University of Virginia Library

19. CHAPTER XIX.

Palamon and Arcite.

During the rest of the journey, Morton, on Mrs. Holyoke's
invitation, was one of the party. Again and again
he was impelled to learn his fate; but recoiled from casting
the die, dreading that his hour was not come. Still, though
every day more helplessly spell-bound, his mood was not despondent.

They came to the town of —, a half day from home.

“My household gods are not far off,” said Morton. “My
father was born at Steuben, a few miles below, where my
grandfather used to preach against King George, and stir up
his parish to rebellion. I have relations there still, and have
a mind to spend to-morrow with them.”

This announcement proceeded much less from family affection
than from another motive. Mrs. Holyoke saw it in an
instant.

“Excellent! Then Miss Leslie can accept her friend's
invitation to make a day's visit at this place; and you will
meet her and escort her to Boston.”

And Morton, much rejoiced at this successful issue of his
diplomacy, repaired to his relatives at Steuben; Holyoke and
his wife proceeded homeward; while Miss Leslie remained to
accomplish the visit with her country friend.

Morton spent a quiet day in the primitive New England
village, a place of which boyish association made him fond.
On the next morning, Miss Leslie was to come to Steuben,
with her hostess; but as there was an abundance of time before
the train would appear, he strolled along a quiet road
leading back into the country. He soon came to an old inn,
over whose tottering porch King George's head might once
have swung. Nothing human was astir. The ancient lilacs
flaunted before the door; the tall sunflowers peered over the
garden fence; the primeval well-sweep slanted aloft, far
above the mossy shingles of the roof. The rural quiet of the
place tempted him. He sat under the porch, and watched the
swallows sailing in and out of the great barn whose doors
stood wide open, on the opposite side of the road.

A voice broke the silence — a voice from the barn yard.
It was the voice of a hen mother, the announcement that an
egg was born into the world. Not the proud, exulting cackle
which ordinarily proclaims that auspicious event, but a repining,
discontented cry, now rising in vehement remonstrance
with destiny, now sinking into a low cluck of disgust. Morton,
skilled in the language of birds, construed these melancholy
cacklings as follows: —

“Whither does all this tend? Why is my happiness
blighted, my aspirations repressed? Why am I forever
penned up within these narrow precincts, amid low domestic

cares, and sordid, uncongenial, unsympathizing associates?
And thou, my white and spotless offspring, what shall be thy
fate? To be steeped in hot water, and eaten with a spoon?
Or art thou to be the germ of an existence wretched as my
own, doomed to a ceaseless round of daily parturition? O,
weariness! O, misery! O, despair!”

And throwing her ruffled feelings into one indignant cackle,
the hen was silent.

The advent of a human biped here enlivened the scene.
This was a young gentleman on horseback, a collegian to all
appearance, admirably mounted, but bestriding his horse with
the look of one who has just passed his first course under the
riding master, and rides by the book, as Touchstone quarrelled.
This important personage, with an air oddly compounded
of assumption and timidity, proceeded to call the
hostler, and order oats for his horse, after which he strutted
into the house, switching his leg with his whip.

As ample time remained, Morton continued his walk along
the road, his mood in harmony with the brightness of the
morning. He was in a humor to please himself with trifles.
A ground squirrel chirruped at him from a crevice of the wall.
He stood watching the small, shy visage, as it looked out at
him. Then a red squirrel, a much livelier companion, uttered
its trilling cry from a clump of hazel bushes. Morton seated
himself on a stone very near it. The squirrel resented the
intrusion, ran out on a fence rail towards the offender, chattered,
scolded, swelled himself like a miniature muff, made
his tail and his whole body vibrate with his wrath; then
suddenly dodged down behind the rail and peered over it at

the trespasser, his nose and one eye alone being visible; then
bolted into full sight again, and scolded as before, jerking
himself from side to side in the extremity of his petulance;
till at last, without the smallest apparent cause, he suddenly
wheeled about and fled, bounding like the wind along the top
of the stone wall.

This interview over, Morton looked at his watch, saw that
it was time to go back towards the village, and began to
retrace his steps accordingly. He had gone but a few paces,
when he saw a countryman, a simple-looking fellow, running
at top speed, and in great excitement, up a byway, which
led to the railroad, the latter crossing it by a high bridge, at
some distance from the station.

“What's the matter?” demanded Morton.

“The railroad cars!” gasped the countryman.

“What of them?”

“They'll all go to smash, and no mistake.”

“What!” cried Morton, aghast.

“Fact, mister. Some born devil has been and sawed the
bridge timbers most through in the middle.”

“What!” cried Morton again.

“Sure as I stand here! I seen the heaps of sawdust on
the road. That's the way I come to take notice. The
minute the locomotive gets on the bridge, down she'll go,
and no two ways about it.”

Morton had no doubt that the man was right. The newspapers,
within the last few weeks, had contained various
accounts of impediments, great and small, maliciously placed
on railroads. It was a species of villany which was just

then having its run, as incendiarism will sometimes have;
and a like case of a bridge partly sawed through had lately
occurred in a neighboring state.

“You fool!” exclaimed Morton, in anguish and despair;
“why didn't you get on the track, and stop the train?”

“I'd like to see you stop the train!” retorted the man.

Morton turned to run for the road, bent on stopping the
engine, or letting it pass over him. But as he turned, a new
arrival caught his eye. This was the cavalier who had baited
his horse at the inn, and who, seeing the excited looks of the
two men, had checked his pace, and was looking at them with
much curiosity.

Crazed with agitation, and hardly knowing what he did,
Morton leaped towards him, seized his horse, a powerful and
high-mettled animal, by the head, and, with a few broken
words of explanation, called on him to dismount. The astonished
collegian did not comply. Morton bore back fiercely
on the bit; the horse plunged and snorted; the rider clutched
the pommel; Morton took him by the arm, drew him to the
ground, mounted at a bound after him, and, as he touched
the saddle, struck his whalebone walking stick with all his
force over the horse's flank. The horse leaped forward frantically,
and rushed headlong down the road. His discarded
rider saw his hoofs twinkling for an instant out of the cloud
of dust, and thought he had had a Heaven-directed escape
from a madman.

The small village above Steuben, at which Miss Leslie and
her friend were to take the train, was three miles off. The
road ran almost directly towards it for more than three fourths

of the way, when it made a bend to the right. Morton, with
his furious riding, very soon reached this point. He could
see the station house before him, on the left, and not more
than a third of a mile distant. The space between, though
uneven, had no visible impediments but a few low fences and
scattered clumps of bushes. Morton pushed through the
barberry growth that fringed the road, galloped over the hard
pasture, leaped one fence, passed a gap in another, and half
way to his goal, found himself and his horse in a quagmire.
At this moment, straining his eyes towards the cluster of
houses, he saw, with agony at his heart, a white puff of
vapor rising above the trees beyond. Then the dark outline
of the train came into view, checking its way, and stopping,
half hidden behind the buildings.

Morton knew that it would stop only for a moment, and
plied his horse with merciless blows. The horse plunged
through the mire, — the mud and water spouting high above
his rider's head, — gained the firm ground, and bounded forward
wild with fright and fury. It was too late. The bell
rang, and with quicker and quicker pants, the engine began
to move. Morton shouted, — gesticulated, — still it did not
stop, though the passengers seemed to take alarm, for a head
was thrust from every window, while the occupants of an
open carriage drawn up on the road were bending eagerly
towards him.

Morton wheeled to the left, and urged his horse up the
embankment in front of the train. With a violent effort, he
reached the top. The engineer was running against time,
and cared for nothing but winning his match. He blew the

steam whistle; and as Morton dragged on the curb with
desperate strength, the horse reared upright, pawing the air.
But, as he rose, Morton disengaged his feet, slid over the
crupper to the ground, and let go the rein. The horse leaped
down the bank, and scoured over the meadow, mad with
terror. Morton took his stand in the middle of the track,
and facing the advancing train, stood immovable as a post.
The engineer reversed the engine, brought it to a stand
within a few yards of him, and, with a profusion of oaths,
demanded what he wanted.

Before the breathless Morton could well explain himself,
the passengers began to leap out of the cars, and running
forward, gathered about him. He soon found words to make
the case known. But one object alone engrossed him. He
pushed on among the throng of questioning, eager men,
mounted the foremost car, and made his way through it, the
crowd pushing behind and around him, and plying him with
questions, to which, in the confusion and abstraction of his
faculties, he gave wild and random answers. He looked at
every face. Edith Leslie was not there. He crossed the
platform into the next car, passed through it, and still could
not find her. It was the last in the train. And now a
strange feeling came over him, a bitterness, a sense of disappointment,
as if his efforts and his pangs had been uncalled
for and profitless; for so intensely had his thoughts been
concentred on one object, that he forgot for the moment the
hundred men and women whom he had saved from deadly
jeopardy.

The train rolled back to the station, the distance being

only a few rods. Morton got out and leaned against the
wall of the house. Men thronged about him with questions,
exclamations, thanks, praises. The reaction of his violent
emotion produced in him a frame of mind almost childish.
He was restless to free himself from the crowd.

“It's nothing; it's nothing,” he answered, as fresh praises
were showered on him. “I saw the train going to the devil,
and did what I could to save it. Any of you, I dare say,
would have done as much. Be good enough to let me have
a little air.”

The crowd gave way, and he walked forward past the
corner of the building. Here, standing on the road, close at
hand, he suddenly saw an open carriage, and in it, pale as
death, sat Miss Leslie, with her friend, and a boy of twelve,
her friend's brother. He sprang towards it with an irrepressible
impulse.

“My God! Miss Leslie, I thought you were in the train.”

“And so we should have been,” said the boy, “but the
cars came in three minutes before their time.”

Edith Leslie did not utter a word.

Some of the passengers were soon about him again. He
repeated to them what he knew of the danger, and told them
how he had learned it. In a few minutes, several men were
seen at a distance on the railroad, running forward with a
handkerchief tied to a stick to warn off the train. A few
minutes later, a Connecticut pedler, one of the passengers,
came up to Morton.

“Mister, they're going to do the handsome thing by you.
They're getting up a subscription to give you a piece of silver
plate.”

“The deuse they are!” was Morton's ungrateful response.

Going into the room where the passengers were met, he
found that the pedler had told the truth; on which, for the
first and last time in his life, he addressed an assemblage of
his fellow-citizens. He told them that he thanked them for
their kind intention; but that if he had done them a service,
he wished for no other recompense than the knowledge of it,
and urged them, if they did any thing in the matter, to
devote their efforts to gaining the arrest and punishment of
the scoundrel who had attempted the mischief. His oratory
was much applauded; many, who had thought themselves in
for the subscription, joyfully buttoned their pockets, and,
instead of the plate, he received a series of complimentary
resolutions, to be published in the newspapers.

Meanwhile, having made his speech, he had lost no time in
making his escape also. Going back to the carriage, Miss
Leslie's friend asked him to accompany them home, whence
they could return to take the afternoon train, when the bridge
would, no doubt, be repaired. Morton, however, declined the
invitation, and, having sent two men to catch the horse, with
instructions to refer the distressed owner to him, he drove in
a farmer's wagon to Steuben. In a few hours, he rejoined
Miss Leslie and her friend; and having escorted both safely
to town, took leave of the former, that evening, at the door
of her father's house.

Several of the newspapers next morning contained the
resolutions passed by the passengers, trumpeting Morton's
humanity, presence of mind, &c. He himself very well knew
that the praise was undeserved, since he had neither thought

nor cared for the objects of his supposed humanity, and, far
from acting with presence of mind, had scarcely known what
he was about.

The bridge had been cut by an Irish mechanic in the
employ of the road, who, for some misdemeanor, had been
reprimanded and turned out, and who had passed half the
night in preparing his demoniac revenge. It afterwards
appeared that he had been a state's prison convict in a neighboring
state, and that he would have been still in confinement,
had not the officious zeal of certain benevolent persons
availed to set him loose before his time.