University of Virginia Library

19. CHAPTER XIX.

The old hypocrite sought me out again that night.
So far, it appears that my part had been acted with
tolerable success. My impetuosity, which had been
feigned, of course, and the vehemence with which I
denounced mankind in declaring my own destitution,
were natural enough to a youth who had lost
his money, and had no other resources; and I was
marked out by the tempter as one so utterly hopeless
of the world's favors, as to be utterly heedless
of its regards. Of such, it is well known, the best
materials for villany are usually compounded, and
our puritan, at a glance, seems to have singled me
out as his own. We had stopped to repair some
accident to the machinery, and while the passengers
were generally making merry on land, I strolled
into the woods that immediately bordered upon the
river, taking care that my reverend fox, whose eye
I well knew was upon me, should see the course I

took. I was also careful not to move so rapidly as
to make it a difficult work to overtake me. As I
conjectured would be the case, he followed and
found me out. It was night, but the stars were
bright enough, and the fires which had been kindled
by the boat hands, gave sufficient light for all ordinary
objects of sight. I sat down upon the bluff of
the river, screened entirely by the overhanging
branches which sometimes almost met across the
stream, where it was narrow, from the opposite
banks. I had not been here many minutes before
the tempter was beside me.

“You are sad, my friend—your losses trouble you.
But distrust not Providence which takes care of all
us, though, perhaps, we see not the hand that feeds
us, and fancy all the while that it is our own. You
will be provided when you least look for it; and
to convince you of the truth of what I say, let me
tell you that it is not in goodly counsel alone that I
would serve you, I will help you in other matters—
I can help you to the means of life—nay, of wealth.
Ha! do you start? Do you wonder at what I say?
Wonder not—be not surprised—be not rash—refuse
not your belief, for of a truth, and by the blessing
of God, will I do for you all that I promise, if so be
that I can find you pliant and willing to strive for
the goodly benefits which I shall put before you.”

“What! you would make me a preacher, would

you? You would have me increase the host of
solemn beggars that infest the country with stolen
or silly exhortations, stuffed with abused words,
and full of oaths and blasphemy. But you are mistaken
in your man. I would sooner rob a fellow
on the highway, than pilfer from his pockets while
I preach. None of your long talks for me—tell me
now of some bold plan for taking Mexico, which,
one day or other, the southwest will have to take,
and I am your man. I care not how bold your
scheme—there is no one so perfectly indifferent to
the danger as he who cannot suffer the loss of a single
sixpence by rope or bullet.”

“You do not say, my friend, that you would willingly
do such violence as this you speak of, for the
lucre of gain. Surely, you would not willingly slay
your brother for the sake of his gold?”

“Ask me no questions, reverend sir,” I replied,
moodily. “I am not in the humour to be catechised.”

“And yet, my friend,” he continued, “I much fear
me that your conscience is scarcely what it should
be. This was my surmise to day as I beheld you
with those unholy cards in your hands. Did I not
see you, while giving them that sort of distribution
which is sinfully styled shuffling—did I not see you
practising an art which is commonly held to be unfair
among men of play. Ha! my son—am I not

right?—have I not smitten you under the fifth
rib?”

“And what should you, a preacher of the Gospel
as you call yourself, what should you know about
shuffling?”

“Preacher of the Gospel I am, my friend,” was his
cool reply. “I am an expounder of the Holy Scriptures,
though it may be an unworthy one. I have
my license from the Alabama conference, for the
year 18—, which, at a convenient season, I am not
unwilling that you should see. Yet, though I am
a preacher of the Blessed Word, I have not, and to
my shame be it spoken, been always thus. In my
youth, I am sad to say, I was much given to carnal
indulgence, and many were the evil practices of my
body, and many the evil devices of my heart. In this
time of my ignorance and sin, I was a great lover
of these deadly instruments of evil; and among my
fellows I was accounted a proficient, able to teach in
all the arts of play. It was thus that I acquired the
knowledge—knowledge which hurts—to see when
thou designedst a trick in which thou didst yet fail,
to win the money of thy fellow. I will show thee
that trick, my friend, that thou mayst know, I tell
thee nothing but the truth.”

Here was a proposition from a parson. I closed
with him instantly.

“You will do me a great service, I assure you.”

“But, my friend, you would not make use of thy
knowledge to despoil thy fellow of his money.”

“Would I not? For what else would I know the
art?”

“But if I could teach thee other and greater arts
than these—if I could show thee how to make thy
brother's purse thine own, at once, and without the
toil of doling it out dollar by dollar, I fear me, my
friend, that thou wouldst apply this knowledge also
to purposes of evil—that thou wouldst not regard the
sinfulness of such performances, in the strong desire
of lucre which I see is in thy heart—that thou
wouldst seek an early chance to put in practice the
information which I give thee.”

“And wherefore give it me then? Of a certainty
I would employ it, as you see, to increase my means
of life.”

“Alas! my friend, but thy necessity must be great
—else would I look upon thee with misgivings and
much horror.”

“Great indeed! I tell you, reverend sir, that but
for your coming, it is ten to one I had sent a bullet
through my own head, or buried myself in the
waters of the `Bigby.' ”

“Thou surely didst not meditate an act so heinous.”

“Look here!” and I showed him my pistol as I

spoke. He coolly took it into his hands, threw up
the pan, and with his finger assured himself that it
was primed. His tone was altered instantly. He
dropped the drawling manner of the exhorting; and
though his conversation was still sprinkled with the
canting slang of the itinerant preacher, which long
use had probably made habitual, yet he evidently
ceased to think it necessary to play the hypocrite
with me any longer.

“You are too bold a fellow,” he said, “to throw
away your life in such a manner, and that too because
of the want of money. You shall have money
—as much as you wish of it; and I take it, you
would infinitely prefer shooting him who has it,
rather than yourself—”

“Nay, nay, not that neither, reverend sir. There's
some danger of being hung for such a matter.”

“Not if you have money. You forget, my friend,
your own principles. You said, and said truly,
that money was the power which made virtue and
opinion take all shapes among men; and when this
is the case, justice becomes equally accommodating.
You shall have this money—you shall compel this
opinion as you please, so that you may do what you
please, and be safe—only let me know that you
wish this knowledge.”

I grasped his hand violently.

“Ask the wretch at the gallows if he wishes life,
and the question is no less idle than that which you
put to me.”

“Come farther back from the river—some of
these boatmen may be pulling about; and such matters
as I have to reveal, need no bright blaze like
that which gleams upon us from yon forge. That
wood looks dismal enough behind us—let us go
there.”

Thither we went, and having buried ourselves
sufficiently among the thick undergrowth to be free
of any danger of discovery or interruption, he began
the narrative which follows; and which, together
with much additional but unnecessary matter, I have
abridged to my own limits.

“There was a boy,” said he, “a poor boy of West
Tennessee, who knew no parents, and had no friends
—who worked for his bread and education, such as
it was, at the same moment, and in spite of all his
labours, found, at the end of every year, after casting
up his accounts, that he had gained during its passage
many more kicks than coppers.”

“No uncommon fortune in a country like ours.”

“So he thought it,” continued the parson, availing
himself of my interruption; “so he thought it.”
He wasted no time and feeling in idle regrets of a
condition which he found was rather more general

than grateful to mankind, and one day he asked
himself how many years he was willing to expend
in trying to get a living in an honest way.”

“Well—a reasonable question. What answer?”

“A reasonable one—like the question. Life is
short even if we have money, said he to himself;
but we have no life at all without it. Following a
plough gives me none—I must follow something
else.”

“Well?”

“He resolved on being honest no longer.”

“Indeed! But how could he put his resolution
into effect in a country like ours, where we are inundated
with so much professional virtue?”

“He put on a professional cloak.”

“Excellent.”

“But, though commencing a new, and, as it
proved, a profitable business, he was not so selfish
as to desire a monopoly of it—on the contrary, a
little reflection suggested to him a grand idea, which
was evolved by the very natural reflection which
you made just now.”

“What was that?”

“Simply that his condition was not that of an individual,
but of thousands.”

“Well—that is a trueism. What could he make
of that?”

“A brotherhood.”

“How?”

“He conceived that, if there were thousands in
his condition, there were thousands governed by his
feelings and opinions. We all have a family likeness
in our hearts, however disguised by habits,
manners, education; but when habits, manners, education
are agreed, and to these is added a prevailing
necessity, then the likeness becomes identity, and
the boy who, on reaching manhood, resolved to be
no longer despicably honest, felt assured that his
resolve could be made the resolves of all who are
governed by his necessities.”

“A natural reflection enough—none more so.”

“Accordingly, his chief labour was that of founding
an order—a brotherhood of those who have
learned to see, in the principles which ostensibly
govern society, a nice system of cobwebs, set with
a double object, as snares to catch and enslave the
feeble and confiding, and defences for the protection
of the more cunning reptiles that sit in the centre,
and prey at ease upon the marrow and fat of the toiling
insects they entangle.”

“Such is certainly a true picture of our social
condition. Man is the prey of man—the weak of
the strong—the unwary of the cunning. The more
black, the more bloated the spider, the closer his

web, and the greater the number and variety of his
victims. He sits at ease, and they plunge incontinently
into his snare.”

Such were some of the reflections with which I
regaled my companion. He proceeded with increasing
earnestness.

“He travelled through all the slave states making
proselytes to his doctrine. With the cassock of a
sanctified profession which we no more dare assail
now than we did four hundred years ago, he made
his way not only at little or no expense, but with
great profit. On all hands he found friends and followers—men
ready to do his bidding—to follow
him in all risks—to undertake all sorts of offences,
and in every respect to be the instruments of his
will, as docile and dependent as those of any oriental
despot known in story. His followers soon grew
numerous, and having them scattered through all
the slave states, and some of the free, he could enumerate
more than fifteen hundred men ready at his
summons and sworn to his allegiance.”

I was positively astounded.

“But you are not serious?”

“As much so as at a camp meeting. There is
not an atom of the best certified texts of Scripture
more true than what I tell you.”

“What! fifteen hundred men—fifteen hundred
in these southern states professing roguery.”

“Nay—not professing roguery—there you are
harsh in your epithet. Professing religion, law,
physic, planting, shopkeeping,—any thing, every
thing, but roguery. They practise roguery, and roguery
of all kinds, I grant you, but no professions
could be more immaculate than theirs.”

“Is it possible!” My wonder could not be concealed,
but I contrived to mingle in some delight
with my tones of astonishment, and my words were
cautiously adapted to second my affectation of delight.

“Yes,” he continued, “by the overruling influence
of this boy as I may call him, though now a
full grown man, such has become the spread of his
principles, and such is the power which he wields.
Yet, in all his labours, mark me, he himself commits
no act of injustice with his own hand. He
manages—he directs others—he sets the spring in
motion and counsels the achievement, yet no blow
is struck by his hand. He is above the petty details
of his own plans, and leaves to other and minor
spirits the task of executing the little offices by
which the grand design is carried out, and the work
effected.”

“Why, this man is a genius.”

My unaffected expression of admiration warmed
my companion, and he soon convinced me not only
that he had all the while spoken of himself, but that

he was remarkably sensitive on the subject of his
own greatness. Discovering this weakness, I plied
him by oblique flatteries of the wonderful person
whom he had described to me, and he became seemingly
almost entirely unreserved in his communications.
He related at large the history of the clan—
the Mystic Confederacy, as it was termed—as it has
already been partially narrated to the reader; and
my horror and wonder were alike increased at every
step in his progress. I could no longer doubt that
the fellows who murdered William Carrington were a
portion of the same lawless fraternity; and while the
developments of my new acquaintance gave me fresh
hope of being soon able to encounter with those
murderers, they opened my eyes to a greater field
of danger and difficulties than had appeared to them
before. But I did not suffer myself to indulge in
apprehensive musings, and pressed him for an increase
of knowledge; taking care at my each solicitation
to lard my inquiries thick with oily eulogies
upon the great genius who had planned, and so far
executed, his enterprises.

“How has this wonderful man contrived to evade
detection, or suspicion at least? It is not easy to
have a secret kept which is so numerously confided.”

“That is one of the beauties of his scheme, that
he confides little or nothing which affects himself,

and he secures the alliance and obedience of those
only who have secrets of their own much more detrimental
to them if made public than could be any
which they have of his. His art consisted simply
in seeking out those who had secrets of a dangerous
nature. In finding these he found followers. But
though he has not always escaped suspicion—he has
been able always to defy it. Societies have been formed,
schemes laid, companies raised and juries prompted,
to catch him in the act, but all in vain. It is not
easy to entrap a man who has an emissary in every
section of the country. The most active secretaries
of the societies were his creatures—the schemes have
been reported him as soon as laid, and one of his own
right hand men has more than once been an officer
of the company sworn to keep watch over him in
secret.”

“Wonderful man!—and what does he design with
all this power? To rob merely—to procure money
from travellers upon the highway—would not seem
to call for such an extensive association.”

“Perhaps not!—but he has other purposes; and
the time will come, I doubt not, when his performances
will, in no respect, fall short of the power
which he will employ to effect them. When I tell
you of such a man, you see at once that he is no
common robber. Why should he confine himself
to the deeds of one—be assured he will not. You

will see—you will hear yet of his performances, and
I tell you they will be such that the country will
ring with them again.”

“He must be a man of great ambition—he should
be to correspond with the genius which he evidently
has for great achievements. I should like to
know—by my soul, but I could love such a man as
that.”

“You shall know him in season—he is not unwilling
to be known where he himself knows the
seeker, but—”

He paused, and I determined upon giving my
hypocrisy a crowning virtue, if possible, by utterly
overmastering his. I put my hand upon his shoulder
suddenly, and looked him in the face, saying deliberately
at the same time:—

“You are the man himself—I'll swear it.”

“How!” he exclaimed, in some alarm; and I
could see that he fumbled in his bosom as if for a
weapon. “How! you mean not to betray me?”

“Betray you, no. I honour you—I love you.
You have opened a road to me—you have given me
light. An hour ago and I was the most hopeless
benighted wretch under heaven—without money,
without the means of getting it, and fully resolved
on putting a bullet through my head. You have
saved my life—you have saved me.”

He seized my hand with warmth.

“I will be the making of you,” he replied. “I
have the whole southwest in a string, and have only
to pull it to secure a golden draught. You shall be
with me at the pulling.”

“What more he said is unnecessary to my narrative,
though he thought it all important to his. In
brief, he told me that he had concocted his present
schemes for a space of more than twenty years—
from the time that he was fifteen years of age, and
he was now full thirty five; showing by this a commendable
perseverance of purpose, which, in a good
work is seldom shown, and which, in a good work,
must have ensured to any individual a most triumphant
greatness. We did not separate that night
until he had sworn me a member of the “Mystic
Confederacy,” and given me a dozen signs by which
to know my brethren, make myself known, send
tidings and command assistance—acquisitions which
I shuddered to possess, and the consequences of
which, I well knew, would task all my skill and
resolution to escape and evade.