CHAPTER XX.

THE INTERRUPTION

There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave, To tell us this. —Shakespeare.

Do not insult calamity, It is a barbarous grossness. —Daniel.

But at this crisis, and when another instant would have dismissed one, if not both of the combatants, to death, a gun-barrel was thrust between them, striking up their blades, and simultaneously Uncle Lawrence stepped out into the road, having approached unperceived and unheard, through the woods.

“For shame,” he said. “Put up your swords, young men. I thought better of you, Major Gordon,” he continued, addressing the latter, “for your blood belongs to your country, and you’ve no right to waste it in a private quarrel.”

Somewhat abashed, the Major dropped the point of his weapon.

Uncle Lawrence, turning to Aylesford, went on.

“Put up yours also, sir. I’ve no doubt this brawl is of your making. You needn’t scowl at me; it will do no good; I was respected by your father before you was born, and I shan’t allow you to murder, or get murdered. Now mount your horse, young man, and go home. You needn’t look at the Major. He’s coming with me, for I have business with him: and I know he’ll promise me there shall be no more of this.”

Sullenly Aylesford, after a vain attempt to bluster, sheathed his sword, and telling his late antagonist, with an oath, that they would meet again, got into the saddle, and moved away as he was directed. When he had turned a corner of the road, a few rods distant, and was out of hearing, Uncle Lawrence said to Major Gordon:

“Now tell me how all this happened. He insulted you, of course, for I know him of old, and I marked his rudeness yesterday in church.”

There was a tone of authority in the speaker, yet one entirely free from assumption, which there was no resisting. With his blood still boiling, the Major put up his sword and prepared to obey the old man. He could not tell everything; Kate’s name was studiously avoided: but he gave otherwise a fair account of the interview. When he had concluded, Uncle Lawrence said:

“It is just as I expected. Now it’s strange,” he continued, “how one brother’ll differ from another. This young man’s father wasn’t the same man at all that Kate’s father was; and the son’s worse even. The old one spent half his fortune on wine and women, and the son has sent the helve arter the hatchet. He leads a wild life, when he’s in town, where he can get company of the same sort; and did the same here, for awhile, when his cousin was in Europe. You can see that, though, in his face.”

Uncle Lawrence paused, but as Major Gordon was silent he went on.

“His family, even Miss Katie, are in fear from his temper. You’ve had a taste of that yourself, and they say its sometimes awful: he’d as lief kill a person, if he was angry, as look at ‘em. Miss Katie, too, pities him, as is natural, for they were children together. I have heerd it was a plan of their fathers to marry ‘em, when they grew up.” His listener winced. “How that’ll be now, however, I can’t tell. Miss Katie worships the very name of her father, and would do a’most anything that she knew he wished: but I’m sartain, if he was alive, he’d sooner see her dead than married to her cousin. Her aunt, I hear, don’t think so, and is a great friend of the young man’s, which is the more odd, because she married just such another, who spent all her money and nigh broke her heart. But they do say, she went a’most crazy with grief, in spite of it all. Women, Major, are queer critters.”

“I suppose it’s this old compact,” said the Major, endeavoring to assume a composure he was far from feeling, “which has brought Mr. Aylesford down to Sweetwater.”

“Most likely. Though there may be something else afloat, as other sarcumstances make me suspect. He’s a tory at heart, I’m sartain. He was always high, and thought nobody good enough for him, talking of his cousin, Lord somebody, just as Mrs. Warren does,” and he laughed that low chuckling laugh, which was all his mirth ever rose to. “Such a man, Major, is naturally a tory; and tories are always on the watch, with their cunning ready, for this youngster’s as cunning as a fox; so I don’t know but there’s mischief afoot. That brings me, too, to my business, which is public, and to that private affairs must always give way, you know. But you’ll go back to the Forks?”

In manly bosoms, love, though the master-passion, is not the selfish and all-engrossing one, which mere romancers would have their readers to believe. Though Major Gordon was as anxious as ever to learn his fate from Kate, he saw that the present was not the time for it, and therefore declared his readiness to return to the Forks, and meanwhile, to hear what Uncle Lawrence had to say.

“It’s about the refugees, Major, that I’ve come to see you,” he said, walking by Selim’s side, as the latter proceeded homeward at a slow pace. “Yesterday, when we were all at meeting, widow Bates’ house was robbed and fired; and it could have been by none but them thieving vagabonds. Poor thing! she has a hard time to get along anyhow. Her husband was killed at Brandywine; and both her oldest sons are ‘listed for the war; so that she had nobody at home but her youngest, a boy of only twelve, and her little darter, who’s still younger. Among us, we manage to plow her little bit of land, so as to give her corn and rye enough to eat; but how she picks up the rest of her living, it’s hard to tell. Yesterday she walked into meeting with her children, though it’s a matter of five miles or more; and when she was away, somebody robbed her, taking everything that was worth carrying off, and then burning down her house.”

“The villains!” exclaimed the listener.

“You may well say that,” continued Uncle Lawrence, “for it’s not charity to call the scoundrels by softer names, as some folks, I hear, do in these times. Nobody but a villain would rob the widow and the orphan. Especially a soldier’s widow. It could only have been the refugees.”

“But have you no clue to them?” said Major Gordon.

“No what?”

“Can you guess who did it?”

“Oh! ay! can I guess? I think I can. It’s Ned Arrison, I’m a’most certain.”

“Who is Ned Arrison?”

“He’s a vagabond well known about these parts, Major, and likely to git his desarts if he’s ever caught by the folks. He used to be a hanger-on of young Aylesford; he was ostler, I believe, at Sweetwater, for awhile; and as Master Charles, as they called him, was always in the stables, the two got pretty thick. Arrison’s ten years the oldest, however, and wasn’t born in this country either, but had to leave Ireland when he was about nineteen, I’ve no doubt for gittin’ into some scrape or other there. He taught the young fellow to drink, and play cards, and worse, if all accounts are true. Long before Katie’s father died, however, the tricks of Arrison were found out, and he was turned off.”

“What makes you think he had to leave Ireland for committing some crime?”

“Why, you see, Major, the rogue has had some eddication, and it stands to reason that such a man couldn’t have been brought up an ostler, or forced to fly his country without being in a scrape. To do young Mr. Aylesford justice, he’d never have been so thick with Arrison, if the fellow hadn’t had some eddication. But this, and his cunning, and his always being ready to lick Master Charles’ shoes, or go down on his knees to sarve him, which pleased the lad’s high notions, made him the right-hand man of the young fellow.”

“But all this does not prove that Arrison had anything to do with yesterday’s affair.”

“Not so fast, Major. It helps, as you’ll see by-’m-bye. Arter being turned off, Arrison went away, and I heerd was living in Philadelphy. I’ve no doubt at all that Master Charles and he were as thick as ever, there, when the lad went up to town to school. I’ve heerd that a poor girl, whom it’s said the youngster ruined, was arterwards made to marry Arrison, in order to hush it up; and that Arrison took the wife for the money that was put down, and then spent the money and broke his wife’s heart, that is if it wasn’t nigh broke before: but of this I ain’t sartain, as what happens away off in Philadelphy, isn’t easy to be got at here; and I never liked to ask outright, when I’ve been in town, and, besides, didn’t know rightly who to ask.

“When the war broke out, and the time came, before Washington re-crossed the Delaware, that ‘most everybody feared the king was going to win, who should come down here but Arrison, and as Katie’s father was now dead, Master Charles was living at the big house, and took Arrison into his employment at once. There was deviltry enough went on, in a few weeks then, to ruin the souls of a hundred men. However, before long, the tables turned, and this young Mr. Aylesford, who, as I’ve said, is as cunning as he is hot tempered, began to be afeerd for himself, if he allowed such a tory to live with him. At this Arrison went away agin. But not long after he was seen, with some other precious scoundrels, hanging about the British camp; and by-’m-bye he came back to our parts, where he took to a reg’lar refugee life. Some of us, at this, turned out and tried to hunt him off. But we couldn’t find him, till one day, he robbed a house down near the Banks. John Sanders was away when it happened, but coming home at night, and hearing from the women all about it, and how Arrison had sworn at ‘em, and struck his old mother because she tried to hide some silver tea-spoons under her apron, he swore an oath, that he’d have revenge. He guessed that the refugees wouldn’t go far that night, for they’d come in a boat, and as the wind was agin them, they’d naturally wait for the next tide: besides there were few men left in these parts at that time, and so they’d nothing to fear. On this, he struck through the woods, coming out on the shore of the river, t’other side of the big bend, some dozen miles below this. He’d taken his axe with him, and what does he do now,” and Uncle Lawrence laughed a low laugh, “but cut a path through the brush, alongside the river, leavin’ just bushes enough between him and the water to hide him. He made his path a couple of hundred feet long, and when he’d finished it, lay down at its lower end, after having double-loaded his gun with buck-shot, to watch for the refugee boat. It was a bright starlight night, and I’ve often heerd Sanders tell, that as he lay there, he could see the dark tide, as it rolled by, rippling past the pint, and twinkling as if a swarm of fire-flies was settling close over it. It was as still, too, as a grave-yard. He could hear the water _lip-lapping_ agin an old tree trunk, that lay in the stream right in front of him; and the whip-poor-wills, he said, never wailed so loud; while, whenever an owl _hoo-hooed_, away off in the swamp, it a’most skeered him, it seemed so near. At last, arter he’d waited a long while, he heerd the sound of oars, soft-like, as if a boat was being rowed only just enough to give her steerage way. He peeped out, his heart a-beatin’, and sure enough there they were, dropping down the river with the tide. He knew Arrison, who had the tiller; and thought he knew one of the others too. There were five of ‘em. So he kneeled down, resting his gun lest his hand should shake, for he wanted to be cock-sure, and when the boat came directly opposite, blazed away. He jumped up at once, but not before he’d time to see that Arrison clapped his hand to his side, as if hurt, and that the fellow next to him, who was pulling the stroke oar, tumbled over dead like. Then he ran, let me tell you, for dear life. The men who weren’t hurt, fired right off. But,” and again Uncle Lawrence laughed his low chuckle, “Sanders, by this time, was two hundred feet off, one way, while the tide had carried them a couple of hundred in another; so that their buck-shot only stripped a few leaves off the bushes, and cut down a huckleberry branch or two. Sanders got home safe before daylight, and we heerd no more of Arrison for a long while, till it was told that he’d been laid up, for months, with a wound, and had arterwards gone over to Maurice river to carry on his deviltries there, thinking that these parts was too hot for him.”

“Now that’s just the kind of rogue,” continued Uncle Lawrence, “that would rob a poor widow. And what makes me think, above all, that it was he burned widow Bates’ house, was that, when Arrison was living at Sweetwater last, he insulted the widow, one day, when he was drunk, for which her husband, who was alive then, gave him a sound thrashing. He’s the very man to remember such a thing, and take out his revenge in this cowardly way.”

“Your conclusions seem accurate,” said Major Gordon, “for it is scarcely credible that there can be two men, in all this district, who could commit so mean an outrage. You wish me, I suppose, to put my men on his track. If that is it, I will do it cheerfully. Though how we are to succeed in running him down, if you, who have better wood-craft, failed when he was last here, I don’t see.”

“There’s nothing like trying,” answered Uncle Lawrence, “and there’s the more need of it, because there’s worse mischief a-brewin’, you may depend on’t. This varmint wouldn’t have dared to come back, especially when he knew there were soldiers at the Forks, unless he’d a good many men at his back, or there were other reasons for thinking he could snap his fingers at us. I can’t tell what it is, but there’s something, I’ll stake my life on that.”

“I’ll go out this very hour with my whole force. Will you help?”

“That’s what I came over for. I’m a pretty good guide through these woods, though I say it that should not say it, and can track a man a’most as good as an Ingin can. I’m agin shedding human blood, too, when it can be helped,” added the old man; but slapping his gun, he went on, “yet if I draw sight on Arrison, he’s a dead man, for I’ve loaded her with as many buckshot as she can carry, and I’d no more mind shooting him, than I would a mad dog.”

As he spoke these words he came in sight of the Forks, where we will leave them for the present.