University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.
WHELP AND DAM.

Our people are hard riders, and a night canter through the
forest is not held to be a very perilous or unpleasant necessity.
It was with no concern that our horseman found the night settling
down upon him as soon as he left the swamp. Nor did it
occasion much concern that the darkness was coming on in
cloud, and with a threat of storm. He looked up at the gloomy
masses gathering in the south, without disquiet; and very
slightly increased the speed of his charger by a slight shake of
the bridle in his grasp.

We need not describe his ride, which was continued for some
hours, his steed being allowed to vary his paces at times, and
to subside finally, from a canter, into a good travelling trot.

His course lay across the country in the direction of the Santee.
By nine o'clork he reached a ruined homestead — a tolerably
ancient manor seat — where, by daylight, the traveller
might readily perceive the proofs of former state and wealth.
A great entrance, or carriage-way, of brick columns, still remained,
opening upon a noble avenue of oaks. But the fences
and gates were gone. Our horseman penetrated the avenue,
which conducted to the site of what had been a noble mansion.
It was now in ruins. The flames had done their work fully
upon the edifice, which had been built of black cypress, upon a
foundation of brick, raised some ten feet above the ground.
The foundation and the chimneys alone remained. The ruin
had been the work of tory hands, one of the thousand proofs,
which the country everywhere afforded, of the terrible civil war
which had now, for some years, prevailed in Carolina.

Our traveller sighed unconsciously as he passed the ruins
which he could but imperfectly discern in the dim light of a
few melancholy stars which shone out still among the imperfect

cloud-drifts. His memory fully recalled the bitter pang
which followed his first knowledge of the fate of the ancient
homestead. The tall chimneys stood up against the sky, in the
open area, like so many gloomy memorials of a tragic history —
silent, but full of speech to his affections. But he rode on without
pausing; his pace, indeed, a little accelerated, as if he aimed
to lose the sight of objects which only brought him troubling
thoughts. He passed through a ravaged garden in the rear;
entered a wood which had been a pretty sylvan haunt of his
youth; in the recesses of which he suddenly came upon a log-house,
through the chinks of which a faint light now reached
his eyes.

As he beheld it through the trees, he drew up his steed,
alighted, and having fastened the reins to the first shrub-tree, he
stole cautiously to the cottage entrance, and peeped silently
through one of its several crevices. As if satisfied, by his survey,
that he might proceed more boldly, he smote the door thrice with
his sabre hilt. His voice seconded this application, and, after a
brief delay, in which he exhibited more impatience than at any
time during his whole ride, the door was opened to him. He
had reached the place of shelter not a moment too soon. Big
drops of rain were now beginning to ooze out from the trailing
clouds above.

The salutation of the cottager — who came to the door in a
partial undress, and bearing in his hand an inch of tallow candle,
“dipt,” such as the poorer sort of people commonly used
whenever they were ambitious beyond the light-wood torch —
would seem to show that the new-comer had been expected.

“Well, major, I had a'most given you up. It's pretty late, I
reckon. I'd a sort o' guess that you'd 'a been here last night;
and I sot up for you till the biggest part of the night was gone.
And when you didn't come, all day, I was jubous something
had happened. All's well, I reckon?”

“Quite, Blodgit; quite as well as it can be at present. Still,
we may hope that it may be better. But of this hereafter.
Now, my good fellow, let us find a cover for my horse. How's
the corn and fodder?”

“Oh! enough, sir, and to spare a friend.”

“And an enemy, too, upon occasion, Blodgit.”

“How, sir, — an inimy!”

“Love your enemies, you know!”

“Oh! yes, sir; that's true; that's in the good book, but
'taint quite the law 'mong sodgers, I'm thinking. Sodgers,
Major —”

“No matter now, about the soldiers, Blodgit; let us see to
the horse.” And the stranger moved from the cabin to where
the beast was fastened.

“Never you mind him, major. I'll see to him.”

“Thank you, Blodgit, but I prefer to see to him myself. My
good `Nimrod' might reasonably be displeased with me if I
left him to the care of anybody but myself. Besides, it's a
habit with me now, and I should not eat my own supper, or
enjoy my own sleep, with any satisfaction, if I did not first see
that he was put properly in the way for getting his. Do you
lead the way to the stables, and shake down some fodder. No
more words about it.”

The words of the speaker, uttered with the air of one accustomed
to command, were decisive, and the two proceeded together
to the stables, which were pretty well shrouded in the
wood, some hundred yards in the rear of the cabin. Here, the
traveller stripped the animal of his furniture, and, in spite of
Blodgit's urgent offers of service, rubbed him down himself.

“It's no wonder, major, that the beast loves you, and you're
sich a horseman as you are. It stands to reason that he should
love you, when you take sich care of him.”

“Tumble in the fodder, Blodgit.”

The latter obeyed. This done, the horseman added: —

“We will let him munch on that for a while. In half an
hour, he must have thirty ears of corn. And now, a word in
your ear, Blodgit. Having seen to the horse, look a little to
his master, who, I can answer for it, has not had a bite since
sunrise.”

“You don't say so, major! Come along, sir, and we kin
find you some cold bread and bacon. Ef you'd wait for it,
we might even run down a chicken.”

“Let the chicken run, Blodgit. The bread and bacon will
answer every purpose.”

They emerged from the stables together, and pushed hurriedly

for the cabin. The rain was now falling steadily. They had
scarcely entered the hut and closed the door, when it came
down in torrents; while the winds, suddenly rising, roared over
the low, shingled roof, with the hoarse rush of the sea upon the
shore. The traveller looked up with satisfaction, rubbing his
hands as he spoke.

“I am fortunate in having saved my distance. How it
pours!”

A woman's voice from an inner room answered his self-congratulation.

“Don't mind the pouring, major, when you're in the dry.”

“Ah! old lady, are you still awake?” responded the traveller.

“Yes, indeed, major; old people don't sleep much; preticklarly
when they're troubled with the rheumatiz.”

“What! still sick — the old complaint?”

“Well, I'm always a-complaining. Pains in all my bones,
preticklarly in wet weather. I kin hardly git about at all; and
that's why I made Pete bring me down from the loft, for I
couldn't be going up and down them troublesome steps, you
know.”

“To be sure — you were right, old lady. In your infirm
condition that room is the proper place for you.”

“So I told Pete. I'm all over infirmities. I kin do nothing
hardly for myself now, and but one little negro gal to help me,
and she so contrary. There's no keeping her awake, do and
say what I will. You Jenny — Jenny!”

And the old woman began to bawl for the negro, whose snores
were audible from the same chamber.

“Don't bother yourself about the gal,” cried Blodgit.
“What do you want, mammy? Let me do it.”

The son, who had been busy spreading the supper-table, now
proceeded to the apartment of the old woman.

“The physic bottle, Pete. It's in the cupboard.”

“What! you will take physic, old lady?” asked the traveller,
still speaking from the hall.

“What kin I do, major? I must take something for these
pains, and this is a most famous physic. It cured old Betsy
Dollard in three weeks, and she was much worse off than me.
She had the rheumatiz, I don't know how many years.”

“Well, I hope the stuff may cure you, old lady. But I have
no faith in physic. It is quite enough to expect, if the patient
does not die of it.”

“Ah! major, you talk like a young man, as ef you was to be
young always. But wait till you git old like me, and then you'll
think there's nothing in the world like doctor's stuff.”

“Heaven forefend!” exclaimed the traveller. “Commend
me to bacon and hominy, egg and chicken, bread and milk —
any farmhouse physic in preference to that of the doctor's shop.”

The speaker, by this time, was slashing away at the fragment
of a flitch, which stood before him.

“Some of this bacon now, Mrs. Blodgit,” he cried aloud.

“Ah! ef I dared! But 'twould be the death of me, at night
preticklarly.”

“The life of you, rather,” was the answer; the speaker shaving
off a second slice of the meat, and doing prompt execution
upon the corn hoecake at the same time.

“Bread and bacon,” he continued, “work like magic upon
sick people. They have cured more desperate cases in one
year, than physic has cured in a century. Bacon is a great
medicine by itself. I've known of a hundred cures which it
has made, taken internally; nay, the very smell of the meat,
when it is warm, has a wonderful effect. There was one poor
fellow, I remember, who was left for dead on the field at Black-stocks.
We never dreamed of his having breath enough in him
to keep a snail alive, and looked to bury him with the rest, as
soon as we had finished dinner. But the moment the men began
to eat, and the savor of the bacon reached his nostrils, he
revived, begged for a morsel only, and has been a well man ever
since. I don't know, indeed, but that he owes his escape from
all bullets from that day, to the fact that he always feeds fully
before he goes into battle. He keeps a thick streak of bacon between
ribs and skin, and it turns off the bullets.”

“Lord presarve me! Is it possible, major?”

“Possible! It is true, Mrs. Blodgit; and known to every
trooper in Sumter's cavalry. The old Gamecock would have
a fellow up at the halberds, in short order, who ventured to dispute
it. Try a morsel, old lady, and you'll feel your pains the
easier for it.”

“Ef I thought so, major. But the doctor says — Doctor
Blumenburg, you know — that, with my complaint, I should
eat a'most nothing.”

“And I say, that, with your complaint, it would be better
were you to swallow Blumenburg himself, than his drugs.”

“Oh! major, how kin you talk so?”

“Does he tell you what your complaint is?”

“No! that's true; he don't!”

“Well, I will! Your complaint is — physic!”

“Jest as I said, mother,” put in Pete. “It's what I'm always
a-telling her. I tells her that it's doctor's stuff and old
age, together.”

“Old age, Pete Blodgit! I wonder what you knows about
it! Old age, indeed! I'm a young woman, major! I'd be
young and spry as anybody, if 'twan't for the rheumatiz. Old
age! Oh! Pete Blodgit, you're a most onnatural son for one
born in a Christian country. Would you b'lieve it, major, but
I warn't but a child — a ga'l of sixteen — when that on-natural
cub was born; and for him to turn upon his mother, just like a
heathen Philistine.”

“Psho, mother, don't be foolish now!”

“Foolish! You oughtn't to say a word to me, Pete Blodgit,
considering you didn't want to let me move my bed down
sta'rs, though you know'd well enough how I was suffering
up thar' in the loft!”

The son answered surlily:—

“There was no need for you to come down. The room's a
good room up in the loft, and down here, you are only in the
way.”

“Only in the way! Oh! you sarpent! A good room, you
say; and all littered up with kags and boxes.”

“Littered! Yes, and who litters them? Tell me that?
Tell the major now, ef you hain't got a hen a-setting now in
every one of them kags and boxes.”

“Jest hear him, the sarpent! Hens must set, major! It's
the natur' of hens to set! But jest you ax him, major, ef he
hadn't the onnateral heart to say I shouldn't come down sta'rs,
to be in the way of his company.”

“Company?” was the single word, uttered inquiringly by
the guest, and he looked at Blodgit as if for explanation.

“You knows I has no company, mother,” said the son, with
a slight show of confusion, and some little impatience in his tone.

“Yes, you has, Pete; and too much for your own good.
What's them men, that kept you a-drinking here, Friday night,
for a'most three good hours; and then you went off with them,
the Lord knows whar', for, I reckon, good two hours more.
You were after no good, I reckon.”

“Leaving you alone all that time, old lady?”

“Jest so, major; and me so mighty bad off with the rheumatiz.”

“Ah! that rheumatiz! Try the bacon, Mrs. Blodgit. It
was the bacon, and not the physic, that cured Mother Dollard.
And so, Pete neglects you for his drinking associates; goes off
with all sort of scapegraces, I suppose, and leaves you to suffer
from your pains.”

“That he does, major —”

“I hev' no company — I don't go off with nobody, major —”

“What, man! won't let your mother speak?”

“That's the how, major! He shets me up jest as fast as I
open my mouth.”

“A sure sign of a bad son, Mrs. Blodgit; but, perhaps, he
had business with these people. You know, I sometimes send
my men to him.”

“Oh! 'twarn't none of your men, major — 'twas —”

Pete Blodgit fidgetted.

“Mother, you'd better let me talk about the business, to the
major, by ourselves.”

The guest perceived the anxiety of the speaker; nor did the
changed tone of voice, with which he spoke, escape the observation
of the former. It had its effect upon the mother also. The
old woman immediately resumed her complaints of the rheumatiz;
and rambled off into a comparison of her pains with those
of Betsy Dollard. The guest was placid, and did not seek to
press the point upon which he was, nevertheless, somewhat
curious. He contented himself with playing upon the old woman,
in another way.

“Your case is certainly a hard one, Mrs. Blodgit. What

with the rheumatism, the girl, and your unnatural son, your life
must be very wretched. Now I can cure you of all three of
these evils. Fling your physic out of the window, and try the
bacon; give the girl to any young woman who has not got the
rheumatism; and, as for Pete, I will take the cure of him upon
myself. He shall go with me to camp to-morrow, and see if our
orderly can't put him into the harness of good behavior.”

“What! send Pete to camp, major, and he a lame person too,
that can't walk, as I may say.”

“You forget; he walks off with those peep-o'-day boys —”

“Oh! that's only once in a way, major.”

“His lameness doesn't hurt him as an overseer. It's a crook
only, not a weakness. A horse may be hipshot, you know,
yet good at draught.”

“But Pete ain't a horse, major.”

“No, indeed; ef I was, mother, you'd ha' driven me to my
last legs long ago!”

“Thar' ag'in, you onnateral sarpent!—” began the old woman,
when the major interrupted her—

“You see, you can do nothing with a fellow so unkind and
ungrateful. The camp's the only place to bring him to his
senses.”

“Oh! major, how you talk. Pete's a good son — thar' never
was a better. He ongrateful and onkind? — tain't in him,
major, to be onkind!”

“Yet he would have kept you up in that villanous loft, with
the hens setting everywhere about you.”

“Oh! Lord, major, for that matter I likes their company;
and, as for the loft, it's not so bad a sleeping-place after all;
and I'm old, and better out of the way up thar. Pete meant
well, and I reckon, major, he was right all the time. Old people
are apt to be onreasonable.”

“But the bad company he keeps, old lady — the roystering
night-stalkers, outlaws, and tories, for aught we know, who —”

“No! no! no tories, I'm sure! oh! major, Pete's one of the
best friends of liberty in all these parts. Ef the men that comes
to see him — only now and then — once a month, perhaps, not
oftener — ef they wouldn't be a drinking here, for two hours at
a stretch!—

“Shocking! and yet, would you believe it, your son, Pete,
has not offered me a drop of Jamaica to take the salt of the
bacon out of my throat.”

“Why, Pete!” began the old woman, but the son, who had
frequently shown himself restiff, and not unfrequently began
the replies for his mother, now spoke quickly, and in tones
somewhat louder than the occasion seemed to require —

“Mother, why will you be talking foolishness. You know
very well that I keeps no liquor in the house — nara [neither]
whiskey nor Jamaica; and when the men comes that you speak
of, they brings their own liquor with 'em. You'll make the
major b'lieve everything that's bad of me, and then he'll be
turning me out of the house, and letting loose the tories upon
me!”

The old woman whined from within, in assurances of her
son's sobriety and virtue; and, with a smile upon his lips, the
guest exclaimed —

“Say no more about it, old lady; your son, I suppose, is not
unworthy of his excellent mother! And now, Master Pete
Blodgit,” he continued, speaking in lower tones, “lead the way
to the hayloft. I'll take my sleep to-night in a bed of fodder.”

“But it rains yit, major.”

“Yes, I hear! But I am neither salt nor sugar, my good
fellow; so lead the way!”

“Set down awhile, major, while I go, and brush up, and
spread out the clean fodder —”

“Pshaw, man, do as I bid you,” answered the stranger, laying
his hands on the other's shoulder and looking him searchingly
in the face. “I am a soldier, and accustomed to rough
usage. Do not, by your prating, lead me to think that your
usage has been too tender.”

There was that in the glance of the stranger, beneath which
the eyes of Pete Blodgit fell; there was something, too, in what
the other said, which filled him with some misgivings. His
dark swarthy features, under a stronger light than that of a
“dipt” candle, would have shown themselves suffused with a
deeper red than usual; and there was a tremor of his slight
form, as the other laid hands upon his shoulder, which betrayed
some lurking apprehensions. His consciousness was such, that,

for a moment, he did not venture to reply. He was about to
light a bit of candle, ingeniously socketed in a huge calabash,
pierced with little holes, the substitute for a lantern, and not a
bad one either — when his companion arrested the movement.

“Take no light, Blodgit. Carry your flint and steel and
the candle in your pocket! Good-night, old lady.”

“What, major, air you guine out into the weather?”

“Only to see if the rain has washed out all the stars.”

“Oh! major, you will be for poking fun at the old woman.
It's the way with you young ossifers.”

Our traveller had some good-natured answer to this, while
Pete Blodgit was undoing the entrance of the cabin; but, while
speaking, the back of the other being turned, he contrived to
lay gently upon the floor at his feet, and just where he had
been sitting, a memorandum pocket-book. His movement escaped
the notice of the cottager, and, in a moment after, the
two disappeared in the night together, taking their way once
more in the direction of the stables.