University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.
FATHER AND SON IN FETTERS.

The hovel in the Four-Holes swamp, distinguished by the
imposing title of “'Bram's castle” — more properly “'Bram's
cabin” — contained but two apartments; one a sort of hall, the
other a sleeping-room. A party of three persons occupies the
hall at the moment when we look in upon them. Two of them
are prisoners, Captain Travis and his son Henry — the latter
a boy about fifteen; the former might have been fifty. They
both sat upon the floor, and both were handcuffed. The boy
looked weary and dispirited; the father, when not looking at
the son, wore an aspect of stern defiance. The third person in
the apartment was Captain Richard Inglehardt, of the loyalist
rifles, a cool, selfish politician — something of a soldier, but more
of a politician — a man of singular manners for a rustic people,
with subtlety suited to an old convention, and lacking in that impulse
and enthusiasm which seem more natural and more necessary
to a new one. He was stretched out negligently upon a
military cloak, not far from the fireplace, in which a few brands
had been kindled, for the purpose of light rather than of warmth.
Their blaze enables us to take in the group, and note with ease
the expressions of their several faces. The floor is strewed with
broom-straw, which, in a log-cabin, is no inappropriate substitute
for a Brussels carpet.

The moment which we take for entering the chamber, finds
the two men already engaged in a discussion, the preliminaries
of which have been dismissed. We wlll have to take certain
things for granted. The parole is with Inglehardt. His tones

were exceedingly mild and subdued, insinuating, and even cordial;
but there was an under-note of sarcasm in them which the
substance of his words implied also.

“My dear Captain Travis, it was a game which we played —
each knowing his hand, and playing at his own discretion. The
hands may have been equal or not. You, at all events, did not
regard them as favorable to me. You took the chances of the
game, and have no right to complain. You calculated on counting
honors; certainly, my dear captain, you have taken good
heed to the profits. You made some good points in the game.
I confess you outwitted me with your skill more than once; but
you failed in the odd-trick. Have I stated the case fairly, Captain
Travis?”

“D—n the game, sir!” was the answer.

“Well, a game lost is properly a game damned! But it
helps the loser nothing to lose his temper with it. You have
lost the one game, but you have others yet to play. You have
capital enough to resume the contest. Let us look at your
position.”

“You have it in a word, sir. I am your prisoner.”

“Yes, that is something; but a resurvey of our game will reveal
much besides that it is important for you to remember.
As a British commissary, sir, largely trusted by Colonel Balfour
and my Lord Rawdon, you grew to riches. My own estimate,
captain, of your resources, gives you a fortune of some hundred
thousand dollars.”

“You have certainly kept a closer watch upon my interests
than ever I did myself.”

“Nay, captain, in saying that, you do injustice to your own
thrift. You have been a vigilant accumulator, and a most keen
accountant. That I have been able and willing to observe
your progress, in fortune-making, is only a proof of my great
sympathy in your success. But, in the midst of this success,
you fancied a condition of public insecurity under his majesty's
government, the results of some very mistaken calculations,
which led you, my dear captain, to the further mistake of entering
into treasonable negotiations with the enemy. You began
to see a beauty in rebellion which, hitherto, you had only seen
in loyalty. I undertook to save you from this error; and, the

better to do so, would have allied my fortunes with your own.
You pretended to welcome the alliance—”

“Never, sir — never! I told you, in so many words, that I
loathed it and scorned it from my innermost soul, and only submitted
to the suggestion in a moment of necessity.”

“That is, when you found the honors against you, and some
danger of losing that odd-trick besides. But you labor under another
error, Captain Travis. You did not venture to tell me of this
scorn and loathing until the moment when, with hands full (as
you thought) of trumps, you were about to turn the tables upon
me. Up to that moment, my dear captain, you were pleased
to encourage my humble suit to your daughter. Ay, sir, encouraged;
and you contrived, with admirable art, I admit, to
keep me in a state of delusive expectation on this score for a
very considerable space of time. Well, the game is played
out, and you have lost. The stake, substantially, was something
more than fortune. It was life, sir, and liberty! The
proof is here, in your present position, a prisoner in the hands
of a captain of loyalists, who has the proof in his possession of
your treasonable intercourse with the enemy, to say nothing of
a goodly catalogue of money-defalcations, forgeries, and false
accounts, the least of which dooms you to the gallows.”

The boy's face flushed; he writhed himself about, and, looking
the speaker full in the face, he cried out to his father:—

“Oh, my father, speak — tell this man that he lies! Oh, that
my hands were free!”

Inglehardt only smiled — a serpent-smile — as he witnessed
the ingenuous indignation of the boy. The father remained
silent. Inglehardt resumed, coolly and softly: —

“Were he to do so, Henry, he would only lie himself.”

The boy sobbed, and his face drooped. The father looked
round fiercely, as he said to the boy:—

“Heed nothing that this man says, my son! I have erred,
no doubt; but it is not for him to judge my conduct, nor is it
for you. It will be time enough for a son to do so when his
father's in the grave. My motives are as much above his conjectures,
as they are above your present experience. I will
answer all doubts in due season, my son — and, I trust, atone
for all wrong-doing to others, of which I may be guilty.”

It was a beautiful feature in the scene, that the father, wicked
as he might be, should strive to protect himself from the
judgments of the son. Of his mode of doing so, we need say
nothing now. Inglehardt, with a sneering smile, replied:—

“It does not much matter, Captain Travis, what the boy
thinks.”

“Ay, sir, but it does,” answered the father fiercely — “it
does matter much, sir — much that your soul may not appreciate,
that a child's ears should not be wounded with the story
of a father's errors, or his young soul tortured with a notion of
his meannesses or crimes. You, sir, with such a soul as yours,
can hardly comprehend this necessity.”

There was a slight flush — a very slight flush — upon Inglehardt's
cheek, when this speech was uttered; but he replied in
tones that underwent no alteration — cool, quiet, and even insinuating.

“It is, perhaps, quite as well, Captain Travis, dealing with
such excitable moods as yours, that I should confine myself, as
much as possible, to the subject of which we were speaking.
This was your present condition. I would, if possible, remind
you of the actual facts in your case. Whether I am right or
wrong, in the statement which I make of your offences against
his majesty's government, is for you to determine, while here,
and to act upon if you think proper. You can best say whether
you are prepared for all alternatives on a trial under these
charges before a military court. The substantial matter (after
this) remains untouched. I have said that ours was a game.
It is yet to be played out. So far, neither has exactly gained
it — we have both lost something. I have certainly gained
some new securities.”

“What are they?” demanded Travis.

“Yourself — your son! These are guaranties to some extent,
for the stakes I have at issue.”

“Myself — my son!”

“Yes! And that there may be no future doubt between us,
touching our true relations, I have only to repeat that the game
needs to be finished. It remains the same, with nothing but an
alternative in the stakes — and the securities! You are aware
of what I demand. Need I say to you, that your own, and the

liberty of your son, will follow instantly upon your compliance
with my demand, and your mutual safety will depend upon
it.”

“Can it be, Inglehardt, that you design to keep that boy in
custody! But I need not ask the question, when I see the ornaments
you have put on his wrists, and feel them upon mine.
Man, man! what must be the soul within your breast, when
you manacle with irons a child like that!”

“That child shoots a pistol remarkably well for his years!
He has the blood of two of my troopers on his hands, manacled
as you see them.” Such was the cool and indifferent answer.
The speaker continued, in the same cool and easy manner.

“But all this passionate declamation, my dear captain, will
avail you nothing, and brings us not one step nearer to an arrangement
of our affairs. Your position is one from which your
own wits, unless under my direction, will never extricate you.
You can only obtain release, by placing the hand of Bertha
Travis within mine. You hear the condition — this is my sine
quâ non!”

“I will rot in your dungeon first.”

“But the boy will rot too, Captain Travis.”

The father gazed on the boy with the bitterest anguish in his
countenance.

“Don't mind me, father!” interposed the son. “Bertha shall
never marry such a monster. Let him put what chains he
pleases on me; I will bear all, sooner than know that my poor
sister is sacrificed to such a man!”

“Really, the youngster shows a brave spirit,” quoth Inglehardt.
“He little knows how bonds can break spirits — how
boys may be birched and sent to bed supperless. A military
school is a hard one, Master Henry, for a very impetuous
temper.”

The father glared at the speaker with eyes of a wolfish anger,
but Inglehardt only smiled complacently.

“Think not to escape, Inglehardt,” exclaimed the prisoner.
“You have me now at advantage. But our friends are in pursuit.
We shall be rescued — avenged!”

“I think it likely that your friends are busy, but it will be
some time, my dear captain, before they get on our tracks; and

we shall adopt the practice of your Swamp-Fox — shift our quarters
before they can beat us up in our camp.”

“Sinclair will avenge us!”

“I shall be happy to encounter that handsome young gentleman,
whenever he will give me the opportunity, and hope to
give as good an account of him, as of yourself.”

“Why didn't you?” said the boy, “when you met at Holly-Dale?”
with an exulting voice and visage.

There was another slight flush upon Inglehardt's visage, but
he quietly said, and with a smile:—

“Ah! you have me there, Harry. Your Willie Sinclair certainly
caught me napping on that occasion. But his success
was due to papa's cunning policy. It was cunning papa, Harry,
that got me into that scrape. But all papa's cunning, you
see, couldn't keep himself out of it; and Willie Sinclair's triumph
has proved a bitter one, I fancy, to more parties than
one.”

“Oh! that I could see you face to face with the broad-sword!”
cried the boy, even while his eyes were gushing with
tears.

“Hush! Harry, my son! Hush,” said the more politic
father.

“Nay, my dear captain, let the youth deliver himself. It
quite pleases me to behold such a grateful specimen of ingenuous
manhood. The boy is wonderfully promising — will certainly
distinguish himself in time, if not prematurely cut off. Shakspere
had his misgivings of smart boys: — `So wise, so young,
they say, do ne'er live long!' Really, my dear captain, you
should scruple at no small sacrifices, that this young eagle should
be once more in the enjoyment of liberty. Let me entreat you
— give the boy his freedom.”

“Fiend! Bitter, cruel fiend!” exclaimed the father.
“What does this profit you, Captain Inglehardt? What gain
you by these goads and tortures.”

“Profit me! The question might be put to yourself, dear
Captain Travis; might have been put to you, every day in the
year, for the last twenty; for, in all that space of time, you
have been toiling monstrous hard; and what does it all profit
you now? We do a thousand things in life daily, my dear captain,

irrespective of the profit. The jest, the sarcasm, the indignation
of bitter words — the sneer, the sting which goads
one's enemy — what do all these profit, if we are to rate the
objects by the material results. I am profited, I fancy, by the
mere ingenious speculations, which I make upon my neighbors'
moods and modes of thinking and feeling. If, for example, we
might, by a series of experiments, ascertain in just what part
of an enemy's body or soul, he were most sensitive to wound
and injury, it might be of profit to know this interesting fact.
I like these little exercises of ingenuity, and never trouble myself
as to the profit or the loss; satisfied, my dear captain, to
yield some hours, every day of my life, to the acquisition of
simple knowledge, without a moment's thinking of the money
gain. Come, my dear captain, look upon life as I do; and
then, a game, conducted with skill and fortune, no matter what
the result, will be always compensative! are we to play any
longer? You know the stakes. Your own, and the freedom
of that very interesting boy — very precocious boy he is —
shoots well — remarkably promising every way; I say, my
dear captain, your own and his freedom; and in return — bonds
about the hands and hearts of your fair daughter and myself.”

“You are already answered.”

“Nay, nay, you answered me prematurely — in your anger.
Think better of it.”

“Do not think a moment, father. My sister never shall marry
this man! Sooner let me live and die in fetters.”

Very proud and fond was the look which the wretched father
cast upon the boy, as his young soul burst forth with this vehement
apostrophe.

“Bravo! my young springald! You are worthy to shake a
spear in the tilting at Marignano. The good knight Bayardo
would have filled your cap with crowns, and sent you home,
with a blessing, to your mother. But, suppose you leave the
further answer to your general. That is one of the necessary
lessons of all good knight-service. Come, dear Captain Travis,
shall it be a match? Shall we cut short this tangled skein of
ours with a merry bridal, and cry quits for all the past?”

Travis was the man to temporize always, where this was possible.
It was now, perhaps, his policy to do so.

“I can not answer for my daughter,” said he, with half-smothered
accents.

“Then you can't answer at all. That is just such an answer
as you have fed me with for six months. The food is no longer
digestible — certainly, no longer palatable. In brief, my dear
captain — there is but one answer that you can make which will
be acceptable. Your daughter, herself in person, when and
where I shall appoint to meet me — ready to marry me — and the
performance of the ceremony, by a priest of the English church,
in orders — this shall be the only proper signal for your release
from bondage — yourself, and the promising young master, your
son.”

The spirit of the son filled the struggling bosom of the father.

“Never, by act of mine! Bertha Travis shall be free to
marry whom she pleases.”

“Ah! you speak so hurriedly! It is the fault of your passionate
impulsive men. You never give yourself time. You
never gain anything from the grand virtue of deliberation. I
must not take advantage of your rashness, and prove rash
myself. I will give you time. Meanwhile, as I say, you need
reflection, not argument.”

He rose slowly from the floor, upon which he had been half
reclined all the while, and, folding up his cloak very carefully,
unclosed the door and walked forth; but only for a moment;
and, standing at the door, with the fastenings in his hand, he
whistled, and in a few minutes, both Dick of Tophet, and the
Trailer made their appearance — neither of them quite sober,
yet not so drunk as to be incapable of rough brute or mule
duty.

“Come in!” said the captain. “You know what you are to
do, Dick.”

“Oh! yes! What! it's no go, eh? He won't hear to the
argyment! Very well! We'll give him a taste of the sort of
feeding and famishing he's to git in our keeping.”

And, with these words, Dick of Tophet burst into the hall,
followed closely by the Trailer, and, more deliberately, by Inglehardt.
The two former approached the boy.

“Git up, young master,” said Dick to Henry Travis, “git up;
we wants you!”

“What do you want with me?” demanded the boy firmly.

“That's telling! We knows! Up with you.”

“I'll not rise till I know what you wish me for. I'll not go
with you!”

“Oh! you won't, eh? Well, it's easy to put a little ring
round a wooden finger.”

And the ruffian seized the boy, and lifted him as if he were
an infant. The young blood of Henry would have prompted
resistance, but the handcuffs humbled him. He could offer none.
He sobbed like a child, when, forgetting his shackles, he strove
in vain to strike.

“Oh!” he cried — “if I were but free and had any weapon.”

“Sword or pistol! Well, you'd use it, I reckon, for you hev
the spunk! I've seed it a'ready. But you ain't got the we'pon,
my lad, and so there's no chaince for you but to go. Kicking's
always a downhill game!”

“Father — I leave you?”

Captain Travis had been hitherto so much confounded by the
movement, as to be incapable of speech or effort. He now
struggled up, and threw himself between the ruffian and the
door. But the Trailer swung him aside roughly. Inglehardt,
meanwhile, looked on, with the air of an indifferent spectator.

“Captain Inglehardt, what are you about to do with my son?”

“Nay, my dear Captain Travis, I am about to do nothing
with him. I am simply yielding him up to his captor, Mr. Joel
Andrews — otherwise called Hell-fire Dick — whose prisoner he
properly is, and who properly claims his custody.”

“Pshaw, Inglehardt, will you lie in such a matter? This is
your creature — this!”

“Lie! Really, Captain Travis, your speech, for a prisoner,
is, I must be permitted to say it, excessively free and easy, if
not elegant. But, as your situation is one to impair your judgment,
I pass over your offence. Properly speaking, your son is
the prisoner of Hell-fire Dick, and not of Richard Inglehardt.”

“You will not tear the boy from his father. Is it not enough
that you hold us both in these vile bonds? will you add to it
the useless torture of separation?”

This was spoken in husky and tremulous accents; the blow
was a terrible one under the circumstances.

“I fancy that Joel Andrews thinks it very far from useless,
this removal.”

“In course I does,” cried the ruffian, haling the boy out on
his shoulder; “I reckon we'll find a use for it afore I'm done
with him, or with you!”

“Great God! to what am I reserved!” cried the wretched
Travis, turning away from the insolent gaze of Inglehardt, and
throwing himself down upon the floor, with his face buried
among the rushes.

Inglehardt gave him but a smile of triumph; then left the
hall also, carefully securing the door behind, upon the outside,
and walking after his associates.

From the tree which overhung the gable and the chimney
top, Jim Ballou, the scout, could hear the retiring voices of the
party, as, followed by Inglehardt, they bore the boy away to
the upper edge of the hammock, where Dick of Tophet had
made his camp. The groans of Captain Travis, from below,
mingled with the sounds. Finally, Jim Ballou heard the groans
only. Our scout muttered to himself:—

“Poor old gentleman; it's a d—d hard tug now about his
heart-strings! I'll try and ease him with a little hope and
comfort; though it's but a word I've got to say; for I mustn't
hang about here too long — not too long.”

Detaching from the top of the chimney, a small nugget of
clay, he dropped it down the funnel, and a moment after the
groans of Travis ceased. Dropping another bit of clay, our
scout then bent over the chimney, with his mouth close to it, at
the peril of inhaling more lightwood smoke than was needed
for odor or refreshment; and said, in steady, clear, but low
tones:—

“Captain Travis.”

“Who speaks?”

“A friend, from Colonel Sinclair. I have but a moment, and
must be off directly. One word only. Don't you be down-hearted.
Your friends are busy. They are on the watch.
They will save you and your son. Only keep up your spirits,
and do nothing rashly. Don't speak again. I must be off. Only
hope — hope — hope! That's all. Hope, and God be with you
as well as hope!”

The voice was silent. The prisoner folded his hands in
prayer. He blushed as he did so — not for the act — but because
of its infrequent exercise; because of the self-reproachful
feeling, that it was now, as it were, extorted from him, in
the overwhelming feeling of his own imbecility. How seldom
had he thought of prayer in his prosperity. How necessary is
it that the strong, and rich, and powerful, should be rebuked by
Fortune, if only that they should be brought, by humility, to a
better knowledge of, and faith in, God!