University of Virginia Library

17. CHAPTER XVII.
THE PRICE OF BLOOD.

Deacon Absalom Pinchbeck was seated in his back-parlor,
in front of his writing-desk. It was an early hour of
the same evening of the tete-a-tete between Newton Stanhope
and Rosalind Clendennan, as described in the preceding
chapter, and the night following the recapture of
little Ellen by the Burglar. The lighted gas, just in front
of the worthy Deacon, poured a bright light upon his pale
face, and clearly revealed an expression that would have
perplexed an experienced physiognomist. It was an expression
that seemed to denote a pitched battle between
grasping avarice and paltry cowardice; and during the
continuance of the strife, each combatant by turns appeared
to get the upper hand of his antagonist. Occasionally
there would be a kind of resolute twinkle of the small grey

eyes, and a thin, meagre, half-starved, sardonic smile,
would peep out around the sensual mouth, make a timid
advance, and beat a hasty retreat. Then the eyes would
enlarge, and look frightened, the under jaw would drop a
little, and the thick, nether lip would turn ashy, hesitate,
and grow tremulous.

The Deacon was alone, so far as having a human companion—but
dark, guilty thoughts were with him; and
each thought seemed to be attended by a fearful spectre,
whose presence could be felt rather than seen; for every
now and then the Deacon would look hurriedly around,
as if half-expecting some frightful apparition in a tangible
shape; and even his own shadow on the wall, more than
once caused him to start with a nervous thrill of terror.

“O Lord!” he muttered; “be kind and gracious to Thy
poor humble servant, who seeks wealth only that he may
do good! Help me to succeed in this, O Lord! preserve
and prosper me—restore my dear child to health—and
bless us with Thy Divine Grace—and I solemnly promise
to give largely to the church in which I worship Thee, and
freely to the poor who may need pecuniary aid to save
them from death! For the Redeemer's sake! Amen.”

Having uttered this selfish prayer, and insulted Heaven
with its blasphemy, the Deacon comforted himself with the
idea that he was really very pious, and that, consequently,
the Lord must be on his side. He felt strengthened with
this reflection, and thought he could safely venture to go
on with his guilty purpose. There was a dirty little scrap
of paper lying on the open lid of the desk before him; and
he picked it up, and read it for the twentieth time. There
was nothing very remarkable in the words it contained; but
the writing itself looked like crow-tracks, and the spelling
was such as no orthographer has sanctioned. It appeared

to have a charm for the worthy Deacon, however; and so
we transcribe it, verbatim et literatim:

“Yu No Hoo.”

“Yes, it must be that he has got the girl again,” mused
the Deacon; “this could have come from nobody but Mulwrack.
What a hardened scoundrel he is—to charge such
an enormous sum for such a trifle. I've a great notion not
to give it—it takes every cent I can raise, without selling
a house or a piece of land. Confound the thing! if I hadn't
told him I'd do it, like a fool, I could have got him to do it
for less—I know I could. I'm always just such a fool when
I get anxious—always getting swindled and cheated. And
then, if it really should turn out nothing after all, I never
should sleep again, for thinking of those ten thousand.
I've the money here, all counted,” he continued, tapping a
drawer. “I thought it was just as well to have it on hand,
even if I shouldn't pay it out. Confound the thing! suppose
he should bungle, or the affair get wind!” The Deacon
stopped and shuddered. “No, no—I'd better not; no,
I won't—for I might not get the fortune after all. I have
half a notion to tell my wife, and get her advice. No, I
won't tell her—women can't keep secrets—and Mrs. Pinchbeck
might box my ears. Confound the thing! I'll surprise
her with the fortune, and see her stare—that is—
that is, I mean, if I conclude to do it. Well, I don't, know
—I don't know. I'll wait and hear what the scoundrel
says, before I decide. Oh! if the Lord would only take
the child, and save me the ten thousand—and—and—the
other!”

Here the Deacon tumbled over some loose papers on his

desk, got his cash-book, made a few entries, looked at his
watch, and was about to leave the room, to go and see his
little boy, who had gone to bed, suffering from what was
supposed to be the effects of a severe cold, when his eye
chanced upon an evening paper, lying on the table.

“Ah!” he said, picking it up—“I must just glance at
the foreign news.”

He again seated himself at the desk, and for a few minutes
very quietly ran his eye over the intelligence by the
last European steamer. Suddenly he gave a violent start,
and uttered an exclamation of profound astonishment.
Then clutching the paper, as a miser would his purse,
while his whole frame trembled, he eagerly, with distended
eyes, re-read the paragraph which had been the innocent
cause of such a heavy shock to his nervous system.

“Well,” he said, looking up at the wall, at an angle of
about forty-five degrees, “who would have thought it?”

As the wall made no reply to this, he repeated the observation,
and then re-read the paragraph. Then looking
up at the wall again, he exclaimed:

“Well, I never!”

This was said so seriously, with such emphatic earnestness,
that any one, to have heard it, must have felt convinced
that the worthy Deacon spoke the truth, and that
in fact he had “never.”

Just at this juncture, the door was thrown quickly open,
and Mrs. Pinchbeck sailed in, with the stately majesty of
a queen, and with a heavy frown presiding over the angles
of the crow's-feet. From that clouded brow, the Deacon
readily conjectured that a matrimonial storm was about to
burst upon his devoted head; and he hastened to fortify
himself against it, by jumping up and placing his chair between
himself and his rouge-blooming companion.

“Yes, you may well dodge, you unfeeling brute!” cried

the amiable Mrs. Pinchbeck, in a towering passion. “If
I get to you, I'll make your ears ring, I promise you!”

“What have I done, my dear?” whined the trembling
Deacon, keeping his eyes warily upon his bigger and better
half, just as a pugilist would watch his opponent, in order
to dodge his blow.

“Done!” half shrieked the enraged better-half; “you've
done nothing! You're a fool! a knave! an idiot! an unfeeling,
ugly brute! There is poor Nelson up stairs,
a-dying—and you havn't been near him! I only hope he
may live to strangle his beast of a father!”

“Thank you, my dear; but if he's dying, he won't, you
know.” Deacon Pinchbeck was not in a mood for jesting
—but this half-jocular expression was compelled out of him,
as it were, by the force of circumstances. “But is the
child really sick, my love?” he hastened to inquire, with
an anxious, troubled look.

“Come and see, if you want to know—if you care to
know—you brutish, lazy drone!” replied Mrs. Pinchbeck,
leading the way out of the apartment, in the same stately
manner in which she had sailed into it.

The Deacon was agitated by so many contending
emotions, that he was obliged to steady himself by the
railing, as he ascended the stairs behind his queenly wife.
On entering the sleeping apartment of his son, he found he
had some fever, and perceived a difficulty in his breathing;
but attributing both to the effects of an ordinary cold, he
merely said:

“Oh! poh! poh! my dear—there is nothing the matter
—nothing serious, I mean; he will be well in the morning;
I have some important business to attend to; excuse me—
I will go and pray for him;” and Deacon Pinchbeck, with
a bow and a scrape, retired; and Mrs. Deacon Pinchbeck

threw herself upon the bed, alongside of her son, in a fit
of sullen anger.

No sooner had the Deacon reached the back-parlor
again, than he hurried to the light, and again feasted his
eyes upon the paragraph, which he had already read some
three or four times. It was a little singular, certainly,
that those few lines should have been found there by him,
at just such a time; and seemed, to say the least, a peculiar
coincidence. The paragraph alluded to, ran as follows:

“John De Carp Montague, of Welden Park, the last
possessor of what is known as the Welden Estate, was
taken suddenly ill, on the 10th ult., and expired within
twenty-four hours, deeply regretted by a large circle of
friends. What is a little curious, no heir to this immense
estate, which is said to be worth, at the very least, some
ten thousand pounds per annum, has as yet been found. It
is supposed that the fortunate inheritor is somewhere in the
United States—perhaps in indigent circumstances.”

It will be readily perceived, that this public announcement,
corroborating as it did the statement set forth by
the mysterious paper in the possession of the Burglar, made
a powerful impression upon the mind of one as grasping
and avaricious as Deacon Pinchbeck. The great doubt of
positive inheritance, which had thus far kept in check the
guilty design of his soul, was now removed, and he was
ready to stain his hands with the innocent blood of the
helpless little orphan, to secure the fortune within his
grasp. He never doubted that the paper referred to contained
a statement of facts—for the family of Stanhope
was known to him, and he knew there was some kind of
relationship between Mrs. Stanhope and his wife; but so
long as John De Carp Montague might live, he could not
be benefitted by the death of Ellen Norbury, and this made

him hesitate. But here seemed a positive certainty—remove
Ellen, and his wife was the next legal claimant—and
what was the obstacle to be overcome, when compared with
the result?

“And even if the crime should be found out,” he reasoned,
“and it should be proved that I was accessory before
the fact—which is hardly possible—and yet admit all
this for the sake of argument—what could the law do with
a man worth fifty thousand dollars a year? Poh! poh!
the idea of any thing very dangerous, is absurd. Why, I
could buy up the lawyers, the jury, the public press, which
is public opinion, and, if necessary, even the Governor
himself. And even then, admitting that the worst should
come to the worst, would not Nelson be the heir after his
mother? and should I fail to make such a trifling venture
for my dear son? I'll do it—yes, I'll do it. It can't
surely be any great crime to put that little girl out of the
way, if one only looks at it in the right light. She is
miserable here, of course; and who knows but the Lord
would look upon it as an act of charity, to put her out of
her misery. It must be a good act; and the more I think
of it, the more I feel convinced that it is. She's got no
family to leave behind her—she's got no friends or relations
to mourn her loss—she is certainly unhappy in this world
—and so what is to hinder its being a good act to send her
to the next? I can build a church with that money, and
who knows but she is an infidel? I can give bountifully
to the poor, whom she might be too proud to notice; and I
can—in short, I can do a world of good, of which the Lord
will approve. And then Mulwrack is shrewd, cunning, and,
no doubt, honest in his way—so that should even he be detected,
which is hardly probable, I do not think he would
blow on me, considering I pay him his price. Confound
the thing! I'll do it—yes, I'll do it. Nothing venture, nothing

have, is a true maxim, in some cases, and I'll make
the venture.”

Thus soliloquized Deacon Pinchbeck—relieving the compunctions
of conscience, as many another has done, and
many another will do, by the fallacious reasoning, that evil
may be done that good may follow. Beware—oh! beware
of that snare of Satan! The victim lured into its meshes,
is doomed to ruin and death. Remember engrave the
sacred truth upon the inner tablet of your heart, and remember—
No evil can be justified! God our Father is pure
and holy—and nothing that is pure and holy, can sanction
evil, be it great or small!

Scarcely had Deacon Pinchbeck finished his soliloquy,
when he heard the street bell ring; and starting to his
feet, he made an effort to appear composed and indifferent,
and hastened out of the room.

“I'll answer the bell myself, Catharine,” he called to the
servant, whom he heard ascending the kitchen stairs; and
proceeding to the door, he leisurely opened it.

As he had expected, James Mulwrack, the Burglar,
stood before him.

“Walk in, sir,” said the Deacon, making a sign of
caution. “Quite a pleasant evening—though a little
cool.”

Mulwrack uttered a sort of growl in reply; and having
fastened the door, the Deacon led the way into the back-parlor.
As soon as he had locked this door against intrusion,
he said:

“You are a bold man, Mr. Mulwrack. How did you
know but I would betray you to the police, and bring you
into a trap here?”

“Because, in the first place, I knowed you was as big a
— villain as me,” returned the robber, with one of his
peculiar chuckles; “and wouldn't like to have the beak's

fingers in your dish, any more'n me. And besides,” he
added, slightly displaying the handle of a knife, “I knowed
you wasn't ready to have your throat cut yit awhile;
which, by —! I'll do, if you ever try to come any of
your foul games over this child.”

“Oh, of course, I was only jesting, my friend,” returned
Pinchbeck, turning pale, and getting a little nervous.

“In course—I knowed you was,” rejoined the other,
taking a seat, and looking rather suspiciously around him.
“Well,” he continued, “now to business. D'ye git my
letter?”

“I must caution you not to speak quite so loud,” said
the Deacon, picking up the dirty scrap of paper lying on
his writing-desk. “Is this what you mean?”

“Well, yes, that's it,” replied the Burglar, taking it
from the Deacon's hand, tearing it in pieces, and throwing
the whole into the fire. “Mag did that,” he continued;
“she's some'at of a scholar, Mag is—I can't write myself.
And arter I'd got it writ,” he pursued, “it bothered me,
like sin, to git it to you. You see, I didn't like to leave
my crib in the day-time; and Mag she'd fell down and got
a bad face, so that she didn't like to go; but she went and
got a boy to take it, and that did jest as well. Well, what
have you got to say to it? I 'spect your mind's made up,
one way or t'other, by this time.”

“And you have really got the child back again?”

“Didn't that there letter say so?”

“Certainly—at least so I understood it—the hand being
a little cramped.”

“Whose hand?”

“I mean the writing.”

“Oh, yes.”

“By-the-by, where did you find the girl?”

“Well, that, I believe, is my business, and haint got

nothing to do with this here,” replied Mulwrack, rather
gruffly. “The long and short on't is, is you going to do
what you said you would?”

“Pray, don't be so hasty!” answered the Deacon; “you
hardly give one time to think.”

“Better take a couple of years,” sneered Mulwrack.
And then he added, with a savage scowl: “The long and
short on't is, if you don't come to the pint, one way or
t'other, right quick, I'll be tempted to break your head, and
put out. What I does, is always in arnest—and I can't
stand trifling from nobody.”

“Oh, certainly—yes—well—certainly—that's right,”
said the Deacon, with some confusion. “Well—yes—I
think, on the whole, I'll—You couldn't do it for less,
eh?”

“No!” growled Mulwrack; “and I'll not do it at all, if
you fool round much longer.”

“But if I should pay you this money—a tremendous
big sum, you know—if I should pay you this, in good hard
gold—and you should do the—the—a—ah—a—what you
agree to, you know—and you should ever get found out,
you wouldn't blow on me, would you?

“No, I'm not such a — villain as to peach,” returned
the Burglar, in a tone of honest indignation.

“Well, I suppose I can see the girl, and be sure, before
you—before it is—ah—done?”

“Sartin—that's fair, if you're in 'arnest; and, for that
matter, you may stop and see me strangle her, if you like.”

“Oh! no! no! I thank you—nothing of that kind!”
cried the Deacon, much horrified. “No! no! Mr. Mulwrack—I
could take no pleasure in that kind of thing. I
am a church-going man, sir, and would not offend the Lord,
(who has been very kind to His poor, humble servant,) by
looking upon—upon—a—ah—that kind of thing. But I

suppose I can see her to-night—just to be sure she's the
one?”

“Oh, yes—just plank, to show you're in 'arnest, and
come with me, and I'll take you right to her,” replied the
robber.

“What do you mean by plank, Mr. Mulwrack?”

“Why, jest down with the tin, the shiners, the dust, the
dough, or whatever you choose to call it.”

“Oh! you mean the money?”

“In course.”

“But business is business, my friend; and so I trust I
shall be allowed to retain the amount, till I am satisfied
all is right?” said the wary Deacon.

“Sartin, if you'll fetch it along with you—for I can't
be running up here all the time,” answered Mulwrack.

The Deacon wriggled about for a few minutes, uncertain
what to do. He did not like to part with the money, without
being sure that the Burglar really had the girl in his
possession; he did not like to go with him, to see for himself;
and he was too anxious to have the foul deed perpetrated,
to think of putting the affair off till another time.
But at last, after some rumination, he concluded to go, and
just see the child; and if she were really the one he had
once catechised in that same back parlor, he would know
that, so far, the Burglar had not deceived him in his statements;
and, this being the case, he thought he might safely
venture to trust to his honor, as a ruffian, to fulfil the rest
of the bloody compact.

“Well,” said the Deacon, at length, “suppose I meet
you at the corner of Seventh and Fitzwater streets, some
ten or fifteen minutes hence? as our being seen together,
might possibly, should any thing occur, attach suspicion
to me.”

“That'll do,” replied the Burglar, rising; “I'll be where

you say; but don't keep me waiting too long. You'll be
ready to plank, I s'pose?”

“Pay, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, certainly.”

“All right, Deacon—just show me out.”

Having seen the robber into the street, the Deacon
hastened back into the room, and locked the door. He
then opened a drawer in his desk, and took out ten bags,
each containing a thousand dollars in gold. The combined
weight of these was rather heavy; and for a few minutes
the good man pondered the best plan of carrying the
“price of blood,” with the least degree of exposure. At
last he decided to tie the ten bags in two separate handkerchiefs,
and suspend these, one on each side of him, by a
strap across the shoulders, in the same manner that he had
once carried his goods, in the days when he was a mere
pedlar. By putting on a cloak, the strap and handkerchiefs
would be completely concealed; and thus equipped,
and prepared for a new adventure, he sallied forth, to keep
his appointment with the Burglar.

But scarcely had he turned the first corner, after leaving
his house, when he met an old friend, who would enter
into conversation, in spite of him; and this resulted in
making him half an hour too late for his appointment.
At Seventh and Fitzwater streets, Mulwrack was not to be
found; and the Deacon had the satisfaction of waiting for
his partner in crime, till he himself was on the point of
leaving and returning home.

The two worthies got together at last—Mulwrack cursing
Pinchbeck for his tardiness, and declaring that he had
been again to his house, to see what had become of him.
The Deacon apologised, gave a true reason for his delay,
and the two set off together, going down into the very

heart of the Infected District. But when the Deacon
came to the hovel, in which Mulwrack said little Ellen was
confined, his courage failed him, and he declared he would
not go in.

“I'll trust to you,” he said, hurriedly; “I'll trust to
you. Here is the money, all counted—take it, and let me
go home.”

He hastily transfered the gold to Mulwrack, who, as
he received it, said:

“Well, this here feels all right; and if I find it so,
depend upon it, Deacon Pinchbeck, your woman will be a
heir in less than an hour. Good-bye, old feller; and if we
shouldn't meet agin in this world, I'll look for you in
Brimstone Corner.”

He shook the trembling hand of Pinchbeck, who turned
and fled through the darkness of the night, accompanied
by a thousand guilty thoughts and their attendant spectres,
and closely watched by that All-Seeing Eye which never
sleeps.