dunn, and your
friend."
While the persons thus indicated came forward, the loiterers at the door,
seeing no chance of their being included in the invitation, went away.
When Dorn had passed through another torrent of congratulations, the
judge genially resumed the direction of affairs.
"Come!" said he. "When justice gets hold of a man, she cannot let him
go scot free, even if he is innocent. Something must be done to him. If
we can't hang him, we must at least marry him. And as you young folks,
Lemuel Pawlett and Ruth—I haven't yet been told the rest of your
name, Miss."
"Ruth Lenox, sir."
"Ruth Lenox, eh? A very pretty name—almost worthy of so pretty an
owner. Very well; as you, Lem Pawlett—and you, Ruth Lenox, have confessedly
aided and comforted Dorn Hackett in evading the fate that a very
blind justice had marked out for him, it is deemed right and proper that
you should suffer with him."
Lem and Ruth, knowing nothing of what had transpired before they
entered the room, and not half understanding the judge's rapid and somewhat
figurative language, looked very much puzzled and even a little
alarmed.
Mary led her friend to one side, and the two girls held a little whispered
consultation together, from which they returned blushing, but apparently
resigned, for each placed herself beside her lover. Then the two couples
ranged themselves in order before the judge, who, dropping his jocose
manner, and with the gravity befitting so solemn a ceremonial as that of
uniting two human lives "until death does them part," proceeded to make
the lovers husbands and wives.
Then the judge resumed his jovial mood, and claimed as his fees the first
kiss from each of the brides, and Mr. Holden and Mr. Merriwether followed
suit, and Mr. Dunn was very certain not to let himself be forgotten
when any such fun as that was going on. There was a great deal of
hand-shaking, and expression of kind thoughts and good wishes all around.
And amid all this happiness nobody noticed for some little time that the
man, whom Mr. Holden had seen bowed over the prosecutor's table, had
arisen, come forward, and was standing in the door. A weak, trembling
old man he was, with thin, deeply furrowed face, and a sad, weary look in
his eyes. It was Peter Van Deust.
"I suppose," said he, speaking in a slow, meditative way, and with a weak,
quavering voice, "that I have no right to come here as a kill-joy among
you. Love and youth were done with me long ago. The first I drove from
me, and the second left me. I can no more call back one than the other,
now. If Jacob were alive to-day, he'd be more at home among you than I
am."
He paused a moment, sighed deeply, passed a tremulous hand over his
eyes, that were full of tears, and continued:
"But I feel as if I ought to speak to you, to two of you at least, and—beg
your forgiveness. I erred, and I'm sorry. I ain't what I used to be;
my head's failing me, a little, sometimes, I guess. But they've got the
right man now, haven't they? They've got him at last! And they'll hang
him, won't they?"
His voice was becoming momentarily more shrill, and his manner more
excited. Mr. Holden took his hand with a gentle, sympathetic pressure
that seemed to recall him to himself, and in a lower tone, half-choked by
a sob, the poor old man exclaimed:
"Oh, you don't know how I miss Jacob! I didn't know how much he
was to me, how much we had grown together, until I lost him! He was
so good, so kind! Ah! If I had been more like him, people would feel for
me now more than they do. But it has taken me all my life to learn that
love is better than gold."
Sadly and slowly he turned and moved away, through the deserted
court-room and the crowded street—lonely alike in both—to his desolate
home, from which, thereafter, he was seldom seen abroad. But the lesson
that it had taken him all his life to learn, he did not forget; for, when
they laid him down by Jacob's dust—ere again the trailing arbutus put
forth its fragrant blossoms beneath the dead leaves of the forest—and read
his will, they found that he had left all he possessed to Mary Wallace, "for
the sake of the kindly love my dear brother Jacob bore for her in memory
of her mother."
What need can be to say the rest? how justice laid her heavy hand upon
profligate young Silas Thatcher, and his doom was that his father had foretold;
how Dorn entered into partnership with Mr. Merriwether, who
proved his staunch and life-long friend; how faithful Lem Pawlett flourished,
and how happy Ruth and Mary were. The interest of our story is
done. Even justice, good deeds, calm joys, and placid lives are tame to
tell.
THE END.
Transcriber's Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been repaired, but archaic spellings and grammatical
usages have been retained.
Both "have'nt" and "haven't" were used in the text—standardized
to "haven't."
Both "its" and "it's" were used for "it is" in the
text—standardized to "it's."
P. 408-409, "who, like you, have no without a blush for what they
are"; the page break was after "no", with possible loss of content,
making this sentence difficult to interpret.