"Take care how you mock me!" cried Patty Cannon, with her dark, bold eyes furtive, like one both angered and troubled, and her ruddy cheeks full of cloudy blood.

"Sit down! Give the shillings to pretty Hulda there."

"To her?"

"_Ya, ya!_ to pleasing Hulda; for what will trouble us then, her sinless bosom being their safe depository, and her long-lashed eyes melting our ghosts to gray air?"

With a look of strong dislike, the woman gave Hulda the shillings, saying:

"If you ever show one of 'em to me, gal, I'll make you swaller it."

Hulda took the silver pieces and looked at them a moment with girlish delight:

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

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

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

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

"Yes," cried Patty Cannon, "I do," and swore a man's oath.

"Has the Senor been in that direction, do you think? I think he has, for Melson and Milman are up from Twiford's with the news that Zeke's last hide has burst her chain and fled, and all the lower Nantic.o.ke gives no trace of her, and Zeke has pa.s.sed the heavenly gates."

The Captain drew the back of his silver clasp-knife across his throat, smilingly, and placed on the table a sailor's sheath-knife.

"Zeke only was untied; it was a too generous omission," he said. "The Philadelphia woman the Senor says he set free, and that she has gone to start an alarm against us. The Senor is a cool man: he told me that, and laughed and roared, and says he will live to see us all in a picture-frame. _Ayme, ayme_, Patty!"

With her face growing longer and longer, the woman heard these scarcely intelligible sentences--wholly unintelligible to the younger people--and to Levin it seemed that she grew suddenly old and yet older, till her cheeks, but lately blooming, seemed dead and wrinkled, and, from maintaining the appearance of hardly fifty, and fair at that, she now looked to be more than sixty years of age, and sad and helpless.

"Van Dorn, I'm dying," she muttered, as her eyes glazed, and she settled down in her chair like a lump of dough.

"_Ha! O hala hala_! hands off, fair Hulda," the Captain cried, joyfully, as Hulda had been moved to relieve the poor old woman; "no one shall a.s.sist at these ceremonies of expiation but Van Dorn himself, whose rights in Mistress Cannon are of priority. She's dropsical, and hastening to perdition too soon, which I must arrest and let her comfort me still more. Sweet comforter! Young gentleman, you shall help me."

Levin took hold of Patty Cannon's feet and found that she seemed made of bone, so tough were her sinews, and Van Dorn easily lifted her broad shoulders, and so she was laid on a bed in the next room, where the elegant Captain was seen rubbing her limbs, and even handling a bottle of leeches, one of which he allowed to crawl over the hand that wore the diamond, making it look like a ruby melting or in living motion. As this voracious blood-lover took his fill around the straight ankles of the hostess, the dainty Captain held her in his arms like an ardent lover.

"Honey," sighed the woman, "my rent is due, and Jake Cannon never waits.

Take Huldy and this yer new recruit, my cousin Levin Cannon, an' drive 'em to the ferry,--an' watch that boy, Van Dorn: I want him broke in!

Give him a pistol and a knife, an' have him cut somebody. Put the blood-mark on him and he's ours."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"See, Patty! The boy shall drink blood like this, till, drunk with it, he can hold on no more, and drops into our fate as in this vial."

As he spoke he let the leech fall in the bottle, where its reflection in the gla.s.s seemed to splash blood.

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

CHAPTER XXVII.

CANNON'S FERRY.

When it was announced to Levin and Hulda, who had meantime been talking in the garden, dangerously near the subject of love, that they were to be given a ride to Cannon's Ferry with Captain Van Dorn, at the especial desire of Aunt Patty Cannon--who also sent them a handful of half-cents to spend--they were both delighted, though Hulda said:

"Dear Levin, if it was only ourselves going for good, how happy we might be! I could live with your beautiful mother and work for her, and, knowing me to be always there, you would bring your money home instead of wasting it."

"Can't we do so some way?" asked Levin. "Oh, I wish I had some sense! I wish Jimmy Phoebus was yer, Huldy, to take me out thair in the garden an' whip me like my father. But, if I hadn't come yer, how could I have seen you, Huldy?"

"How could I have spent such a heavenly night of peace and hope if you had not come, dear? The Good Being must have led you to me."

"Huldy," said Levin, after thinking to the range of his knowledge, "maybe thar's a post-office at Cannon's Ferry, an' you kin write a letter to Jack Wonnell fur me."

"Why not to your mother, Levin?"

"Oh, I am ashamed to tell her; it would kill her."

"If we should be found out, Levin, Aunt Patty would kill me. There is no paper here, no ink that I can get, the postage on a letter is almost nineteen cents, and, look! these half-cents are short of the sum by just two."

"I have gold," cried Levin, thinking of the residue of Joe Johnson's bounty.

He put his hand into his pocket, but the money was no longer there.

"Hush!" cried Hulda, "you have been robbed. Everybody is robbed who sleeps here. Grandma can smell gold like the rat that finds yellow cheese."

The individual who had served the breakfast was seen coming towards them, a man in size, with a low forehead, no chin to speak of, a long, crane neck, and a badly scratched and festered face.

"Mister," he said to Levin, "come help me hitch the horses; I'm beat so I can't see how."

Levin started at once, suggesting to Hulda to make search for his missing money, and, when they were in the little stable, the man observed, in a whisper, to Levin:

"By smoke!"