University of Virginia Library

15. XV.
TRAGICAL.

We left the cooper noosed. And we must beg his
pardon for neglecting him so long in that ticklish situation.
It was necessary to bring forward the array of
events to the moment when he heard the noise which
precipitated the leap. That done, the reader is prepared
to learn the nature of that noise; and he will, we
hope, be gratified to know that it is the bustle of Prudence
returning. She flings open the door, and is plunging
straight into the house, bent on the examination of
her coffers, when the lamentable spectacle meets her
eyes.

The chair overthrown, face to the floor and heels up,
as if cowering in fright and horror; the kitchen pole
sagging and shaking with its unusual burden; the red
silk tied to the pole; and John Apjohn tied to the red
silk: this was the tragical picture. As when some foggy
morning Phœbus, belated, having overslept himself, or
lingered too long over the Olympian beef-steaks and
coffee, looks at his watch, cries “Bless me! is it so late?”
claps on his hat, mounts his omnibus, and whips in hot
haste out of the stables of night into the broadway of

the zodiac: like that original red-faced stage-driver,
Prudence, all in a fume, blown as was never fat woman
before, glows in the entrance of the misty and dismal
kitchen; her eyes so inflamed with heat and sweat that
she can hardly discern at first the character of the
ghostly object strung between the zenith and nadir of
that little universe.

Then the truth, or at least a fragment of it, bursts in
upon her preoccupied mind. John has discovered the
robbery and hung himself! The hanging was obvious;
though Prudence, who would have deemed the finding
of superfluous vegetables on the door-latch a very poor
excuse for the deed, and the loss of a large sum of money
the very best excuse, fell naturally into an erroneous
conjecture of the cause.

John's attitude was extraordinary for that of a hanged
man. He did not kick. Was he then past kicking?
No; he had not indulged at all in that little conventionality
of the gallows. He had other work for his legs to
do. They were straightened and stretched to their utmost,
whilst his feet maintained a painful tiptoe posture,
in the effort to avoid the extremely disagreeable exercise
of dancing upon nothing; for the sanguinary handkerchief
had relented a little, and the remorseful pole
had yielded a good deal, so that he could just reach and
support himself on the floor, as the sagacious reader
has no doubt foreseen, having been all this time, like the
cooper, only imperfectly held in suspense.

And there, in the midst of the kitchen, hung, or rather

stood, or partly hung and partly stood, the melancholy
man, considerably dark in the face, his eyes protruded
and rolling, mouth open, and tongue out, with serious
symptoms of asphyxia, and both hands raised, one above
his head, grasping the red halter for a stay, and the other
struggling in terror and haste with the silken knot under
his ear.

“John! John Apjohn!” ejaculated Mrs. J. A., “what
you doing?”

“Ich — ich — yaw!” said John. For you have only
to choke a man sufficiently in order to make him talk
like a Dutchman.

“Be ye dead, John?” cried his spouse.

“Yaw — yaw,” gurgled Meinherr.

“O John!” groaned Prudence, clutching the handkerchief,
and swaying down the gallows to ease his windpipe.
“Tried to hang yourself! Why did you, John?
Oh, dear! About killed ye, has it?”

John essayed to speak, but only croaked and clucked.

“Oh, dear! oh, dear! Misfortins never come singly!
What shall I do, if I lose you and the money too?” Her
mind flew between those two buffeting disasters like a
distracted shuttlecock. “Don't die just at this time,
John! don't. Can't ye git it off now?” And she pulled
the red silk like a bell-rope, in her endeavor to unhang
him.

“C-c-u-t i-it!” cackled John.

“Wal now, you've said it!” exclaimed Prudence.
“Guess you'll git along! Cut a good new han'kerchief

like this 'ere! Why didn't ye take somethin' else, some
old thing, if you was detarmined to hang yourself?
Your Sunday silk! Jest like you, John Apjohn, for all
the world!”

“Knife — in my p-p-pocket!” strangled the cooper.

“Come!” cried Prudy, losing patience. “I wouldn't
try to talk if I couldn't talk sense. Can't you untie
a knot? Take your teeth!” Query: how was he to
apply his incisors to a knot under his own chin? But
Prudy did not consider that little difficulty. “Bite it!”

“C-c-a-n-t!” quacked John.

“Can't! let me then! Why, it's a slip-noose! Why
don't ye slip it? Oh!” moaned Prudence, “if I was
half as sure of gittin' back my money as I be of gittin'
you out of this trap! How did we git robbed, John?”

“Robbed?” said John, in a more human accent.

“Why! didn't you know it? Ain't that what you
went and hung yourself for?”

“No!”

“And — haven't you been to the till?”

“No!” said John, getting his eyes back into his head
again. But the relief was only temporary.

“Haven't you? Then — maybe — wait a minute!”
and in her agitation she let up the pole, which carried
with it the handkerchief, which once more tightened
around John's gullet.

“Oh! what you 'b-b-bout?” he bubbled.

“Hold on!” cried Prudence, “you can stan' it a minute!
I'm dyin' to know!”

“Yiz — iz — ich!” choked the cooper, up again on his
toes.

Prudence, eager as she was to get to the till, stopped
to right the chair and help him up on to it, where he
stood, like a reprieved culprit, with the noose about his
neck; while she snatched the key from the clock, flew to
the chest, unlocked it, and unlocked the till with another
key from beneath it.

Her great fear was that all her money had been
stolen; for the possibility of a burglar taking the trouble
to extract fifty dollars and leave the rest had not entered
her mind. Equally great now was her joy when she saw
the pocket-book in its place and money in the pocket-book.
Her fright, then, had been causeless. There
were two bills on the Manville Bank precisely similar;
and somebody had put a private mark, exactly like her
own, on the extraordinary duplicate. Such were her
reflections as she came out of the bedroom, with delight
on her countenance, and her treasure in her grasp.

John had in the mean time slid the ends of the pole out
of its supports, taken down his gallows, and seated himself,
with it across his lap, on his scaffold. And there he
was, bent double, patiently loosening the tie of his red
choker, when Prudy threw herself on the wood-box, exclaiming,
—

“We hain't been robbed arter all, John! Here's the
wallet and all the money, I s'pose, — though it's the
greatest mystery about that fifty-dollar bill! And oh!
it's well for Abel Dane that he hain't been meddlin' with

our cash. I've bore enough from them Danes. To
think that stuck-up Faustiny had the impudence to fling
one of her nasty tomatuses at me in the street, the trollop!”

John uttered a lugubrious whine, and dropped his
hands from the noose as if he had half a mind to leave it
where it was, get up, and finish the hanging.

“So I KNOW now 'twas one of the Danes that tied 'em
onto our door! And only think! she had the meanness
to twit me of 'em 'fore Mr. Parker! Oh! only give me
a chance, and I'll make her and Abel smart! I'd be
willin' to lose a little money, if I could prove Abel Dane
had stole it. Come, John! don't have that mopin' face
on. You look blue as a whetstun. And don't you go to
hangin' yourself ag'in, if you expect me to help you down,
for I shan't.” Here Prudence, who, in her excitement on
the subject of her neighbors and their insulting ways,
had held the pocket-book open, commenced a more careful
examination of its contents. “Gracious!” she
screamed.

“Was't a spider?” inquired the cooper, in a weak
voice. For Prudence, with all her strength of character
and robustness of frame, had a horror of spiders,
and he was used to hearing her shriek at them.

“That bill, it's gone! We have been robbed!” Again
she turned over the money. “Sure's the world, John!
'thout you have took it. Have you, sir?”

John, who had succeeded in removing his uncomfortable
cravat, was resting the pole on his knee, and

meekly rubbing his throttle, with a most piteous expression.
“No, Prudy; I hain't,” he answered, taking
no interest.

“Then, oh!” Vengeance gleamed in Mrs. Apjohn's
eyes. “The bill ain't lost; for we can both swear to't,
and recover it as stolen property. I left it in Parker's
hands; he must look to Hodge, and Hodge must look to
Abel; and Abel, — let him be prepared to give a pretty
strict account of how he come by that bill, or it'll go
hard with him! He'll have trouble, or I'll miss my
guess! A man that would serve us sech a trick with the
tomatuses would hook our money. O Faustiny! Faustiny!
you'll come down from your high-heeled shoes!
you'll haul in your horns!”

And Prudence, still reeking from her recent exertions,
set off again at full speed for Mr. Parker's office, — the
cooper rolling his eyes after her with feeble astonishment,
foreboding fresh woes, but scarcely comprehending
the seriousness of her charges and threats against
the Danes.