Levin's horse, at his easy gait, soon left Sorden far behind, and the strange events of the night, and his wonder what to do next, kept Levin's brain whirling till he saw the form of a few houses rise among the trees, and a line of arborage indicate a main road from north to south. The scent as of cold, wide waters and marshes filled the night.

"Here is Camden," Levin thought; "where shall I go? If I turn south I shall get no bed nor food all night, and be picked up in the mornin' fur a kidnapper. I can't go back. The big river or the ocean, I reckon, is before me. What would Jimmy Phoebus do?"

He held the animal in as he asked this question, and paused at the crossing of the great State road.

The idea slowly spread upon his whole existence that James Phoebus would, in Levin's place, ride instantly to Dover and give the alarm.

Levin tried to construct Phoebus in a mood to give some other advice, but, as the resolute pungy captain's form seemed to bestride the young man's mind, it rose more and more stalwart, and appeared to lead towards Dover, where so many poor souls, in the joys of intercourse and freedom, were like little birds unconscious of the hawks above them, and no man in the world but Levin Dennis could save them from death or bondage.

Would James Phoebus, with his lion nature, ever hesitate in the duty of a citizen and a Christian under such circ.u.mstances, or forgive another man for withholding information that might be life and liberty and mercy?

Yet there was Van Dorn to be betrayed. What would Van Dorn do in Levin's place?

The words of Van Dorn, not a quarter of an hour old, spoke aloud in Levin's echoing consciousness: "Think nothing of me. Refer every act to some faithful man and go and do the same!"

Levin looked up, and the very clouds, now swollen dark in spite of starshine, seemed hurrying on Dover. The night-birds were crying "Mercy!

mercy!" the lizards and tree-frogs seemed to cross each other's voices, piping "Time! time! time!"

"_Huldy!_" Levin whispered, and let the reins fall loose, and his animal darted through Camden town to the north.

He had gone by the small frame houses, the Quaker meeting, the stores, the outskirt residences, when suddenly his horse turned out to pa.s.s a large, dark object in the road ahead, and a horseman rode right across Levin's course, forcing his animal back on its haunches.

"High doings, friend!" a man's voice raspingly spoke; "I'm concerned for thee!"

"Git out of my way or I'll stab you!" Levin cried, between his new ardor to do his duty and the idea that he had already been intercepted by Patty Cannon's band.

"Ha, friend! I'm less concerned for myself than thee. Thou wilt not stab a citizen of Camden town at his own door?"

"For Heaven's sake, let me go, then!" Levin pleaded. "The kidnappers is coming to Dover in a few minutes. I want to tell Lawyer Clayton!"

Immediately the other person, a tall, lean man, wheeled and dashed after the dark object ahead, which Levin, following also hard, found to be a large covered wagon--something between the dearborn or farmer's and the family carriage.

"Bill," the Quaker called to the driver, "spare not thy whip till Dover be well past. Here is one who says kidnappers are raiding even the capital of Delaware. I'm concerned for thee!"

The driver began to whip his horses into a gallop, and cries, as of several persons, came out of the close-curtained vehicle.

"What's in there?" Levin asked the Quaker, who had rejoined him; "n.i.g.g.e.rs?"

"No, friend," the Quaker crisply answered, "only Christians."

They crossed a mill-stream, and soon afterwards a smaller run, without speaking, and came to a little log-and-frame cabin in a fork of the road, where Levin's horse tried to run in.

"Ha, friend! Is it not Derrick Molleston's loper thee has--the same that he gets from Devil Jim Clark? What art thou, then? I feel concerned for thee."

"A Christian, too, I hope," answered Levin, forcing his nag up the road.

"Then thee is better than a youth in this dwelling we next pa.s.s," the Quaker said, pointing to a brick house on the left; "for there lived a judge whose son bucked a poor negro fiddler in his father's cellar, and delivered him to Derrick Molleston to be sold in slavery. I hear the poor man tells it in his distant house of bondage."

"What's this?" Levin inquired, seeing a strange structure of beams on a cape or swell to the right, in sight of the dark forms of a town on the next crest beyond.

"A gallows," said the Quaker, "on which a horse-thief will be hanged to-morrow. To steal a horse is death; to steal a fellow-man is nothing."

As he spoke, the mysterious carriage turned down a cross street of Dover and stole into the obscurity of the town.

"Ha! ha!" exclaimed the Quaker; "if Joe Johnson had not stopped to feed at Devil Jim's, he might have overtaken my brother's wagon full of escaping slaves. I tell thee, friend, because I'm scarce concerned for thee now."

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

COWGILL HOUSE.

Long after midnight, Dover was in bed, except at one large house on the Capitol green, where light shone through the c.h.i.n.ks and cracks of curtains and shutters, and some watch-dog, perhaps, ran along curiously to see why.

The stars and clouds in the somewhat troubled sky looked down through the leafless trees upon the pretty town and St. Jones's Creek circling past it, and hardly noticed a long band of creeping men and animals steal up from the Meeting House branch, past the tannery and the academy, and plunge into the back streets of the place, avoiding the public square.

One file turned down to the creek and crossed it, to return farther above, cutting off all escape by the northern road, while a second file slipped silently through and around the compact little hamlet and waited for the other to arrive, when both encompa.s.sed an old brick dwelling standing back from the roadside in a green and venerable yard, nearly half a mile from the settled parts of Dover.

This house was brilliantly lighted, and the rose-bushes and shade trees were all defined as they stood above the swells of green verdure and the ornamental paths and flower-beds.

One majestic tulip-tree extended its long branches nearly to the portal of the quaint dwelling, and a luxuriant growth of ivy, starting between the cellar windows, clambered to the corniced carpentry of the eaves, and made almost solid panels of vine of the s.p.a.ces between the four large, keystoned windows in two stories, which stood to the right of the broad, dumpy door.

This door, at the top of a flight of steps, was placed so near the gable angle of the house that it gave the impression of but one wing of a mansion originally designed to be twice its length and size.

Between this gable--which faced the road, and had four lines of windows in it, besides a bas.e.m.e.nt row--and the back or town door, as described, was one squarish, roomy window, out of relation to all the rest, and perhaps twelve feet above the ground. This, as might be guessed, was on the landing of the stairs within; for the great door and front of the residence being at the opposite side, the whole of the s.p.a.ce at the townward gable, to the width of seventeen feet, was a n.o.ble hall about forty feet long, lofty, and with pilasters in architectural style, and lighted by two great windows in the gable and the square window on the stairway.

The stairway itself was a beautiful piece of work and proportion, rising from the floor in ten railed steps to the landing at the square window, where a s.p.a.ce several feet square commanded both the great front door and the windows in the gable, and also the yard behind; thence, at right angles, the flight of steps rose along the back wall to a second landing over the dumpy back-door, and, by a third leap, returned at right angles, to the floor above, making what is called the well of the stairway to be exceedingly s.p.a.cious, and it opened to the garret floor.

No doubt this cool, great hall was designed to be the centre of a large mansion, yet it had lost nothing in agreeableness by becoming, instead, the largest room in the house, receiving abundant daylight, and it was large enough for either a feast or public worship, and such was its frequent use.

Built by a tyrannical, eccentric man at the beginning of the century, it had pa.s.sed through several families until a Quaker named Cowgill, who afterwards became a Methodist, and who held no slaves and was kind to black people, made it his property, and superintended a tannery and mill within sight of it.

He was frequently absent for weeks, especially in the bilious autumn season, and allowed his domestics to a.s.semble their friends and the general race, at odd times, in the great hallway, for such rational enjoyments as they might select.

In truth, the owner of the house desired it to get a more cheerful reputation; for the negroes, in particular, considered it haunted.

The first owner, it was said, had amused himself in the great hall-room by making his own children stand on their toes, switching their feet with a whip when they dropped upon their soles from pain or fatigue; and his own son finally shot at him through the great northern door with a rifle or pistol, leaving the mark to this day, to be seen by a small panel set in the original pine. The third owner, a lawyer, often entertained travelling clergymen here; and, on one occasion, the eccentric Reverend Lorenzo Dow met on the stairs a stranger and bowed to him, and afterwards frightened the host's family by telling it, since they were not aware of any stranger in the house. The room over the great door had always been considered the haunt of peculiar people, who molested n.o.body living, but appeared there in some quiet avocation, and vanished when pressed upon.

This main door itself had a church-like character, and was battened or built in half, so that the upper part could be thrown open like a window, and yet the lock on this upper part was a foot and a half long, and the key weighed a pound.

This ponderous door, in elaborate carpentry, opened upon a flight of steps and on a flower-yard surrounded by elms, firs, and Paulownia trees, the latter of a beany odor and nature. A lower servants' part of the dwelling, in two stories, stretched to the fields, and had a veranda-covered rear.

Van Dorn called to a negro:

"Buck Ransom!"