University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

The hour was late when the strong-minded
maiden, Rachel Morrison, reached her apartments.
The family, guests and all, had retired to their
several chambers for the night; and in the silent review
which she made of the scene she had just witnessed,
a most annoying conviction rose in her
mind of the probable danger awaiting the young traveller,
Vernon, who, she knew, had appointed to resume
his journey on the morrow. She recollected
the promise of one of the robbers (Saxon) to join
him on the road; and this promise she naturally construed
into a resolution to assail him. To warn him
of his danger was her first impulse, but how was
this to be done? It was impossible that she should
seek him then; it was scarcely proper, indeed, that
she should seek him at any time, and to communicate

her warning to Walter Rawlins—the most easy
and natural mode—was to prompt his inquiries into
other particulars of her knowledge, which she was
not yet prepared to unfold. She dreaded the prying
mind of her lover, and doubted her own strength to
refuse him that knowledge which was effectually to
blast and destroy the son of her protector. The conflict
in her mind kept her wakeful, and at the dawn
of day she was dressed, and anxiously on the watch
for that stir in the household which might denote the
preparations of the traveller. To her great joy she
heard footsteps in the adjoining passage, which she
knew to be those of Rawlins. She went forth and
joined him.

“Walter,” she said, “your friend Mr. Vernon
must be on his guard while he rides. There is danger
awaiting him—let him see to his arms, and be
heedful of the company he meets.”

“Ha! Rachel,—but is this all,—know you nothing
more?”

“Nothing that is of any service to him, and nothing
more of his danger. The robbers are near
us; they will be on the lookout for him. Counsel
him to be well prepared; perhaps you may counsel
him to defer his departure.”

“I have tried that already, but he is bent on a
push to-day. He's very restless to get off, though
his thigh's mighty stiff and sore. But tell me, Rachel,
how do you know all this?”

“Another time, not now—Gideon is stirring. Beware
of him.”

“Ha! Gideon—say, Rachel, what of Gideon?”

The person named, at this moment appeared in
the passage-way, and the maiden was gone from
sight in the next. The woodman instantly returned
to the chamber of Vernon, and apprised him of what
he had heard. The latter listened to him without

emotion. He looked to his pistols, felt the charge,
renewed the priming, and this done, continued his
preparations for departure as coolly as before. An
early breakfast had been prepared, after which, and
the unusually long grace which preceded it, Vernon
bade adieu to his rigid, but hospitable host, and joined
by Rawlins, rode forth upon his way. The latter
escorted him to the river, and on their way to this
point, Vernon suggested to him all those plans and
precautions, by which the woodman was to conduct
the contemplated operations against the robbers.
The reasons for the exclusion of the old Methodist
and his son were necessarily increased by the significant
warning of Rachel Morrison; and, counselled
as well as he might be under the existing circumstances,
Rawlins returned to Zion's Hill, leaving our
hero to pursue his farther journey alone. The narrow,
but deep and rapid stream was soon crossed,
and now let us also leave him, for a brief space,
while he struggles through the rank ooze, and interminable
ponds and sluices that skirt, at frequent intervals,
and for continued miles on either bank, the
dead level borders and drowned lands of the Loosa-Chitta.

The sun was slowly ascending through the
branches of the towering cottonwood and pine-trees,
that seemed to throw themselves forward as barriers
in opposition to his progress, along the eastern elevations,
when a small party of men, three in number,
might have been seen in close consultation beneath
their concealing umbrage. One of these was no
other than our old acquaintance, Saxon. Their
horses were in hand, as if made ready for a journey;
and that air of quickness, keenness, and anxiety
which mingled in their manner, and contrasted
strongly with the low, suppressed tones of their

voices, plainly denoted some new expedition. The
robbers were evidently preparing for business.

“Go you forward,” said Saxon to his two companions
as he leapt to the saddle, “and let Nawls
get the papers in readiness. Meanwhile, I will take
the road from the Benton turn-out, as soon as I am
sure that our man has passed it. I know his course
now, and can readily overtake him. Remember
you are to act as law officers, and you must do your
duty with becoming gravity. None of your swaggering
and swearing, Binks; and do you, Davis,
keep a dry throat. Be sure you cast no discredit
on the venerable authority you are supposed to represent.
It is an honour no less imposing than new,
that you should be made officers of the law you
have so often offended.”

“Not the less worthy officers for all that,” said
one of the fellows. `Set a thief to catch a thief,' is
a maxim which will always give a thief employment.”

“Ay, but you are to catch an honest man as usual,
rascals; so that you are only pursuing an old trade.
But ride on; you have no time to waste. In another
hour our man will be within reach, and you
shall meet us ere we get to Lucchesa. Nawls is
better at running a horse than filling out a warrant,
and you will need to spur him to the task. Let him
waste no minutes that you can save—you, Binks, can
fill up the blank and the Judge can sign it. That
will shorten the business to his hand, and by all calculations,
you should be able to tap your prisoner
on his shoulder ere we gain sight of the village.
Away.”

“It is done,” said Binks, putting spurs to his horse
and followed closely by his companion. Saxon,
meanwhile, crossing the main road, sank into the

opposite forests, and put himself in watch for the
coming of his prey. He was not long in waiting.
His calculations, the result of long experience of
horse's speed and the road, were nearly correct.
Before the hour was ended, the trampling of a steed
was heard, and Vernon went by. Suffering some
moments to elapse, the better to deceive the traveller
as to his late proximity, Saxon at length followed
and joined him a few hundred yards above.

With the first sound of approaching footsteps,
Vernon prepared himself for an enemy, but the sight
of the stranger somewhat disarmed his apprehensions.
Saxon was seemingly without arms of any
kind, and there was that in the frank and manly expression
of his face, in the free, hearty salutation
which he used, and the quiet and simple manner
of his address, that Vernon, as a mere physiognomist,
had he annexed any importance to this idle study,
would have been disposed rather to confide in the
new-comer, than to regard him with distrust. He
answered the salutation of the stranger with equal
frankness, and it was agreed, as they both aimed for
Lucchesa, that they should ride on their way together.
This is not a matter of difficult arrangement
in a country of such lonesome distances and long
miles as ours; and where the parties are young, and
where they have already had any experience in travelling,
there is a very general flexibility of temper,
which prompts them to great social compliances
when upon the road. But, with the present parties
a mutual policy would alone have brought them together;
and each aiming at concealment, the frank
game was the only one to be played by those who
had any occult objects in reserve. Something, too,
in the really excellent capacities and good education
of the two, may have contributed to bring them
more readily together; and each perceiving in the

other a nearer approximation to those standards of
taste which were most agreeable to himself, and
which were something above those presented by the
ordinary intellects of forest life, the dialogue grew
lively after a brief space of time, and soon became
unflagging.

“A few years more, sir,” said Saxon, in reply to
a remark of Vernon, touching the sparse settlements
along the Yazoo; “a few years more, and this
country must become exceedingly populous. Its resources
must be found out, as they are so greatly
desirable to the poor settler every where. The wildness
of the region will keep back the cold, the slow,
the timid, and the wealthy. They will shrink from
a too close neighbourhood with the Indians, and,
perhaps, be equally apprehensive of that wild class,
the squatters, who, rude, rash, violent and reckless
as they are, are yet the necessary men in all new
countries. These will continue to be wild, until they
have made some valuable acquisitions. It is the possession
of something to lose, that makes your social
and best citizen, and the robber himself, when his
accumulations become valuable, will, I doubt not,
settle down into the sober citizen, and grow grave
and great among the first moralists of the land.”

“If a more sudden elevation does not anticipate
such slow results,” said Vernon with a smile; “but,”
he continued, “I have no faith in half the monstrous
robber-tales which are told of every new country.
When you reach the scene of the story, the terrible
and frequently bloody event is placed in a region yet
farther off. The border is always beyond you; the
country of the monsters—the anthropophagi—

is still the country of the unknown. You approach,
and the cloud disperses, and that which, `afar off
seen,' was terrible, not only becomes harmless when
at hand, but lovely and inviting, perhaps, beyond
all other prospects. A certain distance `lends enchantment
to the view,' while an uncertain distance
clothes it with evil aspects, fills it with

In short, ignorance makes as many monsters as fear,
and mankind for ages have shrunk from the possession
of the garden spots of earth, through dread of
those multiplied terrors which have been made to
guard them, simply through the ministry of their
own imaginations.”

Saxon concurred with Vernon in his brief and
natural view of the subject, and the conversation
proceeded with a mutually increasing interest on both
sides. The former spoke with fluency, and a considerable
knowledge of the plain, the positive and
practical. Like qualities of mind were observable
in his companion, but warmed and elevated by a
quick and vigorous imagination, which heightened
the colour of his fancy, gave life to his delineations,
and kindled his enthusiasm. This warmth suffered
a check, and he himself received a warning, however,
as he found the conversation, on the part of
Saxon, gradually rising into a strain of complimentary
remark, as the latter either felt, or affected to feel, the
eloquence and wisdom of his companion's sentiments.
The quick, sensitive mind of Vernon, which, like that
of most ambitious men, had an instinctive dread of
ridicule, was at once checked in its familiarity, and
sunk back upon its caution and self-esteem for defence
and protection. A cold, merely respectful and

civil tone and form of expression, succeeded to the
glow and energy of his previous manner; and Saxon,
with that keen eye which belongs to the tactician,
beheld the change, and readily comprehended its
origin. His own manner was changed, his speech,
more qualified and cautious; and though he took care
that in what he said, the easy deference of his opinions
should convey a no less flattering testimony to
his companion's merits, he yet forebore any of those
more open expressions of approval which he had imprudently
administered ad nauseam. But the nice
sense of moral delicacy once startled, it was not so
easy for him to overcome the reluctance of Vernon
to engage in any new freedom of dialogue. Not
that the conversation flagged between them; the
frankness alone was gone; the playful indifference
of expression had passed away; and though speech
was no less ready than before, yet caution watched
the utterance, and truth was content to show herself
only at the staid and squared portals of opinion.
With some dexterity, Saxon contrived to re-open
the topic which had suggested itself to them at their
first meeting—that, namely, which arose naturally
from the wild and equivocal character of the country,
and its evil influence over the supposed physical resources
of the soil. It was an easy transition, which
the outlaw did not feel at all scrupulous to make, to the
frequent robberies and misdemeanours in the neighbourhood.
He spoke of them, as all spoke of them, as
frequent and sometimes coupled with greater crimes;
but at the same time, seizing upon an expressed opinion
of Vernon, he declared them to be infamously
exaggerated, and deplored the evils to the country
of such an unhappy notoriety as belonged to it.

“It is, in fact, in the absence of citizens that these
things happen. Our population is guiltless, I am
sure, of any participation in them; and these crimes

are committed by those only who make our territory
a stage for their villanous performances. Had we
a community sufficiently dense to act with any thing
like unanimity—indeed, had we any one or two men,
calculated by ability and energy to take a lead, and
bring our men together, nothing, I am sure, would
be more easy than to put a stop to these excesses.
We might soon, by lynching a few, keep the rest in
order, and in good time, the want of means and
money would compel labour, which is all that is wanting
to good morals in any country.”

This was all very fairly and frankly said; the
truth of the latter opinion could not well be denied;
but Vernon, though suppressing every thing like apparent
suspicion, was yet suspicious; and once startled,
he was one of those keen, restless minds that
cannot be quieted, short of utter confirmation on
one side or the other. The mistimed complimentary
speeches of Saxon still occupied his thoughts, and
were productive in him of some such musings as
filled the mind of the Prince of Denmark under not
dissimilar circumstances. The theatrical reference
which his companion employed in one part of his
speech, reminded him at the same moment of his
quondam friend, Horsey, and the phlegmatic and indecisive
Dane.—Why should he flatter so poor a
man as Hamlet? Such applauses to one's beard
were not in ordinary use in that time and country;
and however grateful to such a man as Horsey, were
scarcely pleasing to him, unless it were that his
companion regarded him also as one of the players
just “come hither.” At all events, the effect upon
Vernon was to counsel him to more caution, but to
no reserve; and with this policy in view, he expressed
himself very freely in accordance with the opinions
of Saxon, which, indeed, happened to be precisely
such as he had uttered at the council-board of old

Badger,—if that might be called a place of council
where the chairman—as very often happens to venerable
chairmen—was pretty much resolved from the
beginning to have his own way. It occurred very
naturally that he should relate his recent adventures
on the other side of the river—so much, at least, as
related to the attack of the robbers, and his own
slight hurt in defence of the traveller.

“I then,” he concluded, “in a conversation with
a very worthy and respectable old gentleman,—a
Mr. Badger, with whom I remained a brief space,
in consequence of my hurt,—came to this very conclusion,
though in direct opposition with himself. He
was for turning out the trainbands at once and
searching the swamp,—a labour which, I fear, will
be utterly fruitless. The same scoundrels that assailed
Mr. Wilson, are, I doubt not, full fifty miles off
before this time.”

The keen eye of Saxon surveyed the speaker with
a glance which seemed intended to penetrate his
soul; but the calm, indifferent countenance of Vernon
baffled the inquiry.

“This fellow,” thought the outlaw, “is either a
most admirable tactician, or I have taken a very unnecessary
labour. But, let the game be played out.
We are now, sir,” speaking aloud, “we are now
within sight of one of the prettiest little villages in
this country. They call it Lucchesa—after some
Italian city, I believe. We are all monstrous fond
of going to Europe for names which would be found
more appropriate, and quite as smooth and musical
at home. But call Lucchesa by what name you
will, you will admit when you see it that it is one of
the sweetest spots that could be found any where for
a village. It lies among gentle risings, which here
may be called hills; and which so completely surround,
as to leave it but a single opening for entrance,

and that seems only to be scooped out for the purpose,
and not natural. The woods, you see, are thick
—the old forests are barely trimmed to let in the
daylight, as it were, and give room for the cottages.
These are better built and more neatly decorated
than is often the case in our country villages; washed
with lime, which answers the purpose of the best
white lead for a season or more; and, peeping through
the green openings here and there, they seem to be
the pleasantest little temples that were ever yet raised
by humility to happiness. I think I could spend my
days in this little village, without ever desiring to
look down on the outer side of the hills which surround
it.”

“You live here then?” was the natural question
of Vernon.

“Yes, I may say so,” was the somewhat evasive
answer; “I live here when not elsewhere. But it
is not permitted us to choose our habitations any
more than to choose our graves. No man can say,
death shall seek me here, however much he might
pray for it.”

Saxon was on the verge of Badgerism, as the two
entered the little and lovely, but scattered village of
Lucchesa. It seemed a settlement of some fifteen or
twenty families—the cottages gleaming in a broken
circle from among the trees, planted without much
reference to each other, but amply gaining in picturesqueness
what they might have lacked in regularity.
Some of these were girdled and guarded by
little low white palings, that followed the hill slopes
on which they stood; some were fenced by hedges
of the wild rose or the box, and among the small
trees and bushes, and the bush myrtles, or spreading
cedars that filled up the space between, the multiflora
and the perpetual rose leapt and twined itself
even around the topmost branches. A few pale

sycamores rose up majestically amid the dwarf foliage
that filled the valley, and ran down the slopes,
giving a staid and solemn air to a scene that otherwise
presented no other aspect than one of unqualified
sweetness. But one object more than all gratified
the eye of the observer, in the little stream that
came stealing and whispering out from the hollow
in which the village stood, by the only portal that
led into it, with the sly, smiling glance of the truant
boy, availing himself of the opportunity and open
door, to steal away from the guarded circuit, and
lose himself for awhile among the thick groves, that
had beguiled him from a distance so often and so
sweetly before.

While Vernon looked round admiringly upon a
scene that seemed strangely placed on the very confines
of savage life, he suddenly found himself confronted
by two persons, who, with the air of men
having a perfect right to his attention, demanded to
know his name.

“My name, gentlemen!—my name is Vernon;
but your demand is something singular. You will
oblige me with your reason.”

“Oh, yes; that's all fair enough; Harry, or Henry
Vernon—that's right, a'n't it, sir?” said one of the
men, drawing forth a paper.

“It is, sir,” was the reply of Vernon with increasing
surprise, and a slight increase of colour in the
cheek, and that dilation of the nostril which denotes
the swelling choler. Saxon, meanwhile, looked on
with well-affected astonishment.

“Then, sir, if you're the man, we are commanded
to arrest you, in the name of the state, for murder.”

“Murder!”

“Yes, murder!—the murder of one Thomas Horsey,
a young gentleman from below that you travelled
with a few days past.”

“Horsey dead! Can it be possible? This is the
strangest matter, sir, and—but show me your warrant.”

“Let us go into the tavern, Mr. Vernon,” said
Saxon, sympathisingly, “and you can there look
more calmly into this business.” Upon this hint the
party went forward, Doe and Roe taking care to
environ our hero in such a manner, that escape,
were he disposed to try it, would have been impossible.
Here, with feelings of no enviable character,
Vernon examined the instrument which had been
issued for his taking. He found it to be a criminal
warrant, proper in its forms, and issued by one William
Nawls, a regularly acting magistrate. Had
an enemy confronted our hero with intent to kill, the
absolute danger would have produced less disquiet
and annoyance in his mind than did the simple instrument
which he perused and re-persued, absolutely
bewildered and confounded for the moment. That
Horsey should have been murdered, however sudden
and unexpected this event, was certainly far from
being improbable in a neighbourhood where he, himself,
but a few days before, had a foretaste of a
similar fate awaiting him. But that he should be
made liable for his fate, and arrested for his murder,
was one of those contingencies which, a moment
before, he would have regarded as too remote and
ridiculous a possibility to occasion any other feeling
than merriment in his mind.

“Gentlemen,” he said to the constables, “I can
scarce recover from my surprise at this strange accusation.
Pray, on whose oath was this warrant
issued? What testimony furnished the grounds for
this charge?”

“Well, I read the oath, too,” said one of the officers,
“but if I was to be shot, I couldn't say if the
man's name was Walker or Wilkins. It was one

or t'other, I could safely swear, but which, there's
no telling. Hows'ever, I don't reckon it makes much
difference now—you can see all about it when you
get before the judge.”

“True, true—Justice Nawls!”—turning to the
landlord, and showing the signature of the warrant
—“Is this name that of a gentleman acting as a magistrate
here, sir?”

“Not here, sir, but a few miles off, on the Georgeville
road,” was the reply of the landlord.

“A mighty good man is Judge Nawls,” said one
of the bystanders. “It was only last week he prayed
sarchingly at Green Brier meeting, and the sperit
worked in him so, that the sweat stood round his
eyes jist the same as he'd been a-ploughing.”

“'Twan't the sperit, Dill, 'twas only the flesh that
worked so mightily,” said another of the bystanders.
“'Twas because he had none of the sperit that the
flesh had to do so much, and I'm mighty sure Bill
Nawls never found harder work at the plough in all
his life, than he did at that ar' very sarmon.”

“Well, and worn't it a good one, John Richards?”

“A good one! Well, I can't say what you may
think it, but for myself I can say such a sermon will
never carry me very far along the narrow track.
There's no getting to heaven by a preaching where
there's no getting steam up; and it's a matter of
small wonder that so many take the other road, and
go down to the big pit, when it depends upon the
sweating of Bill Nawls's flesh to keep 'em from it.
But that's not to say, stranger, that Nawls aint a
good judge. He's a most onbecoming person, that'll
see all sides of your case, and do you justice enough
—though, to be sure, he's mighty slow, and takes a
particular long time to get through any writing.
I've seen him take jist as long a time, now, to get
round the body of an `o,' or an `e,' as I would to

put on the tire of a great wagon wheel, drive the
nails, and swing it on the body.”

The merits of Judge or Justice Nawls as a man
and preacher, thus made the subject of popular disputation
around him, was very little edifying to our
hero; and just at this point of the dispute his eye
caught, on a sudden, the glimpse of an object which,
for the moment, almost caused an entire forgetfulness
of the predicament in which he stood. This
was no other than the carriage of Wilson—otherwise
Maitland—which he beheld, denuded of its trunks
and the other paraphernalia of the travellers, yet
evidently occupied, as if for an evening ride, by its
proprietor and his family. A mere glimpse was afforded
him of this vehicle, as it rapidly passed along
the common highway, and a feeling of exulting
satisfaction, which had its source in mingled emotions,
sprang up in his bosom. Once more the object
of his pursuit seemed to be within his grasp;—
he did not, it may be added, fail to perceive that the
daughter of Maitland was with him still, though it
never entered his thoughts, at this early stage of
their acquaintance, that she, too, had become an object
of his pursuit. The desire to see the latter, had,
without his own consciousness, quite as much influence
over him, as the feeling of duty which prompted
him to secure the former; and with these desires
in his mind, uttering an exclamation, he was about
to rush to the entrance of the tavern, when his arm
was forcibly grappled by the officers.

“Not so fast, my lark. That cock won't fight, I
can tell you,” exclaimed one of the constables, while
a brutal burst of laughter from both, reminded him
of his predicament, which the sight of the carriage
of Maitland had moved him momentarily to forget.

“Unhand me, fellows, for an instant. I would see
and speak to the gentleman in that carriage;” and

he almost shook himself free as he spoke, while his
efforts were such as to render necessary all of theirs
to secure him.

“Be quiet, man, before I put a spur into you,”
cried one of the fellows, taking him at the same time
by the collar, and putting on a threatening and insolent
look, that goaded Vernon to a degree of forgetfulness
and fury, to which the sudden arrest of his
previous movement had already greatly moved him.

“Dog!” he exclaimed, striking down the arm that
grasped his collar, and driving his clenched fist into
the fellow's face in the instant with a force that sent
him to the floor, “do you think I will suffer this?”

“Help! help!” cried the second officer, “an
escape! Citizens, I command you, help, help!—
stop the murderer!”

“Cease howling, fool!” exclaimed Vernon, “I
seek not to escape. I would speak but a moment
with the owner of yon carriage.”

His words were disregarded; the constable clung
to him with the tenacity of a bull-dog, that clings
still though it may not conquer, and Vernon had already
dragged him almost to the entrance, when a
short, stout Irishman, who lay upon a bench in the
room, and who, to this moment, had looked on the
fray with the most placid indifference, now sprang
to his feet, and lifting a bludgeon that had lain concealed
behind him, felled Vernon to the ground with
a single blow. He would have repeated the stroke,
when a stranger interposed,—a young Alabamian
who had also just arrived in the village—and catching
the lifted arm with a grasp that fixed it in its
position, exclaimed:

“Stick down, my lad! There go two hands to
this bargain. What the devil sort of soul do you
think you have, d—n you, to strike a man that is
speechless?”

“Thunder and turf, my honey! do you mane to
make me your inimy?” cried the Hibernian. “Would
ye be after resaving a tap on yer own pate, my
honey?”

“Devil-may-care if I do, but you can't give it me,
nor any lad of your inches,” cried the Alabamian,
who in the same moment lifted the astonished Irishman
to his full height in the air, in defiance of all
his struggles, and then dropped him down with as
little reluctance as if he had been one of the most
insensible “p'raties” of his fatherland.

“There, Patrick, what do you say to that, and be
d—d to you?”

A battle to the death was nearly the consequence
of this display of prowess on the part of the Alabamian,
who, no ways loth, prepared for it with the
utmost sang froid, and answered the threats of Patrick
with a swaggering and cool defiance, which
denoted the most perfect confidence in himself. But
it was not the policy of Saxon, who recognised a
follower in Dennis O'Dougherty, to suffer it. He
interposed to keep the peace, and used all the usual
and effective arguments common to cases of such
urgent necessity. The bar supplied the means of
bringing about a pacification, quite as often as it promotes
the strifes and vexations which lead to war,
and the Alabamian expressed himself as clearly of
opinion that the fun was quite as great to drink, as
to fight, with a stout fellow.

“As for Patrick, here—”

“Dennis, if you plase—Dennis O'Dougherty, of
the O'Doughertys of Ballyshannon by the pit of
Ballany—a family of the ouldest—there's no telling,
indade, when the O'Doughertys were not a family
of the ouldest.”

“That accounts for your loss of strength, Mr.
O'Dougherty,” said the Alabamian; “if you hadn't

come from so old a family, I should not have tumbled
you so easily. Your great-grandfather must
have been rather a stout chap in his time, and it
might have given me more trouble to spring him to
the ceiling. But the blood gets mighty thin going
through three, or five, or seven generations, unless
the breed is crossed mighty often. Now, don't
you see the advantage of being of a new family? In
my state, all the men are of new families, and we've
got the strength in us. Perhaps, the time will come
that our children will grow weak and feeble like
you, Dennis, and some chap, away from the Red
River, or the Sabine—some new fellow from Texas
or thereabouts—will swing the grandson of Dick
Jamison just as easily as he can swing you, Dennis.”

“Asily, do you say, Misther Dick Jeemison!” exclaimed
Dennis; “not so asy, my honey, if the thing
is to be thried agin. You had the back of me, Mr.
Dick Jeemison, an' that's a rason why you should
come to the front. But, shall it be for a quart, that
we shall take a friendly gripe at the ribs, or will it
be the shillelah, my honey?”

“Stick, fist, or hug, Dennis O'Dougherty, it's all
the same to Dick Jamison. You're of too old a family,
Dennis, to stand up with a young man from
Alabama; the stuff's not in you, my lad, and I
should swallow you at a mouthful and never ask
after the salt.”

“Now, don't ye be after desaving yerself, my
honey,” replied the Irishman, somewhat astounded at
the cool impudence of the Alabamian, not merely in
disparaging his hitherto acknowledged powers, but in
the still more remarkable disparagement of the greater
merits of an old family, which, to the great horror
and surprise of Dennis, were now made to give way
to the claims of a young one. The almost contemptuous
terms which the member of the new house

employed in determining the proper precedence of
the latter, uttered with so much complacency, tended
still more to embitter the idea. “Now, don't ye be
after desaving yerself, Mr. Dick Jeemison, saing
it was behind my back that ye overkim Dennis
O'Dougherty; and don't ye be after thinking that
ye can overkim him again behind his back, when his
face is turned upon ye. There's a difference, my
honey, between a jontleman's face and his back, that
ye'll be after belaving when ye've sane them together
as I will show ye mine, with a shillelah in aitch
hand, and a pistol in the other, and the spirit of univarsal
liberty in the sowl which will make a rivolution
in your ideas, Mr. Dick Jeemison, and tache you
a leetle abolition of doctrine, that ye may take back
with ye to Alabama.”

“Abolition!” exclaimed one of the inmates of the
bar.

“Abolition!” echoed another and another, and a
dozen faces were peering into the face of the Hibernian
at the inauspicious word.

“Who's talking abolition here?” said one.

“What blasted emissary of Arthur Tappan is it?”

“It's his own self, I do think,” said a third; and
the murmurs began to close with the ominous inquiry
after that venerable border magistrate, Judge
Lynch.

“Jontlemen!” exclaimed the Hibernian, who
began to feel some misgivings that his position
might be made a very awkward one, if the Alabamian
should happen to take the lead against him.
“Jontlemen!” said he, turning from one to the other,
with an air of mingled apology and defiance, “don't
be after desaving yourselves, and misconsaving
Dennis O'Dougherty. I'm a jontleman by my mother's
side,—she was an O'Flaherty—”

“To be sure; don't you suppose, Dennis, that we

know all that?” said the Alabamian; “look you,
friends and fellow-citizens, we all know what Dennis
means by abolition, but being an Irishman born, and
of an old family that's nearly worn out, how should
he be able to speak good English. He is a gentleman,
as he says, by the mother's side—his mother being
an O'Flaherty; and a lady by his father's side, the
old gentleman being an O'Dougherty; and therefore
he asks you all to join with him here in a sup
of whisky,—regular Monongahela,—that we may
have a revolution of ideas and an abolition of distinctions.
That's what Dennis means by abolition,
only the poor fellow hasn't been long enough in
America to speak good English. And, look you,
my friends, it's not a bad notion now, I tell you, for
a man whose family's almost worn out, to wish to
abolish distinctions where our families are only
just beginning. He'd be mighty willing to let that
matter drop, and so you see he's for giving us a drop
all round; so come, Kitty, fill your quart and set
out the sugar, and look you, friends, we'll drink to
the health of Mr. Dennis O'Dougherty, who is a gentleman
by his mother's side, and a lady by his father's;
and may he soon recover his strength by
getting into a new family.”

This speech was received with loud huzzas. The
explanation of the Alabamian, as it was only understood
in part, was perfectly satisfactory to all parties;
the countrymen around were satisfied with it, as
its result was one easily swallowed and perfectly
habitual; and the Hibernian, though there was
much in the speech to confound his better judgment,
and stagger his conception of the English he
already knew, was also content to receive it without
scruple as explanatory of his own ideas, simply as he
found it so successful with all around, and as it relieved
him from a predicament, which some recent

examples had already convinced him, might have
become an awkward, if not a dangerous one. A
more general diffusion of the peace principle was
evident soon after the quart flagon was placed upon
the counter of the publican, and the Alabamian, who
was something of a wag, and no little of a democrat,
was soon busy in labouring to convince Dennis that
there was no greater misfortune on earth than to be
the descendant of a very old family; as he proceeded
to show by every analogous case, drawn from the history
of bird, beast and reptile, that the breed must
degenerate, with every successive advance, after the
fifth generation; and the only hope of an old nation
was to merge itself, as soon as possible after that period,
in the body and bosom of a new. The final
speech of Mr. Jamison, at the moment when we propose
to leave the company, may be put on record as
containing a proposition of quite as much political
truth as theory.

“It's in America here, Dennis, my boy, that we will
preserve the English, and the Irish, and the Scotch,
when, in your own country, you'll all be worked
down to a mere stump of what you were. It's here,
I tell you, that the English people will get a new
growth, a height and a depth, a breadth and a bottom,
when the old families wouldn't have one fellow
among 'em fit to carry guts to a bear. This is the
country, after all, to make men out of your sticks,
jist the same as taking a plant from one place
where it's been growing so long that it's come to
nothing, and putting it into a new field where
it never was before. See the difference! how it
shoots up—how it spreads, and what a fine crop you
get from it for the first five years—maybe seven,—
but after that you must carry it farther off to some
new opening, and begin again. If I was to do any
thing for you, Dennis, I'd marry you off at once to

Polly Whitesides,—you all know Polly Whitesides,
my boys?”—A general laugh attested the success
of the reference.—“I'd marry you off to Polly
Whitesides, of Beattie's Bluff, and make a new family
out of an old one.”

“It's a lady you spake of, Mr. Dick Jeemison?”

“Ay, to be sure, a lady—what else? She's six
feet in her stockings, with cheeks red as a gobbler's
gills, and an arm, Dennis, that would put your thigh
out of countenance!”

“J—s! and she's a lady, Mr. Jeemison?”

“And the very gal to make a new and rising family
out of an old one on its last legs,” was the reply.

Let us change the scene, and follow Vernon into
the apartment into which he was carried at the moment
when the blow from the shillelah of Dennis
O'Dougherty had laid him senseless on the floor.