"Oh, Captain! can't you pay her debts! I'll give all Joe's going to give me, to pay you back. See how she lays on the bare floor! Hear her child crying for her! Oh! I think I hear my mother's voice a-callin' of me home as I listen to it."

Van Dorn, feeling Levin's hands grasp his own with simple confidence, heard and did not turn his head, while blushes like roses bloomed successively upon his fresh, effeminate cheeks. He did not repel the boy's hands, however, but looked at the scene with worldly and unpitying curiosity.

"To pay the distraints of Isaac and Jacob Cannon," he murmured, softly, "would keep a poor slaver poor. You must grow accustomed to such cries: I had to do so. Learn to love money like that merchant and me, and you will think them music."

"Oh, when we cry to G.o.d for mercy, captain, maybe our cries will sound like that! I can't bear to hear it."

"You told mother, Jake Cannon, when she rented this ole house," the boy, Owen Daw, exclaimed, "that she needn't pay the rent, if she didn't want to, till the day of judgment."

"I've got the judgment," Jacob Cannon answered, his whitish eyes seeming to chuckle to the bridge of his nose, "and this is the day it's due. All legal days are 'judgment days' to Isaac and Jacob Cannon."

"My son, my son," the woman's voice wailed out to Owen Daw, "I see the end of your going to Patty Cannon's: my baby to the grave, myself to the almshouse, and you to the gallows."

"Captain, Captain," Levin cried, "oh, pay the debt for me! Mother's never been poor as this. Pay it, and I will work fur you anywhair, dear captain."

"How much is the debt," asked Van Dorn, lispingly.

"Ten dollars," spoke the constable, also moved to shame.

"Cannon, will you take me for it?"

"I'll take your judgment-bond or the cash, Captain Van Dorn, nothing less."

"Put back her stuff," the captain said, slightly pressing Levin's hand, as if to say, "This is for you"--"put back her stuff and I'll settle it with Isaac Cannon."

"G.o.d bless you!" cried the woman, taking her babe from the cradle and hushing its hunger at her breast; "they call you a wicked man, but blessings on you for all the good you do!"

"_Chito! chito!_" smiled Van Dorn. "I did it for this foolish boy; I pity none."

Hulda had resorted to the strand, or river street of Cannon's Ferry, where there were two storehouses, and she had borrowed quill and ink, and written a letter addressed to "Mrs. Ellenora Dennis, Princess Anne, Somerset County, Maryland," saying:

"_Madam, Levin, your son, is near this place against his will, among dangerous men and in great temptation, but he has found a friend. In one week this friend will try to write again, and, if not heard from, seek Levin Dennis at Johnson's Cross-roads_."

This letter, written with all her unproficient speed, had just been folded, wafered, and endorsed, and she had put down one of the shillings of 1815 to pay the postage, when a shadow fell upon the store counter, and the letter was withdrawn from her hand; Van Dorn stood by her side.

"_Chis! chito! Es posible?_ A spy, perhaps. Now you will love Van Dorn, or Grandma Cannon shall hear your letter read!"

"Give it to me, Captain," Hulda pleaded; "she will kill me if she reads it."

"If it were sent, _pomarosa_, we all might die. No, you are too dangerous."

He looked, without his blush, at the shilling she was putting back in her bosom, and his eye was cold and fierce. Hulda's heart sank down.

"Brother Isaac," cried Jacob Cannon, to a man of fine, lean height, who was at the desk--a man a little shorter than Jacob, and not so much of a king in appearance but with the same whitish eyes dancing around the bridge of his nose, and a more covert and thoughtful brow--"Brother Isaac, Captain Van Dorn is chicken-hearted, and wants to settle the debt of the Widow O'Day, otherwise Daw."

"By cash or judgment-note, captain?"

"Cash," answered Van Dorn, modestly; "take it out of this double-eagle, with Madam Cannon's rent for your farm."

"There's a tree--a bee-tree, Brother Jacob, I think you said--cut down from Mrs. Cannon's field?"

"Yes, actionable under statute made and provided, wilfully to spoil or destroy any timber or other trees, roots, shrubs, or plants; value of said bee-tree three dollars; _levari facias!_ The quotient is unsatisfactory to Isaac and Jacob Cannon."

The eyes of the elder and smaller brother endeavored to have an introduction to each other through the bridge of his nose.

"Oh, Brother Jacob," he chuckled, "what an executive help you air!

Captain, isn't he a perfect Marius?"

"Madam Cannon," observed the captain, "throws up the farm with this payment, gentlemen. She has already moved her effects across the line to son-in-law Johnson's. The bee-tree I know nothing about."

"Brother Jacob," spoke Isaac Cannon, "Moore takes the farm! Let him be notified that his rent commences without day."

"Execution made, Brother Isaac," answered the Marius of the family.

"This morning, perceiving Patty Cannon about to move her effects, my bailiff seized on her plough as security for the aforesaid bee-tree spoiled, maimed, and destroyed, and Moore is ploughing to put in his wheat with it already. Time is money to Isaac and Jacob Cannon."

"Ha, ha! what an executive comfort! Brother Jacob never adds an item to profit and loss."

"Gentlemen," said Van Dorn, "I recommend you not to be charging bee-trees to tenants in the vicinity of Johnson's Cross-roads. It's an unusual item, and we are raising young men there who may not understand it."

"Captain," said the elder Cannon, chuckling as if still in admiration of Marius's subtlety, "I recollect now that our ferryman brought over a man from Laurel this morning with some news. A woman with a broken shackle reported there last night, and said she was the slave of Daniel Custis of Princess Anne: she came from Broad Creek."

"Where did she go?"

"A Methodist preacher put her in his buggy and started to her master's with her."

"Then she'll beat the wind," said Van Dorn; "these preachers are all horse-jockeys, and can outswap the devil. _Hola! ya, ya!_ I must see to this."

He strode out, with a cold eye glanced at Hulda.

"Come, young people," spoke the grand head of Jacob Cannon to Levin and Hulda; "I will show you my museum."

He led the way to a warehouse overhanging the river and unlocked a door, and told them to walk carefully till they could see in the dark of the interior.

Levin kept Hulda's hand in his as they slowly saw emerge from the shadows a great variety of dissimilar things heaped together, till the house could hardly hold the vast aggregate of pots and kettles, spinning-wheels and cradles, bedsteads and beds, harrows and ploughs, chairs and gridirons, rakes and hoes, silhouettes and picture-frames, hand-made quilts of calico and pillows of home-plucked geese feathers, fishermen's nets and oars--whatever made the substance of living in an old country without minerals and manufactures, in the early part of the nineteenth century.

"Whare did you git' em, sir?" Levin asked.

"Executed of 'em," said the warrior head and stature of Jacob Cannon; "pounced on 'em; satisfied judgments upon 'em. _Fi. fa.!_ We call this Peale's Museum Number Two, or the Variegated Quotient."

"All these things taken from the poor?" asked Hulda. "How many miseries they tell!"

"Mr. Cannon," said Levin, "what kin you do with 'em? People won't buy 'em. They're just a-rottin' to pieces."

"We keep' em to show all them who trespa.s.s on Isaac and Jacob Cannon,"

answered Marius, with easy grandeur, "that there is a judgment-day!"

Hulda's long-lashed gray eyes, with a look of more than childish contempt, accompanied her words:

"I should think you would fear that day, Mr. Cannon, when you say the prayer, 'Forgive us our trespa.s.ses as we forgive those who trespa.s.s against us.'"