"I loved him as I never loved A male."

The desperate party beneath the stairs at last broke open the back door there and rushed forth, only to receive handfuls of red pepper dust thrown by Miles Tindel, as he cried,

"Tackle 'em, Cap'n Van!"

They screamed with anguish, and rolled in the wet gra.s.s, and yet, with fears stronger than pain, sought the road in blindness, and some way to leave the town.

Young Owen O'Day, or Daw, crept down the tree, and, seeing Van Dorn in Sorden's arms at the wagon, contemptuously said, as he mounted his mule and vanished:

"I reckon he'll never discipline me no mo'."

Derrick Molleston, regretting the loss of his loping horse, bore out to the wagon an object he had found striving to escape from the veranda at the kitchen side, though with a gag in his mouth, and a skewer between his elbows and his back.

"See me, see me!" the negro kidnapper spoke, hoa.r.s.ely. "He's mine an'

Devil Jim Clark's. I tuk him."

"Why, it's Buck Ransom," Sorden said.

"An' I'm gwyn to sell him, too," the negro muttered, seizing the reins.

"You see me now! Maybe he cheated us. Any way, he's tuk."

The old wagon started at a run through the driving rain, the black victim lying helpless on his back, and Van Dorn bleeding in Sorden's arms, who continued to moan,

"I loved him as I never loved A male!"

Van Dorn made several efforts to talk, and often coughed painfully, and finally, as they reached a lane gate, he articulated:'

"The Chancellor's?"

"Yes, dis is it," Derrick Molleston said. "See me, Cap'n Van. I's all heah."

As they advanced up a shady lane, fire from somewhere began to make a certain illumination in spite of the loud storm.

"It's Bill Greenley. He's set de jail afire," the negro exclaimed. "See me, O see me!"

The conflagration gave a vapory red light to a secluded dwelling they now approached, upon a bowery lawn, and Sorden saw a woman of a severe aspect looking out of a window at the fire.

"What is the meaning of this trespa.s.s so late at night?" she called.

"Are you robbers? My aged husband is asleep."

"Madam," answered Sorden, "here is the husband of Mrs. Patty Cannon. She was your brother's mother-in-law. I love this man as I never loved A male. He is wounded, and we want him taken in till he can have a doctor."

"Take him to the jail, then, if that is not it burning yonder," the woman exclaimed, scornfully. "Shall I make the home of the Chancellor of Delaware a hospital for Patty Cannon's men as a reward for her sending my brother to the gallows?"

She closed the window and the blind, and left them alone in the storm.

"Drive, Derrick, to your den at Cooper's Corners, quick, then," Sorden said.

As they left the lane a flash of lightning, so near, so white, that they seemed to be within the volume and crater of it, enveloped the wagon.

One horse sank down on his haunches, and the other reared back and tore from his harness, while the wagon was overset.

The negro picked up his helpless fellow-African and lifted him on his back, starting off in mingled avarice and terror, and saying,

"Derrick's gwyn home, sho'. See me, see me!"

Van Dorn put his finger at his throat, where blood was all the while trickling, and, with a gentle cough, extorted the sounds:

"Leave me--under a bush--to--die."

"No," cried Sorden, raising Van Dorn also upon his back; "I love him as I never loved A male."

The fire of the burning jail lighted their return into the outskirts of Dover and to the gallows' hill, where stood the scaffold, split with the lightning from cross-beam to the death-trap. As they halted opposite it to rest, a horse and rider came stumbling past, and Molleston, dropping his burden, shouted:

"Bill Greenley, dat's our hoss. We want it."

"His is the hoss that's on him," cried the escaped horse-thief, looking scornfully up at his own gallows as he lashed his blinded animal along in the rain.

"Cheer up, Captain Van," John Sorden said, soaked through with the rain; "'t'ain't fur now to Cooper's Corners."

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

TWO WHIGS.

"Goy! Look at the trees, friend Custis," said John M. Clayton, standing before his office as the rising sun innocently struck the tree-tops in the public square of Dover.

Judge Custis, sitting at an upper window, observed that many n.o.ble elms and locusts had been riven by lightning, or torn by wind and wind-driven floods of rain.

"What a night!" Custis exclaimed; "the jail burned, the lightning appalling, and I thought I heard firearms, too."

Judge Custis heard Clayton say, as he entered the room:

"So ole Derrick Molleston, Aunt Braner, asked you about my dinner, did he? And it's Bill Greenley that burned the jail? Goy! And the black people licked the kidnappers at Cowgill House?"

"Dat dey did, praise de Lord!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Aunt Braner, fervently.

Clayton turned to a young man at the table, now dressed in a good clean suit of clothes, and said, as the old cook left the room:

"Now, friend Dennis, tell your tale. Goy!"

The boy, whom the Judge was startled to recognize, at once began:

"Jedge Custis, the kidnapper man you left in the kitchen has stole Aunt Hominy and your little n.i.g.g.e.rs. They was at Johnson's Cross-roads last night. Maybe they's gone before this. My boat was hired to take 'em off, and I had to come along, but I run away from the band and give warnin'

last night to Mr. Clayton yer."