“Ha!” exclaimed Hewson, “it rings well—again—again. Never mind; you’ll wake nothing, mistress, but the dogs, cocks, and owls. Hear how they’re at it!—‘bow—wow—wow—the beggars are come to town,’—ha, ha—well done. But boys, I say, we’d best be off soon. Pat, you know” (he had already communicated his plan to Pat), “bring down one of them young ones.”
Pat went—he lingered. “Come, boys, hurry,” cried Hewson, who now began to apprehend the possibility of a response to Mrs. Archer’s summons: “what the d—l ails that fellow?”—he went to the staircase and called. Pat appeared; but without the child, and looking as a wild beast might, subdued by a charm. “They’re blind, captain—both blind!” he said. “I can’t touch them—by all that’s holy I can’t—there’s not strength in my arm to hold the sightless things—the one nor the t’other of ’em.”
“Fool—baby!” retorted Hewson, “you know we don’t mean to hurt ’em.”
“Then do it yourself, captain—I can’t, and there’s an end on’t.”
Hewson hesitated. The image of the mother and her blind children daunted even his fierce spirit. An expedient occurred to him:—“A sure way,” he thought, “of drowning 207feelings.” In ransacking the pantry he had seen a flask of brandy, and then prudently concealed it from his men. He now brought it forth, and passed it round and round. It soon began its natural work: consumed in its infernal fires all intellectual power, natural affection, domestic and pitiful emotion; put out the light of Heaven, and roused the brute passions of the men.
Hewson saw the potion working; their “human countenances changed to brutish form.” “It’s a d—d shame,—ant it, boys,” said he, “for this tory madam to balk us?—we shall have a hurra after us for this frolic, and nothing to show—we might as well have robbed a farmhouse, and who would have cared?”
“We’ll tache her better, captain,” said Pat; “we’ll make an example of her, as the judges say in Ireland when they hang the lads. I’ll give her a blow over the head, if you say so, handy like—or wring the chickens’ necks—it’s asy done.”
“Pshaw, Pat—it’s only your asses of judges that think examples of any use. If we hook one of the chickens, you know, Pat, she’ll be glad to buy it back with the yallow shiners, boy, that’s lodged safe in York—fifty a piece—share and share alike—my turn is it?—here’s to you, boys—a short life and a merry one. I’ve charged ’em up to the mark,” thought he; and in raising the flask to his lips, it slipped through his hands and was broken to fragments. “Ah, my men! there’s a sign for us—we may have a worse slip than that ‘’tween the cup and the lip:’ so let’s be off—come, Pat.”
“Shall I fetch ’em both, captain?”
“No, no—one is as good as a thousand. But stay, Pat. Drunk as they are,” thought Hewson, “I’ll not trust them in the sound of the mother’s screeches. First, Pat, let’s have all ready for a start—tie up your bags, boys, come.”
The men’s brains were so clouded, that it seemed to Hewson they were an eternity in loading their beasts with 208their booty. Delay after delay occurred; but finally all was ready, and he gave the signal to Pat.
Pat now obeyed to the letter. He mounted the stairs, sprang like a tiger on his prey, and returned with Lizzy, already an unconscious burden, in his arms. One piercing shriek Hewson heard proceeding from Mrs. Archer’s apartment, but not another sound. It occurred to him that Pat might have committed the murder he volunteered; and exclaiming, “The blundering Irish rascal has kicked the pail over!” he once more ascended the stairs to assure himself of the cause of the ominous silence. Edward was in the adjoining apartment when Lizzy was wrested from her mother’s arms. He was recalled by Mrs. Archer’s scream; and when Hewson reached the apartment, he found Mrs. Archer lying senseless across the threshold of the door, and Edward groping around, and calling, “Mother!—Lizzy!—where are you?—do speak, mother!”
A moment after, Mrs. Archer felt her boy’s arms around her neck. She returned to a consciousness of her condition, and heard the trampling of the outlaws’ horses as they receded from her dwelling.
209CHAPTER XVIII.
—“Good vent’rous youth,
I love thy courage yet, and bold emprise.”
Captain!—Captain Lee! don’t you hear that horn?” said Gurdon Coit, shaking our soundly-sleeping friend Eliot.
“Yes, thank you, I hear it;—it’s daylight, is it?”
“No, no; but there’s something to pay up at Madam Archer’s. Those devils you met on the road, I doubt, are there—the lights have been glancing about her rooms this hour, and now they’ve blown the horn—there’s mischief, depend on’t.”
“Why in the name of Heaven did not you wake me sooner?” exclaimed Eliot. “Rouse up these fellows—wake that snoring wretch on the settle, and we’ll to her aid instantly.”
The offensive snoring ceased as Coit whispered, “No, don’t wake him—edge-tools, you know” He then proceeded to wake the men from West Point, who were sleeping on the floor. Eliot, as they lifted their heads, recognised them—the one a common soldier, the other a certain Ensign Tooler—a man who had the most disagreeable modification of Yankee character; knowingness overlaid with conceit, and all the self-preserving virtues concentrated in selfishness, as bad liquor is distilled from wholesome grain. “Tooler, is that you?” exclaimed Eliot—“and you, Mason? up instantly!”—and he explained the occasion for their prompt service.
“And who is this Madam Archer?” asked Tooler, composedly resting his elbow on the floor.
210“She is a woman in need of our protection. This is enough for us to know,” replied Eliot, discreetly evading more explicit information.
“She lives in the big house on the hill, don’t she?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Then I guess we may as well leave her to her luck, for she belongs to the tory side.”
“Good Heavens, Tooler!—do you hesitate?—Mason, go with me if you have the soul of a man.”
“Lie still, Mason, we’re under orders,—Captain Lee must answer for himself. It’s none of our business if he’s a mind to go off fighting windmills; but duty is duty, and we’ll keep to the straight and narrow path.”
“Cowardly, canting wretch!” exclaimed Eliot.
“I’m no coward, Captain Eliot Lee, and if Coit will say that Madam Archer is on our side, and you’ll undertake to answer to General Washington for all consequences, I’ll not hinder Mason’s joining you.”
The terms were impracticable. There was no time to be lost: “You will go with me, Coit?” said Eliot.
“Why, Captain Lee, it’s a venturesome business.”
“Yes or no, Coit! not an instant’s delay.”
“I’ll go, Captain Lee,—I’m not a brute.”
Mason did not quite relish the consciousness of acting like a brute, and he half rose, balancing in his mind the shame of remaining, against the risk of disobeying his ensign’s orders. “Lie still, Mason,” said Tooler; “mind me and you’re safe—I’ll take care of number one.”
The person on the settle now sprang up and poured a torrent of vituperative oaths and invectives on Tooler. Tooler looked up with the abject expression of a barking cur when he hears his master’s voice. “Why, gen’ral,” said he, “if I had known—”
“Don’t gen’ral me!—don’t defile my name with your lips! 211A pretty fellow you, to prate of duty and orders in the very face of the orders of the Almighty commander-in-chief, to remember the widows and fatherless in their affliction. I always mistrust your fellows that cant about duty. They’ll surrender the post at the first go off, and then expect conscience to let them march out with the honours of war.”
“I’m ready to go, sir,—ready and willing, if you say so.”
“No, by George!—I’d rather fight single-handed with fifty skinners, than have one such cowardly devil as you at my side.” All this was said while “the gen’ral” was putting on his coat and hat, and arming himself; “are we
ready, Captain Lee?” he concluded.
“Perfectly,” replied Eliot, wondering who this sturdy authoritative auxiliary might be, but not venturing to ask, as he thought “the gen’ral” had implied his wish to remain incognito, and really not caring at this moment whose arm it was, provided it was raised in Mrs. Archer’s defence. After one keen survey of “the gen’ral’s” person, he concluded, “I never have seen him.” He had not. Once seen, that frank, fearless countenance was never to be forgotten; neither could one well forget the broad, brawny, working-day frame that sustained it, or the peculiar limp (caused by one leg being shorter than the other), the only imperfection and marring of the figure of our rustic Hercules.
In an instant they were mounted, and in five minutes more, the distance not much exceeding half a mile, they were entering Mrs. Archer’s hall. An ominous silence reigned there. The house was filled with smoke, through which the lighted candles, left by Hewson’s crew, faintly glimmered, and exposed the relics of their feast, with other marks of their forray. A bright light shone through the crevices of the pantry door; Coit opened it, and immediately the flames of a fire which had been communicated (whether intentionally, was never ascertained) to a chest of linen burst forth. “Good 212Heaven! where are the family!” exclaimed Eliot and his companion, in a breath.
“Follow me,” cried Coit, leading the way to Mrs. Archer’s apartment, and shouting “fire!” His screams were answered by the female servants, who now rushed from their mistress’s apartment. “Where’s your lady?” demanded “the general.” They were too much bewildered to reply, and both he and Eliot followed Coit’s lead, and all three paused at the threshold of Mrs. Archer’s door, paralyzed by the spectacle of the mother, sitting perfectly motionless with her boy in her arms, and looking like a statue of despair. The general was the first to recover his voice. “Lord of Heaven, madam!” he exclaimed, “your house is on fire!”
She made no reply whatever. She seemed not even to hear him. “Where is the little girl?” asked Coit.
Mrs. Archer’s face slightly convulsed. Her boy sprang from her arms at the sound of a familiar voice,—“Oh, Mr. Coit,” he cried, “they’ve taken off Lizzy!”
The crackling of the advancing flames, and the pouring in of volumes of smoke, prevented any farther explanation at the moment. The instinct of self-preservation, awakened in some degree, renerved Mrs. Archer; and half sustained by Eliot’s arm, she and her boy were conducted to an office detached from the house, and so far removed from it as to be in no danger from the conflagration. In the meantime the general had ascertained from the servants all that could be learned of the direction the skinners had taken, and that they were not more than fifteen minutes in advance of them. He and Coit had remounted their horses, and he was hallooing to Eliot to join them:—“Come, young man,” he cried, “let’s do what’s to be done at once, and cry afterward, if cry we must.”
“Recover her!” said Mrs. Archer, repeating the last words of Eliot’s attempt to revive her hopes—“her lifeless body you may—God grant it!”
213She paused, and shuddered. She still felt the marble touch of Lizzy’s cheek—still saw her head and limbs drop as the ruffian seized her.
Eliot understood her: “My dear madam,” he said, “she has fainted from terror, nothing more; she will be well again when she feels your arm around her—take courage, I beseech you.”
It is not in the heart of woman to resist such inspiring sympathy as was expressed in Eliot’s face and voice. If Mrs. Archer did not hope, there was something better than despair in the feeling of intense expectation that concentrated all sensation. She seemed unconscious of the flames that were devouring her house. She did not hear the boyish exclamations with which Edward, as he heard the falling rafters and tumbling chimneys, interspersed his sobs for poor Lizzy; nor the clamorous cryings of the servants, which would break out afresh as they remembered some favourite article of property consuming in the flames.
A few yards from Mrs. Archer’s house, a road diverged from that which our pursuers had taken. They halted for a moment, when Coit, who was familiar with the localities of the vicinity, advised to taking the upper road. “They both,” he said, “came out in one at a distance of about three miles. They would thus avoid giving the forward party any warning of their approach, and their horses being the freshest and fleetest, they might possibly arrive at the junction of the roads first, and surprise the skinners from an ambush.”
“Lucky for us that there is another road,” replied the general, as, conforming to Coit’s suggestion, they turned into it. “The rascals we’re after are foxes, and would be sure to escape if they heard the hounds behind them.”
“I should think, from my observation of their horses,” replied Eliot, “they have small chance of escaping us in a long pursuit.”
214“There I think you mistake; they get their jades for no vartu under heaven but running away, and I’ve heard of their distancing horses that looked equal to mine; speed a’n’t Charlie’s forte, though,” he added, in a half audible voice; and patting his beast lovingly, “you’ve done a feat at it once, Charlie. They know all the holes and hiding-places in the country,” he continued, “and I have heard of their disappearing as suddenly as if the ground had opened and swallowed them up—I wish it would—the varmin!”
“Had we not best try the mettle of our horses?” asked Eliot, who felt as if his companions were taking the matter too coolly.
“If you please.”
The general put up his Bucephalus to his utmost speed; but in spite of the feat his master boasted, he seemed to have been selected for other virtues than fleetness, for both Eliot and Coit soon passed him, and so far outrode him as not to be able to discern the outline of the rider’s figure when they reached the junction of the roads where they hoped to intercept the skinners. They had perceived the faintest streak of dawn, while they could see the eastern horizon and the morning star trembling and glittering above it. Now they entered a little wood of thick-set pines and hemlocks, and the darkness of midnight seemed to thicken around them.
“Hark!” cried Eliot, suddenly halting—“don’t you hear the trampling of horses?”
“Yes,” replied Coit, “there is a bridge just ahead; let us secure a position as near it as possible.” They moved on, and after advancing a few yards, again halted, still remaining under cover of the wood. “We are within twenty feet of the other road,” resumed Coit; “it runs along just parallel to where we stand, and a few feet below us; there is a small stream of water on the other side of the pines, which we pass over by the bridge as we fall into the other road; the rub will 215be to get on to the bridge before they see us—I wish the general would come up!”
“We must not wait for him, Coit.”
“Not wait for him!” replied Coit, whose valour was at least tempered by discretion, “we are but two to five, and they such devils!”
“We have Heaven on our side—we must not wait a breath—we must intercept them; follow me when I give the spurs to my horse.”
“Oh, if he would but come up!” thought Coit; “this young man is as brave as a lion, but the general is a lion!”
The skinners had now approached so near to our friends that they fancied they heard the hard breathing of their horses. They halted at the brook, and Eliot distinctly heard Hewson say to Pat, “Don’t she come to yet?”
“I can’t just say—once or twice she opened her sightless eyes like, and she gasped, but she’s corpse-cold; and captain, I say, I don’t like the feel of her; I am afeard I shall drop her, there’s such a wonderful weight in her little body.”
“You cowardly fool!”
“By the soul of my mother, it’s true—try once the lift of her!”
“Pshaw! I’ve twice her weight in this bundle before me. Hold up her head while I dash some water in her face; they say the breath will go entirely if you let it stop too long.” Hewson then dismounted, took from his pocket a small silver cup he had abstracted from Mrs
. Archer’s pantry, and was stooping to fill it, when he was arrested by the appearance of his pursuers.
“Now is our time!” cried Eliot, urging his horse down the descent that led to the bridge. There the animal instinctively stopped. The bridge was old, the rotten planks had given way, and as destruction, not reparation, was the natural work of those troubled times, the bridge had been suffered to remain 216impassable. Eliot looked up and down the stream; it was fordable, but the banks, though not high, were precipitous and ragged. Eliot measured the gap in the bridge accurately with his eye: “My horse can leap it,” was his conclusion, and he gave him voice, whip, and spur. The animal, as if he felt the inspiration of his master’s purpose, made a generous effort and passed the vacant space. Eliot did not look back to see if he were followed. He did not heed Coit’s exclamation, “you’re lost!” nor did he hear the general, who, on arriving at the bridge, cried, “God help you, my boy!—I can’t—my beast can’t do it with my weight on him—follow me, Coit,” and he turned to retrace his steps to a point where, as he had marked in stopping to water his horse, the stream was passable.
Eliot was conscious of but one thought, one hope, one purpose—to rescue the prey from the villains. He had an indistinct impression that their numbers were not complete. He aimed his pistol at Patrick’s head—the bullet sped—not a sound escaped the poor wretch. He raised himself upright in his stirrups, and fell over the side of the horse, dragging the child with him.
At this moment two horsemen passed between Eliot and Pat, and one of them, dropping his bridle and stretching out his arms, screamed, “Misser Eliot—oh, Misser Eliot!”
It was poor Kisel, but vain was his appeal. One of the men smartly lashed Kisel’s horse:—Linwood’s spirited gray darted forward as if he had been starting on a race-course; and Kisel was fain to cling to him by holding fast to his mane, so strong is instinct, though if he had deliberately chosen between death and separation from his master, he certainly would have chosen the former.
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