Without reply, the Captain kept his own thoughts for several minutes, and finally sighed:

"I know one thing in which I might believe, pretty child."

"Oh, then embrace it," Hulda said, "and give your faith a single straw to cling to."

Van Dorn's hand slipped around her waist, and his florid cheeks and blue eyes bent beneath her Leghorn hat:

"I find it here, perhaps, Hulda. Shall I embrace your youth with my strong pa.s.sion? I fear I love you."

"Yes," she answered, looking up with her long-lashed eyes of such entrancing gray; "kiss me if it will give you hope!"

The blush and high color went out of his face as he stared into those pa.s.sive, large gray orbs, wide open beneath his pouting, rich, effeminate lips, and, as he hesitated, Hulda repeated:

"Kiss me, if it will make you hope!"

"No, no," he answered; "of all places I am most hopeless _there_."

"I knew you would not kiss me," Hulda said, with a tone above him, "if I gave you the right for any pure object. The kiss _you_ would give me does not see its mate in my soul."

"You hate me, then?" said Van Dorn.

"No, I pity you; I pray for you, too."

"For me? What interest have you in me?"

"I do not know," said Hulda. "I have often wondered what made me think of you so often and, yet, never with admiration. You are the only person here who appears to have lost something by being here; some portion of you seems to have disappeared; I have felt that you might have been a gentleman, though you can never be again. I shrink from you, and still I pity you. But, with all your handsome ways, I would never love you, while the poor boy who is riding with us I loved as soon as he came."

"_Chis! chito!_ You can shrink from me and not from a Cannon, too? Why, girl, you have put him in my power."

"I have been in your power for a long time, Captain Van Dorn, and you have looked at me with bold and evil eyes many a time, but never came nearer. When I gaze at you as I did just now, you fly from me. That boy I love is as safe as I am, in your hands."

"Why, dear presumer? Tell me."

"Because I love him, and you require my pity. As long as you protect that poor orphan boy I shall carry your name to G.o.d for pardon; if you ever do him harm, my prayers for you will be dumb forever."

"_Oh! ayme! ayme!_" softly laughed Van Dorn, his blush not coming now; "you forget, Hulda, that I believe in nothing."

They had hardly gone four miles when a little, low-pitched town of small square houses, strewn about like toy-blocks between pairs of red outside chimneys, sat, in the soft, humid October morning, along the rim of a marshy creek that, skirting the hamlet, flowed into the Nantic.o.ke River a few miles, by its course, above Twiford's wharf. Two streets, formed by two roads, ended in a third street along the sandy, flattish river sh.o.r.e, and there stood four or five larger dwellings, like their humbler neighbors, built of wood, but with bolder, greater chimneys, rising into the air as if in rivalry of four large ships and brigs that lay at anchor or beside the two wharves, and threw their masts and spars into the sailing clouds, making the low forest that closed river and village in, stoop to its humility. But the beautiful river, with frequent bluffs of sand and woods, flowing two hundred yards wide in stately tide, and bearing up to Cannon's Ferry fish-boats and pungies, Yankee schooners and woodscows, and the signs of life, however lowly, that floated in blue smoke from many hearths, or sounded in oars, rigging, and lading, seemed to Hulda human joy and power, and she cried to Levin:

"Levin, oh, look! Did you ever see as big a place as this? Yonder is the road to Seaford, just as far as we have come! The big ships are taking corn for West Indies, and bringing sugar and mola.s.ses. That is the ferry scow, and on the other side it is only five miles to Laurel."

"Do you like to travel that road?" asked the Captain, with his pleasing lisp and blush returned again.

"It makes me sad," replied Hulda; "but I do not mutter when I go past the spot, like grandma."

"What spot?" asked Levin.

"Where father killed the traveller," Hulda said. "He died shamefully for it. You could almost see the place but for yonder woods, where the road to Laurel climbs the sandy hill."

"What's this?" said Van Dorn, seeing a little crowd around one of the single-story cabins, and turning his team into the parallel street.

A very tall, grand-looking man towered above the rest, and seemed unable to stand upright in the low cottage, with his proportions, so that he took his place on the gra.s.sy sand without and gave his directions to some one within:

"Levy on the spinning-wheel! Simplify the equation! Stand by your _fi.

fa.!_ Don't be chicken-hearted, constable--she's had the equivalent; now she sees the quotient, too."

Van Dorn looked on and saw a spinning-wheel come out of the door, and a little wool in a bag after it. Jacob Cannon put his foot on the wheel and poked his head in the door.

"I see an axe and a coffee-mill there, constable: levy onto 'em with your _distringas. Experientia docet stultos!_ Pa.s.s out that pair of shoes!"

A voice of a woman crying was heard, and Van Dorn and Levin both leaped out to look.

Hulda also stepped down and disappeared.

A woman, barely able to stand up, and white as illness and anguish could make her, had staggered to the door to beg that her shoes be given back, and pointed to her naked feet.

"Now she's off the bed, levy on that!" cried the military figure with the long, eloquent face and twinkling eyes; "shove it out the window.

Mind your _fi. fa._ and I'll take care of the quotient."

"Have mercy!" cried the woman; "my child was only born last week."

"Fling out that good chair there, constable. Levy on the green chest!

Don't you see a whole quilt or blanket anywhere! Allow neither tret nor suttle when you serve a writ for Isaac and Jacob Cannon!"

"Where shall I lie with my babe?" cried the poor woman, looking around on the naked cabin, where neither bed, nor blanket, nor chair, nor chest, nor spinning-wheel remained.

"_Li-vari facias!_ and _fi-eri facias!_ If there's a mistake a replevin lies, but no mistakes are made by Isaac and Jacob Cannon. Constable, I think I see an iron pot on that crane!"

"It's got meat in it, sir--meat a-bilin'," answered the constable.

"Turn out the meat! Levy on the pot! Make the quotient accurate!

Eliminate the pot from the equation!"

Out came the pot, as the material boiling in it put out the October fire, and it was thrown in the miscellaneous heap at Jacob Cannon's feet.

"Now take the cradle, hard-hearted man," the woman cried, "and turn the baby into the fire, too, since I can cook nothing to make its milk in my b.r.e.a.s.t.s."

"Is the cradle worth anything, constable?" asked the magnificent-looking man with the gray silvery lights around his horsy nose; "if it's worth taking, I want it. People who can't pay their debts must live single like Jacob Cannon, and not be distrained."

A boy, with his face scratched, and dissipation settled in it, bounded suddenly into the aghast group of spectators, and made a vicious dive to recover the effects around Jacob Cannon's feet, but that mighty worthy took him by the collar and, holding him up, dropped him over a fence like a bug:

"Owen Daw, here be witnesses to an a.s.sault _insultus_, actionable as a trespa.s.s _vi_, the quotient whereof is damages or the equivalent in Georgetown jail. Take heed, good citizens, and especially I note you, Captain Van Dorn."

"I'll kill him," shouted the young bully of Johnson's Cross-roads, and late distrainer on the profile of Cyrus James, Esquire, seizing an ugly stick.

"Justifiable as _son a.s.sault demesne_," remarked the creditor, carelessly, as he wrenched the bobbin from the spinning-wheel and knocked the boy down with it.

His commanding manner and the ready hand operated to abash the latter, and, deeply pained with the scene, Levin Dennis fervently and impulsively cried to Van Dorn: