University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.

The young mind of Colleton, excursive as it
was, could scarcely realize to itself the strange
and rapidly succeeding changes of the last few
days. Shelf-exiled from the dwelling in which so
much of his heart and hope had been stored up—
a wanderer among the wandering—assaulted by
ruffians—the witness of their crimes—pursued by
the officers of justice, and finally the tenant of a
prison, as a criminal himself! After the first emotions
of astonishment and vexation had subsided—
ignorant of the result of this last adventure, and
preparing for the worst—he called for pen and
paper, and briefly, to his uncle, recounted his adventures,
as we have already related them, partially
acknowledging his precipitance in departing from
his house, but substantially insisting upon the propriety
of those grounds which had made him do
so. To Edith, what could he say? Nothing—
every thing. His letter to her, enclosed in that to
her uncle, was just such as might be expected from
one with a character such as we have endeavoured
to describe—that of the genuine aristocrat of Carolina—gentle,
but firm—soothing, but manly—truly
but loftily affectionate—the rock touched, if not
softened, by the sunbeam. Warm and impetuous,

but generally just in his emotions—liberal in his
usual estimate of mankind, and generous, to a
fault, in all his associations. Ignorant of any value
in money, unless for high purposes—as subservient
to taste and civilization—a graceful humanity, and
an honourable affection. With a tenderness the
most respectful, he reiterated his love—prayed for
her prayers—frankly admitted his error in his abrupt
flight, and freely promised atonement as soon
as he should be freed from his difficulties; an event
which, in speaking to her, he doubted not. This
duty over, his mind grew somewhat relieved, and
despatching a note by the jailer's deputy to the lawyer
Pippin, he desired immediately to see him.
Pippin had looked for such an invitation, and was
already in attendance. His regrets were prodigious,
but his gratification not less, as it would give
him an opportunity, for some time desired, for serving
so excellent a gentleman. But the lawyer
shook his head with most professional uncertainty
at every step of his own narration of the case, and
soon convinced Ralph that he really stood in a
very awkward predicament. He described the
situation of the body of Forrester when found—
the bloody dirk which lay beside it, having the
initials of his name plainly carved upon it—his midnight
flight—his close companionship with Forrester
on the evening of the night in which he had
been murdered—a fact proved by old Walton and
his family—the intimate freedom with which Forrester
had been known to confide his purposes to the
youth, deducible from the joint call which they had
made upon the sweetheart of the former—and many
other smaller details, unimportant in themselves,
but linked together with the rest of the particulars,
strengthening the chain of circumstances against
him to a degree which rendered it improbable that
he should escape conviction. Pippin sought, however,
to console his client, and, after the first development
of particulars, the natural buoyancy of
the youth returned. He was not disposed readily
to despair, and his courage and confidence rose
with the pressure of events. He entered into a
plain story of all the particulars of his flight—the
instrumentality of Miss Munro in that transaction,
and which she could explain, in such a manner as
to do away with any unfavourable impression
which that circumstance, of itself, might create.
Touching the dagger, he could say nothing. He
had discovered its loss, but knew not at what time
he had lost it. The manner in which it had been
found was of course fatal, unless this fact could
have been established; and for this the consulting
parties saw no hope. Still, they did not despair,
but proceeded to the task of preparing the defence
for the day of trial, which was at hand. The technical
portions of the case were managed by the
lawyer, who issued his subpœnas—made voluminous
notes—wrote out the exordium of his speech,
and sat up all night committing it to memory.

Having done all that the occasion called for in
his interview with Ralph, the lawyer proceeded to
visit, uncalled-for, one whom he considered a far
greater criminal—the murder being proved—than
his client. The cell to which the luckless pedler,
Bunce, had been carried, was not far from that of
the former, and the rapid step of the lawyer soon
overcame the distance between. Never was man
seemingly so glad to see his neighbour, as was
Bunce, on this occasion, to look upon Pippin. His
delight found words of the most honeyed description
for his visiter, and his delight was truly infectious.
The lawyer was delighted too, but his delight
was of a far different origin. He had now

some prospect of getting back his favourite steed
—that fine animal, described by him elsewhere to
the pedler, as one docile as a dog, and fleet as
a deer. He had heard of the safety of his horse,
and his anger with the pedler had undergone some
abatement; but with the consciousness of power,
as is the case with inferior minds, came a strong
desire for its use. He knew that the pedler had
been guilty in a legal sense of no crime—and could
only be liable in a civil action for his breach of
trust. But he suspected that the dealer in wares
was ignorant of the advantageous distinctions in
morals which the law had made, and consequently
amused himself with playing upon the fears of the
offender. He put on a countenance of much commiseration,
and drawing a long sigh, regretted the
necessity which had brought him to prepare the
mind of his old friend for the last terrors of justice.
But Bunce was not a man to be easily frightened.
As he phrased it himself, he had been quite too long
knocking about among men to be taken in by
shadows, and replied stoutly—though really with
some internal misgivings—to the lachrymalities of
the learned counsel. He gave him to understand,
that if he got into difficulty, he knew some other
persons whom his confessions would make uncomfortable;
and hinted pretty directly at certain practices
of a certain professional gentleman, which,
though the pedler knew nothing of the technical
significant, might yet come under the head of barratry,
and so forth. The lawyer was the more
timid man of the two, and found it necessary to pare
down his potency. He soon found it profitable to
let the matter rest, and having made arrangements
with the pedler for bringing suit for damages against
two of the neighbouring farmers concerned in the
demolition of his wares—who, happening to be less
guilty than their accessories, had bentured to remain
in the country,—Bunce found no difficulty in
making his way out of the prison. There had been
no right originally for his detention, but the consciousness
of guilt, and some other ugly misgivings,
had so relaxed the nerves of the tradesman,
that he had never thought to inquire if his name
were included in the warrant of arrest. It is probable
that his courage and confidence would have
been far less than it appears at present, had not
Pippin assured him that the regulators were no
longer to be feared—that the judge had arrived—
that the grand jury had found bills against several
of the offenders, and were still engaged in their
labours—that a detachment of the state military
had been ordered to the station—and that things
looked as civil as it was altogether possible for
such warlike exhibition to make them. It is surprising
to think how fearlessly uncompromising
was the conduct of Bunce under this new condition
of affairs.

But the pedler, in his own release from custody,
was not forgetful of his less fortunate companion.
He was a frequent visiter in the dungeon of Ralph
Colleton,—bore all messages between the prisoner
and his counsel, and contributed, by his shrewd
knowledge of human kind, not a little to the material
out of which his defence was to be made. He
suggested the suspicion never before entertained
by the youth, or entertained for a moment only,
that his present arrest was the result of a scheme
purposely laid with a reference to this end; and
did not scruple to charge upon Rivers the entire
management of the matter. Ralph could only
narrate what he knew of the malignant hatred of
the outlaw to himself—another fact which none but
Lucy Munro could establish. Her evidence, however,

would only prove Rivers to have meditated
one crime; it would not free him from the imputation
of having committed another. Still, so much
was important, and casualties were to be relied
upon for the rest. But what was the horror of all
parties when it was known that neither Lucy nor
any of the landlord's family were to be found.
The process of subpœna was returned, and the
general opinion was, that, alarmed at the approach
of the military in such force, and confident that his
agency in the late transactions could not long remain
concealed in the possession of so many,
though guilty like himself, Munro had fled to the
west. The mental agony of the youth, when thus
informed, cannot well be conceived. He was, for
a time, utterly prostrate, and gave himself up to
despair. The entreaties of the pedler, and the
counsels and exhortings of the lawyer, failed equally
to enliven him; and they had almost come to adopt
his gloomy resignation, when, as he sat on his low
bench, with head drooping on his hand, a solitary
glance of sunshine fell through the barred window
—the only one assigned to his cell. The smile of
God, himself, that solitary ray appeared to the
diseased spirit of the youth, and he grew strong in
an instant. Talk of the lessons of the learned, and
the reasonings of the sage—a vagrant breeze, a
rippling water, a glance of the sweet sunlight, have
more of consolation in them for the sad heart, than
all the pleadings of philosophy. They bear the
missives of a higher teacher.

Bunce was an active coadjutor with the lawyer
in this melancholy case. He made all inquiries—
he went everywhere. He searched in all places,
and spared no labour, but at length despaired.
Nothing could be elicited by his inquiries, and he
ceased to hope, himself, and ceased to persuade

Ralph into hope. The lawyer shook his head in
reply to all questions, and put on a look of mystery
which is the safety-valve to all swollen pretenders.
In this state of affairs, taking the horse of the youth,
with a last effort at discoveries, Bunce rode forth
into the surrounding country. He had heretofore
taken all the common routes, to which, in his previous
intercourse with the people, he had been accustomed;
he now determined to strike into a path
scarcely perceptible, and one which he never remembered
to have seen before. He followed, mile
after mile, its sinuosities. It was a wild, and, seemingly,
an untrodden region. The hills shot up jaggedly
from the plain around him—the fissures were
rude and steep—more like embrasures, blown out
by sudden power from the solid rock. Where the
forest appeared, it was dense and intricate—abounding
in brush and underwood; where it was deficient,
the blasted heath chosen by the witches in
Macbeth would have been no unfit similitude.
Hopeless of human presence in this dreary region,
the pedler yet rode on, as if to dissipate the unpleasant
thoughts following upon his frequent disappointment.
Suddenly, however, a turn in the winding
path brought him in contact with a strange-looking
figure, not more than five feet in height,
neither boy nor man, uncouthly habited, and seemingly
one to whom all converse but that of the trees
and rocks, during his whole life, had been unfamiliar.
The reader has already heard something
of the Cherokee pony—it was upon one of these
animals he rode. They are a small, but compactly
made and hardy creature—of great fortitude,
stubborn endurance, and an activity, which,
in the travel of day after day, will seldom depart
from the gallop. It was the increasing demand
for these animals that had brought into existence
and exercise a company, which, by a transition far
from uncommon, passed readily from the plundering
of horses to the cutting of throats and purses;
scarcely discriminating in their reckless rapacity
between the several degrees of crime in which
such a practice involved them.

Though somewhat uncouth in appearance, the
new-comer seemed decidedly harmless—nay, almost
idiotic in appearance. His smile was pleasant,
though illuminating features of the ruggedest
description, and the tones of his voice were even
musical in the ears of the pedler, to whom any
voice would probably have seemed so in that
gloomy region. He very sociably addressed Bunce
in the patois of that section, and the ceremonial of
introduction, without delay or difficulty, was overcome
duly on both sides. In the southern wilderness,
indeed, it does not call for much formality, nor
does a strict adherence to the received rules of etiquette
become at all necessary, to make the traveller
“hail fellow well met.” Any thing, in that quarter,
savouring of reserve or stiffness, is punished
with decided hostility or openly avowed contempt;
and, in the more rude regions, the refusal to partake
in the very social employments of wrestling or
whiskey-drinking, has brought the scrupulous personage
to the more questionable enjoyments of a
regular gouging match and fight. A demure habit
is the most unpopular among all classes. Freedom
of manner, on the other hand, obtains confidence
readily, and the heart is won, at once, by an offhanded
familiarity of demeanour, which fails to
recognise any inequalities in human condition.
The society and the continued presence of nature,
as it were, in her own peculiar abode, puts aside
all merely conventional distinctions, and men meet
upon a common footing. Thus, even when perfect

strangers to one another, after the usual preliminaries
of “how are you, friend,” or “strannger?”—
“whare from?”—“whare going?”—“fair” or “foul
weather”—as the case may be—the acquaintance
is established, and familiarity well begun. Such
was the case in the present instance. Bunce knew
the people well, and exhibited his most unreluctant
manner. The horses of the two, in like manner
with their masters, made similar overtures; and,
in a little while, their necks were drawn in lines
parallel to each other.

Bunce was less communicative, however, than
the stranger. Still his head and heart, alike, were
full, and he talked more freely than was altogether
consistent with his Yankee character. He told of
Ralph's predicament, and the clown sympathized;
he narrated the quest which had brought him forth,
and of his heretofore unrewarded labours; concluding
with naming the ensuing Monday as the
day of the youth's trial, when, if nothing in the
mean time could be discovered of the true criminal—for
the pedler never for a moment doubted
that Ralph was innocent—he “mortally feared
things would go again him.”

“That will be hard, too—a mighty tough difficulty,
now, strannger—to be hanged for other folks'
doings. But, I reckon, he'll have to make up his
mind to it.”

“Oh, no! don't say so, now, friend, I beg you.
What makes you think so?” said the anxious
pedler.

“Why, only from what I heer'd you say. You
said so yourself, and I believed it as if I had seed it,”
was the reply of the simple countryman.

“Oh, yes. It's but a poor chance with him now,
I guess. I'd a notion that I could find out some
little particular, you see—”

“No, I don't see.”

“To be sure you don't, but that's my say.
Everybody has a say, you know.”

“No, I don't know.”

“To be sure, of course you don't know, but that's
what I tell you. Now you must know—”

“Don't say must to me, strannger, if you want
that we shall keep hands off. I don't let any man
say must to me.”

“No harm, friend—I didn't mean any harm,”
said the worried pedler, not knowing what to make
of his acquaintance, who spoke understandingly,
though in language which left the fact doubtful.
Avoiding all circumlocution of phrase, and dropping
the “you sees,” and “you knows” from his
narration, he proceeded to state his agency in procuring
testimony for the youth, and of the ill success
which had hitherto attended him. At length,
in the course of his story, which he contrived to
tell with as much caution as came within the scope
of his education, he happened to speak of Lucy
Munro, but had scarcely mentioned her name
when his queer companion interrupted him:—

“Look you, strannger, I'll lick you now, off-hand,
if you don't put Miss for a handle to the gal's
name. She's Miss Lucy. Don't I know her, and
han't I seen her, and isn't it I, Chub Williams, as
they calls me, that loves the very airth she treads?”

“You know Miss Lucy?” inquired the pedler,
enraptured even at this moderate discovery, though
carefully coupling the prefix to her name while
giving it utterance—“now, do you know Miss
Lucy, friend, and will you tell me where I can find
her?”

“Do you think I will, and you may be looking
arter her too? Drot my old hat, strannger, but I
do itch to git at you.”

“Oh, now, Mr. Williams—”

“I won't answer to that name. Call me Chub
Williams, if you wants to be polite. Mother
always called me Chub, and that's the reason I
like it.”

“Well, Chub,”—said the other, quite paternally—
“I assure you I don't love Miss Munro—and—”

“What! you don't love Miss Lucy. Why, everybody
ought to love her. Now, if you don't love
her, I'll hammer you, strannger, off-hand.”

The poor pedler professed; and satisfied, after
a while, the scruples of one who, in addition to
deformity, he also discovered to labour under the
more serious curse of partial idiocy. Having done
this, and flattered, in sundry other ways, the peculiarities
of his companion, he pursued his other
point with laudable pertinacity. He at length
got from Chub his own history: how he had run
into the woods with his mother, who had suffered
from the ill treatment of her husband: how, with
his own industry, he had sustained her wants, and
supplied her with all the comforts which a long period
had required; and how, dying, at length, she
had left him—the forest boy—alone, to pursue those
toils which heretofore had an object, while she yielded
him in return for them society and sympathy.
These particulars, got from him in a manner the
most desultory, were made to preface the more
important parts of the narrative. It appears that
his harmlessness had kept him undisturbed, even
by the wild marauders of that region, and that he
still continued to procure a narrow livelihood by
his woodland labours, and sought no association
with that humanity which, though among fellow-creatures,
would still have lacked of fellowship for
him. In the transfer of Lucy from the village to
the shelter of the outlaws, he had obtained a

glimpse of her person and form, and had ever since
been prying in the neighbourhood for a second
and similar enjoyment. He now made known to
the pedler her place of concealment, which he had,
some time before this event, himself discovered;
but which, through dread of Rivers, for whom he
seemed to entertain an habitual fear, he had never
ventured to penetrate.

“Well, I must see her,” exclaimed Bunce. “I
an't afraid, 'cause, you see, Mr. Williams—Chub, I
mean, it's only justice, and to save the poor gentleman's
life. I'm sure I oughtn't to be afraid, and
no more I an't. Won't you go there with me,
Chub?”

“Can't think of it, stranger. Guy is a dark man,
and mother said I must keep away when he rode
in the woods. Guy don't talk—he shoots.”

The pedler made sundry efforts to procure a
companion for his adventure; but finding it vain,
and determined to do right, he grew more resolute
with the necessity, and, contenting himself with
claiming the guidance of Chub, he went boldly on
the path. Having reached a certain point in the
woods, after a very circuitous departure from the
main track, the guide pointed out to the pedler a long
and rude ledge of rocks, so seeming to the glance
that none could have ever conjectured to find them
the abode of any thing but the serpent and the wolf.
Chub gave him his directions, then alighting from
his nag, which he concealed in a clump of neighbouring
brush, hastily and with the agility of a monkey
ran up a neighbouring tree which overhung the
prospect. Bunce, left alone, grew somewhat staggered
with his fears. He now half-repented of
the self-imposed adventure; wondered at his own
rash humanity, and might perhaps have utterly
foreborne the trial, but for a single consideration.

His pride was concerned, that the deformed Chub
should not have occasion to laugh at his weakness.
Descending, therefore, from his horse, he fastened
him to the hanging branch of a neighbouring tree,
and with something of desperate defiance in his
manner, resolutely advanced to the silent and forbidding
mass of rocks, which rose up so silently
around him. In another moment, and he was lost
to sight in the gloomy shadow of the entrance-passage
pointed out to him by the half-witted, but not
altogether ignorant, Chub.