University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.

The night which followed these agitating events, was not,
as may be easily imagined, one of very calm repose to either of
the lovers: For as they retired to their respective rooms, now
many miles apart, and laid their heads on their solitary pillows,
the occurrences of the day, so deeply interesting to the feelings,
and so important to the future destinies of both, were made to
pass again and again in review before them. And while the
blissful sensations, flowing from their own and the consciousness
of each other's love, grew more rapturous in the retrospect, the
unprovoked treatment they had received, now that the feeling of
resistance, with which the bosom is apt to arm itself to meet the
infliction of a wrong, had passed away, was felt with double
poignancy. Lot's feelings, in respect to this treatment, it is true,
had been somewhat modified by Stacy's developments, which
were calculated to lessen the effect of Old Jude's conduct on one
of his character; but, as much as these developments had quieted
his feelings in some respects, they added to his uneasiness
in others. He now felt himself placed in a new and somewhat
embarrassing position. He knew not what fierce battles for
property, and, perhaps, for character, in which his motives would
doubtless be impugned, were about to be fought over his head.
And besides this, the beautiful girl he had wooed in the confidence
arising from supposed equality in pecuniary circumstances,
now stood before him as a wealthy heiress; and he could not
prevent new doubts and fears from arising in his mind, lest, when
this should be known, his humble claims would be made to give
place to more advantageous offers. The consciousness, however,
of pure motives—of the fact, that he had offered her his hand
when he supposed her destitute of wealth, together with his faith
in her character and constancy, at length, in a good degree, prevailed
over his doubts and conquered his uneasiness in this respect.

But though he might be able to quell these lover-like
troubles by the deep trust which he felt he could place in Miss
Hosmer, so long as she should be left to follow the dictates of her
own unbiased judgment, yet doubts and fears far less easily disposed
of now arose for the effect of the machinations which this
new insight into the motives and character of her uncle assured
him would be put in train to prejudice or deceive her, and break
off the connection. And the more he looked forward to the
probable difficulties in his path, and reviewed the slender, silken
thread of love, which led to the desired consummation, and
which, in all cases, is so easily snapped asunder, the less was
his hope that it could withstand the many rude shocks that it
was doubtless destined to receive.

With Lucy the case was considerably varied. She, having,
by this time, no suspicions that the situation and extent of her
property was any different from what her uncle had, for so many
years, been artfully preparing her to believe, and consequently
being ignorant of the deep motives he had to drive away the
suitor of her choice,—she could not bring herself to believe that
his opposition, whether grounded on the inadequate reasons he
had held out, or any other prejudice, would long be persevered
in. Although, sooner than she intended, she had been brought
virtually to engage herself, in her sympathy for her lover under
his ill usage, and in admiration of his manly conduct on the occasion,
yet she did not regret the step she had taken. Entertaining
neither a doubt nor a fear, that her own feelings and
purposes or those of her lover would ever be estranged or shaken,
she saw no clouds in the future. And the happiness she felt, in
now, for the first time, permitting her gushing affections to flow
unrestrained, and in looking through the brightening vista before
her, was only alloyed by the annoying sense of the wrongs and
insults with which this new and interesting era of her life was
associated. These, for a while, she thought she could never
forget or forgive. But resentment could never long find harbor
in a bosom so beautifully harmonized as that of Lucy Hosmer,
who possessed the enviable faculty of making the good in every
picture so prominent as to overshadow the bad, and even of extracting,
like the bee, some portion of sweet from every bitter

flower she found in her path. She soon resolved, therefore, to
cast away anger and endeavor to conquer her uncle by kindness.
And this resolution was strengthened by the unusual cordiality
with which the latter responded to her smiling salutations, when
they met the next morning. But she little knew what was
passing in the breast of him whom she thought thus to move
from his purposes. He, himself, had been the first to perceive
the error he had committed, and his plotting brain was already
at work devising new and more effectual measures to estrange
and separate the lovers; when he somehow became apprised of
the existence of other dangers, which were so much more immediately
threatening to his interests, as to engross his whole
attention, and cause him, for the following week, to be almost
wholly absent from home.

Esquire Stacy, in the meanwhile, not only in fulfillment of
his promise to his deceased friend, but in furtherance of the prospective
rights and happiness of the lovers, in whom, now he
had discovered them to be such, he took a double interest, was
anxiously deliberating with himself respecting the first step to
be taken in their affairs; and it was not till after the lapse of
many days, so critical did he perceive the ground on which he
stood to be for any active movement, that he could come to any
definite conclusion on the subject. Although, however, he made
up his mind first to have an interview with Old Jude, broach
the subject of the proposed union of his niece with young Fisher,
and then proceed as circumstances should dictate; and with
this view, he went out several times intending to accost him,
but each time found, on enquiry, that he was absent from the
village. Wondering what could cause the old man, who was
so generally about home, to be absent so much, just at this time,
and growing a little impatient to put his project into execution,
Stacy continued on the look-out several days longer; when, one
morning he was gratified to see the object of his thoughts making
his appearance in the street. The Squire immediately approached
him, and, when near, began to pause in his walk to intimate
his inclination to hold some conversation. But the other, without
heeding the intimation, brushed by him with a look of peculiar
significance and passed on in silence.

“Now what can that manner towards me, and especially that
expression mean?” said Stacy glancing after Old Jude, marching
stiffly on his way. “It is the same look of malicious triumph
which I have often seen him slyly assume in courts and
other places, when he had discovered some hidden advantage
over an opponent; and it must now be meant for me. Ay, and
if I have not read that masked face of his, for twenty years, in
vain, he thinks he has made a discovery through which he anticipates
a triumph over me in some matter of consequence. But
what can it be?”

And he thought over his own private affairs, and even the various
law-suits of which he had the charge for others, but soon
decided it could be none of these. It must be that he had got wind
of his disclosures to Lot—but how? Lot himself, surely, after
the cautions he had received, would not have even hinted the
matter to any, except Lucy; and her, it was quite certain Lot
had not seen; and he must have known better than to have
trusted such a secret in a letter to her. But by what other
means could the old fox have got at the secret? “Stay—stay!”
at length exclaimed the Squire, in alarm, as now for the first
time, the truth glanced through his mind—“that noise we heard
in the back window of the office! He or some dirty minion
sent for the purpose, must have been there, and listening to our
whole discourse, perhaps. Well, it does seem, as if the Old Evil
One himself told him what was going on, else how should he
have the thought of being there with such an object?”

The secret of the old man's continued absence during the past
week was now explained. Although Stacy, in the disclosures he
made to Lot had not while stating what he could prove of Hosmer's
misdeeds, named any of the persons on whom he relied for evidence,
yet he knew the old man would use every effort to discover
them, and that, if successful, he would scruple at no means
to corrupt or intimidate them. No longer doubting that his subtle
opponent, in his alarm at what he had probably overheard,
had been abroad solely for the purpose of trying to ascertain the
sources of his danger, the Squire at once resolved to lose no
time in visiting the most important of his secret witnesses, in order
to ascertain whether any of them had been discovered or suspected
to be such, and to take such measures with them, by inducing
them to commit themselves on paper or otherwise, as

should be best calculated to secure them against the tampering
arts to which they might now be subjected. Accordingly, the
next morning he saddled his horse and set forth on his projected
expedition, with some apprehensions, certainly, but, after all,
with no serious expectation that anything of consequence had
been discovered, much less that anything could have been effected.
But he soon began to perceive traces of his opponent, and
as he continued his rounds, he became fully satisfied that, where-ever
he went, the crafty and persevering Old Jude had been there
before him, making use of all the means that wealth, artifice or
intimidation could effect, in repairing the breaches, which, with
the clues he had received, he had, to his great alarm doubtless,
found open and unguarded in the wall of defences, with which
he supposed he had so strongly entrenched himself:—One man
by whom Stacy expected to show a bold fraud in the sale of real
estate in which that person, in a pretended public sale had been
employed to bid in, as he did for a mere song and then redeed
to Old Jude, the most valuable piece of Colonel Hosmer's property,
now produced a receipt from the administrator to apply
for the amount of the value of the premises except interest, and
pretended that what he had before said, respecting the sale was
only to gratify a momentary spleen and not intended to be in
earnest. Another person, by whom was to be proved a collusion
in the compromise of what is usually termed a trumpped
up claim, brought against the estate, in which Old Jude, on the
payment of some small sum, and taking receipts for the amount
claimed, had charged the estate several thousand dollars, had
now, like the other man his false answer, feigning to have forgotten
all about the affair, except, that it was, as the papers
showed, a fair and honest transaction. And nearly thus did the
vexed and chagrined Squire find every case which related to
the frauds he once could have proved, he felt sure to have been
committed on the estate. Nor was he any more successful with
those, from whom had, directly or indirectly, been entrusted,
in confidence, with secrets respecting the old man's criminal offences,
by which it was supposed he could be sent to the State's
prison. One had just bought a piece of land of Hosmer, on trust
and now knew nothing to his disadvantage. Another had suddenly,
the past week, gone off for some unknown part of the
western country, having some how been helped to the pecuniary
means of doing so, as he had long wished, but never before had
the ability; while another boldly denied a communication formerly
made to Stacy in private, and challenged him to prove
it.

“Outwitted and outdone! ay, completely outdone, at least for
the present,” exclaimed the baffled lawyer, as he now relinquished
the further prosecution of his object in dispair, and rode thoughtfully
homeward. “But we will see if there be no other field of
action in which to give battle to the slippery old rascal. If human
ingenuity can devise the means of bringing him to justice, it shall
now be done with a vengeance; for now that he has seen so much
of my hand in this strange game, he will never rest on the defensive,
even as regards me personally, but soon be hatching his
plots to destroy me. So he or I must fall in the contest, which
I can no longer avoid, if I would.”

One morning, several days subsequent to Stacy's signal failure
in respect to that power, which he thought he possessed over
Old Jude, and in which he so much trusted to bring the other
to terms, as the former was sitting in an open window of his office,
deeply engrossed in the subject, that now principally occupied
his thoughts, he suddenly started and called to his wife
who was out training some shrubbery, in the pleasant little yard
enclosed between the house and office—

“Wife, how old is Lucy Hosmer?—do you know exactly?”

“Yes,” replied the comely and intelligent looking matron,
turning round with a surprised and enquiring expression, “yes,
I know, and by reckoning a little, I can tell to a day.”

“Well, reckon away then—I want to know exactly.”

“I will, Mr. Impatience,—how long have we been married—
eighteen years, is it not?”

“Yes, this June.”

“Very right, Sir, but what day of June is it now?”

“To day is the 20th.”

“Well, Lucy was of age, that is eighteen, then, yesterday.”

“Are you sure of that, wife?”

“Yes, and will make you so in a dozen words:—You will remember,
that you depended on having Colonel Hosmer, your
great friend, at our wedding; and do you not also remember,
that he was prevented from attending by the confinement of his
wife, that day, of their first and only child?”

“I do—yes, I do recall the circumstance now, but what day of
the month was that?”

“The 19th, as you will find by consulting our bible record.”

“You are right, woman, though I did not dream that she was
of age so soon. It is strange,” he continued, slapping together
the book in his hands with an air of vexation—“it is plaguy
strange, I cant keep up with anything! This must be seen to
immediately.”

“What must be seen to, my dear Sir? I do not see to what
all this can tend.”

“I didn't mean you should, Mrs. Curiosity, (there, that
makes us even.) It is an office secret, which women must not
know.”

“Well, I was not aware that office secrets embraced so particularly
the ages of the ladies. But to be serious, if your enquiry
relates to any move you are about to make respecting Lucy's
property, I hope you will go on; for I have long suspected, that
great wrong would be done that amiable girl.”

“Ay, but don't guess it aloud; and look here, wife—if Lucy
comes into the street to-day, I want you should ask her into the
house, if not, contrive up some way to get her from home where
I can see her; for I must not let that sun go down without having
a talk with her.”

But all Stacy's inducement to see his fair young friend was
destined to be destroyed by the unexpected occurrence of the
next moment. Even before he and his wife had finished all that
would probably have been said, they were interrupted by the
appearance of Old Jude's servant, Shack Rogers, who entered
the office holding a paper in his hand, which he presented, saying
in his usual gruff and unconcerned manner,

“Mr. Hosmer wants you should read that, Squire, and tell him
whether or no it is good in law.”

With considerable surprise at so unexpected a request, Stacy
took the paper, and that surprise soon changed to a feeling bordering
on consternation as he read it as follows:—

“In consideration of three hundred dollars, rec'd to my full
satisfaction of Jude Hosmer, in his note payable in clothing or
furniture, I hereby fully acquit, release, and discharge the said
Hosmer from all claims, rights and demands of every kind I
have or may have on him for any and all the property personal

and real that came into his hands as my guardian, or as the administrator
of my father's estate”—which instrument, bearing
date of that day, was signed by Lucy Hosmer, sealed and witnessed
by Shadrack Rogers and Tabitha Talbot, all in due
form.

When the Squire, on a second perusal, became fairly convinced
that this strongly written instrument was genuine, he could
scarcely restrain his indignation from bursting forth in open execrations: For he saw, at once, that the settlement and discharge
into which the injured orphan had been so artfully drawn by
the wretch who should have protected instead of plundering her,
must give a finishing blow to her expectations, unless it could be
proved,—which was not very probable—that the paper was
obtained by fraudulent representations; and he saw also very
clearly that it had been sent there, not for the purpose of advice,
as the old man, who had not consulted him for a dozen
years, now pretended, but in the spirit of insulting defiance, and
only to show the completion of his triumph. And if ever the
conscientious attorney was tempted to do a wrong act, it was to
tear the paper to pieces on the spot. But a second thought corrected
the inclination, and he said to himself in a low tone,

“No—no—that won't do, nor perhaps anything else; but I
cannot, and will not, believe, that Providence will permit such
a monstrous wrong to go unpunished.”

As the Squire finished the sentence, he happened to glance at
Shack's countenance, and found it, to his surprise, beaming with
an expression of pleasure and intelligence. And the long, scrutinizing
look, which he instantly turned on the other, convinced
the penetrating lawyer, that the fellow possessed feelings and
intellect that he never had credit for; and that, though he was
formerly very deaf, in consequence of a severe scarlatina, his
deafness now, for some shrewd motive, must be partially or
wholly assumed. This circumstance, which scarcely would
have been noticed by an ordinary observer, or if noticed, passed
over as of no consequence, was eagerly seized on by Stacy as a
new clue to possible advantages of much importance, and he at
once determined to follow it up by putting Shack to further trial.
With this object in view he raised his voice and said—

“Yes, the paper is good enough.”

“Umph—what?” said Shack through habit or design.

“Tell your master it is good in law,” bawled the squire; “but”
he added letting his voice fall to a very low key, “but shall you
tell him also what I said to myself about his cheating Lucy?”

Shack again looked knowingly, and without making any
direct reply to the question, observed:

“One of my ears, somehow has got a notion of hearing, when
any thing is going on against Lucy, who has treated me kinder
than all the rest put together there, but it won't hear any more,
Squire, if you tell what I sorter mistrust you have guessed about
it.”

“I will keep your secret till you tell mine,” said the Squire,
regarding the fellow with increasing interest.

“It is safe then,” said Shack; “and if you feel as I do about
certain things, perhaps I may tell you what you don't know,
and help on matters some.”

“Ah! that is it, my good fellow,” exclaimed Stacy eagerly
and with brightening eye, “that is what I want—we understand
each other, do we? Lucy—her property,—and the one she
would like to marry, eigh?”

“Exactly, but I must go now, or some bird will be carrying
news to the old man.”

“Stay! are you no hoeing corn, these days, down in his meadow,
by the river there?”

“Yes, and it is out of sight of the house where the old chap
stays, mostly.”

“Well, suppose I should stroll along down there with my fishpole,
this afternoon,—could you show me where I might catch
a few good trouts for a breakfast?”

“Yes, oceans of 'em—I saw a whacker there, yesterday,” replied
Shack, with a significant wink, as he hurried out of the
office.