University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.

Having now fairly lodged Vernon for the murder
of Horsey, it is high time that we should retrace our
steps and look into the progress of the latter important
personage. Though somewhat baffled in his
hope of having a companion, in a kindred spirit, to
the end of his journey, the stage-struck hero was not
without his consolation in the moment of the parting
from his friend. He was on his way to the scene
of action—another day would bring him to the place
where the wandering tribe was to be found, for
whose communion he panted even as the hart panteth
after the water brooks; and visions of theatric
glory began to gather on his eyes. With that restlessness
of imagination which betrayed itself in
every thing which he said and did, he was already
fancying himself in the midst of such difficulties,
arising from bad management and the laboured rivalry
of inferior persons, as were really grateful to
a man of his temperament. His cogitations, which
broke forth at moments into rabid soliloquy, were
most generally of this description. Now he laughed
at the idea of Jim Tilton and Hugh Peters, and the
ridiculous figures which they must cut as Brutus

and Julius Cæsar; at the next moment, he was soliciting
their applause for some new reading with
which he contemplated to astound the natives and
improve Shakspeare. Anon he went back to the
cottage of Yarbers, and his visions, then, were of
Mary Stinson as the most perfect Juliet that ever
stimulated the best capacities of a Montague; and
as that fancy worked in his mind, his voice grew
more emphatic, and a spectator in the bushes might
have been no less surprised than amused to have
heard and seen him as he rode, declaiming at the
full pitch of his lungs to Juliet in the balcony, and
at moments, in the earnestness of his action, almost
flinging himself from the ungainly and venerable
steed of his sire, whose neck he sometimes embraced,
by a very natural error of his imagination which
confounded it with the form of Juliet, or Mary Stinson
rather, who, in such moments, seemed brought
immediately within his reach. In this manner, with
a mind far away, in a province utterly foreign to
that through which his only half-conscious person
travelled, he went forward without interruption, and
was only brought back to the actual condition of
things around him when he reached the river, and
the grim Charon of that stygian stream, leading his
horse through bog and sluice, contrived, with some
difficulty and after no little delay, to place the two
fairly in his boat. Some time was consumed in
conveying him across, for the river swamp, in the
day of which we write, was one of the most interminable
intricacies that ever distressed a good steed
or vexed an impatient traveller. But the delay did
not so much affect the actor. He soon made a companion
of the boatman—a simple, stupid fellow, who
scarcely comprehended five of all the words that
were said to him, and answered none. But Horsey
needed no answer—his only object was an auditor,
and he was sufficiently satisfied, if suffered to talk
on without stint or limit, though the hearer made
no response to any of the questions which he asked.
These were neither few nor unimportant; but as the
actor did not wait for an answer, why should we?
He was soon, comparatively speaking, set across
the river; but the thousand hollows of the swamp,
filled with the waters of a recent freshet, were
around his path, leaving it at moments doubtful in
what direction he should pursue his way. But Tom
Horsey was not the man to suffer himself to be bewildered
long. His mind soon ran off in the direction
of his desires, and looking rather to the end of
his journey than to his course, he gave himself not
much concern about the way which led to it. After
a few moments of reluctant attention, in which it
seemed to his eyes that all his efforts only led his
hobbling horse from one sluice into another, he soon
forgot every thing but the one subject most at his
heart; and if his allegiance wavered for an instant,
it was, perhaps, in regard to an exception which
might be considered, indeed, only an auxiliar to the
other—namely, the person of Mary Stinson, and
she as Juliet. With a mind thus directed, he had
no attention to bestow upon the external world
around him, and did not seem to heed, or be conscious
of the fact, that the day was approaching to
its close—and that so far from nearing the cottage
where he proposed to spend the night; he had, in
fact, utterly departed from every thing like a road,
his horse slowly toiling forward through Indian footpaths
that deepened occasionally into the cart or
wagon width, but only at places where the presence
of bog or creek suggested the best of reasons why
they should do so, and not because they had ever
been employed by any such vehicles. But, utterly
absorbed in his own speculations, none of these signs
were perceptible to the actor, and night would have
come upon and caught him in the swamp before he
would have been conscious of his predicament; but
for the sudden appearance upon his path of one,
whose wild and uncouth exterior and abrupt entree,
were of too startling a character to pass without regard.
The stranger was a chunky little imp, not
more than four feet high; wearing a bunch upon his
shoulder, which at first glance, suggested to Horsey
the idea of a native born Richard. His arms were
long like those of an ape; his ears of corresponding
dimensions; his lips, pursed into a point like two
bits of shrivelled coonskin, were covered with a
thick furze, not unlike that of the hair upon the same
animal; and with a short pug-like nose, and little,
quick, staring gray eyes, that peeped out from under
a shaggy white pent house of hair—he presented altogether
the most comical appearance that could be
imagined, and one that would have made the fortune
of a cunning showman in any of the Atlantic
cities. His legs, though short, were strangely bowed
—indeed, the extreme curve which they described
was one cause of their shortness. He might have
risen to five fair feet, could they have been smoothed
out symmetrically. As he went forward, which he
did with a readiness that occasioned surprise in the
spectator, the bow of the advanced leg would completely
overlap the other, so that he would seem, to the
passing glance, in possession of one only. His garb
contributed something to his comical appearance.
He wore tights, as pantaloons, which showed to a
nicety the attenuated size of the crooked limbs on
which he depended for support. He seemed almost
entirely without flesh. The lower limbs were not
merely short and deformed, but slender to a degree
which made the spectator apprehensive that they
might snap as readily as pipe stems under the swollen
and dropsical bulk of body which they carried. But
this show was deceptive. The urchin had an elasticity
of muscle, a capacity of stretch and endurance
in his sinews, and a share of positive strength in his
excessive breadth of shoulders, which made him
little inferior in conflict to most ordinary men; and
in speed he could have outwinded the best. A little
jacket of green bombasin, made on a plan quite as
narrow and contracted as the breeches, rendered
the hump singularly conspicuous upon his shoulders;
and by contracting these somewhat too closely,
served to throw the long and apish arms out from
the body in such a manner as greatly to increase
the similitude between the owner and the ungainly
animal to which we have likened him. A coonskin
cap, set rather jauntily on his cocoanut-shaped head,
and tied under his chin with a green riband, completed
this parody on man, who, leaping suddenly
out of a green bush in the middle of a mud puddle,
that lay beside the path, proved a more startling
object of terror to the horse of the actor, than of
surprise to himself. The animal sunk back on his
haunches with a snort of terror; and, with a greater
show of muscle and spirit than he had deigned to
vouchsafe since he had begun the journey from
Raymond, he was for wheeling about in good earnest,
and making fleeter back tracks than he had
ever made before. But that Horsey was a born
rider, like every other western man, he had been
soused for a season in any one of the hundred miry
habitations of frog, hog and alligator, which so
thickly garnished the low territory around him.
Meanwhile the little urchin stood upright, or as
nearly upright as he could, in the narrow pathway,
never making the slightest movement to budge or
assist the rider, but grinning with a smile of satisfaction
at every wheel and flirt of the still frightened
animal, which promised to fling his rider into the
ditch. The unassisted efforts of Horsey, however,
managed to evade these attempts, and at length,
finally succeeded in subduing the spirit—no difficult
task—even if he did not so soon quiet the terrors of
“old dot-and-go-one.” Shaking his finger at the
dwarf as he forced the horse forward, the actor exclaimed
with a degree of good nature, which probably
arose from the consciousness that his good
horsemanship had not been without a spectator,—
and which, had he not been the conqueror in the
strife, would not have been so apparent—

“Ah, you comical little fellow! How you scared
my horse!”

“And you too, if the truth was known, Mr.,”
was the unhesitating reply of the urchin. “I'm a
man mighty apt to scare people that's not used to
me.”

“Gad! there's reason in what you say!” exclaimed
the actor. “But look you, my pretty little
Jack of Clubs, suppose I had been a sour-tempered
fellow instead of what I am, what would I be doing
at this time, and what sort of speech would you be
making? Wouldn't I be using a hickory upon your
shoulders, my lad, for scaring my horse, and—”

“His rider!” The urchin finished the sentence
after his own fashion. “Ha! ha! ha!” The woods
rang with his yelling laughter—a peal more
strange and unnatural than any thing in his shape.
“Ha! ha! ha! Mr. Traveller—more easy said
than done. If the thing were tried, it might be your
shoulders and my hickory; and if you think otherwise,
why, you can only begin the business as soon
as you please.”

“Say you so, you little apology for a man—you
little cock-a-doodle-doo—I'm almost tempted to try
odds with you for the fun of it, for riding by one's

self makes one rather dull, and the fun that turns
up by the roadside is always apt to be the funniest.
Wait a bit, then, till I can cut a hickory.”

And the actor made a show of dismounting as he
spoke.

“Boo! boo!” cried the little urchin with a yell,
as, leaping from the path, he ran along a fallen
tree, slippery with mire, that rose out of the ooze
of the swamp and stretched away into a canebrake,
in the midst of whose tops the dwarf squatted himself
down, and grinned, and laughed, and pointed
with his finger at the assailant, confident that he
could not so easily be approached by an unpractised
footman, and secure of a second means of
flight, in the branches of a tupola hanging above
him into which a customary leap would easily carry
him.

“Ah! ha!” exclaimed Horsey, “there you are;
and you think yourself safe, do you, but what do
you think of that, my little mannikin, eh?”

He pointed a pistol upward as he spoke, but the
derisive laugh of the dwarf mocked this exhibition,
as he in turn produced from his breast a like weapon,
the dimensions of which would have swallowed
up those of his assailant.

“Ha! ha! and what do you think of that?” said
the urchin. “It's snout for snout—and the advantage
is all o' my side as yet.”

“How do you make that out, you pretty little deformity?”
demanded the actor, in good-natured accents,
amused rather than annoyed by the readiness
of the urchin.

“Well, it's easy enough, and you might see for
yourself,” replied the other; “I'm rather the littlest
man of the two, but I have the biggest pistol—
you're the biggest man with the littlest pistol. Aint
my chance the best to hit, you big fellow—aint it

now? Suppose we try—that's the best way to come
at it—you may bang away first, for all the good it's
going to do you.”

“Come down, you small specimen of humanity—
you youngest son of the little old gentleman in black,”
said the actor, with a hearty good humour that satisfied
the dwarf there was nothing more to fear. “Come
down, you queer little coxcomb, and let's hear all
about you. You are certainly the strangest sniggering
little scamp, that I've seen in all my travels.
You'd make a most superb fellow on the stage—a
witch in Macbeth—no!—'Gad, maybe you're one of
us already.”

“Maybe I am, maybe I'm not!” said the dwarf
with a grin as he descended. “Who are you—can
you bite?”

“Bite!”

“Yes, bite—have you got teeth to bite, or are you
nothing but a barking dog?”

“Teeth to bite—barking dog!—why you talk as
queerly as you look, my little Richard.”

“Richard! Why, who told you my name?”

“What! your name is Richard then?”

“Yes, with a pair of scales to the end of it—you
couldn't guess that, I reckon?”

“No! I don't know what you mean.”

“I'll tell you—my name is Richard Stillyards, or
Dick Stillyards—sometimes they call me Dick Still,
and sometimes Dick Yards, and then it's only when
I'm in the humour that I answer them. I always
answer gentlemen when they call me by my right
name.”

This was said with a manner which filled Horsey
with merriment, and would have filled a wiser man
with sadness. The swagger, the solemn strut with
which it was accompanied, and the air of superiority
with which the narrow and protrusive chin was

perked forward, had in it so much of a rotund self-conceit,
that never was that foible of humanity so
completely be-mocked and be-devilled.

“Why, what is there to laugh at, I wonder?” said
the dwarf, in tones and with a manner of more real
dignity, though with an equally ludicrous effort.

“Hark ye, Stillyards, my dear fellow,” cried the
good-natured Horsey, “let us shake hands. You're
a d—d comical little fellow, Stillyards, and we must
jog on together. I'll make your fortune, Stillyards;
by the powers, you shall grow famous—you shall.
Don't you grin, my boy, I'm telling you nothing but
the truth. You shall grow famous and make your
fortune. You shall be one of us—and I'll undertake
your tuition. By the ghost of David, Stillyards, I'll
find you a dozen characters in Shakspeare alone
which could not be done by any body half so well
as yourself. You have read Shakspeare, Stillyards,
have you not?”

“Read!” said the dwarf, with something like a
sinking of his dignity. “Well, stranger, to say the
truth, reading aint my business, though, I suppose,
I could larn just as soon as any body else. There's
a nigger of Joe Smith's, named Peter—his young
misses taught him to read in a short six months only,
and he can now read write-hand 'most as good as
print. I'm sure if I had any chance, I could larn as
quick as Peter.”

“Devil a doubt, Dicky, that you might, but who's
to learn you, unless you could persuade the same
young lady that taught Peter to give you a few
lessons?”

“Why, didn't you say you'd larn me?” said
Richard Stillyards, with a grin of satisfaction that
caused a considerable encroachment of his mouth
upon the territory usually conceded to cheeks and
ears.

“To speak and act, you terrapin, and not to read,”
was the reply.

“Look you, stranger, if it's the length of my
teeth you want to know, call me out of my name,” replied
the urchin, with a grave air of offended dignity.
“You're not the first man that's lost flesh between
my jaws for making too free; so it's jist as well you
should know it beforehand. I know I'm a little
smaller than you, and maybe not quite so good-looking,
but that's neither here nor there, and I don't
mind the difference of size no more, when I feel
wolfish, no more than I'd mind a dog-bark in a
seedy night. I axed you a question jist now, and
didn't get an answer.”

“What was that, Mr. Richard Stillyards?” demanded
Horsey, with an air of respectful deference,
exceedingly delighted with the strange monster he
had encountered, and disposed, with a true actor's
fondness for fun, to humour the weakness which betrayed
itself so ludicrously. “What was it, Mr.
Richard?—speak again, and don't imagine for an instant
that I am at all desirous to fill your jaws with
my flesh, as I cannot say with certainty that I have
any to spare—certainly none to spare, unless you
are willing to take it just where I give you leave. I
could give you a bite in one place or in another, and
not miss it, perhaps, but it's likely you'd be choosing
for yourself. Eh?”

The literal manner in which Horsey had chosen
to accept the coarse figurative language which the
urchin had employed was, in western parlance,
“a huckleberry above his persimmon;” and Mr.
Richard Stillyards began to regard his companion
as an animal no less strange to him than he appeared
to Horsey. After a brief space, which he devoted
in silence to a jealous survey of those features,
which, by this time, the actor had schooled into inflexibility,

he replied, as if satisfied with his examination—

“I was a-thinking at first, stranger, that you was
a-funning with me, but I believe it's only because you
don't know no better. I'm a country gentleman in
these parts, and have company camping out in the
woods, here away, down by the corner of Little
Bend in the Cane Prairie—every fellow's a man
among 'em, all barking dogs—and so I axed you
about your teeth.”

“My teeth?”

“Yes, your teeth,” replied the deformed curiosity;
“aint you got teeth? Can't you bite?”

The actor surveyed him with intentness, and the
result of his examination, as he beheld the bona fide
earnestness in the fellow's face, was to convince him
that Richard Stillyards was an idiot—a conclusion
which, no doubt, has been already reached by the
reader. But let him not be mistaken. Dick was no
idiot, but a cunning owl that hoots with a greater
drawl of melancholy when most meditating mischief.
He had his purposes in the question that seemed so
excessively simple to his companion, and was answered
satisfactorily when he received no answer.

“Dick, my lad, you're a strange fellow. To ask
a man whose teeth have been opening upon you
every moment since we have met, if he has any!”

“Oh, no harm, mister—I don't mean any harm—
to be sure, I see you have got teeth, and I oughtn't
to ask, but it's a way I've got; but you're a-travelling
only?” and here the urchin gave a keen, quick
glance to the corpulent saddle-bags, filled to the brim
with knight, prince, warrior, and tyrant, which hung
from the saddle of the actor. In a second instant
his eye was averted, as he beheld that of the traveller
fixed upon him.

“Dick, my boy,” said Horsey, “you're a nut for
the devil to crack, for d—me if I can. To be sure
I'm a traveller, just as certainly as I've got teeth;
and now that you remind me, I'd like to know where
I'm travelling, and how far I may be from a place
of lodging?”

“Why, don't you know?”

“Devil a bit.”

“What! you don't know where you're a-travelling?
I reckon you knew when you begun?”

“Why, yes! That I did, but look you, many a
man sets out for the horse and finds the halter. I
started for Benton.”

“Benton?”

“Yes, Benton. How far am I from the house of
one Jenks Glover?”

“Jenks Glover! Why, he's on the lower road—
a matter of sixteen miles to the left of you. You've
got on the wrong track.”

“The devil you say!”

“No! I say the wrong track; it's you that said
`the devil,' three times, or maybe more, and it's no
wonder you lost the road. You must have lost it
after the first jump at the ferry.”

“And it's how far to Benton?”

“Mush! I can't tell you—it's on the other road,
and a smart round about chance to get to it.”

This news confounded our traveller. He shrugged
his shoulders, and looked round him upon the dismal,
dark, and seemingly impenetrable swamp, the pale
cypresses of which shot up sparingly, with the tupola
and the ash, to gigantic heights, interlaced between
with a complete wall of matted canes, briars, and
wild thorny vines, that promised to defy even the
rude pressure of the grisly bear, or his more good-natured
sable brother. The prospect made the actor
shudder.

“Dick, my boy,” he said, “whose is the nearest
house, and how far?”

“There aint no house on this road, that I knows
of, and nobody.”

“`If that thy speech be sooth!”' the actor began,
after the nature within him; but the dogged stare of
the dwarf warned him that his companion suffered
nothing equivocal, and he resumed in plain English:
“No house, Richard—no house, my dear fellow?—
Why, what am I to do—where am I to sleep to-night?”

A grin diffused itself from ear to ear upon the fellow's
countenance, as he listened to the words and
beheld the visible consternation of the actor. He
seemed disposed to amuse himself at the expense of
the traveller.

“I reckon you aint used to sleeping out of the
dry. You were born, maybe, in a nice house, with
a close roof to it?”

“Ay, to be sure, and in a devilish comfortable bed
too, I reckon; but what then, Dicky, my darling?”

“It's a bad chance you'll have for a dry house
here in Big Black Swamp; there's no better house
than Cane Castle, and it's so large you can't see the
walls, and it's so high you can't see the roof; and if
you aint used to the stars for candles, you'll have to
go to bed in the dark. There's no house near by,
and only one under ten miles, and that's 'Squire
Nawls'—and he's a judge, and don't take in travellers.”

“But he lives on the Benton road.”

“No he don't. I reckon he's on the upper road,
a smart distance from it. As for road—you're in no
road at all here—you're in Big Black Swamp, and
if your nose was long enough, you could smell the
river at a short mile off, on your right. If you was
used to the smell, you could smell it here without

going much farther. I can, easy enough,”—snuffing,
while he spoke, with consummate complaisance—
“and a mighty sweet smell it has, too, just after the
sun's gone down.”

“You're an amateur, Mr. Richard.”

“No, d—d if I am, and I tell you agin, stranger,
'twont do to call me by any nickname. I'm Mr.
Richard Stillyards, or Dick Stillyards, and I won't
go by any other, so I warn you before danger.”

“Well, Dick, my dear fellow, I'll be civil—the
fact is, I'm in no humour for making enemies. But
tell me where I am to sleep to-night—where shall I
get a bed?”

“I licked Ike Laidler only a month ago, 'cause
he called me a little circumstance,” continued the
deformed.

“And sufficient provocation too,” said the actor;
“but, Mr. Stillyards, the bed—the bed—the house
to sleep in.”

“Well, now, stranger, you're mighty pushing.
Ha'n't I told you there's no house under ten miles—”

“Then you told a whopper, Dick Toady,” cried
a third person, suddenly emerging from the bushes
on the left, and interrupting the dwarf without any
of that scrupulous consideration upon which he was
so much disposed to insist in his conversation with
Horsey. The stranger was a small man, with a narrow
sunburnt face, a hook nose, and lively twinkling
gray eyes, that seemed to cover a world of cunning.
His voice was good-humoured, and at the first sound
of it the dwarf started with an air of dissatisfaction,
which did not seem to justify the free and familiar
manner with which the new-comer had addressed
him.

“How should you tell the gentleman, Toady, that
there's no house nearer than Judge Nawls'?”

“Well, where's any?”

“Why, here, you blue bottle, here in Cane Castle,
hard by, within a Choctaw's mile. When the
stranger asks for a house, what does he mean but a
place where he can take his snooze out without danger
and disturbance. He don't mean wall of clay
and clapboards—he means nothing more than a
good supper and an easy sleep. Am I right,
stranger?”

Horsey, somewhat relieved of the annoying conviction
that he must sleep in a canebrake with the
soft ooze of a rank swamp in place of a mattress,
was yet not utterly satisfied that this description of
his desire was altogether a correct one. Still, there
seemed little choice, and the free buoyant manner of
the stranger was too much after his own heart not
to reconcile him to things even more disagreeable
than those he feared. He was consoled to find that
if he must sleep in the swamp, he was to have a
good bedfellow—a conviction which had not soothed
him for an instant during his whole protracted conversation
with Mr. Richard Stillyards. He expressed
his assent to the suggestion of the speaker, though
in a qualified measure, but this the other did not seem
to perceive. He proceeded in his speech in a manner
still more agreeable to the traveller.

“We are a few of us, stranger, almost playing
gipsy in the swamp to save expense. There's some
six or eight of us, Today here not being counted,
though he may be thrown in as a sort of makeweight.
We sleep pretty much in a huddle, under
pole and bush tents, and there's room for an odd one
when the river's foul and the swamp rises. We are
players—play-actors—perhaps you don't quite know
what a player is?—the people in these parts look on
us with as much wonder as pleasure—we play plays
—speak speeches—show tricks, dance and sing, for
the public gratification and our own. We shall soon

set out for Benton, Lexington, Lucchesa, and other
villages—soon as the rest of the boys come in—and
if you'll keep in the neighbourhood till then, you'll
see rare sport, I tell you.”

The effect of this speech upon Horsey may
readily be conjectured. His ejaculations of pleasure
interrupted the speaker a dozen times before he
had finished, and then he grasped his hand with a
hearty tug that threatened to shake his arm off.
He forgot his cares of bed and lodging and supper—
all cares—all doubts—all apprehensions—in the one
predominant pleasure that filled his soul; and a hundred
questions and ejaculations followed each other
too rapidly for correction or reply, as he gave free
vent to those emotions which he had so long and so
unwillingly restrained.

“And you belong to little Jim Tilton's company?
And where's Jim?—I knew the little fellow in New
Orleans, when he was—a-hem!” He was about to
say candle-snuffer, but a little prudence came to his
aid at the moment, and put an estopel on his tongue.

“Jim Tilton,” said the other, “is no go. He's but
a poor drab, and the less we say of him the better.
He's not with us now, and I seriously doubt whether
he'll ever show his face among us. It'll be a dark
day for him when he does.”

“Ha! how so? how so?”

“Well, he's a rogue—that's the long and short of
it. We played at Manchester to a good smart chance
of a house, and before the play was over, Jim was
missing, and the treasury with him. We heard of
him going down to the river to Vicksburg, and
that's the last. He won't come back, unless he
brings a double chance of picayunes to make up
hush-money.”

“The skunk! But it's like him,” said Horsey.
“He was a poor shote of a fellow at Orleans, a mere

candle-snuffer for C—well, when I was playing second-rates
at the American.”

“You playing—you! Why, who are you?” said
the new-comer, with a very natural expression of
surprise.

“My name is Horsey,” replied our traveller, with
a modest dropping of the voice.

“Horsey!—Not the famous actor at Ludlow's in
Mobile? It can't be possible. Tell me, stranger?”

The gusto with which this was spoken—the voluminous
odour which it bore up into the mental nostrils
of Horsey, was as good as a year's growth—a
prize in the lottery—or a crowning benefit. His
blood tingled in his veins from head to foot, yet
never did mortal face struggle more hard to subdue
the exulting smile—to assume and wear the pursed
up aspect of humility.

“I was at Ludlow's,” he replied, modestly, “and
I don't know that there was any actor there but myself
of my name; but I was not famous—no, no! I
did some good things—I think I did—but they passed
without notice. I do not think I got much reputation
in Mobile.”

“My dear sir, you do the Mobilians injustice—
great injustice. I have heard of you a thousand
times in Mobile, and from the best authorities. R—a
thought you a first-rate. R—a was an excellent judge
in theatricals—my particular friend—a noble fellow,
and there was—what's his name?—the editor of the
Commercial—ah! devil take it, I have such a memory.
But it matters not. I tell you, Horsey, never
did dramatic reputation stand higher in Mobile than
did yours. You were off for New Orleans when I
reached the city, but every body was asking after
you, and on one occasion it was reported you had
arrived but had no engagement, and then there was
a hue and cry after the manager. It was asked in

all the papers why you were not engaged, and he
was compelled to assure the audience, under the terrors
of an uproar, that you should be engaged as
soon as your arrival was made known to him. I
was present at the time, and know the stir it made.”

“Is it possible? I wonder I never heard of it before.”

“I reckon you didn't read the newspapers. It was
all there—all put down as large as life. Nay, if you
were in Orleans, you must have heard of it.”

“No,—indeed I didn't. I never read the newspapers.
I took a dislike to editors. I thought them
all humbugs—they spoke very disrespectfully of me
at my first beginning, and I was resolved never to
read their stuff. But I was wrong: I suspect—”

“Wrong! Yes, that you were! You have shut
your ears against some pleasant truths. If they
treated you ill at first, they made you ample amends
afterwards, as I think I can show you. I have, I
think, some of the Mobile Patriot of that time that'll
open your eyes. Newspapers and editors, Mr. Horsey,
should not be looked down upon with too much
contempt. They are useful in their way. They
may be made so at least; and, between us, it's best
to treat the humblest profession with charity, since,
if our managers continue this trick of running away
with the strong box, there's no telling to what condition
we may be reduced.”

“Very true! But what could be expected of such
a fellow as Tilton. I was astonished when I heard
that he had presumed to set up for a manager.”

“What! you heard of us then?”

“Yes—I heard of you down in Raymond, and
my purpose was to join you.”

“Join us! God bless you, Mr. Horsey. It'll be
the making of us,” said the stranger, grasping Horsey's

hand and flaming out with the opening in
Richard—

“That was well spoken, Mr.—ah! pardon me,—
but oblige me with your name.”

“Jones!—a humble one, sir, utterly unknown to
fame!” replied the other with a great show of modesty.

“It may be, Mr. Jones,” replied Horsey, warmly;
“but those two lines which you have just now
spoken were really well said—very prettily said—
excellently well said. I shall look for good things
from you. Indeed, I shall.” The flatteries of the
stranger had seduced the judgment of Horsey into
a corresponding flexibility, and in a few moments,
the apprehensions of the traveller were all forgotten
in the exultation and resuscitated hopes of the actor.
The anxieties natural to his situation, and
which, but a moment before, had grown almost
painful, were dismissed entirely from his mind, and
in a moment he had resumed all the characteristics
of manner and feeling, which he had shown to our
readers on his first introduction. He now spoke, ad
libitum, of plays and playing only. Every third
word was a quotation; and it was only when the
new-comer, who had kept up the ball with no little
show of practice and ability, found his corresponding
store of quotation utterly exhausted, that he was
brought back to the more immediate necessities of
his situation. It was now the turn of Jones to remind
him of his lodgings for the night. But it was
not so easy now to direct the attention of our actor,
who, once aroused on his favourite theme, would
wag a tongue in its honour so long as the member
itself had a single working hinge to depend upon.

“But we forget, Mr. Horsey,” said Jones, in prosecuting
his often baffled purpose—“we actors, who
so love our profession, are very apt to forget other
matters. Here we are, wasting our readings upon
the desert air, when we should be thinking upon
other matters. Supper now and a place to sleep in
—I must crave your pardon for keeping you from
these things so long.”

“Nay, these are small matters. The toast and
tankard can be got at any moment, but for the rest
—what of my old Prince of Hickories? What of
Hugh Peters, and how are his timbers? He to
make a Julius Cæsar! Ha! ha! ha! The thing's
ridiculous, Jones; and he must be got rid of as well
as Tilton—birds of a feather—no game—fellows
that will disgrace us only. Crows, crows!”

“Very true, sir—I agree with you fully, but—”

“Oh, to be sure, I know there will be a difficulty
about it;—it will be unkind to drive the fellow off
and hurt his feelings; though d—n his impudence,
he deserves no better for presuming on such a vocation.
Why, Jones, I remember even now the comical
figure the old fool used to cut in giving us
lessons in reading. Even then, when I was a mere
brat of a boy and knew little or nothing, I could
scarce keep my face to see him mouthing out the
golden verses of the great master. He'd get up on
a box for a stage—his bow legs at a straddle, as if a
ditch lay between 'em, for the better support of his
bag-of-cotton body; and then he'd turn his little
turnippy pugnose, fairly affronting the heavens, and
his lips sinking deep at every sentence that he spoke,
in the hollows where his teeth were knocked out
just in front,—he got it done one dark night as he
fell over a wash tub, and composed himself among
the stumps of a new clearing. The hole was large
enough for my finger,—and he to be an actor? Ha!

ha! ha! It's ridiculous—we must get rid of him;
though, to be sure, as you say, we must do it in
such a way as not to hurt the poor devil's feelings.
By the ghost of David, though I should remember
Little Bowlegs only by his hickories, yet I'm for doing
it tenderly. We must smooth the track for him
so that he may walk off freely. But go he must if
we hope to do any thing. He'd be only in the way
—he can do nothing.”

“Yes, to be sure—you're perfectly right, Mr.
Horsey, and the management might very well be
put into your hands. I'm sure we might make our
monster Dick here do every thing that Peters might
do; but, as I was saying—”

“What, Stillyards!” exclaimed Horsey, turning
upon the attentive dwarf, who stood, all the while
the dialogue proceeded, wondering, with owlet eyes
and broad distended mouth, swallowing the incomprehensible
stuff that he never could digest. “Look
you, Jones, that fellow's a host himself. I wouldn't
give my friend Dick here for all the Peters under
the sun. He's the most comical fellow! What a
Caliban he'd make—a natural born Caliban. Egad!
we had a scene between us just before you came
up—a scene for a melo-drame—it was worth a picayune
to see it. He ran up that tree like an ourangoutang;
drew out his barker, squatted on his
haunches, with the felicity and grace of a black
bear at a honey gum, and challenged me to a regular
exchange of shots. The comical fellow—he's
worth a company himself; and in New York—look
ye, Jones, after all, New York's the place—on the
Bowery, that fellow as Caliban would be a sure card,
and we must play him when we play ourselves.”

“We must talk of this to-morrow,” exclaimed
Jones, desperately,—and seizing upon the only

pause which Horsey had made for an inconceivably
long time. “I will send Dick forward to get
things in readiness for us—supper and a bed. Ho!
Dick! let the boys know that the great actor, Mr.
Horsey, is coming with me. Away, by the gulleys,
while we ride round. We'll be with them in a
half hour.”

The urchin prepared to obey.

“But why not go along with Caliban?” demanded
Horsey.

“For the best of reasons. He can go where our
horses cannot. On a line we are but a poor quarter
of a mile from our camp ground, it will be a
good half hour's ride to reach it the way we must
travel, and night will swallow up the track before
we are done. We must ride, therefore, to make up
lost time. I was so pleasantly occupied, Mr. Horsey,
in listening for the last half hour, that I never
saw that the sun had left us. You must give our
boys some lessons to-night as soon as supper's
over.”

“Ah, Jones, you flatter,” said our friend, modestly;
“I am no such man as you think me. You
can do the thing quite as well as myself.”

“No, no!” replied the other, with something of
a mournful tone, as he rode forward—“No, no!
that is not to be hoped for. Would to heaven it
were!”

Horsey followed with a new feeling of delight
within his bosom. The tone of the cunning Jones,
the words he employed, not to speak of the prospects
and promises of ultimate and unqualified triumph
before him, were all so much heavenly manna
to the still hungering vanity of his heart; and
never before, in all his career, when the possession
of money, lavishly squandered, secured him the

clamouring applauses of the profligate associates
who misled him, had he received a more grateful
tribute to his ruling desire than that afforded by an
adroit outlaw of the Mississippi border. He followed
his guide without suspicion, and was soon
swallowed up from sight in the darkness that now
environed the dense swamps of the Loosa-Chitta.