"Now, don't! Well, I guess there must be some mistake; you aint sure, now, friend: might be some other dealer that you bought from?"

"None other than yourself, Bunce. You are the man, and I can bring a dozen to prove it on you."

"Well, I 'spose what you say's true, and that jest let's me know how to mister you now, 'cause, you see, I do recollect now all about who I sold that bit of goods to that season."

The landlord had been overreached; and, amused with the ingenuity of the trader, he contented himself with again lifting the huge fist in a threatening manner, though the smile which accompanied the action fairly deprived it of its terrors.

"Well, well," said the landlord "we burn daylight in such talk as this.

I come to you as the only man who will or can help me in this matter; and Lucy Munro tells me you will--you made her some such promise."

"Well, now, I guess I must toe the chalk, after all; though, to say truth, I don't altogether remember giving any such promise. It must be right, though, if she says it; and sartain she's a sweet body--I'll go my length for her any day."

"You'll not lose by it; and now hear my plan. You know Brooks, the jailer, and his bulldog brother-in-law, Tongs? I saw you talking with both of them yesterday."

"Guess you're right. Late acquaintance, though; they aint neither on 'em to my liking."

"Enough for our purpose. Tongs is a brute who will drink as long as he can stand, and some time after it. Brooks is rather shy of it, but he will drink enough to stagger him, for he is pretty weak-headed. We have only to manage these fellows, and there's the end of it. They keep the jail."

"Yes, I know; but you don't count young Brooks?"

"Oh, he's a mere boy. Don't matter about him. He's easily managed. Now hear to my design. Provide your jug of whiskey, with plenty of eggs and sugar, so that they shan't want anything, and get them here. Send for Tongs at once, and let him only know what's in the wind; then ask Brooks, and he will be sure to force him to come. Say nothing of the boy; let him stay or come, as they think proper. To ask all might make them suspicious. They'll both come. They never yet resisted a spiritual temptation. When here, ply them well, and then we shall go on according to circ.u.mstances. Brooks carries the keys along with him: get him once in for it, and I'll take them from him. If he resists, or any of them--"

"Knock 'em down?"

"Ay, quickly as you say it!"

"Well, but how if they do not bring the boy, and they leave him in the jail?"

"What then! Can't we knock him down too?"

"But, then, they'll fix the whole business on my head. Won't Brooks and Tongs say where they got drunk, and then shan't I be in a scant fixin'?"

"They dare not. They won't confess themselves drunk--it's as much as their place is worth. They will say nothing till they got sober, and then they'll get up some story that will hurt n.o.body."

"But--"

"But what? will you never cease to but against obstacles? Are you a man--are you ready--bent to do what you can? Speak out, and let me know if I can depend on you," exclaimed the landlord, impatiently.

"Now, don't be in a pa.s.sion! You're as soon off as a fly-machine, and a thought sooner. Why, didn't I say, now, I'd go my length for the young gentleman? And I'm sure I'm ready, and aint at all afeared, no how. I only did want to say that, if the thing takes wind, as how it raaly stood, it spiles all my calkilations. I couldn't 'stablish a consarn here, I guess, for a nation long spell of time after."

"And what then? where's your calculations? Get the young fellow clear, and what will his friends do for you? Think of that, Bunce. You go off to Carolina with him, and open store in his parts, and he buys from you all he wants--his negro-cloths, his calicoes, his domestics, and stripes, and everything. Then his family, and friends and neighbors, under his recommendation--they all buy from you; and then the presents they will make you--the fine horses--and who knows but even a plantation and negroes may all come out of this one transaction?"

"To be sure--who knows? Well, things do look temptatious enough, and there's a mighty deal of reason, now, in what you say. Large business that, I guess, in the long run. Aint I ready? Let's see--a gallon of whiskey--aint a gallon a heap too much for only three people?"

"Better have ten than want. Then there must be pipes, tobacco, cigars; and mind, when they get well on in drinking, I shall look to you through that window. Be sure and come to me then. Make some pretence, for, as Brooks may be slow and cautious, I shall get something to drop into his liquor--a little mixture which I shall hand you."

"What mixture? No pizen, I hope! I don't go that, not I--no pizening for me."

"Pshaw! fool--nonsense! If I wanted their lives, could I not choose a shorter method, and a weapon which I could more truly rely upon than I ever can upon you? It is to make them sleep that I shall give you the mixture."

"Oh, laudnum. Well, now why couldn't you say laudnum at first, without frightening people so with your mixtures'?--There's no harm in laudnum, for my old aunt Tabitha chaws laudnum-gum jest as other folks chaws tobacco."

"Well, that's all--it's only to get them asleep sooner. See now about your men at once. We have no time to lose; and, if this contrivance fails, I must look about for another. It must be done to-night, or it can not be done at all. In an hour I shall return; and hope, by that time, to find you busy with their brains. Ply them well--don't be slow or stingy--and see that you have enough of whiskey. Here's money--have everything ready."

The pedler took the money--why not? it was only proper to spoil the Egyptians--and, after detailing fully his plans, Munro left him. Bunce gave himself but little time and less trouble for reflection. The prospects of fortune which the landlord had magnified to his vision, were quite too enticing to be easily resisted by one whose _morale_ was not of a sort to hold its ground against his habitual cupidity and newly-awakened ambition; and having provided everything, as agreed upon, necessary for the accommodation of the jailer and his a.s.sistant, Bunce sallied forth for the more important purpose of getting his company.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

SACK AND SUGAR.

The task of getting the desired guests, as Munro had a.s.sured him, was by no means difficult, and our pedler was not long in reporting progress.

Tongs, a confirmed toper, was easily persuaded to anything that guarantied hard drinking. He luxuriated in the very idea of a debauch.

Brooks, his brother-in-law, was a somewhat better and less pregnable person; but he was a widower, had been a good deal with Tongs, and, what with the accustomed loneliness of the office which he held, and the gloomy dwelling in which it required he should live, he found it not such an easy matter to resist the temptation of social enjoyment, and all the pleasant a.s.sociations of that good-fellowship, which Bunce had taken care to depict before the minds of both parties. The attractions of Bunce himself, by-the-way, tended, not less than the whiskey and cigars, to persuade the jailer, and to neutralize most of the existing prejudices current among those around him against his tribe. He had travelled much, and was no random observer. He had seen a great deal, as well of human nature as of places; could tell a good story, in good spirit; and was endowed with a dry, sneaking humor, that came out unawares upon his hearers, and made them laugh frequently in spite of themselves.

Bunce had been now sufficiently long in the village to enable those about him to come at a knowledge of his parts; and his accomplishments, in the several respects referred to, were by this time generally well understood. The inducement was sufficiently strong with the jailer; and, at length, having secured the main entrance of the jail carefully, he strapped the key to a leathern girdle, which he wore about him, lodging it in the breast-pocket of his coat, where he conceived it perfectly safe, he prepared to go along with his worthy brother-in-law. Nor was the younger Brooks forgotten. Being a tall, good-looking lad of sixteen, Tongs insisted it was high time he should appear among men; and the invitation of the pedler was opportune, as affording a happy occasion for his initiation into some of those practices, esteemed, by a liberal courtesy, significant of manliness.

With everything in proper trim, Bunce stood at the entrance of his lodge, ready to receive them. The preliminaries were soon despatched, and we behold them accordingly, all four, comfortably seated around a huge oaken table in the centre of the apartment. There was the jug, and there the gla.s.ses--the sugar, the peppermint, the nutmegs--the pipes and tobacco--all convenient, and sufficiently tempting for the unscrupulous.

The pedler did the honors with no little skill, and Tongs plunged headlong into the debauch. The whiskey was never better, and found, for this reason, anything but security where it stood. Gla.s.s after gla.s.s, emptied only to be replenished, attested the industrious hospitality of the host, not less than its own excellence. Tongs, averaging three draughts to one of his companion's, was soon fairly under way in his progress to that state of mental self-glorification in which the world ceases to have vicissitudes, and the animal realizes the abstractions of an ancient philosophy, and denies all pain to life.

Brooks, however, though not averse to the overcoming element, had more of that vulgar quality of prudence than his brother-in-law, and far more than was thought amiable in the opinion of the pedler. For some time, therefore, he drank with measured scrupulousness; and it was with no small degree of anxiety that Bunce plied him with the bottle--complaining of his unsociableness, and watching, with the intensity of any other experimentalist, the progress of his scheme upon him. As for the lad--the younger Brooks--it was soon evident that, once permitted, and even encouraged to drink, as he had been, by his superiors, he would not, after a little while, give much if any inconvenience to the conspirators. The design of the pedler was considerably advanced by Tongs, who, once intoxicated himself, was not slow in the endeavor to bring all around him under the same influence.

"Drink, Brooks--drink, old fellow," he exclaimed; "as you are a true man, drink, and don't fight shy of the critter! Whiskey, my boy--old Monongahely like this, I say--whiskey is wife and children--house and horse--lands and n.i.g.g.e.rs--liberty and [hiccup] plenty to live on! Don't you see how I drive ahead, and don't care for the hind wheels? It's all owing to whiskey! Grog, I say--Hark ye, Mr. Pedler--grog, I say, is the wheels of life: it carries a man _for'ad_. Why don't men go _for'ad_ in the world? What's the reason now? I'll tell you. They're afeared. Well, now, who's afeared when he's got a broadside of whiskey in him?

n.o.body--n.o.body's afeared but you--you, Ben Brooks, you're a d----d crick--crick--you're always afeared of something, or nothing; for, after all, whenever you're afeared of something, it turns out to be nothing!

All 'cause you don't drink like a man. That's his cha-cha-_rack_-ter, Mr. Bunce; and it's all owing 'cause he won't drink!"

"Guess there's no sparing of reason in that bit of argument, now, I tell you, Mr. Tongs. Bless my heart--it's no use talking, no how, but I'd a been clean done up, dead as a door-nail, if it hadn't been for drink.

Strong drink makes strong. Many's the time, and the freezing cold, and the hard travelling in bad roads, and other dreadful fixins I've seed, would soon ha' settled me up, if it hadn't been for that same good stuff there, that Master Brooks does look as if he was afeared on. Now, don't be afeared, Master Brooks. There's no teeth in whiskey, and it never bites n.o.body."

"No," said Brooks, with the utmost simplicity; "only when they take too much."

"How?" said the pedler, looking as if the sentence contained some mysterious meaning. Brooks might have explained, but for Tongs, who dashed in after this fashion:--

"And who takes too much? You don't mean to say I takes too much, Ben Brooks. I'd like to hear the two-legged critter, now, who'd say I takes more of the stuff than does me good. I drinks in reason, for the benefit of my health; and jest, you see, as a sort of medicine, Mr. Bunce; and, Brooks, you knows I never takes a drop more than is needful."

"Sometimes--sometimes, Tongs, you know you ain't altogether right under it--now and then you take a leetle too much for your good," was the mild response of Brooks, to the almost fierce speech of his less scrupulous brother-in-law. The latter, thus encountered, changed his ground with singular rapidity.

"Well, by dogs!--and what of that?--and who is it says I shan't, if it's my notion? I'd like now to see the boy that'll stand up agin me and make such a speech. Who says I shan't take what I likes--and that I takes more than is good for me? Does you say so, Mr. Bunce?"

"No, thank ye, no. How should I say what ain't true? You don't take half enough, now, it's my idee, neither on you. It's all talk and no cider, and that I call monstrous dry work. Come, pa.s.s round the bottle. Here's to you, Master Tongs--Master Brooks, I drink your very good health. But fill up, fill up--you ain't got nothing in your tumbler."

"No, he's a sneak--you're a sneak, Brooks, if you don't fill up to the hub. Go the whole hog, boy, and don't twist your mouth as if the stuff was physic. It's what I call nation good, now; no mistake in it, I tell you."

"Hah! that's a true word--there's no mistake in this stuff. It is jest now what I calls ginywine."