The Entailed Hat Part 29

"Not as I ever heard about, Jack. They say you ain't got no sense, but you never fight n.o.body. Everybody kin git along with you, Jack!"

"No they can't, Levin. Meshach Milburn hates the ground I tread on. If he know'd I was in love with little Roxy he'd marry her to a n.i.g.g.e.r."

"What makes him hate you so, Jack?"

"Becaze I wears my bell-crowns, and he wears the steeple-top hat. He thinks I'm a-mockin' of him. Levin, I ain't got no other kind of hat to wear. Meshach Milburn needn't wear that air hat, but if I don't wear a bell-crown I must go bareheaded. I bought that lot of hats with the only dollar or two I ever had, as they say a fool an' his money is soon parted. The boys said they was dirt cheap. Now there wouldn't be nothin'

to see wrong in my bell-crowns, ef all the people wasn't pintin' at ole Milburn's Entail Hat, as they call it. Why can't he, rich as a Jew, go buy a new hat, or buy me one? I don't want to mock him. I'm afeard of him! He looks at me with them loaded pistols of eyes an' it mos' makes me cry, becaze I ain't done nothin'. I'm as pore as them trash ducks,"

pointing to a brace of dippers, which were of no value in the market, "but I ain't got no malice."

"No, Jack. That trader could give you that bag of gold to keep and it would be safe, becaze it wasn't your own."

"I 'spect I will have to go to the pore-house some day, Levin; my ole aunt, who takes keer of me, can't live long, an' I ain't good fur nothin'. I can't git no jobs and I run arrands for everybody fur nothin', but the first money I git I'm gwyn to buy a new hat with. Ever sence I wore these bell-crowns Meshach hates me, an' I hope he's the only man that does hate me, Levin. I don't think Meshach kin be a bad man."

"How kin he be good, Jack?"

"Why, I have seen him in the woods when he didn't see me, calling up the birds. Danged if they didn't come and git on him! Now birds ain't gwyn to hop on a man that's a devil, Levin. Do you believe he deals with the devil?"

"I do," said Levin; "I see sich quare things I believe in most anything quare. These yer tarrapins has got sense, and they're no more like it than a stone. One night when we hadn't nothin' to eat at home, mother and me, an' she was a sittin' there with tears in her eyes wonderin'

what we'd do next day, I ree-collected, Levin, that there was four tarrapins down in the cellar,--black tarrapin, that had been put there six months before. I said to mother: 'I 'spect them ole tarrapins is dead an' starved, but I'll go see.'

"I found 'em under the wood-pile, an' they didn't smell nor nothin', so I took 'em all four up to mother an' put 'em on the kitchen table befo'

the fire, an' I devilled 'em every way to wake up, an' crawl, and show some signs of life. No, they was stone dead!

"'Well, mother,' says I, 'put on your bilin' water an' we'll see if dead tarrapin is fit fur to eat!' She smiled through her cryin', and put the water on, an' when it began to bubble in the pot, I lifted up one of them tarrapins an' dropped him in the bilin' water, an' Jack, I'll be dog-goned if them other three tarrapins didn't run right off the table an' drop on to the flo' an' skeet for that cellar door!

"I caught 'em an' biled 'em, an' as we sat there eatin' stewed tarrapin without no salt, or sherry wine, or coffee, or even corn-bread, we heard somethin' like paper scratchin' on the window, an' mother fell back and clasped her hands, an' said, 'There, do you hear the ghost?'

"I rushed to the door an' hopped into the yard, an' not a livin'

creature did I see; but there on the window-shelf was packages of salt, coffee, tea, and flour, and a half a dollar in silver! I run back in the house, white as a ghost myself, an' I cried out, 'Mother, it's father's sperrit come again!'

"She made me git on my knees an' pray with her to give poor father's spirit comfort in his home or in heaven!"

CHAPTER XVII.

SABBATH AND CANOE.

They now approached an island with low bluffs, on which appeared a considerable village, s.h.i.+ning whitely amid the straight brown trunks of a grove of pine-trees; but no people seemed moving about it, and they saw but a single vessel at anchor in the thoroughfare or strait they steered into--a canoe, which revealed on her bow, as they rounded to beside her, a word neither Levin nor Jack could read, except by hearsay: _The Methodist_.

"Jack," said Levin, "that was a big pine-tree the parson hewed his canoe outen. She fell like cannon, going off inter the swamp. She's a'most five fathom long, an' a man can lie down acrost her. She's to carry the Methodis' preachers out to the islands."

"Hadn't we better wake _him_ up now?" said Jack Wonnell; "I 'spect you want a drink, Levin?"

"Yes; I got a thirst on me like fire," Levin exclaimed. "I could do somethin' wicked now, I 'spect, for a drink of that brandy."

Mooring against the sh.o.r.e, Levin went to his pa.s.senger, who was still in deep sleep stretched upon the bare floor of the hold or cabin--a brawny, wiry man, with strong chin and long jaws, and his reddish, dark beard matted with the blood that had spilled from his disfigured eye, and now disguised nearly one half his face, and gave him a wild, bandit look.

"Cap'n! mister! boss! wake up! We have come to Deil's Island."

The long man, lying on his back, seemed unable to turn over upon his side, though he muttered in his stirred sleep such words as Levin could not understand:

"The darbies, Patty! Make haste with them darbies! Put the nippers on her wrists an' twist 'em. Ha! the mort is dying. Well, to the garden with her!"

At this he awoke, and turned his cold, light eyes on Levin, and leaped to his feet.

"Did you hear me?" he cried. "It was only nums, kid, and jabber of a nazy man. Some day this sleep-talk will grow my neck-weed. Don't mind me, Levin! Come, lush and c.o.c.k an organ with me, my bene cove!"

"If you mean brandy," Levin said, "I must have some or I'll jump out of my skin. I feel like the man with the poker was a-comin'."

Joe Johnson gave him the jug and held it up, and the boy drank like one desperate.

"How the young jagger lushes his jockey," the tall man muttered. "He's in Job's dock to-day. I'll take no more. A b.l.o.o.d.y fool I was all yesterday, an' oaring with my picture-frame. What place is this?"

"Deil's Island, sir."

"Ha! so it is. 'Twas Devil's Island once, till the Methodies changed it fur politeness. This is the camp-meetin', then? Yer, Wonnell, take this piece of money, an' go to some house an' fetch us a bite of dinner.

We'll wait fur you."

The tall man led the way to the heart of the grove of pines, where the seeming town was found--a deserted religious encampment of durable wooden sh.e.l.ls, or huts, in concentric circles of horseshoe shape, and at the open end of the circle was the preaching-stand, a shed elevated above the empty benches and pegs of removed benches, and which had a wide shelf running across the whole front for the preacher's Bible, and to receive his thwacks as he walked up and down his platform.

It looked a little mysterious now, with the many evidences of a large human occupation in the recent summer, to see this naked town and hollow pulpit lying so suggestively under the long moan of the pine-trees, conferring together like dread angels in council, and expressing at every rising breeze their impatience with the sins of men.

At times the great branches paused awhile, scarcely murmuring, as if they were brooding on some question propounded in their council, or listening to human witnesses below; and then they would gravely converse, as the regular zephyrs moved in and out among them, and pause again, as if their decision was almost dreaded by themselves. At intervals, a stern spirit in the pines would rise and thunder and shake the shafts of the trees, and others would answer him, and patience would have a season again. And so, with scarcely ever a silence that remained more than a moment, this council went on all day, continued all night, was resumed as the sun arose to comfort the world again, ceased not when the rainbow hung out its perennial a.s.surance upon the storm, and typified to trembling wors.h.i.+ppers the great synod of the Creator, in everlasting session, ready to smite the world with fire, but suspending sentence in the evergreen pity of G.o.d.

In one of the deserted sh.e.l.ls, or "tents," of pine, with neatly s.h.i.+ngled roof, facing the preaching-booth, Joe Johnson and Levin Dennis found benches, and, at the tall man's example, Levin also lighted a pipe, and looked out between the escapes of smoke at Tangier Sound, deserted as this camp-ground on the Sabbath, since the wors.h.i.+ppers had reached home from church in their canoes. He thought of his lonely mother in the town of Princess Anne, wondering where he was, and of the Sundays fast speeding by and bringing him to manhood, with no change in their condition for the better, but penury and disappointment, a vague expectation of the dead to return, and deeper intemperance of the dead man's son and widow's only hope. He would have cried out with a sense of misery contagious from the music of those pines above him, perhaps, if the brandy had not begun to creep along his veins and s.h.i.+ne bold in his large, girlish eyes.

"Levin," said Joe Johnson, "don't you like me?"

"Yes, Mr. Johnson, I think I does, 'cept when you use them quare words I can't understan'."

"I'm dead struck with you, Levin," Joe Johnson said. "I want to fix you an' your mother comfortable. You're blood stock, an' ought to be stabled on gold oats."

He drew the canvas bag of eagles and half-eagles out of his trousers, and held its mouth open for Levin to feast his eyes.

"Thar," said he, "I told you, Levin, I was a-goin' to give you one of them purties. I've changed my mind; I'm a-goin' to give you five of 'em!"

"My Lord!" exclaimed Levin; "that's twenty-five dollars, ain't it, sir?"

"Oll korrect, Levin. Five of them finniffs makes a quarter of a hundred dollars--more posh, Levin, I 'spect, than ever you see."

"I never had but ten, sir, at a time, an' that I put in this boat, and Jimmy Phoebus put ten to it, an' that paid for her."

"What a stingy pam he was to give you only ten!" Joe Johnson exclaimed, with disgust. "Ain't I a better friend to ye? Yer, take the money _now_!"

He pressed the gold pieces ostentatiously upon the boy, who looked at them with fear, yet fascination.