University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.

Leonora.

The distant bell of St. Inigoe's was heard summoning
the priests of the House to the chapel service of
the Vigil of All Souls,—or, in other words, the season
had now advanced as far as high noon on the
last day of October, when the quay in front of the
Crow and Archer was enlivened by the gossipping
faces of a group of quidnuncs who had assembled
there in the warm sunshine, to discuss a most melancholy
piece of intelligence which had just come to
town, and which was debated with that characteristic
respect for truth and decent spirit of condolence
with which horrible accidents and distressing casualties
are generally propagated.

“There's proclamation of hue and cry out,” said
Willy of the Flats, speaking as one who had obtained
possession of a state secret—“I heard it myself, but
now, at the mansion, from Master Llewellen, who
was sent for, on set purpose, by his Lordship, to
make proclamation by hue and cry as fast as it can
be writ down.”

“Good reason!” replied Mug the sexton; “I'll
warrant you Tiquassino's men have slipped across
the bay, with Jackanapes or Robin Hood at their
lead, to whet their knives on Christian flesh; and if
they are to be caught, we must do it quick, I can tell
you, neighbours. Will the body be brought to town?”

“That shall be as Master Coroner shall order,”
said Garret Weasel, with the air of a man who felt
himself entitled to instruct the company in matters
of law. “No one durst touch the body till the coroner
has dealt with it. Giles Ferret must have a fancy,
forsooth, to summon me on his jury! but I foiled him
on privilege, d'ye see, masters,—for the Sheriff hath
set me down on the panel for the provincial court
next week;—so no two juries for me, Master Coroner,
says I. Lord, lord! I could no more face Simon
Fluke's family,—to say nothing of the dead man himself,—in
their distress, than I could look upon my own
dame in her winding-sheet.”

“Troth! you shall never look at me in that dress,”
exclaimed the laughing landlady, who stood on the
skirt of the crowd, hitherto unseen by her husband.
“I have pranked out two as pretty men in woollen
as yourself, Garret Weasel, before I had the good
luck to clap eyes on you; and, faith, I mean to put
you to bed with the shovel, ere I go myself. What
are the townsfolk good for, that they are not up and
abroad to find out the villains who murdered the
fisherman?”

“They talk of a following with hot hand,” said
Derrick Brown, in reply to the question of the hostess,
“as soon as the Coroner comes back. The Indians

are lurking somewhere upon the border of the settlements:
take my word it will be proved so.”

“An' we were sure of that,” said Garret Weasel,
“I should be for boot and spur, harquebuss and
hanger, up and away, lads;—but we must move
with caution in the matter till we get lawful ground
for an out-riding. Give us the hue and cry before
we start.”

“Some do say,” interposed Master Clink, a mender
of kettles, who had left his work so hastily that he
had not thrown aside his leather apron, “that the
murder was done by Papists in the disguise of Indians.”

“I'll warrant you as many lies will be pinned upon
the back of this murder as it will hold,” said a tall,
sallow, spare-built man, who was known as the head
constable of the riding of St. George's. “It is ever
the fashion now, when a piece of mischief has been
practised, for one side or the other to turn it into
a church matter. Every body knows that Simon
Fluke was as good a Roman as there was in the
riding. Why dost thou prate about the Papists, Tom
Clink? Who told thee that monstrous lie?”

“By the faith of my body! I did hear it whispered,”
replied the tinker; “thought, as I am an honest
man, I did not believe it.”

Whilst this little knot of newsmongers continued
upon the quay, discussing the rumours of the day
and, now and then, enlivening their drooping spirits
with a resort to the red lattice of the Crow and
Archer, behind which Matty Scamper and Dame
Dorothy by turns administered the refreshment of a

cup of ale or some stronger potation, two boats were
discovered approaching the harbour from a point below
St. Inigoe's, and making as much speed as their
complement of oars would allow. As they neared
the quay, it became apparent that the first contained
a coffin attended by the fisherman's family, and two
priests; the second was freighted with the jury under
the charge of Master Giles Ferret, the Coroner.

Whilst the boats are approaching, we recur to our
narrative where we left it at the conclusion of the
last chapter; deeming it necessary to say that the
anxious wife, after venting some unavailing and affectionate
expressions of impatience at her husband's
delay in returning to his breakfast, sat down to her
meal, unconscious of the cause that detained her
mate, and ascribing his absence to that carelessness
of hours which grew out of the nature of his calling.
Noon came, and the frugal board was again spread
for dinner, but to it came no father of the wondering
household;—still the vacant seat was not so unusual
a spectacle as to excite alarm. But when the sun
began to dip upon the verge of the western horizon,
and no trace could be discerned of the homeward
step of the fisherman, fears arose in the bosom of
his wife,—and long and earnestly she paced the
beach and strained her sight to catch his expected
form. At length, heading her little household troop,
she sallied forth, with hurried step, along the sands,
for more than a mile; and finding no vestige of him,
returned sorrowfully to her humble roof and gave
up the night to that sharpest of all the trials by
which grief may assail the human breast,—the half-hoping,

half-fearing, silent, doubting watchfulness
for the approach of evil tidings, which the heart, by
a strange presentiment, sometimes truly foretells.

At daylight her eldest boy was despatched to the
house of St. Inigoe's for aid, and very soon some
four or five persons were on foot to scour the country
in quest of the lost man. A short search disclosed
the dreadful truth: the body was found in a
thicket of cedar, with the marks of a bullet through
the brain; the spot within a hundred paces of the
shore of a small inlet (at this day known as Smith's
creek,) that flowed from the Potomac a few miles
westward of Point Lookout. There were the foot
prints of men upon the beach, and marks of the keel
of a boat which had been drawn up on the sand.
The wretched wife could only tell of her husband's
departure in the morning:—all other recollections,
in the depth of her sorrow, were swept from her
mind; and the persons who were busy in seeking out
the facts of the murder were obliged to leave the
spot with nothing better than vague conjectures as
to the agency by which it was perpetrated.

The tidings were quickly brought to the town, and
the Coroner instantly proceeded with a jury to the
spot to perform the duties required by the law. His
office was soon discharged, and, as we have seen,
he was now, early in the afternoon, on his return
with the body of the deceased, attended by the wailing
family and the jury who had pronounced their
verdict of `intentional homicide by persons unknown.'

In the excited state of parties, at this crisis, the

Proprietary did not choose to risk a popular tumult.
Already, as was usual at that day, regardless of any
ascertained fact relating to the murder, common
opinion ascribed it to the Indians; whilst the more
violent of the factionists noised it abroad as a contrivance
of the Catholic party to overawe their adversaries,—directly
charging the murder upon the friends
of the Proprietary, who, it was alleged, had accomplished
it in the garb of Indians. The animosity with
which this improbable and, in this case, absurd report
(for the deceased was known by many, to be of
the same faith with his imputed murderers) was propagated,
induced, in the mind of Lord Baltimore, an
apprehension of some disturbance, and he had accordingiy
directed Captain Dauntrees to keep his
force in readiness to suppress any attempt at disorder
which might arise. The boats, therefore, were
no sooner discovered approaching the quay, than the
garrison of the Fort were drawn out by their Captain
and marched to the foot of the mulberry at the Town
House, where they awaited the funeral procession,
which it was designed they should accompany to the
grave.

Curiosity, that eager impulse to feast on popular
horrors, had brought a considerable crowd of the
townspeople to the landing place; community of faith
with the deceased had brought many, and the angry
and disturbed temper of the times still more. The
whole together formed a mass of persons actuated by
various passions. The idle stare of that vacant portion
of the spectators who came merely to gape at
the spectacle, was contrasted with the serene thoughtfulness

of those who made it their duty, from religious
affinity with the deceased, to attend the remains to the
tomb; and still more did it strike the beholder, when
it was compared with the stern hatred and ill-concealed
scorn of that class of lookers-on who, belonging
to the lately baffled party of the disaffected, stood
by with scowling brows, whispering contemptuous
sneers against their opponents, as these latter busied
themselves in ordering the hasty procession which
was formed from the quay up the bank towards the
Town House.

The two priests who attended the body, clad in
their robes, took the lead of the funeral train. The
body, borne by four stout men comrades of the deceased,
followed; and immediately behind it tottered
along with uncertain step, the fisherman's wife, in
rude and neglected attire, sobbing convulsively—her
apron thrown over her head, and her walk guided
by a friendly matron whose frequent but abortive
efforts at consolation seemed only to produce fresh
bursts of sorrow. After these came the unconscious
children, dressed in their homely holiday suits, looking
around them with faces of constrained seriousness,
which scarcely repressed the broad expression
of the gratified interest they took in the novel scene
around them. Many of the townspeople of both
sexes formed in the procession, which was brought
up in the rear by the company of musqueteers, who
wheeled into the line of march, as the last of the
marshalled followers of the body passed from beneath
the shade of the mulberry. The bell of the
Chapel of St. Mary's tolled whilst the train moved,

at a measured pace, towards the church door, where
being met by father Pierre, the corpse was deposited
in the aisle; and the good priest, with such despatch
as might comport with the solemnity of his duty,
performed the appointed service of the dead, in the
presence of the large body of spectators who had
pressed into the building.

Whilst the crowd was still engaged as witnesses
of this scene, a rumour was whispered around that
the proclamation of hue and cry had just been put
forth by the council. A messenger came for Captain
Dauntrees, who was observed, immediately
afterward, silently to steal forth from the church, and
to take his way with hasty strides towards the Proprietary
mansion. By degrees, one after another,
the spectators followed, and were soon discovered
in groups scattered about the town; until, at last, the
corpse was left with but few more attendants than
were necessary to perform the proper duties of
sepulture.

Half an hour had scarcely elapsed before mounted
men were seen galloping through the avenues of the
little city. The silence which attended the funeral
procession was exchanged for busy and clamorous
conversation; the bell had ceased to toll, and in its
place the notes of a trumpet were successively heard
at several points, as a horseman paced from place to
place, and read the proclamation calling on the
burghers to follow with Hue and Cry the perpetrators
of the vile murder of honest Simon Fluke. In process
of time, this bustle subsided into a more orderly
and quiet gossip; the trumpeter had spent his last

breath in braying forth the official summons to pursue
the murderer, and had gladly put away his noisy
instrument; the riders had ceased to throw up the
dust of the highways; the inquisitive dames of the
town and its marvelling maidens had no more news
to seek in the open air, and had withdrawn beneath
the shelter of their respective roofs:—the church-yard
was deserted by all but the sexton and his comrade
of the spade, who now were smoothing the
sides of the new-made grave; and the tap-room of
the Crow and Archer was once more enlivened by
the pot-and-pipe companions who were wont to render
its evening atmosphere murky and political. In
short, the murder of Simon Fluke had, in the marvellous
brief period of a few hours, ceased to be the
engrossing wonder of the day, and the city of St.
Mary's was partially restored to its usual routine of
ale-drinking and news-telling;—making proper allowance
for the fact, that about a dozen men had ridden
forth to scour the country in quest of the murderers,
who on their part had only been allowed a day and
a half to make their escape, and that the good people
who staid at home were holding themselves in readiness
to be as much excited as ever with any tidings
that might arrive tending towards the probable ascertainment
of the perpetrators of the crime.