University of Virginia Library

22. CHAPTER XXII.

William Hinkley was all impatience until his little
messenger returned, which she did with a speed which
might deserve commendation in the case of our professional.
Mercury's—stage-drivers and mail-contractors,
hight! He did not withhold it from the little maid, but
taking her in his arms, and kissing her fondly, he despatched
her to her mother, while he wrapped up his pistols
and concealing them in the folds of his coat, hurried
from the house with the anxious haste of one who is going
to seek his prey. He felt somewhat like that broad-winged

eagle which broods on the projecting pinnacle of yonder
rocky peak in waiting for the sea hawk who is stooping
far below him, watching when the sun's rays shall glisten
from the uprising fins of his favourite fish. But it was
not a selfish desire to secure the prey which the terror of
the other might cause him to drop. It was simply to
punish the prowler. Poor William could not exactly tell
indeed why he wished to shoot Alfred Stevens; but his
cause of hostility was not less cogent because it had no
name. The thousand little details which induce our prejudices
in regard to persons, are, singly, worth no one's
thought, and would possibly provoke the contempt of all;
but like the myriad threads which secured the huge frame
of Gulliver in his descent upon Lilliput, they are, when
united, able to bind the biggest giant of us all. The prejudices
of William Hinkley, though very natural in such
a case as his, seemed to him very much like instincts. It
seemed to him, if he once reasoned on the matter, that, as
he had good cause to hate the intruder, so there must be
justification for shooting him. Were this not so, the
policy of hating would be very questionable, and surely
very unprofitable. It would be a great waste of a very
laudable quantity of feeling—something like omitting one's
bullet in discharging one's piece—a profligacy only justifiable
in a feu de joie after victory; where the bullets have
already done all necessary mischief, and will warrant a
small subsequent waste of the more harmless material.

Without designing any such child's play, our rustic
hero, properly equipped with his antique pistols, well
charged, close rammed, three ounce bullets, or nearabouts,
in each, stood, breathing fire but without cooling, on the
edge of the lake, perched on an eminence and looking out
for the coming enemy. He was playing an unwonted
character, but he felt as if it were quite familiar to him.
He had none of that nice feeling which, without impugning
courage, is natural enough to inexperience in such
cases. The muzzles of the pistols did not appear to him
particularly large. He never once thought of his own ribs
being traversed by his three ounce messengers. He had
no misgivings on the subject of his future digestion. He
only thought of that blow from his father's hand—that
keen shaft from the lips of Margaret Cooper—that desolation
which had fallen upon his soul from the scorn of

both; and the vengeance which it was in his power to
inflict upon the fortunate interloper to whose arts he ascribed
all his misfortunes! and with these thoughts his
fury and impatience increased, and he ascended the highest
hill to look out for his foe; descended, in the next
moment, to the edge of the lake, the better to prepare for
the meeting. In this state of excitement the meekness
had departed from his countenance; an entire change of
expression had taken place: he stood up, erect, bold,
eagle-eyed, with the look of one newly made a man by
the form of indomitable will, and feeling, for the first time,
man's terrible commission to destroy. In a moment, with
the acquisition of new moods, he had acquired a new aspect.
Hitherto, he had been tame, seemingly devoid of
spirit—you have not forgotten the reproaches of his cousin,
which actually conveyed an imputation against his
manliness?—shrinking, with a feeling of shyness akin to
mauvaise honte, and almost submitting to injustice, to
avoid the charge of ill-nature. The change that we have
described in his soul, had made itself singularly apparent
in his looks. They were full of a grim determination.
Had he gazed upon his features, in the glassy surface of
the lake beside him, he had probably recoiled from their
expression.

We have seen Mrs. Hinkley sending Stevens forth for
the purpose of recalling her son to his senses, receiving
his repentance, and bringing him once more home into the
bosom of the flock. We have not forgotten the brace of
arguments with which he provided himself in order to
bring about this charitable determination. Stevens was a
shot. He could snuff his candle at ten paces, sever his
bamboo, divide the fingers of the hand with separate bullets
without grazing the skin,—nay, more, as was said in the
euphuistic phraseology of his admirers, send his ball between
soul and body without impairing the integrity of
either. But men may do much shooting at candle or bamboo,
who would do precious little while another is about to
shoot at them. There is a world of difference between
looking in a bull's eye, and looking in the eye of man. A
pistol too, looks far less innocent, regarded through the
medium of a yawning muzzle, than the rounded and neatly
polished butt. The huge mouth seems to dilate as you
look upon it. You already begin to fancy you behold the

leaden mass—the three ounce bullet—issuing from its
stronghold, like a relentless baron of the middle ages,
going forth under his grim archway, seeking only whom
he may devour. The sight is apt to diminish the influence
of skill. Nerves are necessary to such sportsmen, and
nerves become singularly untrue when frowned upon
through such a medium. Under this view of the case, we
are not so sure that the excellence of aim for which Alfred
Stevens has been so much lauded, will make the difference
very material between the parties; and now that he is fairly
roused, there is a look of the human devil about William
Hinkley, that makes him promise to be dangerous. Nay,
the very pistols that he wields, those clumsy, rusty, big
mouthed ante-revolutionary machines, which his stout
grandsire carried at Camden and Eutaw, have a look of
service about them—a grim, veteran-like aspect, that makes
them quite as perilous to face as to handle. If they burst
they will blow on all sides. There will be fragments
enough for friend and foe; and even though Stevens may not
apprehend so much from the aim of his antagonist, something
of deference is due to the possibility of such a concussion,
as will make up all his deficiencies of skill.

But they have not yet met, though Stevens, with praiseworthy
Christianity, is on his way to keep his engagements,
as well to mother as to son. He has his own
pistols,—not made for this purpose—but a substantial pair
of traveller's babes—big of mouth, long of throat, thick of
jaw, keen of sight, quick of speech, strong of wind, and
weighty of argument. They are rifled bores also, and, in
the hands of the owner, have done clever things at bottle
and sapling. Stevens would prefer to have the legitimate
things, but these babes are trustworthy; and he has no
reason to suppose that the young rustic whom he goes to
meet can produce any thing more efficient. He had no
idea of those ancient bull-pups, those solemn ante-revolutionary
barkers, which our grandsire used upon harder
heads than his, at Camden and the Eutaws. He is scarcely
so confident in his own weapons when his eye rests on
the rusty tools of his enemy.

But it was not destined that this fight should take place
without witnesses. In spite of all the precautions of the
parties, and they were honest in taking them, our little
village had its inklings of what was going on. There were

certain signs of commotion and explosion which made
themselves understood. Our little maid, Susan Hinkley,
was the first, very innocently, to furnish a clue to the
mystery. She had complained to her mother that cousin
William had not shot the little guns for her according to his
promise.

“But, perhaps, he didn't want to shoot them, Susan.”

“Yes, mamma, he put them in his pockets. He's carried
them to shoot; and he promised to shoot them for me as
soon as I carried the note.”

“And to whom did you carry the note, Susan?” asked
the mother.

“To the young parson, at uncle William's.”

The mother had not been unobservant of the degree of
hostility which her brother, as well as cousin, entertained
for Stevens. They had both very freely expressed their
dislike in her presence. Some of their conferences had
been overheard and were now recalled, in which this expression
of dislike had taken the form of threats, vague and
purposeless, seemingly, at the time; but which now, taken
in connexion with what she gathered from the lips of the
child, seemed of portentous interest. Then, when she understood
that Stevens had sent a note in reply,—and that
both notes were sealed, the quick, feminine mind instantly
jumped to the right conclusion.

“They are surely going to fight. Get my bonnet,
Susan, I must run to uncle William's, and tell him while
there's time. Which way did cousin William go?”

The child could tell her nothing but that he had taken to
the hills.

“That brother Ned shouldn't be here now! Though I
don't see the good of his being here. He'd only make
matters worse. Run, Susan,—run over to gran'pa Calvert,
and tell him to come and stop them from fighting,
while I hurry to uncle William's. Lord save us!—and let
me get there in time.”

The widow had a great deal more to say, but this was
quite enough to bewilder the little girl. Nevertheless, she
set forth to convey the mysterious message to grand'pa
Calvert, though the good mother never once reflected that
this message was of the sort which assumes the party addressed
to be already in possession of the principal facts.
While she took one route the mother pursued another, and

the two arrived at their respective places at about the same
time. Stevens had already left old Hinkley's when the
widow got there, and the consternation of Mrs. Hinkley
was complete. The old man was sent for to the fields,
and came in only to declare that some such persuasion
had filled his own mind when first the billet of his son had
been received. But the suspicion of the father was of a
much harsher sort than that of the widow Hinkley. In
her sight it was a duel only—bad enough as a duel—but
still only a duel, where the parties incurring equal risks,
had equal rights. But the conception of the affair, as it
occurred to old Hinkley, was very different.

“Base serpent!” he exclaimed—“he has sent for
the good young man only to murder him. He implores
him to come to him, in an artful writing, pretending to be
sorely sorrowful and full of repentance; and he prepares
the weapon of murder to slay him when he comes. Was
there ever creature so base, but I will hunt him out. God
give me strength, and grant that I may find him in season.”

Thus saying, the old man seized his crab-stick, a knotty
club, that had been seasoned in a thousand smokes, and
toughened by the use of twenty years. His wife caught
up her bonnet and hurried with the widow Hinkley in his
train. Meanwhile, by cross-examining the child, Mr. Calvert
had formed some plausible conjectures of what was on
foot, and by the time that the formidable procession had
reached his neighbourhood he was prepared to join it.
Events thickened with the increasing numbers. New
facts came in to the aid of old ones partially understood.
The widow Thackeray, looking from her window, as
young and handsome widows are very much in the habit
of doing, had seen William Hinkley going by towards the
hill, with a very rapid stride and a countenance very much
agitated; and an hour afterwards she had been Brother
Stevens following on the same route—good young man!—
with the most heavenly and benignant smile upon his countenance,—the
very personification of the cherub and the
seraph, commissioned to subdue the fiend.

“Here is some of your treachery, Mr. Calvert. You
have spoiled this boy of mine; turning his head with law
studie, and making him disobedient—giving him counsel
and encouragement against his father—and filling his mind
with evil things. It is all your doing, and your books.

And now he's turned out a bloody murderer, a Papist murderer,
with your Roman Catholic doctrines.”

“I am no Roman Catholic, Mr. Hinkley,” was the
mild reply—“and as for William becoming a murderer,
I think that improbable. I have a better opinion of your
son than you have.”

“He's an ungrateful cub—a varmint of the wilderness,—
to strike the good young man in my own presence—to
strike him with a cowskin—what do you think of that, sir?
answer me that, if you please.”

“Did William Hinkley do this?” demanded the old
teacher earnestly.

“Ay, that he did, did he!”

“I can hardly understand it. There must have been
some grievous provocation?”

“Yes; it was a grievous provocation, indeed, to have
to wait for grace before meat.”

“Was that all? can it be possible!”

The mother of the offender supplied the hiatus in the
story—and Calvert was somewhat relieved. Though he
did not pretend to justify the assault of the youth, he
readily saw how he had been maddened by the treatment
of his father. He saw that the latter was in a high pitch
of religious fury,—his prodigious self-esteem taking part
with it, naturally enough, against a son, who, until this
instance, had never risen in defiance against either. Expostulation
and argument were equally vain with him; and
ceasing the attempt at persuasion, Calvert hurried on with
the rest, being equally anxious to arrest the meditated
violence, whether that contemplated the murderous assassination
which the father declared, or the less heinous proceeding
of the duel which he suspected. There was one
thing which made him tremble for his own confidence in
William Hinkley's propriety of course. It was the difficulty
which he had with the rest, in believing that the
young student of divinity would fight a duel. This doubt,
he felt, must be that of his pupil also: whether the latter
had any reason to suppose that Stevens would depart from
the principles of his profession, and waive the securities
which it afforded, he had of course, no means for conjecturing;
but his confidence in the youth induced him to
believe that some such impression upon his mind had led
him to the measure of sending a challenge, which, otherwise,

addressed to a theologian, would have been a shameless
mockery.

There was a long running fire, by way of conversation
and commentary, which was of course maintained by these
toiling pedestrians, cheering the way as they went; but
though it made old Hinkley pleasant and wrathy, and exercised
the vernacular of the rest to very liberal extent, we
do not care to distress the reader with it. It may have
been very fine or not. It is enough to say that the general
tenor of opinion run heavily against our unhappy rustic,
and in favour of the good young man, Stevens. Mrs.
Thackeray, the widow, to whom Stevens had paid two
visits or more since he had been in the village, and who
had her own reasons for doubting that Margaret Cooper
had really obtained any advantages in the general struggle
to find favour in the sight of this handsome man of God,
—was loud in her eulogy upon the latter, and equally
unsparing in her denunciations of the village lad who
meditated so foul a crime as the extinguishing so blessed a
light. Her denunciations at length aroused all the mother
in Mrs. Hinkley's breast, and the two dames had it, hot
and heavy, until, as the parties approached the lake, old
Hinkley, with a manner all his own, enjoined the most
profound silence, and hushed, without settling the dispute.

Meanwhile, the combatants had met. William Hinkley,
having ascended the tallest perch among the hills, beheld
his enemy approaching at a natural pace and at a short
distance. He descended rapidly to meet him and the
parties joined at the foot of the woodland path leading
down to the lake, where, but a few days before, we beheld
Stevens and Margaret Cooper. Stevens was somewhat
surprised to note the singular and imposing change which
a day, almost an hour, had wrought in the looks and bearing
of the young rustic. His good, and rather elevated
command of language, had struck him previously as very
remarkable, but this had been explained by his introduction
to Mr. Calvert, who, as his teacher, he soon found was
very well able to make him what he was. It was the
high bearing, the courteous defiance, the superior consciousness
of strength and character, which now spoke in
the tone and manner of the youth. A choice military
school, for years, could scarcely have brought about a more
decided expression of that subdued heroism, which makes

mere manliness a matter of chivalry, and dignifies brute
anger and blind hostility into something like a sentiment.
Under the prompting of a good head, a generous temper,
and the goodness of a highly roused, but legitimate state
of feeling, William Hinkley wore the very appearance
of that nobleness, pride, ease, firmness and courtesy,
which, in the conventional world, it is so difficult, yet held
to be so important, to impress upon the champion when
ready for the field. A genuine son of thunder would have
rejoiced in his deportment, and though of a sneering,
jealous and disparaging temper, Alfred Stevens could not
conceal from himself the conviction that there was stuff in
the young man which it needed nothing but trial and rough
attrition to bring out.

William Hinkley bowed at his approach, and pointed to
a close footpath leading to the rocks on the opposite
shore.

“There, sir, we shall be more secret. There is a narrow
grove above, just suited to our purpose. Will it please
you to proceed thither?”

“As you please, Mr. Hinkley,” was the reply; “I have
no disposition to baulk your particular desires. But the
sight of this lake reminds me that I owe you my life?”

“I had thought, sir, that the indignity which I put upon
you, would cancel all such memories;” was the stern
reply.

The cheek of Stevens became crimson—his eye flashed
—he felt the sarcasm—but something was due to his position,
and he was cool enough to make a concession to
circumstances. He answered with tolerable calmness,
though not without considerable effort.

“It has cancelled the obligation, sir, if not the memory!
I certainly can owe you nothing for a life which you have
attempted to disgrace—”

“Which I have disgraced!” said the other interrupting
him.

“You are right, sir. How far, however, you have
shown your manhood in putting an indignity upon one
whose profession implies peace, and denounces war, you
are as well prepared to answer as myself.”

“The cloth seems to be of precious thickness!” was
the answer of Hinkley, with a smile of bitter and scornful
sarcasm.

“If you mean to convey the idea that I do not feel the
shame of the blow, and am not determined on avenging it,
young man, you are in error. You will find that I am
not less determined because I am most cool. I have come
out deliberately for the purpose of meeting you. My
purpose in reminding you of my profession was simply to
undeceive you. It appears to me not impossible that the
knowledge of it has made you somewhat bolder than you
otherwise might have been.”

“What mean you?” was the stern demand of Hinkley,
uttered in very startling accents.

“To tell you that I have not always been a non-combatant,
that I am scarcely one now, and that, in the other
schools, in which I have been taught, the use of the pistol
was an early lesson. You have probably fancied that such
was not the case, and that my profession—”

“Come, sir,—will you follow this path?” said Hinkley,
interrupting him impatiently.

“All in good time, sir, when you have heard me out,”
was the cool reply. “Now, sir,” he continued, “were
you to have known that it would be no hard task for me
to mark any button on your vest, at any distance,—that
I have often notched a smaller mark, and that I am prepared
to do so again, it might be that your prudence
would have tempered your courage—”

“I regret for your sake,” said Hinkley, again interrupting
him with a sarcasm, “that I have not brought with
me the weapon with which my marks are made. You
seem to have forgotten that I too have some skill in my
poor way. One would think, sir, that the memory would
not fail of retaining what I suspect will be impressed upon
the skin for some time longer.”

“You are evidently bent on fighting, Mr. Hinkley, and
I must gratify you!”

“If you please, sir.”

“But, before doing so, I should like to know in what
way I have provoked such a feeling of hostility in your
mind? I have not sought to do so. I have, on the contrary,
striven to show you my friendship, in part requital
of the kindness shown me by your parents.”

“Do not speak of them, if you please.”

“Ay, but I must. It was at the instance of your worthy

mother that I sought you and strove to confer with you on
the cause of your evident unhappiness.”

“You were the cause.”

“I?”

“Yes—you! Did I not tell you then that I hated you;
and did you not accept my defiance?”

“Yes; but when you saved my life!—”

“It was to spurn you—to put stripes upon you. I tell
you, Alfred Stevens, I loathe you with the loathing one
feels for a reptile, whose cunning is as detestable as his
sting is deadly. I loathe you from instinct. I felt this
dislike and distrust for you from the first moment that I
saw you. I know not how, or why, or in what manner,
you are a villain, but I feel you to be one! I am convinced
of it as thoroughly as if I knew it. You have
wormed yourself into the bosom of my family. You
have expelled me from the affections of my parents; and
not content with this, you have stolen to the heart of the
woman to whom my life was devoted, to have me driven
thence also. Can I do less than hate you? Can I desire
less than your destruction? Say, having heard so much,
whether you will make it necessary that I should again
lay my whip over your shoulders.”

The face of Stevens became livid as he listened to this
fierce and bitter speech. His eye watched that of the
speaker with the glare of the tiger, as if noteful only of
the moment when to spring. His frame trembled. His
lip quivered with the struggling rage. All his feeling of
self-superiority vanished when he listened to language of
so unequivocal a character,—language which so truly
denounced, without defining, his villany. He felt, that if
the instinct of the other was indeed so keen and quick,
then was the combat necessary, and the death of the rustic
essential, perhaps, to his own safety. William Hinkley
met his glance with a like fire. There was no shrinking
of his heart or muscles. Nay, unlike his enemy, he felt
a strange thrill of pleasure in his veins as he saw the
effect which his language had produced on the other.

“Lead the way!” said Stevens; “the sooner you are
satisfied the better.”

“You are very courteous, and I thank you,” replied
Hinkley, with a subdued but sarcastic smile, “you will
pardon me for the seeming slight, in taking precedence of

one so superior; but the case requires it. You will please
to follow. I will show you my back no longer than it
seems necessary.”

“Lead on, sir—lead on.”