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KATY OF CATOCTIN

THE CHAIN-BREAKERS

A NATIONAL ROMANCE

GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND

"GATH"
AUTHOR OF "THE ENTAILED HAT," "TALES OF THE CHESAPEAKE," ETC.

" Older than the Shenandoah mountains is love."

EMERSON.

NEW YORK

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1895

BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY^

COLONEL JOHN HAY

WHOSE ACQUAINTANCE I MADE IN THE WHITE HOUSE,

WHERE THE PRESIDENT AND EMANCIPATOR

LAY DEAD.

M63588

PR E FAC E.

FROM the hour the author stood by the dead face of
Abraham Lincoln, in the Executive Mansion at Washington,
he has had the idea of writing a romance upon the conspir
acy of Booth.

Like many such literary projects nursed by a journalist,
this one had not only to be postponed, but finally to become
a portion of a broader story, because too many of the actors
in the tragedy still lived, and the mere crime presented no
elevated moral to justify its embellishment.

Considering it, however, as one of a series of cumulative
acts of violence committed upon or from the soil of Mary
land during the conflict of Emancipation, the author felt not
only an epic propriety to be in the theme, but it appealed
to him as a descendant of Marylanders and one who had
already, in his romance of "The Entailed Hat," pictured
the twin lobe of Maryland and the rise of the slave interest.

The temptation to paint the more picturesque Western
Shore, from the old Catholic tide- water counties and the met
ropolitan life of Washington and Baltimore to the German
valleys and the mountain battle-fields, was not to be dis
missed, either by the sacrifice it would require, or from the
delicacy of a generation still alive.

Experimenting with the subject, the author found such
rapid changes taking place in all this region, in thought as
well as in things, that he believed it would be next to im
possible in twenty years more for any one to realize the soci-

6 PREFACE.

ety which came first into national notice when Booth made
his hegira through it. Besides, the author's stock of materi
als, made complete by visits and searches of nineteen years,
required the interpretation of his own eye and hand.

He felt that, while to have written this book earlier would
have been to speak too harshly and too narrowly of some
agents in the crime, to postpone the composition longer
would have been to remand it to mere antiquarian literature
and lose the missionary use and the heartiness of adventure ;
for, when he knew Booth personally and saw his associates
executed, the author was turning into twenty-five, and, when
he unraveled the skein of Booth's concealment and flight
after the crime, the author was 'turning forty-four years.
Voters had grown up in the interim who had been but tot-
tling babes when the mighty war ceased with this sacrificial
mass, and the President's death ended the wild Maryland
epic, of which the raid of John Brown, the Baltimore riots,
Antietam battle, and the spy system in the old Potomac
counties were elements.

Enough of all this was yet undiscovered to leave space
for fancy to enliven the athletic game, and in one or two
cases characters have been wholly invented, or rather made
out of general types and conditions, to replace others not
proper to be copied.

The author not only lived contemporary with the per
sonages of his book, but he was an active traveler and sight
seer with and among them. No natural scene is sketched
in this book that did not dwell upon his sight, and he trusts
that the impassioned scenes of action have been tinted in
subordination to a national and human philosophy.

GAPLAND, MD., 1886.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. MOUNTAINEERS . . V

II. THE LOOKER .

III. SOME OLD DUTCH

IV. KATY "P'INTED"

V. LOVE AMONG THE SPOOKS
VI. DOGS AND HOUNDS .

VII. WITCH OF SMOKETOWN . : '.
VIII. BEAVER CREEK DUNKERS .

IX. THE SACRAMENT . . V

X. ISAAC SMITH'S FARM .
XL KATY'S ACCORDION
XIL JAYHAWKERS .

XIII. LLOYD'S DESTINY CHANGED

XIV. LEXINGTON, NOT CONCORD .
XV. DARK, LIGHT, AND KISS.

XVI. THE SUCK .
XVII. ASHBY'S GRATITUDE . .

XVIII. KAGI .
XIX. FIRST CADET SLAIN
XX. GAULT HOUSE . . .

XXI. ABEL QUANTRELL
XXII. THE YANKEE . ' .- : .

XXIII. JOHN BROWN'S FORT

XXIV. THE FREE-STATE LINE
XXV. ClIARLESTOWN

XXVI. OATH-PLIGHT AND TROTH-PLIGHT
XXVII. KNOW-NOTHINGS .

XXVIII. NEW FACES IN THE VALLEY

XXIX. THE ACTOR

17
23

39
45
54
67

7S
88

95
Tog

121
128
136
144
1 60
I67

I98
210
216
231
243
253
26l
271
286

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

XXX. JOHN BROWN EXECUTED .

XXXI. DISINTEGRATION

XXXII. STRAY ENDS

XXXIII. LOVE'S FIERCE PROBATION

XXXIV. THE OLD SLAVE COUNTIES

XXXV. REBELLION

XXXVI. CRESCITE ET MULTIPLICAMINI

XXXVII. " TICK-A-TOCK-A ! " . ^ .

XXXVIII. PURITAN, JESUIT, AND GERMAN

XXXIX. LLOYD'S HUNTING-PARK

XL. INSTIGATION

XLI. GRASS WIDOWS . . .

XLII. LEGITIMATE DRAMA

XLIII. THE ABDUCTION PLOT .

XLIV. THE BAND .

XLV. ASSASSINATION .

XLVI. FLIGHT OF SPIES .

XLVII. PAYNE .

XLVIII. IN THE SHORT PINES

XLIX. THE RETURN . . .

L. DEATH OF BOOTH .

LI. EMIGRAVIT

PAGE
297
311
324

339
355
365
380

392
404

415
429
441

452
463
475
490

504
512
523
536
546
555

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

CHAPTER I.
MOUNTAINEERS.

" MARYLAND is only a rim of shore, a shell of mountain, but all
gold ! "

So said Lloyd Ouantrell, the gunner, looking down from the
South Mountain upon Middletown or Catoctin Valley, an October
Saturday in the year 1859.

The mellow light of afternoon touched or bathed the hundred
farms, the bridges, barns, hamlets, stacks, corn-rows, brown woods,
streams and stone walls, and with a fruity smell, as of cider-presses,
seemed to come up the tone of bells ringing the Marylanders home
from the labors of the week.

He saw the red and white spires of Middletown in the lap of the
valley like its babe, and thought he saw, beyond its Catoctin Mount
ain knees, the father Frederick, the good old burgher, holding his
devout fingers up, like index boards at the junction of his many pike
roads.

Then fancy spread other terraces of Maryland, farther and far
ther on, like descending steps of gold and marble, beyond the hills
of Sugarloaf and Linganore, to where Potomac and Patapsco blended
their cascades and ocean-tides at the shrines of Washington and
Baltimore.

Lloyd Quantrell's dog put his nose in the air silently, looking
also downward, as if he scented, with the pheasants of the mount
ain, the sea-fowl of the Chesapeake.

A train of cars was crossing the mouth of Catoctin Valley from
the dark chasm of Harper's Ferry, as the dog started back along

I0 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

the mountain-top, " pointing " for a bird ; and when Lloyd had fol
lowed and fired at and missed the bird, he saw another view in the
west, all flooded with the sunset — the plateau between the Antietam
and Potomac, stretching in woodland or crystal to the North Mount
ain and the Conococheague.

Here, amid equal abundance, a wilder paradise extended, as if
nature's ruggedness had somewhat delayed the gardener hands of
man.

.Beneath Quatitrdl's eye, to the left, a short, bold mountain in
truded, which- had 'be'gun a_ race with the South Mountain for the
Pennsylvania lme> but ^'topped in sight of the white clusters of set
tlement toward 'HagerStcAYiX discouraged at their beauty and multi
tude, like Balaam's stride arrested by the Hebrew camps.

Between this, Elk Ridge (or Maryland Heights) Mountain, and
his own, and in the narrow peninsula beyond, where the Potomac
begged a passage to the Shenandoah, a few wild farms found lodg
ment, as if poor, fugitive, and hermit men had clung there to a fun
nel, and now their white log and plaster houses and decayed black
barns, in the midst of small mountain orchards, sent up to Quantrell
light spirals of smoke, or flame of burning brushwood, or bells of
milch-cows tinkling in alder-copses.

Where these wild homes and startled spurs of mountain halted,
the basin of the great Cumberland Valley fell away indistinctly, and
Keedysville lay in the foreground, like a bunch of the American
flag.

The colors in the landscape were gold, purple, chrome, and all
varieties of autumnal blue and gray, and, as if they were mixed in a
cup, the young Baltimore sportsman drank them in and pined to
understand the delight : for the love of scenery yearns to become an
art.

In all this patriotic prospect there was no responsive heart, and
Lloyd Quantrell was still unbeloved.

New pulses had beat of late in him, and, like the hair upon his lip,
sentiment had begun to grow : the idea of woman followed him
about — of no one woman but of womankind, and in this glowing
Eden of his native State the scenery seemed to lack a sympathetic
spirit to reach up her white arms from the vale and cry : " Come
down, my love, appointed for me ; and I will make thy soul at rest,
to enjoy every prospect, which, lonely, thou never canst ! "

Beautiful, detached time of life ! when, like a mote of the

MO UN TA INEERS. T j

Italian poplar's pollen blowing in the air to find the female cup, the
souls of two young, destined people, yet unknown, solicit each other
in the world.

The crude, destructive instincts of the young man were expressed
aloud in his emotion between savagery and art :

" What would I do if all this was mine, on both sides of the
mountain ? " Lloyd Quantrell said. " Let me see ! Why, I would
clean out the whole region, like a Norman king, and make it a hunt
ing park. All the wild beasts once here should return again — none
but native American beasts, you bet ! I would let them make their
dens and shelters in these towns. The people would have to go —
go West, I suppose — and then these stone, brick, and timber villages
would decay, and we should have real American ruins in a few
years. Too many Dutch are in this up-country for me! Instead
of a lot of Dutchmen going to Baltimore market, we should have
hunters sending down deer and bear. I would bring the buffaloes
back from the West — for they used to herd here too, in the early
day — and let them make dust, like an army, as they galloped be
fore my hunters The wolf should howl again, to make the mount
ains romantic. I would have grizzlies hug each other, panthers
sneak away and prowl nearer again, and foxes should be protected,
so that every day would be a morning chase. My castle I would
put on the South Mountain, right here where I stand."

He stopped, thinking what would a castle be without a lady.
But in a minute his mind ran along with the vision :

"I think," he resumed, "that I would not disturb the Dutch
beauties, for I would need a few vassals, and, to reconcile these and
give me society, I might marry one of them. Yes, she should be
the rosiest of all. I would educate her and make her my baroness ;
Baroness of the Blue Ridge."

As his thoughts, like the predatory hawk, flew back to a domes
tic nest and mate, Lloyd basked a moment in the soft, languorous
vision of a settlement in life, till the dog whined and pointed, and,
looking where it indicated, the gunner saw, in the edge of the woods,
a few steps distant, a strange, primitive old man, accompanied by
two young companions, watching him.

The apparition was more lean than tall, and dressed in dark
woolens, cut almost Quaker fashion, and his waistcoat was but
toned nearly up to a leather stock around the tough whip-cords in
his throat, which were revealed when he took his bushy gray beard

12 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

in one hand and drew it aside, looking meantime at young Quantrell
with a pair of severe, gray-blue eyes.

The intruder's hair was brushed straight up from a rather low,
receding forehead. He had a hawkish nose, and the beard which
encircled his face, and would have fallen low upon his breast, stood
outward at his chin like autumn brush against a rock.

" If this is your land, you don't mind my gunning on it ? " spoke
Quantrell.

" It is not my land, sir," answered the man, not finishing his
searching look.

" Then I don't see why you look at me so hard, friend, unless I
have stolen something."

" Are you from Virginia ? " asked the man.

" No, I am from Maryland — from Baltimore."

" You have been walking around this country three days ! "

" There's no law against that, old man. I have been shooting,
what little there is, and picking a few fish out of the brooks. Have
you been following me all the time ? "

" I have seen you around my dwelling, sir, on two occasions,
yesterday and the day before," continued the mountaineer, "and
you are here still."

" Upon my word, friend, I don't see why I shouldn't pass your
dwelling every day of my holiday here, particularly as I don't know
where it is ! "

An idea crossed Lloyd Quantrell's mind that there might be
robbers in these mountains, and he gave a glance at the two other
men.

They were young fellows, and, in appearance, were so nearly
the same, that observing one, answered for both ; of good height,
spare-faced and sunburned, sallow, worn thin, and with long, dark
hair and beards ; mere rustics to look at, with some passing alert
ness of curiosity now, but too docile and gentle to retain a preda
tory purpose.

This time Lloyd Quantrell guessed that they might be an old
preacher and his two sons, of Mennonite, or Dunker, or some mount
ain Dutch sect. But the nasal tone of the old man, and his bold,
grave address, made Lloyd think again that he had seen such men
bringing horses to Baltimore market from Ohio and the West.

The only sign of offensive warfare they possessed was a kind of
spear of steel, like a broad, double-edged knife-blade, with a cross-

MO UNTAINEERS. l $

piece or guard below, and carried upon a wooden pole by one of
the younger persons.

" What have you there, my friend ? " asked Quantrell, walking
over freshly. " It looks like what we called at school ' a gig,' to
spear suckers and pike."

" I calkelate you hit it right the first time," said the possessor,
smiling agreeably.

" We live over beyond the Short Mountain there," explained the
other young man ; " down on the river road to the ferry. Since
we've been here, so few well-dressed strangers have gone past, that
father was a little surprised at you — that's all."

" Then we are all Marylanders," exclaimed Quantrell, "and I'm
glad of that, because I have been lonesome for somebody to drink
with me. Here's a flask of old Needwood whisky, I know I can
recommend ! Age before beauty, pop ! "

He extended the flask to the old man and winked at the boys.

" It's something I never drank, sir, in my life," spoke the firm
old man, shaking his head.

Lloyd then turned to the boys.

" We're not accustomed to it, friend," said the elder of these,
"but don't let us interfere withjww."

Quantrell drank, and liked it so well that he drank twice, and
then, laying down his gun and calling in his dog, he felt familiar
and companionable with all men. He produced cigars and a fuse,
and offered his cigar-case to the party.

"We're unfortunate," said the younger of the sons ; "neither
father nor we boys smoke, or use tobacco."

" Sit down, anyway," said the young man from the city ; " there's
the habit of talk, that is common to all. What is your name ? —
Smith will do ; anything to begin on."

" You're a good guesser. Smith is what it is," spoke the old
man, taking off his wool hat and stretching himself on the rocks
and grass. " Isaac Smith — and yours ? "

"Quantrell, of Baltimore."

" Ah ! " exclaimed Mr. Smith, " that is the name of one of the
slave-dealers there ! "

" Yes," said Lloyd, reddening a little, " that's unfortunately an
uncle of mine. He's managed, by the notoriety of the business, to
have me identified pretty generally. It's a business I shouldn't go
into — because it's not a gentleman's,"

14 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

The young men, as if interested, now stretched themselves on
the mountain-slope, and the older man, changing his look to one
more neighborly, said, in an impressive yet kind voice :

" Hardly a good Christian business, Mr. Quantrell ! A business
has got to be good, I think, sir, to insure any prosperity. If nobody
could be found to *trade in slaves, the evils of slavery would be
small, because they would not be sent to great distances and worked
up on the plantations. It would then not be profitable. Slavery
in Maryland, except in two or three counties, is a trifling mat
ter."

"Yes," said Lloyd, "it's small, except in the tobacco counties,
and they, as you have said, don't seem to prosper. But I hope you
ain't an abolitionist, Mr. Smith ? "

" Unfortunately, I am a slaveholder," said Smith, straightfor
wardly.

" How many negroes have you got ? "

" Six."

"Why, pop," answered Lloyd, familiarly, "you're a man of
property ! What are negroes worth, up this way ? "

" They're higher than they will be, I think," said Mr. Smith, re-
flectivelyo

Quantrell looked at the old man's Judaic nose and wrinkled
bridge thereof, and wad of grizzly hair above his grizzled, updrawn
eyebrows, with the gray-blue eyes wide apart, cool and deep as
frozen springs, and that mouth, which was like a fissure in granite,
and again it seemed to the young man that there was something
wild in Mr. Smith.

"Yet," he reflected, "Smith is a man more substantial every
way than he looks. Six negroes and a farm, and reasoning so ra
tionally against his interests — and with religious views, too ! "

" What are your politics, Smith ? " asked Lloyd. " I'll be frank
with you, and tell you, I'm an American."

" Why, so am I, Mr. Quantrell ! "

" Shake hands on it, old fellow," cried Lloyd, while the sons
laughed aloud to see the city stranger's open temperament pushing
the acquaintance.

" I'm just keyed up on that," repeated Lloyd, clasping Mr.
Smith's hands heartily, "for there are too many Dutch and Irish in
this, our country. Down in Baltimore we have got them on the
run. I'm a cock-robin I "

MO UNTAINEERS. 1 5

" I don't quite understand you, Mr. Quantrell. Is that a kind of
fire company or political club ? "

" You've got it, Smith ! On every suitable occasion we turn out
and have a parade, and go right through the foreign quarter, driv
ing everything we see under cover. Our idea is that Americans
are good enough to rule America ! "

Mr. Smith reflected a minute, and said that good Americans
ought to make the best rulers. "However," he added, " Senator
Broderick, of California, was an Irishman, I believe, and he has just
been murdered, in a duel."

" Well, he's an Irishman's son" replied Lloyd; " he was born
on the Potomac here, in the District of Columbia, and that's almost
as good as Maryland."

" They killed him," figured up Mr. Smith, in his deliberate, nasal
way, "on the i8th of last month. It will be four weeks to-morrow
nighr, Mr. Quantrell."

At this, the plain, independent old man, as Lloyd began to
think him, looked at his two sons, and they raised their eyes to
him.

" Next Sunday night vrill be four weeks," repeated Mr. Smith,
still looking at his boys, " since David Broderick was killed by a
judge, in a duel. The newspapers say his last dying words were,
' They killed me because I was opposed *to the extension of slavery
and a corrupt Administration.' "

There was a look of queer import, Lloyd Quantrell thought, be
tween those plain people ; for, as if forgetful of himself, they contin
ued observing each other with a sense of some strong coincidence.

At this moment Quantrell's dog started and ran a little way down
the mountain and " pointed " at some low saplings with his fine white
and brown nose.

Lloyd took his gun and followed out of sight of his new compan
ions, and finally saw a mourning-dove sitting in a leafless tree. He
raised his piece and aimed, feeling it unworthy work to shoot a turtle
dove, but as he withdrew the gun his dog still " pointed," as if rav
enous after the day's barren sport.

Quantrell waved his hand, intimating to the trained animal to
seek to the right and farther on.

The dog, for a minute, obeyed the order, and then returned, and,
with tail straight out and one leg lifted, " nosed " the solitary dove
again and made a slight, whimpering entreaty.

T6 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

" Well, Albion," thought his master, " I must either disappoint
you or the dove," and he aimed again and shot the bird.

It was so soft-eyed and so harmless, and seemed to look with
such love and suffering at him as it trembled in his hand in the
convulsion of death, the red rill of blood making purpler its brown
plumage — like the blood of Abel sinking in the ground —that Lloyd
felt some self-accusation.

With the dead bird in his hand he walked back toward the place
of conversation, where he was arrested at a cedar-tree by the singu
lar posture of Smith and his sons.

The old man was standing with his hands stretched straight out
and their palms together, his body drawn up and his beard pointing
upward, as his head was thrown back ; while his sons, still seated,
had crawled nearer their father, and had dropped their beards, as if
assisting in prayer.

In the greatest wonder, Lloyd Quantrell looked at this scene, and
for a minute doubted, as is natural with all men in a very practical
land, seeing silent human marvels in lonely places, whether he saw
anything at all ; if the mountain at this point were not enchanted,
and these three serious mountaineers only appearances or illusions.

But he heard articulated sounds proceeding from that old man's
beard, and the word "Amen ! " pronounced with respectful inclina
tions of their heads, by both his tough, grown sons.

A new feeling then suddenly rose upon young Quantrell's imagi
nation ; for the first time he had a sense of parental influence, some
thing he had never known — confidence, consultation, and parental
respect and discipline between a father and sons.

Before him was such a scene : absolute community of thought,
directed by a strong-willed, plain-hearted father, who held his ma
tured sons in the leash of his integrity and morality, till they loved
his magistracy, and were like women to his counsel and authority.

" Such sons exist no more where I have been," thought Lloyd,
" at least not in the life I have seen. There the restraint of sons is
broken by their waywardness and rebellion in early boyhood, even if
their fathers desire to control them, or are worthy to do so."

He thought of his own self-loving father, without moral restraints
himself, or ever a rebuke for his son's indulgences.

At the crackle of his approaching feet the old man, Smith, and
his boys ceased their apparent devotion and turned their heads.

" Mr. Quantrell," spoke the old man, again examining Lloyd

THE LOOK EX. ij

piercingly, " we do a little surveying on the mountains, and that is
why we found you in this unexpected spot. They tell me, sir, who
have lived here longer than I have, that General Washington was
the first surveyor of these parts, and surveyed Harper's Ferry tract
itself. But what have you been killing ? "

He took in his hand the little bird, and looked at Lloyd as he had
at first, with a severe,' almost domineering examination, and tight
jaws.

" I have no respect for any man who will shoot a little dove," he
remarked, in a cold, reproving tone.

His sons also looked rebuke, and one of them said :

" Mr. Ouantrell, that wasn't fair game ! "

" No, I am ashamed of it," spoke Lloyd Ouantrell, frankly. " My
dog pointed so obstinately that I killed the poor thing against my
better will."

" I will forgive you, young man," exclaimed Smith, the elder,
" on condition that, if you ever see a man going to kill another dove,
you will reprove him, sir."

" I will," said Lloyd, blushing, " unless he already feels as mean
as I do."

" Father," interposed the younger Smith, " it was an accident, I
calkelate. He's owned it like a man. Let us show him our favor//*?
view of the valleys."

They looked again over the Catoctin Valley, and also at the
Hagerstown Valley, both softer, paler in the descending sunlight.

It seemed to Lloyd, when he recalled these scenes in later years,
as if that sunset was the last vouchsafed the world of heavenly peace
and blessing.

CHAPTER II.

THE LOOKER.

"FRIEND Smith," exclaimed Lloyd Quantrell, "I was thinking
to myself, just before we met, that if this high country of the Cum
berland Valley, and the apron of it off here to the east, were all my
property, I would make it a great baronial park, and stock it with
nothing but American game collected from every State and Territory
— a sort of Forest of Ardennes."

1 8 KATY OS C A TO C TIN.

Quantrell, who was a good singer, and of an unrestrained, hearty
temperament, here recollected a bit of song, and without any cere
mony raised his voice and sang, to the delight of Smith's boys :

" ' Under the greenwood tree,

Who loves to lie with me,

And tune his merry note

Unto the sweet bird's throat, •

Come hither, come hither, come hither :

Here shall he see

No enemy,
But winter and rough weather.'

" Ha, ha, ha ! " cried Lloyd, when he had ended, his melodious
voice humanizing the place, and seeming to touch the younger son,
whom the old man had addressed as Oliver, almost to tears, " that's
a song a friend of mine, a great young actor, sings like a real hunter.
Now, if you and 1 and the boys here had control of this, we'd live
like banished dukes. Is that your sentiment, Oliver? "

The young man with the sallow face and modest, sunken eyes,
and careless hair and beard, put his brown hand to his throat,
where there was a rising swelling, and said : " I think it is beautiful
as it is. One log-house and— and my wife, would be enough for
me."

The old man, with a firm voice, interposed, glancing seriously at
the son's evident susceptibility to the song and the question.

" This is pretty scenery, gentlemen, and rich country," he said,
in a high, shrill tone, " and it delights the eye ; but it fails to appeal
to the mind, for the reason that history has not yet embellished it.
Its great uses have not yet been perceived, I think. To grow gram
and make butter and cheese, are agreeable to man ; but even so
fine a region as this can not compete with the great West in those
respects — with Illinois, Iowa, and the Territory of Kansas. The
political importance of the Alleghany Mountains far exceeds their
agricultural importance. If I had been General Washington, and
had his influence to locate the capital of the United States, I would
have placed it behind the South Mountain, instead of in the clay
gullies of the tide-water country."

" O friend Smith," cried Lloyd Quantrell, " there are too many
Dutch up this way. They don't know anything in the Dutch coun
try but saving and slaving, and that would never do."

THE LOOKER. JQ

" But hear father out, sir," exclaimed the elder son. " He's been
a great reader and traveler. Father's been to Europe ! "

It was not common in 1859 to have " been to Europe," and even
the young Baltimorean looked at Smith with new interest.

The old man pointed over the valley with long fingers, his
shoulders stooping a little, and his retreating forehead, hollow in
the center, assisting the hawkness of his nose.

Lines of thought and an abstracted countenance marked his
face while moving up and down and consulting the ground, but
when he faced Lloyd Quantrell and his own sons, and gave them the
full benefit of his steady and penetrating eyes, they felt that the
narrow-shouldered, wiry old fellow must be a tall man.

He now took his beard in one hand, and with the other pointing
over the autumnal-tinted plain and detached mountains, gazed out
like some Hebrew seer.

" You want your political capital, gentlemen, where it has natu
ral defenses against a military enemy, such as mountains interpose,
and has population and agriculture enough to feed and defend
it, and is also in a position to exert all its political influence
with what I will call geographical directness on the country. The
city of Washington can do nothing of that kind. It was easily
taken and destroyed by a small army in the year 1814. Before it
was established the people in its vicinity were getting their food
from these German upland valleys. It has now no political influ
ence at all, except a pernicious one, on the American people, having
been governed for sixty years by the local ideas of two places —
Richmond in Virginia and Baltimore in Maryland. Those cities
were bound to influence it in the line of their very backward, or, as
some say, conservative tendencies, because they received no other
elements of population that lived around them in the old tide-water
parts — people who continued to raise tobacco, catch herring, sell
negroes, and marry their cousins. On the other hand, the country
above the South Mountain ridge could subsist a very large popula
tion, and feed a large army, during repeated years of war. This
mountain, with its natural ramparts, could be easily held by a few
troops at the passes. The great valley behind it is the line of emi
gration and of easy communication from the St. Lawrence to the
Mississippi, and, gentlemen, the inevitable line of war ! "

Without paying attention to anybody, Smith reached out his
hand and took the spear instrument from his son, and, gesturing

2O KATy OF CATOCl^IN.

with it against the blue air, looked to Quantrell to be a colossal and
seedy school-master, illustrating a lecture on an enormous black
board.

" It will cost more fighting men than can be levied from all that
tide-water country," he continued, "merely to protect the govern
ment and the public property located at the city of Washington. If
the capital had been placed here, in the Cumberland Valley, it
would have been able to launch armies against the enemy and pro
tect itself from a perpetually flanking second army, moving up the
valley and getting to the north of Washington. Here will the
enemy invade once and again, and have the start in the race, and be
deep in the resources and positions of your country before you can
come up with him and make him turn and fight. I would remove
the public effects from Washington. I would hold Baltimore to
her allegiance by Fortress Monroe. I would take the valley of the
Cumberland Mountains from them at the beginning, leaving them
to scratch clay and eat fodder on the emaciated plains, and I would
fight them from the west ! "

" Crazy as a bedbug," thought Lloyd Quantrell, a little awed,
"and on the subject of the Revolutionary Wrar."

Sticking the fish-spear in the sward and apostrophizing it, Mr.
Smith, now apparently aroused and in the depth of his subject, con
tinued in the same plain, brief style of address :

" This is why God has established the Alleghany Mountains —
for the refuge of his people ! The geologist tells us that the first
mountains in the world to be made were the Adirondacks. My
schooling was all before these days of science, and I don't just
quite get the idea. But if it be so, that the first land to rise above
the sea and give the raven foothold after the deluge was there,
where our household affections look to-day " (he glanced at his sons),
" even upon that Ararat, I was always thinking of my boyhood,
when I was a tanner on these Alleghanies.

"Yes," resumed Isaac Smith, after a pause, " in the year 1826 I
was tanning leather near the spot where General Washington — at
your ages now, and my age when I lived there — went on his long
winter journey to stop the French at old Fort Le Bceuf. I used to
look at the creek that supplied my vats, and wish I could follow it
down to the Venango and the Alleghany, and ascend Washington's
path by the Monongahela to the mountains and cross them to the
Potomac. I married there, and the desire of money arrested my

THE LOOKER. 21

dreams ; but every energy I put out in that direction failed. At
times great fortunes seemed within my grasp, but slipped from me.
In Europe, where I went for business, I found my mind led to bat
tle-fields and the study of war. I tried to drive the idea away, and
regain my credit in the business of all my maturer life — grading and
selling wool ; for I could tell the difference in similar wools raised
in different of our States if they were put in my hand in the dark !
But the confused verses of Scripture would rise in my mind when
ever I heard the military trumpets sound abroad : ' He seeketh wool
and worketh willingly, but all his household are clothed in scar
let!1"

"And now, old man," exclaimed the irreverent Quantrell, "you
think you are at last back in a good country ! "

"Yes, Mr. Quantrell," said Isaac Smith, soberly, "I am in the
country of my destiny. I love this country, and hope it may be
loved for me and my children."

" You have made one mourner in advance, pop," answered Lloyd.
" I think you only need to have been born in a military age to have
reached the consideration of Sam Houston or General Jackson. But,
unfortunately, you could no more get these Dutch, up this way, to
fight than teach them style."

" We never can tell, gentlemen," said Smith, " when war is, as
you may say, at our elbow. I have been a great reader of the his
tory of wars, particularly in the Old Testament. Most of the wars
there recorded, were made by Moses, acting out the will of God. He
led the Hebrews out of their bondage in Egypt and toward a land
of promise. The people in that land, we may understand, had done
no harm to Moses or his people. They existed as peaceably as the
people of Virginia and Maryland, that we see from this elevation —
working for the dollar and expecting no enemy whatever. But
Moses, who was keeping his flocks on the back side of the desert,
as we read, 'went out on the mountain of God, even to Horeb,' say
the Scriptures. Something took him there not in the way of inter
est, perhaps not his desire. But there he heard his name called
aloud from a burning bush, or heap of brush — ' Moses, Moses ! '
And he said, ' Here am I ! ' "

Lloyd Quantrell was again convinced that the Smith family were
crazy.

As he recited this old bit of Scripture, with a slow, shrill, nasal
cry, Isaac Smith folded his arms, closed his eyes, and dropped his

22 KATY OF CA70CTIN.

head upon his beard and breast, standing there a moment speech
less, and his sons, also taking his attitude, looked to the ground as if
all three were again to pray together.

" ' Here am I, Lord, on thy mountain ! ' " repeated Isaac Smith
with rising inflection, unfolding his arms and stretching them wide.
His strong jaws closed a moment, as he slowly turned his head,
and with a steady eye, looking into Lloyd's, finished the sentence :
" These were the words of Moses."

Some picture of Moses that Lloyd had seen, probably in the old
Bible of his mother's family, was revived by the appearance of Isaac
Smith at this moment. His nose would have been quite the Jew's,
but that it came to an end too bluntly. His eyes, at spells, turned
inward, like a lost thinker's, and his manner varied from the hard,
practical American to the introspective, tranceful Oriental.

" The poor man is crazy on religious subjects," thought Lloyd
Quantrell, " but how in the deuce did he get the military lunacy
there too ? Why, out of Moses, of course !

" So, General Smith," interrupted the young hunter, pleasantly,
." that was the way Moses got his military commission ? He was
made a general in the bush ? "

" I was about to say, Mr. Quantrell, the general peace prevailing
among many nations was broken — among the Canaanites, the Hit-
tites, the Jebusites, the Philistines, and many others — who looked
upon Moses, probably, as a sore disturber. They had not heard
the voice he heard, nor seen the cause of war that lay among them.
But in the deep prosperity of society often lies the live coal of war,
as I have seen, at corn-harvest time, the fires break out in the woods
and standing crops. One man might fail in this age — even one as
obedient as Moses — to set in conflict the powers that now lie so
tightly bound in cunning compromises that they can not draw back
to strike each other. But the Power which sent the mysterious
voice can bring the armies up, though the chosen captain look in
vain to know how or where ! He may excite only derision instead
of war. He may be punished in a lunatic asylum. He may have
the misery of utterly failing and involving others in destruction, but
Moses thought all these things over, and they did not move him."

Lloyd Quantrell arose and whistled to his dog.

" General Smith," he said, " myself and your two sons have been
greatly edified. To meet a man of your travel and intelligence on
the top of the mountain is a refreshing surprise, sir. But the sun is

SOME OLD DUTCH. 23

getting low, and I have no shelter for the night. I would accept the
hospitality of your house, if I knew just where it was."

" We are not going home, Mr. Quantrell," spoke one of the young
men, " and there is nobody at our little cabin to entertain you. WTe
are sorry, sir. You will do best to go down into the Catoctin Val
ley, here, where the settlements are close together. It is not very
far to Middletown, where there is a tavern."

"Yes," said Isaac Smith, "we are out, Mr. Quantrell, on a night
excursion, to hunt minerals in the mountain. I use the divining-rod,
sir, with much success. We expect to find lead in these hills, or
iron, at least."

" Ah, General Smith, you have got a universal head there ! So
all-night luck, to you, and good-by. — Come, Albion."

The dog started ahead at the cry.

" God bless you, sir ! " said Isaac Smith, taking Lloyd's hand in a
large, fatherly palm. " Remember the queer old man's sermon on
the mountain, and — never kill a dove again."

As the young man waved his hand and went on, he looked back
once, and saw all three of the mountaineers watching him till he dis
appeared in the woods.

CHAPTER III.

SOME OLD DUTCH.

LLOYD QUANTRELL had still more than an hour of daylight ;
not enough to find his way back to Sandy Hook, where he had
slept at the tavern, but abundant time to walk down the mountain
into Catoctin or Middle Creek Valley.

He took the side-roads leading from the mountain pasture-lands,
"hen crossed the steep fields, now stripped of their crops, and, find
ing plenty of chestnuts to fill his pockets, gnawed as he went along,
and had a shot or two at some late-feeding partridges ; and finally
he jumped on a farmer's wagon, the farmer nodding assent pleas
antly as he urged his horses, till, at a farm-gate near the creek, the
wagon turned in.

Lloyd then jumped off and found himself at a covered bridge
from which he could not see the white spires of Middletown. So
he turned up a road at the creek's side, which looked cool and

24 KATY OF CAJ'OCTIN.

idling, and at a spring in the sandstone took a drink. Here his dog
also drank, and then barked as if hungry.

Continuing half an hour on farther, a turn in the road brought
to view a comfortable farm settlement on a slope of the sluggish,
verdant-rimmed Catoctin, which, on alternate sides, as it wound
through the deep-cloven fields, slid beneath the exposed layers of
stone. Upon that side, opposite such an exposure, where the bank
rounded down to a level lawn, in which a stone spring-house shaded
a cool spring at the roots of a great, skyey sycamore, stood, above
the spring-house, at the top of a path, one of the large log-houses,
whitewashed, which make at once the cheapest and most whole
some residences in this part of Maryland.

There had originally been a square, stern stone house in place of
this, and it still remained against the southern gable of the log por
tion like an ice-house, always cool and perhaps dampish, its small,
deep-walled windows taking an expression upon them like one of
the hard Scotch-Irish race, who probably built it in the days when
they needed such protection for their cruelties to Indians and each
other.

But the peaceful German, in time crossing the Pennsylvania line,
perhaps unconscious of a boundary, had bought his precursor out,
sowed clover, reduced the stone to soil, and, as his family wants en
larged, became his own carpenter, calling his sons and neighbors
together, and hewing in his own woods in winter, while farm-work
languished, the native forest trunks to compose his addition. These,
split in half and the faces smoothed, were called puncheons, and
they were dragged to the side of the old stone block-house, and
theie fitted and framed together, and their chinks filled with plaster,
while the family lived undisturbed in the stone castle.

This new and roomy dwelling, made of oak or chestnut, was set
with its side to the road, propped on brick or stone foundations, and
its roof, doors, and shutters were painted blue like winter cabbages.

These ideas went through Quantrell's brain as he caught sight
of the long, homely farmer's dwelling standing on the hill, shaded
there by maples and large willows, and to the north were a garden
and small peach-orchard, and beyond that was a huge barn of logs,
with a bridge leading to its main story, and cattle in the cow-yard
and beneath its stone basement.

At sight of these cattle and of the dairy-house beneath the syca
more-tree, Lloyd exclaimed to his dog :

SOME OLD DUTCH. 2$

" Albion, here ! Milk, by George ! "

Thus stimulated or encouraged, Albion darted in the open gate
of the house-yard, and trotted briskly up the path to the dwelling.
He was almost there, when a growl arrested him.

A dog of about the same size, of cross-breeds, but with mastiff
in him, appeared on the top of the hill, directing his attention to
both dog and gunner.

For an instant Albion appeared to be meditating an attack, and
raised his hair and showed his row of white molars. But, without
any ceremony, the country dog, seeing this, came down the hill
with a steady trot, increasing it to a run, and then at a bound ran
under the pointer, upset him, and rolled down hill, and then started
back for a second wrestle and fight.

The pointer now lost all show of self-possession, and crouched
down and looked rapidly for escape ; but before he could conclude
which way to fly, the ugly animal was upon him, and only Albion's
agility, as he jumped high in the air, aided by his opponent's clum
siness, saved his fine ears from being torn. He turned and fled down
the path to the spring-house, and, darting in there, upset a pan
of warm milk as it was just being placed in the stone spring trough
beside others by_a little lady.

" IVass hut'm g'fatld? Here, Fritz ! " cried the milk fairy to her
dog, and in an instant he plunged in at the door and turned over into
the cold-water trough, upsetting two other pans of milk, and Albion
crouched at the mistress's feet, trembling and whining for protec
tion.

Lloyd Ouantrell, who had hurried after his dog, peeped into the
spring-house door in time to see a beautiful, dark-eyed girl, with her
arms bare and a finely modeled foot, extricating her gown from the
pointer's hysterical paws. As she saw Lloyd standing there with a
gun, he heard her murmur:

" Waer is ar, anyhow ? Down, Fritz ! "

She menaced her own dog with a large wooden butter-ladle, and,
as he came out of the dairy, Lloyd spoke firmly and candidly to
him :

" Fritz, my brave fellow ! Did we spill his darling mistress's
milk ? Well, Fritz, we must pay her father for it."

Admiration was instant and mutual in the young man and the
girl. Her astonishment relaxed to the likeness of his ardent smile,
and he said, without dropping his eyes :

26 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

" I thought it would be just my luck to stop where the prettiest
girl in Frederick County lived ! "

" You're sure you've found te right place, then ? " spoke the girl,
naturally, but blushing much.

" Won't you let me stop here and prove it ? " said Lloyd.
" What's your name ? Mine's Lloyd."

"I'm Katy," said the girl, "Jake Hosier's Katy. I'm goin' on
seventeen."

At this point the dog Albion, as if smarting under his recent
discomfiture, grasped the situation : he saw Fritz being petted by
his master, a thing to provoke his jealousy, and Fritz's mistress
ready to apply the big wooden spoon to Fritz in case he violated
any law of hospitality. Thought Albion, " It's a safe chance for
intervention ! "

So, with cool but, as it soon appeared, mistaken policy, Albion
made a dart, after reconnaissance, upon Fritz's extended hinder leg,
and, seizing it with his teeth, made an effort to hamstring his enter
tainer.

The rough country dog, suspecting no assault, was maddened
by the pain, and springing backward and turning in the air he locked
his teeth in the first flesh he came to, which happened to be Albion's
ear, and both dogs rolled into the spring-house fighting, the one
from courage and the other for life. Little Katy could not beat them
apart, and Lloyd Quantrell rushed in to seize them, and, losing his
footing in the dark interior of the dairy, fell full length into the
water, and came out wet to the skin.

The noise of fighting and howling dogs brought down the in
mates of the log and stone house : a large, barefooted man with a
great black, wide-brimmed hat, and homespun clothes all of the same
gray color ; and a younger man in a copy of the same dress ; and a
fine-looking blonde girl in brown homespun with flowers in her hat.

" Flint ? " exclaimed the farmer, looking at the gun ; then look
ing at Lloyd, he added, " Ymgltng /" and cried out :

"Katy, wo fail's now?"

"Nothing's te matter, father," Katy replied, "but te dogs
fought and te young man's wet his clothes."

As Lloyd came out, holding his fine dog up by main strength,
they saw that one of the pointer's beautiful ears was gone. The
humiliated beast, still in apprehension, ran to the feet of every person,
cringing and whining with pain.

SOME OLD DUTCH. 2J

Lloyd Quantrell took a stick from the ground and whipped his
dog till it seemed to lose all voice and spirit.

" There," finished the gunner, coolly, " he'll have just ear enough
after this for good, big, right game, and no more doves ! "

None interrupted the flogging but little Katy, who kept saying :

" Ganoonk ! Enough ! He won't do so any more."

" No," remarked Lloyd, "not if it can be flogged out of him.—
Farmer Rosier " — he addressed the man, with ready memory and
frankness — " I've been gunning, and one of your talkative neighbors
has kept me out late. Can't you give me a bed and a dry suit or a
blanket, for love or money?"

" Yaw. Coom along ! " the farmer said, asking no more ques
tions, and the farmer's son took Lloyd's gun, saying :

" Take supper with us. It's a' ready."

Lloyd looked at the two girls, Katy with rich, dark eyes and
dark hair, and small, supple figure, and the other girl, a full blonde,
tall, large for her young age, and looking at Lloyd with bold, instant
coquetry, as if she would not be anticipated in his conquest.

" Ha ! " thought Lloyd, " it's well to have a choice, but I think
that little Katy of Catoctin will do for me."

Katy, so happy and so startled that she did not know what she
felt, replied to her female friend's suggestion, in the mountain Dutch
Patois, that Lloyd was "orrick sktuls," or "very proud-looking,"
by saying :

" Sell isn mistake ; ar is orrick friendlich"

Lloyd grasped the meaning, and knew himself described as " very
sociable."

The barefooted farmer walked up the steep grassy lawn to the
establishment, which had three doors in its long front, one near each
end of the log portion, and another in the older stone gable.

" Luter," he said to his son, " he sleeps py you."

Without any more words, farmer Jake Rosier seized a rope which
communicated with a large bell on the top of the log-house, and
rang it loud and clear for the farm-hands to come in, saying :

" Soon-down ! Ri'm-by ! "

As the clear bell sounded in the cool amber mountain evening
out of the perfect rest of this soft valley, it seemed that Sunday en
tered in and the lately savage dogs began to agree. Fritz licked the
place where Albion's lost ear had been, and Albion, defeated every
where, permitted the attention like one always in the right, yet some-

28 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

times put down. Lloyd Quantrell received the warm, admiring look
of Katy's friend, but gave it back to little Katy.

" You sleeps py me," Luther Bosler said, leading the way up-stairs
by the door in the stone-gabled front.

They entered a bare room of good size with a fireplace in the
end, and there Katy's brother had hardly put some wood on two
stones, when her father brought up a shovel of coals and set the
wood on fire.

"Here," said Luther Bosler, "git into tese clothes, Mister
Yager."

" No mister about me, Luther," answered the sociable Balti-
morean, tenacious of a name ; " my name's Lloyd Quantrell. You
and Jake call me Lloyd ! "

He looked audaciously at farmer Bosler, who, far from resenting
the "Jake," now laughed.

"All right, Lloyd!" cried Jake. "Ha! ha! Luter, he's joost
as plain as us ole Tunkers, ain't he ? — Well, Lloyd, coom to supper.
Bi'm-by ! "

As father and son went down the stairs, Lloyd, slipping on the
suit of coarse, clod-smelling clothes, and an old flannel shirt, lay on
the bed, where he could find no cover but another feather-bed,
and shut his eyes in the pleasurable tingle after a cold bath and by
a now crackling fire. Night seemed to come and sit in the deep
stone windows to warm at the fire, now brighter than the day.

" A Dutchman's guest ! " he said to himself. " Well, well ! The
last Dutchman I met I stuck in the thigh with a shoemaker's awl
for getting too near the polls. Can I ever respect a Dutchman ?
—even the father of little Katy of Catoctin ? "

CHAPTER IV.

KATY "P'INTED.'

WHEN he came down to supper, several plain, uncultivated-look
ing men were already at the table, where Lloyd was accommodated
with a place between Katy and her friend, who was introduced by
Katy, saying :

" Tis is Nelly Harbaugh ; she's a Swisser."

KATV "P' IN TED."

" You're a Deitsher," replied Nelly Harbaugh to Katy.

" What's the difference, girls, between a Swisser and a Deitsher? "
asked Lloyd of the two ladies alternately, looking his fondest. — " Jake,
you tell me."

" Nay," said Jake, replying in kind. " Ich waz'ss net, Lloyd.
Ask Andrew Atzerodt ; he's quick."

" Te Swisser," spoke up one of the apparent serving-men — that
only one whose face, as Lloyd now remarked it, seemed to have a
little worldly restlessness — " te Swisser offers hisself for to pe
bought. Te Deitsher gits sold and says nix. Dat's so, py Jing ! "

He raised his voice at the end in a way to exasperate Lloyd,
looking at Lloyd, too, as if to say, " I am always positive."

" Nelly," insinuated Lloyd, " when you re in the market, let me
know, sweetness! — Katy, don't you get sold without giving me the
first chance ! "

" Ha, ha ! Lloyd," Jake Bosler broke out, " you is a great feller
for te girls."

" Do you mean it ? " Nelly Harbaugh asked Lloyd, giving him
the whole sunflower of her attention.

" I reckon so," Lloyd answered, but looking at little Katy.

" Py Jing ! " exclaimed Atzerodt, across the table, fiercely at
Lloyd, " Nelly, tare, is my gal, I haf you know ! "

He looked to Lloyd now to have been drinking, or to be natu
rally a little drunk.

" There's nothing like being impressive, Andrew," replied Lloyd,
looking straight at him, and mentally wishing he had him down the
road. " Are you a Swisser or a Deitsher ? "

" Me? Py Jing, I'm a Swisser. I lif in te Valley of Fergeenia,
where tey fights at te drop of te hat ! "

" You better go down there and fight, then," Nelly Harbaugh
said to Andrew. — " Luther Bosler, tell Lloyd about the mountain
Dutch ! "

" Te German-blood people," spoke up Luther Bosler, after hesi
tation, and in a still and somewhat dignified way, " come to Penn-
sylvany first. Amongst te first was us Tunkers. We been here
hundred and forty year."

" You too, Katy ? " interjected Lloyd. " A hundred and forty
years here, and never sent for me ? "

Everybody laughed loud, Andrew Atzerodt more boisterously
than all, and Katy answered meekly at last :

3O KATY OF CAlOflSN.

" I'm going on seventeen."

Stopping till he was requested to continue, Luther Bosler, whose
dark eyes were like Katy's, but his hair was coarser and of a deeper
brown, said on :

" Yes, Lloyd, us Dutch is a hundred and fifty year in te United
States. First off, te Germans come to New York, and didn't like
that much, so most of tern moved to Pennsylvany. Te Tunker
Dutch was Baptists, and they spread all over Pennsylvany and Ma
ryland and down Virginia way. After they got te valleys, te
Swiss come and took te hills dat wasn't good for much. So now
we're all mixed up. Katy's got worldly ; Nelly, she's no Tunker.
Andrew, he's nothin' but a Dutch coach-maker."

"I'm te pest coach-maker in Fergeenia, don't you forgit it!"
Andrew said, with rising inflection and want of equipoise.

"No, Andrew," put in Lloyd, "when Katy and I want our
royal coach, we'll have you make it. — But, Luther, what do these
Dunkers vote ? "

" They don't vote in general," said Luther. " It's not religious.
I voted three year ago."

" I hope you voted for Mr. Fillmore, Luther ? "

"No, I didn't," said Luther.

" Oh ! of course, you Dutch folks had to vote for old Buchanan.
You couldn't go one of us Americans."

"Because I was an American, I thought," quietly remarked
Luther, " I voted for Colonel Fremont. He got just two hundred
and eighty-one out of 'most eighty-seven thousand votes in Mary
land. So you can see my vote sticking up at te end, all by itself."

" Luter 'most got turned out of meetin' forvotin '/'exclaimed his
father. " But dey took him back."

" Dat Fremont was a tarn French abolitionist ! " exclaimed the
excitable Atzerodt. " I kill him, py Jing ! "

"Go for him, Andrew," said Lloyd, grimly. "He's afraid of
you, I know. But, pop " — to Jake Bosler — "can't you take me to
meeting with you to-morrow? "

" O father, do ! " spoke up Katy, impulsively, " it's /0z^-feast ! "

" We'll all go ! " Nelly Harbaugh cried ; " Luther must take
me."

" Oh, you'll laugh at us poor Tunkers, Lloyd," Jake Bosler said.

" Nelly, you goes with me ! " Andrew Atzerodt spluttered, hot-
ly. " Didn't I come all te way from Port Tobacco to see you ? "

KATY "P' IN TED." 31

" I have got better company," said the girl, negligently.

V Py Jing ! " raged Atzerodt, " I kill somebody ! "

" Don't kill me," exclaimed Lloyd, with humor. " I'll run under
the table if you look at me so."

Superior in worldly confidence and speech, and with unchecked
humor and feelings, the city guest surpassed himself that evening
as the candles were lighted and the wood-fire flamed, and the pre
suming Atzerodt also felt his influence as Lloyd jested light and
complimentary.

Luther Bosler was a good listener, and whenever Lloyd looked
his way, Luther, with a certain sluggish softness in his dark-lighted
eyes, seemed watching him, but not with any dislike ; for, once
when Lloyd cried —

" Luther, I see you're a long-headed old sly-boots "-

" Oh ! " said Luther, " my head, Lloyd, can't keep in my poots
vf\itnyoure a-talkin' ! "

When they had partaken of the stewed chicken and smear case
and cream, and what Jake called the " wedgable things " for vege
tables, little Katy brought in pies for supper. Lloyd smiled to him
self, thinking : " What heathens ! pie for supper ! "

" What kind of sweet things, Kate," he cried, "are you trying
to sour us on with yourself? "

" Oh," said Katy, beaming joy, " here's peach snitz and elder, and
some kickelins. I cooked tern."

Lloyd found the " kickelins " were sweet cakes fried in fat, and
the "snitz" were dried peaches, and the queer pie was made of
elder-berries. Said Katy, in their Dutch tongue, to Nelly :

" How I like to see him eat ! He does it so easy."

" I should like to see him in love, Katy."

" Hush ! " said Katy, trembling.

" Bedtime," Jake Bosler nodded, setting back his chair and
glancing at the clock. " Bi'm-by ! "

"Jake, your clock is fast," Lloyd observed, consulting his own
gold watch, at which all the company looked, marveling.

"We keep it fast, Lloyd," Luther Bosler said ; "it's te fashion
up here, so we can go to work earlier."

"My goodness!" Katy cried, " te apples is cut and you men
must snitz."

Two wash-tubs were brought into the whitewashed room, and
sitting around them on wooden chairs all the men commenced to

32 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

peel apples for drying, while Katy and Nelly produced two spinning-
wheels and made them fly and hum on woolen yarn.

" We make all our own yarn," said Katy to Lloyd, "and send it
to te weaver. He makes it into Dunker cloth."

Lloyd peeled apples awhile, till Nelly Harbaugh called him to
unravel something at the wheel, and then he watched the two fine
girls working on Saturday night, with a sense of reproof in his mind
for so much avarice of time.

Nothing was here, he thought, but the physical beauty of these
women to ornament life ; no pictures on the wall but lithographs
from Scripture, no books but the " Hagerstown Almanac " and
Bausmann's travels in the Holy Land, and a Dutch Bible ; no orna
ments but some horns of deer and a robe of yellow panther-skins
sewn together, with the eye-holes embroidered around the red lin
ing. The very peace seemed, to the strong-willed American, heavy
with unspiritual content ; but it had brought to these young girls
the perfection of everything but mind.

The face he understood the best, and which seemed also to un
derstand him, was Nelly Harbaugh's ; too open to his gaze, unre-
treating before him, ready to be admired whenever he turned toward
it, and seeming to say, " You can make no mistake — I am ready to
hear you."

Had Katy not been there to drop her eyes before his warm ad
miration, he might have paid closer regard to Nelly Harbaugh's
sunny charms.

She was larger, fuller, taller than Katy, with a carriage erect yet
indolent, as if Nature had given her such animal health that she
could not droop, but like some strong - stemmed golden flower
blinked not at the hottest sun, but took its color in every petal.
Over Katy her influence might be strong, Lloyd thought, and he said :

" Nelly, I know I have seen your fine blue eyes in Baltimore."

" No, I have never been there," Nelly said, " except to market,
and Luther made us come back as soon as we sold out."

She looked coquettish reproach, with the same searching direct
ness, at Luther as he came over and, putting his hand upon her
shoulder, looked at her with mild interest.

"Nelly," said Luther, "will you pe my girl if I drive you to Bea
ver Creek meeting ? "

" I am always yours, Luther," answered Nelly, examining him
with even more wistfulness than Lloyd. " But you don't want me."

KATY "P'SNT££>." 33

" I do," said Luther, " but I want you all. I think you can not
gif me all your heart. It is difided."

" It is not," said Nelly, " but you will not ask for it."

Lloyd Quant rell was arrested at both the deepened interest in
Nelly's eyes and the finely contrasted animal perfection of her
and of her admirer. Luther was dark and deep-voiced, and with a
manly something in him, however rude. In her tall, well-rounded
figure and long waist, which a bodice might adorn, and finely
grained flesh and long braids of corn-colored hair, there seemed to
be strength, fruitfulness, and power over man ; yet in her undis
guised ardor and will it seemed that she needed Luther's reality and
slower though not stronger impulses of character. He looked at
her with mild, almost devout, eyes, as if he kept love back by rea
son.

" Kiss her," said Katy. " I know you want to, Luther."

Luther passed his arm around Nelly, but did not kiss her.

With disappointment, yet pride, the girl turned on Lloyd Quan-
trell again the same penetrating and steady look.

Thought Lloyd, returning the gaze in kind, " That girl a man
might dress to look like a queen, but even then she could take a
lesson in nature from little Katy."

Katy had such large eyes, the pupils big and the eyeballs big
too, that they turned in her head like poems, Lloyd thought, harmo
niously rhyming in expression and so full of tender feeling that he
said once, " Katy, I can almost see the water drip from those two
buckets of your eyes as they rise on me from the well of your fresh
heart."

" Why," said Katy, " you're a poet, Lloyd. I can make rhymes
too."

" Singsht? " Lloyd asked, having picked up a word.

" Yaw, Lloyd, and I play te accordion."

Modestly Katy went for the instrument, and bringing it back
began to draw forth its sounds, opening her lips to breathe inward
the harmony, and Lloyd saw that her teeth were full and white.

Sitting there a mere child, her long braid of chestnut hair hang
ing to her chair, her long, expressive fingers at the keys, and shy
ness and fervor playing in her countenance like trout in springs,
she suddenly raised a little German idyll, and her brother joined in
it with his untrained bass, and all the farm-hands turned their faces
up to hear :
3

KATY OF CATUCTIN.

" Oh was is shenner uf der welt

Os blimlin roat un weis ?
Un bio, un gail, im arble feld —

Wass sin de doch so neis !
Ich wais noch goot in seller tzeit

Hob ich nix leevers du,
Os in de wissa, long un breit

So blimlin g'soocht we du." *

Lloyd knew that it was a song about hunting bright flowers in the
fields, and almost understood the timid peep of Katy's eyes upon
him, when she sang :

" I know yet well that in that time

Naught would I rather do,
Than in the meadow long and wide
Such flow'rets seek as you."

Jake Bosler, who had been nodding, awoke to hear the tune, and
when it was done he wiped his eyes of some tears.

•' Ich cons net helfa — I can't help it," he said : " I tink of my
olty—"

" My mother who is dead," Katy explained, as Jake faltered ;
"she's been dead two years."

" Bettime — bi'm-by ! " Jake Bosler managed to say at last, and
Katy moved to the table and opened the old Dutch Bible. When
she had read, in the sweetest tones, words intelligible to Lloyd only
by their holiness, all present knelt and Jake Bosler prayed for his
brood, for pure hearts and thoughts, and for the stranger within
his gates. His daughter and son went up to kiss him.

" Goot-night, Lloyd," he said. " Soon-up, bi'm-by."

" Thinking of work even as he falls to sleep ! " Lloyd exclaimed.
" Now give old daddy a parting tune ! "

He started up the little song by Samuel Woodworth :

" The pride of the valley is lovely young Ellen,

Who dwells in a cottage enshrined by a thicket,
Sweet peace and content are the wealth of her dwelling,
And Truth is the porter that waits at the wicket."

Katy caught the air and kept the accompaniment with her ac
cordion, and Lloyd changed " Ellen " into " Katy," and sang it to

* By Tobias Witmer : " My Old Woman's Birthday."

KATY "P*INSED"

her with all his spirit, being in fine voice, and all the Dutch people
listened with delight.

" Ah, Katy ! " said Jake, going up-stairs, " I guess you got a beau,
Katy."

The serving-men took their departure too, and only Andrew
Atzerodt remained.

" Luter," he said, "git me some of Jake's whisky. I hat a head
on me yisterday."

" Here's some whisky we make ourselves, Lloyd," Luther said,
producing it. " Te Tunkers keeps little still-houses and makes a
few bar'ls a year."

The pure liquor soon brought a pleasurable glow to the men,
Luther drinking sparingly, and for a while the influence was pecul
iar on Atzerodt, bringing out a vein of natural humor in him.
Lloyd read him soon to be a man of such volatile nature that his
forwardness was always getting him into predicaments. He chal
lenged everybody, and probably had a brutal Hessian instinct, as
Lloyd expressed it, but possessed no fortitude to carry it out. See
ing that Luther was now increasing his interest in Nelly Harbaugh,
Andrew cried out :

'• Now, py Jing ! you haf been holting my gal's hand tare long
enough ! "

"Sit down!" commanded Nelly Harbaugh, "or I'll send you
home to walk to Middletown in the dark."

" I'll go, den," Atzerodt cried, making a movement toward his
hat.

" Behave, you fool ! " cried Nelly, making Luther release her
hand, however.

" She's got two fellows on the string," thought Lloyd Quantrell,
" and is fishing for me too. — Ah ! Andrew," Lloyd spoke out, "you
are a courageous man. A desperate man, I call you. I have no
doubt that you could take your hat and walk alone among these
mountains all night, and not run from the ghost I saw to-day."

"Geisht!" exclaimed Andrew, looking behind him and turn
ing pale, " I walk past a shpook and shust laugh at him — ha !
ha!"

" Give me your hand, my brave fellow," cried Lloyd, standing
up. "And ypu have got a strong grip too, Andrew."

" If I shqueeze you hard, py Jing," said the heedless mechanic,
"you goes crazy."

36 KArFY OF CATOCTIN.

"Don't squeeze me, Andrew," exclaimed Lloyd, with a wink to
the rest. " Now you are doing of it. Ouch ! Let me go ! "

As he spoke, Lloyd, who was a powerful man, trained in athletic
games, closed his great palm around the coachmaker's, and slowly
tightened it. The poor fellow writhed and groveled in pain, but
feared to cry out, since his oppressor kept saying :

" What nerve ! what endurance !' Don't squeeze me so ! Oh,
take him off ! Have mercy, Andrew ! "

Thus shouting, the tears came to Lloyd's eyes to see the poor
braggart suffer, and all laughed but Katy, who cried :

" You're hurting one another, I know."

" Ah ! " said Lloyd, looking at his own hand as if in misery,
" never will I go into the lion's den again."

" Py Jing ! " exclaimed the other, as soon as he could get breath
and suppress his sobs, " you got a purty goot grip, too. But I'm a
workin'-man. Better not tackle me, Lloyd ! "

" Poor thing," said Katy, taking Lloyd's hand timidly, and look
ing at it. He raised her little fingers up as if to show her his wound,
and kissed them.

" Don't," said Katy ; " I been huskin' corn all day in te field."

" Do they work the women out in the fields? " asked Lloyd.

" Oh, yes," Katy answered simply, while Nelly Harbaugh made an
effort to restrain her, which Katy did not understand ; " father gives
Nelly half a dollar a day for huskin' and plantin' corn. She must
be rich."

" What ghost did you see on the mountain, Lloyd ? " Nelly Har
baugh asked, evasively.

All seemed interested to hear this, and Lloyd, standing up to em
phasize the story and test Andrew Atzerodt's nerve-powers, looked
quite the necromancer in his farmer's suit and in a wide Dunker hat
he now drew on.

" Andrew," spoke Lloyd, " only your splendid courage could
have resisted the feeling that the old man I saw to-day was not
mortal. He had a nose that seemed to curl like an elephant's
trunk ; his eyebrows stood up like a horse's mane ; his beard fell
below his breast-bone and had silver fire in it like old punk. He
closed his big jaw, saying : ' Is this a dove you have been shooting?
Agh-h-h ! '"

"Stop! You lie! He wasn't tare!" cried Andrew, sinking at
the knees, at the stranger's well-acted part.

KATY "P' IN TED."

" He was there, Andrew. I swear it ! 'Is this a dove you have
been killing ? ' the wild man said, his voice as cold as the October
wind which blows that door open now — hoo-oo-oo ! "

" Scat ! Te wind is high," chattered Atzerodt, as the door to the
kitchen opened a little way.

" * I have no respect,' the phantom said to me, ' for any man
who will kill a little dove. No-o-o-o ! "

" You scare us, Lloyd ! " murmured little Katy, leaving her chair
and coming forward, as if to shut the creaking door. He held his
hand out to detain her, and continued :

" ' I did not mean to do it,' I said to that strange man ; ' my
pointer dog was obstinate, and nosed the harmless bird. Forgive
me, mountain-wizard ! ' ' No ! ' pealed he, ' a dove ! A little, little
d-o-o-ve ! "

" Pooh ! " said Atzerodt, " if dat was all, a little pit of a dove,
you wasn't afeard."

Atzerodt took a stout drink of the whisky. The loose door
obeyed the wind again and opened inward. Katy stepped forward,
but Lloyd held her at an arm's length.

" ' My dog -would nose the dove,' I pleaded. ' 'Twas not my
fault, indeed ! ' ' You killed a dove,' said he, ' a little, little d-o-o-ve.'
' Hist, Albion,' said I, 'seek farther on — ' "

" Ha ! what's dat ? I hears a kreisha ! " Andrew muttered, as a
sort of wail came from the kitchen.

"Albion!" repeated Lloyd, himself disturbed by the noise and
his own zeal, for he had involuntarily exceeded his joke.

As he mentioned the name of his dog, Albion himself, mechani
cally walking as if in sleep, came through the kitchen door that was
ajar, and advancing near the middle of the large room, threw back
his body and threw up his white and brown nose, and whimpered as
on the mountain-top. His torn ear was turned toward them and
showed bloody yet.

" The hoond p'ints something," muttered Luther Bosler. " What
is it. ? "

" Ha ! ha ! ha ! " Atzerodt replied, repeating his drink. " I tink
it's Katy."

" Maybe it's the Black Dog ! " shouted Nelly Harbaugh. " Say
The Words/ Katy!"%

As both girls started to mutter something like an incantation,
Luther Bosler advanced to take his sister, but Lloyd Quantrell had

38 KATY OF CATOCTIN,

assuaged her terror in his own arms, and as he drew her tenderly to
him he threw Jake Bosler's big wool hat at the dog, which snapped
at it and shrank back into the dark kitchen.

" Dear little dove," Lloyd Quantrell said, attempting to kiss Katy,
but she pressed his head away, " that wasn't a black dog at all, only
my English pointer."

" The Black Dog," said Nelly Harbaugh, " needn't be black.
It's a spirit."

" Spirit of what ? "

" Trouble," answered Nelly Harbaugh.

" Lloyd," murmured little Katy, " it p'inted at me and you. We
must say ' Te Words ' together."

" ' The Words ? ' " Lloyd answered. " I don't know ' The WTords,'
Katy."

" O Lloyd ! ' Te Words ' keep off te Poltergeist. I say them
when I see a bad sign and when I am too happy, for when we're
happiest te bad man likes to come."

"Say them now, Katy," Lloyd whispered, pressing her close in
his strong arms ; " I'm very happy, for I love you ! "

"Do you? Oh! you must tell te truth now; for I'm going to
say ' Te Words,' and it's wicked to say them with a lie."

" I love you," Lloyd Quantrell replied, his arms trembling. " I'll
say ' The Words ' after you with joy, Katy."

" Call on te three Highest Names, my love," said Katy, in rapt
awe.

As they said together in a country rhyme, he repeating after her,
the dread names in the Trinity, they heard the dog howl in the
kitchen.

"There," said Katy, "te Black Dog heard us and is gone.
Lloyd, you may kiss me now."

" O blessed words," Lloyd Quantrell murmured, " which brought
this kiss to me. Teach me from your pure heart all that it knows,
dear child, and keep me happy as I am."

" You must pelieve," said Katy, " pelieve in te Three Highest
Names and say 'Te Words', and then love will be beautiful."

"Who told you, Katy ? "

" My dear mother, Lloyd, and my heart tells me, too."

" Did you ever love before ? "

" No, but I often tried to. When you came to te spring house,
Lloyd, I was saying to myself : ' I guess somebody is going to love

AMONG THE SPOOKS. 3^

me. But I wonder when he will come ? ' I knew he was some-
wheres."

" God bless you, darling ! That very same was I thinking : that
the country was beautiful, but I was lonely in it, for want of some
gentle heart and glowing face. I have found you, Katy, and both
of us are happy."

Again the stranger in the mountains pressed to his lips the sim
ple and unresisting face which had floated to him like a sunny cloud
in this high vale, and for a little while he forgot that she was " Dutch,"
hard as his native prejudices were against that humble race, longer in
the land than his own name of Quantrell.

CHAPTER V.

LOVE AMONG THE SPOOKS.

WHEN they returned in consciousness to the whitewashed great
room of Jacob Bosler, Nelly was sitting near the fire, which had
burned low, with Luther on her right and Atzerodt on her left.
Atzerodt was telling tales of spirits and frightening himself, and
hence drew frequently upon the jug of whisky to give him what
Lloyd called " Dutch courage."

He told of the snarley-yow and the were-wolf ; the phantom sol
dier and the white woman which announced a death ; of the big In
dian's shade with a light in him ; and of the fox-fire in the fields
which lay on the meadow-grass at night and turned to silver, but
like the fire-coals when stirred by avarice were silver only at night,
but in the morning ashes.

Atzerodt's sallow, furtive, somewhat anxious face, like that of
one intense yet animal, brightened up between the drink, the super
stition, and his enjoyment of the others' fears ; his voice was shrill
and responsive to his emotions, his frame thick set and his move
ments were agile, his eyes a keen blue, and no repose was in his
Soul.

" He's one of the best coachmakers to be found," said Nelly to
Lloyd. " If he'd be steady, he could marry any girl, and be a rich
man."

" Can't you make him steady ? "

40 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

"I don't want to be a mechanic's wife," said Nelly, "unless I
must."

Looking at him again, as if trying to read him, Nelly Harbaugh
said :

" Is your watch gold ? Won't you give it to me ? What do
you do in Baltimore ? "

" Spend money," said Lloyd, " run to the fires, turn out with the
Grays, and guard the polls."

" The Grays ? That's soldiers ! "

" Yes, we're all Union men. Not a foreigner in the company.
Our motto is, ' Put none but Americans on guard.' "

" I hope everybody is for te Union," Luther Rosier remarked ;
"we're all for it up this a-way."

" Katy," Lloyd said, " do you believe in ghosts? "

" Oh, yes, Lloyd."

" Tell me about one."

Katy shrank a little at being called upon to take so much atten
tion, but her ready impulses carried her along.

"There was a girl over in Smoketown," Katy spoke, "who
wanted to sell herself to te divel" — Katy here seemed to be saying
" The Words " again an instant — "she wanted to pe rich and not to
work ; she thought she was a lady, and not a poor Dutch girl. So
she asked her mother to let her sell herself to te little lame man.
Her mother told her to go sit by te spring and say :

' I want clothes, and I want gold ;
I want nefer to pe old ;
I want peauty as long as I can —
Gif it to me, little lame man ! ' "

" What a nice wish ! " exclaimed Nelly Harbaugh.

" So te little lame man came right to te spring, and he said,
'Put your right hand on te top of your head.' She put it there.
' Put your left hand on the soles of your feet,' said he. She was
sitting down, and she did that, too. ' Now,' said te lame man, ' you
must say, "All that is between my tu>o hands belongs to te divel." '
She started to say it, and had got to te last word, when her mother
ran there and shouted ' God 7 ' so she lost the words and said,
' All that is between my two hands belongs to — God ! ' Te little
lame man run back to Smoketown as fast as his legs could carry
him."

LOVE AMONG THE SPOOKS. 4!

" But didn't the girl get any nice clothes, or anything, for being
so good ? " asked Nelly.

" She got," said Katy, blushing, " a good husband, my mother
told me, if he was a poor young man."

" Dot Shmoketown," cried Atzerodt, " is an ole Shpooktown, py
Jing ! I come along tare one night purty trunk, riding a horse, and
joost as I crossed te leetle stream dis side of Shmoketown an begun
to climb te mountain road dat comes dis way, and had got into de
glen petween te Short Mountain an te Plue Ridge, I see pefore me
a black man with a white face like a chiny plate. I said to my
self, ' Py Jing, any company is petter dan none ! ' So I jined te
black feller, and he was de nicest feller I ever did know ; he was
rale shentlemans.

" Says he : ' It's cold ; we'll drink together ! ' He handed me a
flask. When I got done trinkin', tere was another man riding with us.

" As we come up te mountain through te chestnut forest, te moon
shined on te road, an efery time we took another trink, tere was
another man on horsepack, till, py Jing ! I counted apout nine men,
and de last man was a woman.

" Tey all seemed to know te black man with te white face ; he
was a rale shentlemans.

" He made speeches out of pooks and drilled us like a solcher
company, and we charged at a gallop, an rode company-face, an
right-countermarch, an had a good time, py Jing ! I guess I was
purty trunk."

" You're not far from it now," said Nelly Harbaugh.

Atzerodt looked into the darker parts of the room apprehen
sively yet saucily, and continued :

" We got most to te top of te Plue Ridge, when te black man
said, ' Who's dat long feller amongst te horses ? '

" There was a man walkin' in te road. He was a long man in
black clothes. He looked up and powed and said, ' Good-evening,
friends ; we're 'most home ! ' ' Te devil you are ! ' said te black man
with te white face.

" We rode along awhile till te captain, as I'll call him, begun
whisperin' to us an saying : ' Look at dat feller ! He's eferywhere at
once ; he's on dat side, and on dis side, and petween our horses, and
I pelieve he's joost a devil. Let's ride over him ! '

"So we looked, an tere he was, right amongst te horses, dis
side, dat side, not a pit afraid — "

42 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

" Oh, don't," spoke Katy, " don't tell us the rest unless it's good."

" Go to bed, Andrew, you desperate, brave man," Lloyd Quan-
trell said, drawing his arm tighter around Katy.

" Yes," Luther Rosier added, " it's late, and this story is too
long."

" Go on," said Nelly Harbaugh ; " I want to know what became
of the black man with the white face."

" ' Let's ride over him ! ' said te captain. ' All right, py Jing ! '
says I.

" ' No,' says some, ' he's a nice ole man, and he says he's 'most
home.'

" ' Put it to vote ! ' says te black man with te white face.

" Py Jing ! it was a tie ; one half was one way and one half was
te oder way.

" ' Leave it to te woman ! ' says te captain."

" That was the right way," Lloyd Quantrell said. " The women
are always for pity, Katy."

" Te woman," concluded Atzerodt, " looked a leetle queer an
said nothing till te black an white man rode to her side and looked
at her like a rale shentlemans. Den she leaned over an' kissed him,
and she joost yelled, ' Charge ! ":

Excited with the recital and the drink, Atzerodt had arisen un
steadily as he shouted this last word.

" ' Charge ! ' yelled te woman, and on we put, py Jing ! to tram
ple dat long man in te road.

" The first ting I knowed, we was at te steep edge of te mount
ain, and te captain rode right over. Down, down he went, and
efery feller after him, and last of all, for my horse had stumpled —

"Ah! ah! Andrew," spoke Lloyd, " surely, with your splendid
courage, you were not in the rear ? "

" I was pitched off te horse joost pefore he jumped over, and I
was fallin', too, but I see te long man lyin' in te road, an' I took hold
of his hand to save myself.

" Te moon showed him lyin' there dead, all cut with te horseshoes.
Te hand I took was slippery with something, and I couldn't git a
tight hold of it."

" Not with your stalwart fist, Andrew ? " exclaimed Lloyd.

" I couldn't git hold of it," said Atzerodt, with a changed and low
ered tone, " because his hand was bloody. So down I went, hun
dreds of feet, and next mornin' tere I was found underneath te

LOVE AMONG THE SPOOKS. 43

mountain, and Nelly Harbaugh was py me. Py Jing ! ain't it so,
Nelly?"

" Yes," said Nelly, after a pause, " it was last April ; he was
coming to see me to make me marry him. I went out to hunt him,
and there I found him asleep in the road, and his horse going loose.
So I woke him up and sent him to the right-about."

" Py Jing ! " exclaimed the tipsy man, tears of various origin com
ing to his eyes, " I'm come agin to-day, Nelly, to ask you to pe my
wife. Don't say ' No.' You'll preak me all up. I have got a shop at
Port Tobacco, and all te work I want, but I can't keep sober unless
you marry me. Come, make me a home ! You needn't work in te
fields no more. I'll save you from want, and you'll save me from
wickedness. Oh, I'll promise eferything ! "

" It's worth considering, Nelly," Luther Bosler remarked, with
grave emotion. " He's a good mechanic."

" Take the candle and go to bed," commanded Nelly Harbaugh,
looking at Atzerodt ; " if you intend to obey me, begin now. I will
not give you an answer till you are sober."

She stood, beautiful and tall, with her blue eyes full of care yet
spirit, like one with resources but in doubt.

" Oh, to-night," pleaded Atzerodt, " or I may dream agin ! "

" To-morrow," said Nelly Harbaugh, pointing to the door.

The common fellow, in whom seemed some real sensibility now,
took the candle and staggered meekly toward the entrance.

" Kiss good-night ! " he muttered unsteadily.

" You are not obeying me," answered Nelly Harbaugh.

He threw open the door leading into the night and stopped, with
a trembling of the candle he held up, and the words, " It's dark,
Nelly ! "

" Now, now, Andrew ! " Lloyd Quantrell cried, " I know you're
not afraid to go to bed alone."

" You're a loafer," shouted Atzerodt in sudden rage, uttering an
oath. " You'll pe no good to Katy ! "

Lloyd made a push for the door, and Atzerodt fled, slamming it
behind him.

" The cur ! " exclaimed Lloyd Quantrell, throwing his arm around
Katy, who had followed him. " You know he slanders me, Katy."

" Oh, he must," Katy said, " you are such a gentleman ! "

Her brother's eyes followed Katy tenderly to the fire, as if to re
assure her of their guest's good character ; and then seeing her, with-

44 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

out affront, caressed by the so recent acquaintance, Luther turned to
Nelly Harbaugh, who had sunk into one of the wooden chairs.

" What will you answer Andrew to-morrow, Nelly ? "

" Whatever you say."

" Do you love him ? "

" Luther," exclaimed the girl, as a great sob escaped from her
throat, " there is but one I love : you know it. "

" If I could make you happy," Luther replied, " I would marry
you. Your great beauty makes up for your poverty, Nelly. I haf
a good farm next to father's. Could I tepend upon your opedi-
ence ? "

" For life, Luther ! You are the only man I would obey with

joy-"

" Girls nowadays, Nelly, looks at a man as a slave to gratify
all their follies. My wife must do her part in toil and saving as our
mothers did. Can you do that ? "

" Luther, I can for you, I believe."

" I haf loved you a year," said Luther, deliberately. " Kiss me ! "

Little Katy rose from her lover's side and came forward.

" Oh, what a night of happiness ! " she cried. " Hiresht se, Lu
ther ? Marry and call Nelly ' wife. ' I hoped you would, for Nelly
is willful. But she is beautiful, too."

After Katy kissed them both, her friend, with a moments care,
exclaimed :

" Luther, will you hitch up your horse and buggy and drive me
home ? "

" Now ? "

" Yes, I do not want to face that man to-morrow. He may be
dangerous."

" Andrew ? Why, stay and tell him. Be up and down about it."

" No," said Nelly, firmly, "I do not want to see him. He has
once before threatened me, and, though he is a coward, he is unsafe.
Tell him, Katy, from me, ' Good-by forever.' "

Her face expressed decision yet apprehension. Luther stepped
out, and soon came to the door with the buggy.

" Nelly," he said, putting on his hat and big over-jacket, " it
looks as if I had pegun to obey y -ou."

" To-morrow, Katy," exclaimed Nelly, nervously, " we will meet
you and Lloyd at the forks of the road this side of the mountain,
going to meeting."

DOGS AND HOUNDS.

Lloyd Quantrell, as the door closed upon them, drew Katy to his
heart again.

" Beloved," he murmured to her, " who would have thought it
this morning ? That my empty, hungry heart would now be full ?
That you, dear child, were waiting for me ? "

" I love you, Lloyd," said Katy. " I hope te Lord sent you to
me. Come, put your right hand on your head and this left hand
under the sole of your foot, and say after me, ' All petween my
two hands pelongs to God ! "

" All between my two hands belongs to God," Lloyd Quantrell
repeated.

" Good-night, Lloyd."

She slipped from his ardent grasp.

As they gave the long, wistful kiss of faith and future, pain and
gladness, life and love, a door opened and Jake Bosler poked his
head down the stairs, and saw them clasped together, without re
proof.

" Soon-up," Jake uttered, sleepily. " Bi'm-by."

CHAPTER VI.

DOGS AND HOUNDS.

LOOKING through the small stone windows of his sleeping-room,
as soon as he was awakened by the big bell, Lloyd Quantrell saw
the red and white spires of Middletown peeping low to the south,
and the bounding profile of the Blue Ridge overlap itself like ele
phants marching, and the Catoctin Mountain to the east leap out
of the plain like a boy's ball bouncing forward and falling again.

The Sunday morning dawn touched the high summits and crests
of this double panorama with gilt as if it was the picture-frame,
while between, just warming with the light, white farm-houses and
gray barns, straight yellow-corn rows, sheep with brown backs, and
next year's wheat just spearing above the pebbly swells, made the
valley of the Catoctin seem itself another mountain, only kept down
by its abundance.

Jake Bosler opened the latchless door without knocking, and
entered with Lloyd's clothes dried and pressed.

46 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

" Soon-down. Bi'm-by ! " Jake said, looking at Atzerodt asleep
pon the floor.

" Who pressed these clothes so well, Jake ? Katy, I think ? "

" Yaw ; she shtayed oop last naucht, Lloyd, to git tern purty."

" God bless her ! " cried Lloyd. " And you, too, Jake, for being
her father."

" Oh, yaw, Lloyd," Jake Bosler said, taking the proffered hand
humbly. " Katy's my letsht — te last, I mean, Lloyd. Luter, he's
engaged now to Nelly Harbaugh."

The man lying on the floor, in the second feather-bed, muttered
here :

" I can't keep soper unless you marry me. Come, Nelly ! make
me a home."

" T'zu shpoat" Jake murmured, " Nelly wanted Luter ; Antrew
wanted Nelly. When Antrew went to ped, Nelly took Luter. I
don't knows not'ing about it."

" Nelly took Luter ! " Atzerodt spoke, rising upon his elbow and
looking through hot, dry eyes.

Jake Bosler looked still humbler, and. as he turned down the
stairs, said compassionately :

" Soon-up ! Bi'm-by ! "

"Yes, poor fellow," Lloyd Quantrell answered for Jake, "wait
for sun-up. Bi'm-by it will shine bright, Andrew, from another
pair of eyes."

" Where is she ? " whispered Atzerodt.

" Luther took her away last night. She thought it would dis
tress both of you to see each other."

" O my Gott ! " — the unhappy man threw his face into the gay
feather quilt — " she wrote to me to come and marry her. Dis is
her letter."

He began to weep like a broken-hearted child. Lloyd reflected
that even this unspiritual being had a heart.

" Don't be too hard on her, my lad," he spoke ; " she's poor and
ambitious. She thought well of you, but your coming has brought
the man she loved most, to the popping-point at last."

Atzerodt finished his fit of weeping and rose up.

" Gif me a drink ! " he pleaded, " I can't eat none. I'll git on te
road an tramp agin."

" Pull at it light, Andrew," Lloyd interrupted, as he saw the
deep draught the other took.

DOGS AND HOUNDS. 47

" She said she'd gif me her answer when I got soper," Atzerodt
exclaimed, pulling his slouched hat over his brows ; " she's run away
from her promise. I'll never pe soper agin, so help me Gott ! "

Again bursting into a wail and tears, he went down the steps
and reappeared from the barn, riding a horse. Pausing a moment
at the foot of the hill and looking fiercely back, he shook his fist and
shouted :

" Gott tarn dat house an eferypody in it ! "

Then, with a cruel blow at his horse, and another sob and gush
of tears, he galloped away.

" Dutch, Dutch ! " Lloyd Quantrell said"; " not fit to have a wife.
Yet the fine Swisser did deceive him. She is a Dutch Venus ; I
might have won her instead of Katy. Dare I marry either ? Well,
I can be in love."

He took his gun and game-bag to carry them away. The dove
was still in the game-bag, and he brought it out and looked at it
again.

" By George ! " he exclaimed, " Albion did point at little Katy,
truly, just as he nosed this poor little bird. If I lived long among
the Dutch I would get to believe in ghosts."

Katy was finishing the setting of the table, and she went up and
kissed Lloyd before her father.

" I reckon you think I'm familiar for a stranger, Jake," Lloyd
said.

" How else would you git acquainted ? " queried Katy's father.

" I told /adder you was my peau," Katy said, blushing.

" Yaw," Jake said, " if Katy didn't tell her olt dawdy when she
was happy, how could he pe glad ? "

Katy spread her hands over the table and said the blessing in
English, and Jake Bosler ended it with Amen,

" Lloyd," asked Jake, after Katy had helped them to coffee and
ham and eggs, " what religion is you ? Is you Baptist or not ? "

" I'm a poor sinner, Jake. I was brought up a Catholic. That's
how I was educated. My father is a convert ; my mother was a
Methodist."

" Any religion is petter dan none, Lloyd. Us Paptists was pe-
fore Martin Luter. We asks all to come to te Lord's supper and
to pe our friends."

A big wagon, with clean straw in the bottom, drawn by two
great gray horses, Jake Bosler drove to the door and cried, " Git in,

48 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

Lloyd." Little Katy had a bundle with her and a large basket, and
Lloyd threw in his gun and kit.

"Stop," said Lloyd, as they started off; "won't you lock the
house up ? "

" Oh, no, Lloyd," replied Jake, " nobody steals up this a-way,
pecause nobody is lazy, and the poor is a-welcome."

Jake Bosler's cattle in the bottoms looked up to see them go —
those roan, red, white, and speckled cattle, calling " moo " so ten
derly, and each with the great mild Bosler eyes ; and the turkeys,
now fattening, sat under the cherry-trees in their white bodies with
wings of gold and red and breasts of black, all agitated that Katy
was going ; the peacock spread his tail of eyes and fashions, and
broke his heart in one long sob of protest ; and pea fowls and Guinea-
hens, cocks and pullets, came trooping from the barn to see the
face which fed them smiles, as her hands had given them food, go
away but for a day.

Along the row of cherry-trees, by a little mill-race flowing in the
clover, near hedges of the new Osage orange from the blood-red fields
of Kansas, and where gum-trees matched the sycamores in strength
in some old sedgy pasture, they rolled in the reddish road, and now
and then saw the Catoctin Mountain's purple-green sides, and black
crest and yellowing foliage, bound up and fall.

At the first little hamlet they turned their backs upon the Catoc
tin range and faced the South Mountain to the northwest, and Katy
at the little towns pointed out the United Brethren and the Lutheran
churches ready for worship.

Going between the high, billowy corn-hills to cross the main Ca
toctin Creek, they rose upon a bold mound in their way, and only
three miles ahead saw their road scale the Blue Ridge, which, like a
giant child playing through the sky, showed dimples of turning
foliage in his austere countenance, and grace and sweetness nursed
by storm.

Near the foot of the mountain, at a road coming in from the
north, Luther Bosler and Nelly Harbaugh were waiting in a buggy.

Nelly now had a dress of bright colors and a straw hat of city
jauntiness trimmed with natural flowers, and Lloyd smiled to see,
as she put her straight foot from the buggy, that she wore hoops
and flounces.

" Katy," he said to his Ijttle girl, who sat in a black Dunker hood
and cape and gown, her hair plaited down her back, and her white

DOGS AArD HOUNDS.

Dunker cap transparent at her little ears, " why don't you dress
like Nelly?"

" I am not so peautiful," Katy said, looking down at her dark
gown and white apron, " and, Lloyd, I want to love God, who has
let you love me."

" My child," Lloyd said, not repelling some tears which came to
his eyes, " why do you not see the wicked fellow I am and turn
away from me ? I am not worthy of your pure heart, Katy ! "

" Yes, you are," Katy said ; " maybe I can pring you to God if I
try hard. What else is woman for? "

The tears came again and yet again to the young man's eyes ;
at last they streamed upon his cheeks, and he felt them dropping
like blood from a fresh wound into his hands, as he held his palms
open and thought they would fill. It was the first mention of God,
the first affection bestowed upon him, so hungry-hearted, since his
Christian mother's death.

Katy threw her arms around him and drew his head upon her
little neck.

" Tese is love-feast tears," she said. "Our Saviour made tern
holy, darling, at his last supper. Come, take it with me to-day and
pe happy."

He sobbed so hard he could not speak : a past world of love
now faded in the grave, another world of fatherly affection he had
sought but could not find ; recollections of prayers long taught but
long unuttered, of gentle feelings brutalized by coarse city contacts,
of the sense of home not yet obliterated but blunted, and of being
at this moment too well, too nobly, if humbly beloved, stirred all the
nature of the young man up and melted into rills of tears the ice in
caverns long denied the air.

" My God ! " he spoke at last, " can love do this ? Was I ex
perimenting with love, and finding such religion ? — Katy," he sud
denly looked up and pushed her from him, " you must let me
go ! "

" Nefer, now," said Katy, looking with all her heart and great
deep eyes upon him. — " God, gif me this soul, and let it feed with me.
of thy supper and drink thy precious blood ! "

Coming to the wagon to find Lloyd in tears and Katy clinging
to him, Luther Bosler exclaimed :

" IVass treibsht olla weil? Are you two quarreling ? "

" No, Luther," answered Lloyd, wiping his eyes ; " Katy is trying
4

50 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

to make something good out of me. Yonder mountains ought to
be between us."

" ' Faith/ " observed Luther, mildly, " ' can remove mountains/ it
says. Let us cross them together."

He took the reins, and Nelly Harbaugh sat by him, and so they
slowly went up the pebbly mountain-road, old Jake going before in
the buggy, with the parting words :

" Love-feast. Bi'm-by ! "

Sitting with his arm around Katy, and with sweetly troubled
feelings, yet manlier than he had ever known, Lloyd looked back
into Catoctin Valley and remarked :

" Luther, why can't I see the houses and towns now ? "

" Because te upper valley is hilly and tey puilt te houses py te
springs petween te hills. But tey is all tere, Lloyd, and whoefer has
pusiness with tern can find tern. When their country calls for tern,
up will run te flag eferywheres and pe peautiful."

"We'll be there, Luther, won't we? This great, free Union is
worth fighting for ! "

" Yes, Lloyd. A pity it ain't free, too, and ten, I think, we
should always have peace."

" What a singular Dutchman ! " Lloyd thought to himself.
"What he says seems eloquent, because he is so honest. How
came he to be so grave and parental ? I am not so. He is like a
father to his father because, I suppose, he is so good a son. My
father ! Why will he not give me his confidence ? Do I deserve it ? "

" I live yonder where the hills are all rocky and wild, past Wolfs-
ville," said Nelly Harbaugh, pointing north. " Mount Misery, where
the counterfeiters had their cave in the Revolutionary War, is close by
me. The Tories hid there, too, that were caught and hanged. I'm
bad root, Lloyd," blushed Nelly, with a deep look on Luther.

" The heart is the true rest," Luther said. " Keep that steady,
and your pad ancestors will not trouble you. But whose dogs
are those ? '

He pointed back, and coming together in the road were Fritz
and Albion, the latter leading on, as if he had proposed the excur
sion ; Fritz hanging back, yet looking at the carriage sturdily, as
ready to take his reproof.

" Fritz, wo gaesht hee?" spoke Luther, without temper, to his
dog, but looking serious, and stopping the horses on the mountain-
top.

DOGS AND HOUNDS. 51

The Sugar-Loaf Mountain far away was peeping hazily over the
giant ramparts of Catoctin, and up from the depths behind them
followed the solemn green woods to where, upon this summit, lay
ledges of sandstone, and the oak and chestnut trees shook with a
coming tempest of wind and rain.

Fritz came straight up to the carriage, looked at Luther unhap
pily, and barked.

The city dog, with a vicious barking at Lloyd, took to the wood-
side and disappeared ahead in the road.

"Evil communications corrupt good manners, Luther," Lloyd
said. " My dog has tempted yours away."

" Fritz," spoke Luther to his dog, shaking his head, "was not in
the hapit of leafing home, where he is my friend and guard."

The dog came right up under the whip and barked with an ex
citement above apprehension, as if to say, " Whip me, but spare my
pride !"

" Unfortunate dog ! " exclaimed Luther, but more tenderly. " Can
I do anything put send him home ? "

The dog started back with head down, needing no further hu
miliation.

" Stop, Fritz ! "Luther continued, his face lighting up, " does any
person here speak for this tisopedient friend of mine, who has, per
haps, peen under pad atvice to-day ? "

The dog had stopped, and when both Katy and Lloyd cried
" Yes, do forgive him ! " and Luther replied, " Very well, then," the
dog took his place meekly under the wagon, and they entered the
summit forest.

The winding road-track through the fallen chestnut-leaves and
stone-heaps reminded them of Atzerodt's story, as they saw the
pale, lemon-yellow leaves twirl in the rising gust like witches in a
circle, and the squirrels run when mischievous lightning chased them
from tree to tree. The clean trunks arose smoothly from stony
ledges, and, ever young in form and foliage, though in their autumn
days, the chestnut forest had an appearance pleasing even now in
the grasp of coming storm. Something of the light and straight
nature of the French was in it, tender in greenness, comely in ma
turity, engaging in the burr, and toothsome in the nut. However
lofty the mighty shafts might rise, though monarchs of the forest,
they had the complaisance and sentiment of kings in France.

Nothing crossed their way but wood-cutters' paths barely trace-

52 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

able through the translucent goldness of the trees and litter, and the
rail-splitters' piles and chips seemed only larger yellow leaves and
ferns that strewed the vistas. A cool, small cedar-tree occasionally
appeared, like a green parasol in the bright sunshine ; but nothing of
man or domestic beast broke the Sabbath stillness of the mountain-
tops — hardly the eagle yonder, so near overhead he almost touched
the trees, like Jove taking his jealous watch and throwing from his
eyes upon the woods below the citron glisten of Olympus.

" See ! " whispered Nelly Harbaugh to Luther, " yonder are men
— negroes — runaway slaves. There's money for catching them,
Luther ! Quick ! "

Across the road, not fifty yards before, passed two black men,
one carrying the other.

The younger was barefooted and had no coat, and limped as he
labored under the older man's weight.

The old man seemed in the palsy of fear, or age, or disease, and,
as he saw the carriage coming and women in it, a habit of courtesy,
too old to be forgotten, made him take off the old straw hat he wore
and bow almost idiotically and make a chattering noise.

Attracted by the movement, the young man turned and saw the
carriage, and at a run, still limping, he bore the old man into the
woods, flying to the north.

" Oh ! " cried Nelly, " they're gone ; we might have caught them.
Along this mountain they travel at nights. It's hardly thirty miles
across Maryland to the free State. We have got people here who
live by catching them and get hundreds of dollars reward "

"And a millstone it will pe around their necks," exclaimed
Luther.

" I reckon so, too," Lloyd said. " Niggers oughtn't to run away,
but let somebody else than me do the catching."

At this moment the pointer-dog, Albion, reappeared out of the
place in the woods where the fugitives first emerged, and his deli
cate brown kid nose was trailing something.

" Hist ! " cried Lloyd ; " come here, Albion ! "

Raising his head only to bark ill-naturedly, and striving to lick
his torn ear once, the white and yellow pointer dropped to the scent
again and darted into the opposite woods, barking.

" I hope he won't petray those poor fellows," Luther said, " but
we can't stop for him, for te rain is coming hard, and tere's no shel
ter till we get to Smoketown."

DOGS AND HOUNDS.

" Oh," cried Nelly Harbaugh, " stop there at the fortune-teller's ! "

The storm now burst in half-sunny nonchalance upon the mount
ain they were on, and yet, while its lightnings leaped vengefully here,
the parallel mountain, beyond the gorge they were overhanging,
seemed to be serene as Sabbath, and through the mist of sheet-
rain, at pauses, they could see its happy countenance of chestnut
woods and sulphur-tinted leaves, waiting like one beatified martyr
for another to pass through his fires.

With cool, executioner-like method, the spirits of the storm
whipped the longer mountain's back with rods of forked fire until
it smoked, and the sound of riven trees beneath the thunderbolts
seemed like the broken rods of Pilate's soldiery shivered upon the
unanswering Pioneer. Yet, sometimes red as blood, the electric
current flowed along the hairy woodlands till rain, like floods of
tears from heaven, streamed down to cool the mountain's anguish,
and groans, from none knew where, feebly or wail-like accompanied
the tempest.

The road grew black ; the steady gray wagon-horses shrank as if
they would crawl upon their bellies ; dust and water, thunder and
flame mutinied against each other in their common purpose, and
fought together without proceeding, while the great dike of the Blue
Ridge Mountain buried itself in mystery or melted away.

" Why, this is hell, or the portent of it ! " Lloyd Quantrell spoke,
covering Katy with his body and arms.

" Say ' Te Words,' Lloyd," he heard her whispering, " and we will
pe happy."

" Steaty, Jim ! Steaty, Sam ! Holt steaty, poys ! " Luther Bos-
ler's voice spoke calmly ; " it will soon pe ofer."

A scream from Nelly Harbaugh at this moment, and the horses
leaping in their harness and striving to break from the driver's prac
ticed hands, were occasioned by a sight in the road which seemed
almost supernatural : a strange, half-transparent, rose-colored mist,
like lava dissolved in wine, sprang up as if the lightning had been
distilled and held a long moment in atmospheric solution, and
through it were seen at the horses' heads two men and two large
hounds, gazing up at the carriage, and themselves surprised as
much as its occupants.

The men were burly, coarse-looking, neither good nor evil of
countenance, and clearly people of this world.

While the occupants of the carriage gazed at them for a period

54 KATY OF C A TO C TIN,

of time measured only by its vividness upon the nerves and heart,
blackness, as of a cloud, came down again like a mighty crow alight
ing in the road, and with it a silence that was the Sabbath of the
dead.

Slowly this yielded to the influences of -a gentle shower and re
turning sun, and soon they saw the road before them plainly open,
and the freshly twisted and prostrate trees embarrassing the way.

" What made you scream, Nelly ? " asked Luther, stooping to
kiss her.

" The slave-catchers," cried Nelly. " Didn't you see them ? "

" Did you know their faces ? "

" Oh, yes — Lew and Ben Logan. They watch at nights and on
all the stormy days ; for then the slaves are running. They're rich,
I reckon."

" Not in conscience, I think," mused Luther, getting down to
examine his harness. " We must stop at te first house in Smoke-
town to tie up this breeching."

" Oh, I'm so glad ! " Nelly Harbaugh exclaimed. " That's Han
nah Ritner's, the fortune-teller."

" Lloyd," cried little Katy, " I wasn't frightened at all — you held
me so close. And then you said ' Te Words ' last night, and all your
body was God's."

CHAPTER VII.

WITCH OF SMOKETOWN.

A LITTLE farther the South Mountain opened like an amphi
theatre, and showed some patches of fields and farms at the base of
their broken mounds ; but the landscape was yet ragged and almost
uninhabited till, on the descending road before them, some small
houses of a poor appearance were finally seen straggling along, each
to itself, as if they came together by accident and had hardly discov
ered each other, so embowered were they in fruit-trees, weeds, gar
dens, and corn.

" There's Smoketown," Nelly Harbaugh cried ; " some calls it
Ginny Winders's town. Old Ginny keeps a groggery for the black
berry-pickers, chestnut- sellers, wood-choppers, charcoal-burners, and
slave-catchers. Oh, it's a hard place ! "

WITCH OF SMOKE TOWN. 55

" I should think so," Lloyd Ouantrell remarked, looking at the
near mountains and at a deep gorge behind him, like the wide-open
throat of a wild beast ready to devour the scattered place ; " it seems
to me to be running away, like the children in the Bible chased by
Elisha's bears. Who is this Hannah Ritner? "

" She's a stranger, but I reckon she's lived here for years," Nelly
replied ; " she's religious, and teaches the poor children to spell and
to sew. Some say she's crazy, and that's why they go to her to get
their fortunes told. She tells them real true,"

By this time they had come to the first house in the place on the
right-hand side — a small, very neat, whitewashed cottage, with an
old blackened roof, and with a little portico in front, the latter
covered with a trained blackberry-vine.

The house stood in a small arbored garden, and the mock-orange
and gourd vines could be seen dropping their yellow or roan-gold
fruit from these small arbors, and also from the locust-trees along
the roadside paling. Yellow marigolds grew against the gable ;
bright flowers in whitewashed flower-pots showed along the path
leading back to the door from the gate ; and a willow-tree in the
garden seemed to weep for an unmarked grave which was not
there.

The fruit-trees and bean-poles and shocked corn added a look of
rankness and weediness in the midst of such providence and taste,
and the forest coming down from the stony hills behind, in bits of
chestnut thicket and brush, seemed to wrap the small cottage in.

An old stable was at the edge of this forest, and paths went
back from it into the rain-raveled mountain-spurs.

Nothing else Lloyd Quantrell could see but a large preserving-
kettle in the garden, hung on a wooden crane ; and while he looked
at this, a gray and yellow fox, licking his chops of sirup, leaped up
from the kettle and ran into the woods, followed hotly by Fritz.

Nelly Harbaugh stepped out first, at the entrance of a little lane,
deeply shaded with cherry and plum trees, which crept back almost
mysteriously to the stable ; a horse was tied here, and she had
barely seen it when a man came through the garden and stopped
her in the lane.

" Andrew ! " she exclaimed, and started to run back.

" Nelly ! " cried Atzerodt — for it was he — and he seized her by
the wrist.

The girl, a moment shrinking, drew her graceful figure up

56 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

haughtily and cried, " If you strike me, I'll have you repent in
Hagerstown jail ! "

" Going to haf your fortune told, Miss Nelly ? " muttered the
sallow, outcast man. " I'll tell it to you, py Jing ! "

His lips trembled with excitement. The girl tore her arm away,
and with a quick gesture she picked up a stick from a flower-pot,
rending out the deep-red rose which grew upon it. Lloyd Quan-
trell had quickly come upon the scene, and he marked the fine
beauty of the girl thus impassioned and defiant.

"I declare, Nelly," he said, "you're as splendid now as a great
actress on the stage ! "

The words seemed to have a power to arrest Nelly Harbaugh's
attention even in her apprehensions.

" Am I, Lloyd ? " she replied. " Oh, I would rather be that
than anything in the world ! "

" Dat is shoost what you are fit for, py Jing ! " Atzerodt broke
in. — " Luter Bosler, you got my girl ; she'll pe no good to you."

" Come, Antrew, forget and forgive," Luther remarked, coming
forward from the horses ; " pad words putter no parsnips."

He reached out his hand, which the other repelled, ancl Atzerodt
continued in a reckless yet suffering tone :

" Luter, she'll get you in love and preak your heart. She is
false to eferypody."

" You lie ! " exclaimed the girl, herself the dangerous person now,
seeking to get past Quantrell and ply her stick on Atzerodt.

Lloyd interposed good-naturedly.

" She wants your money, Luter. She's a cold-hearted Swisser,
you pet. She'll nefer marry you if somepody else will gif her petter
clothes. Your poor heart will hang where mine is now, and den
you'll feel for me."

He broke down in almost touching, though maudlin drunken
misery, and the girl dropped her stake of wood and pushed past
Lloyd Quantrell.

" I could not love you," she said to Atzerodt. " You earn noth
ing ; you can not support a wife. Never do you come near me
again, but say good-by forever now."

He called her an ugly word, which he had barely done when
Lloyd, with a flat-hand blow, struck him to the grass, and stood
over him, saying :

" What do you say before Katy ? "

WITCH OF SMOKETOWN. 57

"Dear Andrew," spoke Katy, coming forward, "come to church
at Beaver Creek and pe a petter man. If you don't like us Bunkers,
there is te Luteran church, and te Mennese church and te Breth
ren too, all close together."

" Nelly Harbaugh," continued Atzerodt from the ground, cowed
but still revengeful, "you'll nefer let me forgit you. Some day I'll
pe hung on te gallows for you, I tink."

He remained on the wet ground with his face in the weeds, and
all left him there and went forward to the cottage.

As they approached it there was a sound of musical water, and
across the embowered yard flowed a mountain stream so wide they
could hardly step across it, and foaming now with the rain which no
longer fell, but in the sky a rainbow took its place and spanned the.
mountain like an arch of beauty.

" My love," spoke Lloyd, taking Katy's arm, " the bow of prom
ise is come already for us."

" Lloyd," she replied, " poor Andrew suffers so, it clouds my
heart."

The cottage seemed to be empty, and consisted of only one
room and a kitchen, the latter low as the ground, the main room
higher and containing a bed, an open Franklin stove, and a large
flag-bottomed rocking-chair painted green. There was no other
chair, but in a corner a glass-faced cupboard contained Delft plates
and coffee service, and many bottles of cordials and home-made
wines, and a line of jars of preserves, and also several books.

A Bible was on the window-sill and a candlestick beside it, and
on the wall was a print in colors of Hagar and Ishmael, showing a
large hand, as of a man, protruding from a door, with the palm
raised against the mother and son, who were thus shut out.

Everything in this room was clean as it was plain, the bed-quilt
sewn by hand from little rag savings, the wood scrubbed white, the
stove polished, and flowers in water, on a little shallow mantel, dif
fused a subtle perfume.

"Hannah Ritner keeps no servant," said Nelly Harbaugh.
" See this beautiful candle ! She makes it herself of bear's grease
and beeswax, and they say her light never goes out the longest
night."

Lloyd saw a movement at the stable in the rear of the house,
and a tall woman came from it and walked at a dignified pace to
ward him.

58 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

She had coal-black hair, like the crow's wing, falling in combed
tresses below her waist, so that her shoulders and fine, straight,
matronly form were half covered with these splendid waves of hair,
in which some silver threads made barely an impression.

She was one of the finest women Lloyd had ever seen, with
something almost grand in her stature and bearing, unbent, and her
skin of a clear, pure tint, as if its roses could be called back if she
would only exercise the will.

Her face was rather large than long, the jaws being of fine,
ample mold, and her hair was cut off between the tresses in front,
and the short tassel of jet-black frontlet there half covered her
forehead, or nearly meeting the rich black eyebrows, and under
these were dark eyes, large, melting, sad, compassionate, and full
of thought, with black lashes sweeping her cheeks, and a nose
long and fine, but neither straight nor aquiline, and like an inverted
bow.

She was dressed in a dark gown, with a dark apron tied round
her waist. No ornament was in her ears or on her neck or hands.

As she approached, this woman, seeing Lloyd, opened her large
eyes wider, but did not stop nor hesitate, yet continued to look
straight at him till his own eyes sank down under the soul-searching
gaze of this noble-seeming and mysterious being.

Still advancing upon him — for he stood in the door between the
house and kitchen, looking outward through another door — the
woman made a grave, sweet inclination of her head and counte
nance, and said, nearly like a question, yet with recognition :

" Ouantrell ! "

He started with astonishment.

" Lloyd, is it not ?" she continued, with a slightly German ac
cent, but in a voice of deep music, worthy of a prophetess.

" Lloyd Quantrell is what they named me,v he exclaimed.

" Is your mother dead ? "

" Yes, madam."

" I read so. Have you come to see the fortune-teller ? That is
a sweet child I see behind you. Do you pretend to love her ? "

" Pretend, madam ? " Lloyd answered with indignation, yet also
with accusation and fear. " I hope you are not tempting me."

" God forbid ! " she exclaimed, with stately reproof , "yet ye have
golden tongues. What do you find to kill in these mountains like
these simple birds of sex ? "

WITCH OF SMOKE TOWN.

She waved her hand toward the women.

At that moment Luther Bosler perceived the dog Albion come
out of the woods and begin to scratch and whine around the little
stable.

" Is that your dog ? " the woman spoke, also looking toward the
stable as if with some new interest. " Go bring him away, in
stantly ! "

Luther, not Lloyd, started to do so. He found his own dog,
Fritz, returned, and Fritz followed him obediently ; but the English
pointer was not tractable, and ran back into the chestnut and chin
quapin bnish, whither Luther followed, calling his name.

" Hannah," spoke Nelly Harbaugh to the woman, " the harness
is a bit broke, and we stopped to mend it. Won't you tell our fort
unes ? "

" Idle request upon the Sabbath-day ! " Hannah Ritner replied.
" I have told one fortune for you to-day already. Is not your lover
yonder? "

She pointed to where Atzerodt's horse was tied in the secluded
path.

Lloyd Quantrel!, looking there, saw Atzerodt standing up and
looking intently toward the stable.

" Give me your hand ! " the seer commanded, taking Nelly's in
her own palm, and gazing with great candor and beauty of expres
sion into her eyes.

Lloyd thought he had never seen together three more beautiful
women than these.

Hannah Ritner then slowly spoke these lines, with such deep,
distinct, and eloquent diction that Lloyd hoped she would speak
more :

" Ebbes dunkel und weiss marrick ich,
Mit dunkla soil's Vmarricka dich !
Gaed der roth-fogel uf 'n rets',
Dann waersht net dunkel or net weiss ! "

Nelly Harbaugh muttered something Lloyd believed to be the
protecting " Words," and dropped her fine blue eyes.

The fortune-teller, turning her own eyes to Lloyd, exclaimed :

" It is not my wont to tell on poor girls secrets that may smirch
them in a man's eyes. Here is her fortune as I gave it, put in Eng
lish words."

Still holding Nelly Harbaugh's hand, Hannah Ritner recited to

60 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

Lloyd and little Katy as follows, studying Katy meanwhile, and only
once looking at the hand :

" Something dark and white I mark,
It shall mark thee with the dark !
When the red-bird takes his flight,
Thou shalt not be dark or white ! "

" Look out for the red-bird, Nelly," Lloyd exclaimed ; " the dove
is my warning."

Hannah Ritner caught the word and repeated it :

" Die Dowb : that was the bird of the Holy Spirit which de
scended on the baptizers, cooing as it flew from heaven, ' This is
my beloved Son !' My well-beloved son !" she turned to Lloyd,
with something very tender, yet sorrowful, in her great eyes, " you
may be baptized with fire. Seek even in the fire for that immortal
dove which bravely swept the Deluge with his tired pinions, and re
turned to the little ark of love at last. Why do you seek this simple
maiden's eyes as if their luster was the window of that ark to you ?
—She trembles while I ask.— Fear not, my little peasant-maid ! I'll
tell your lover's fortune, and, if I tell it true, never need you fear to
come to Hannah Ritner and ask her counsel. — Lloyd, give me your
hand!"

She took Lloyd's hand, and little Katy, full of faith and yearning,
took his other hand almost in stealth, and looked in Hannah Rit-
ner's eyes with simple pleading.

At that moment, Lloyd Quantrell, cool and undisturbed, saw the
stable-door unclose, and a negro emerge, carrying an old man on
his back, and, looking backward agonizingly, the negro stole down
the embowered lane.

Lloyd looked again in Hannah Ritner's eyes. He could not see
them, for they were bent upon his hand, and, to his astonishment,
some tears fell from somewhere on his palm.

" Why do you weep ? " he asked ; " I am nothing to you."

" This is a large, strong hand," answered Hannah Ritner, with
deep feeling. " I see the marks of conflicts upon it, but not of toil.
Oh, find some task to do, my son, and bless your Maker for sweet,
constant occupation ! "

" Tell my fortune ! " spoke Lloyd. " I am not afraid to hear it.
You will not hurt this little girl's feelings, I know ; for she is dear
to me, Mother Hannah ! "

WITCH OF SMOKETOIVN. 6 1

At this familiar salutation, tears fell from Hannah Ritner's eyes
again, and she was unable to proceed for some time.

Throwing an arm around each, she drew both Lloyd and Katy
to her breast, and, looking down on them, the silent tears fell from
her splendid eyes all the more, and not like the tears of anguish, but
of great commiseration.

Lloyd thought she was like the Virgin he had seen a picture of at
the Catholic school, whose everlasting cause of love and woe was the
successive ages of mankind, and their many sorrows, ever to recur.

Little Katy, also tearful and tender, reached up her lips and
kissed the prophetess's mouth, saying :

" Fergeb uns imser shoolda ! You must be good, I know."

" God bless you, my child, for those sweet words ! " said Hannah
Ritner, quieted and strong again.

Looking now at Lloyd with deep interest, she repeated what he
could not understand, in her beautiful intonation, thus :

" All's game's unna die Sunn Ich sae,
Fer deina Flindt fleegt in die Hoh ;
Und wann aw dodt sheest allum ort,
Dann singt die Darddle-Daub doch fort ! "

" Come, Mother Ritner ! " Lloyd pleasantly entreated, yet feeling
something remarkable to be in this person, and a slight sense of
superstition in himself, " you will not leave my fate such a Dutch
riddle as that ? Tell my coming luck in English, too ! "

The strange, stately woman tapped her forehead as if seeking to
recollect or to compose, or, at least, to translate something.

" I have spent so much of my time, my children, among these
mountain poor, teaching them in Dutch, that my English verse
comes slowly back to me, and I am growing old, too, and memory
and wit are weaker."

With the same slight German accent she then made the transla
tion of Lloyd's fortune, not readily, yet with eloquence, like profound
conviction :

" All the game beneath the sun
Shall rise up before thy gun ;
When thou killest everything,
Still the turtle-dove will sing ! "

" Thank God for that, Katy ! " Lloyd exclaimed. " Let the tur
tle dove be heard, whatever happens to us. — And now, Mother Rit-

62 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

ner, dear little Katy is waiting to have her fate told before she goes
to church ; for Luther. I reckon, has mended the harness by this
time."

" I must be quick," Hannah Ritner said ; " for I am strangely
nervous this morning. It seems to me I hear the baying of dogs.
Katy, let me see your hand ! Why, my darling, the lines in it are
almost like-my own. I can tell your fortune easily."

As she repeated the following lines, Katy listened with deepen
ing awe and final trembling, so that Lloyd kissed her to his heart,
at the end :

" In dara bond sae Ich en Ring
Ferleera, sollsht du's, schoenes ding ! "

Katy heard with prayerful wonder and fear. The seer spoke to
her with deep and solemn tones the next couplet, as follows :

" Doch bawdst du fer's im krickly noof,
' Dan sollsht du's finna bei 'ma Buch ! " *

As she spoke, Hannah Ritner accidentally laid her hand upon
the Bible.

" Now for the English, Mother Hannah ! " Lloyd exclaimed
seeing that Katy Bosler looked pale and frightened.

" What noises are those ? " Hannah Ritner whispered. " Surely
it is the blood-hound's bark I hear ! Who is at my stable ? "

She strode through the kitchen and shouted :

" What do you there ? Stealers are ye of the souls and bodies
of your fellow-men ! "

Lloyd, Katy, and Nelly following, they beheld come out of the
small chestnuts behind the stable, first the dog Albion, very ani
mated and frolicsome, and he threw himself into the attitude of point
ing game a few steps from the stable-door.

Next there bounded from the same thicket three dogs apparently
fighting, and one of these was engaged in a clinched struggle with
another, which bayed deep and loud ; and the third dog, a great
blood-hound, rushed upon the stouter of these dogs and bit him
terribly, while Albion also barked as he " pointed," and so the air was
full of fierce, savage noises.

Luther Bosler, going to the relief of the injured dog, which was

* These predictions are all translated into Pennsylvania Dutch by Thomas
C. Zimmerman, of Reading, Pa.

WITCH OF SMOKETOWN. 63

now seen to be his own Fritz, was himself set upon by the two
hounds, and they seemed to be on the point of tearing him to pieces,
when out of the thicket rushed the two men already related to have
crossed the mountain during the thunderstorm, and both of these
shouted loudly to the blood-hounds and pulled them separate ways.

" It's the Logan boys," exclaimed Nelly Harbaugh ; " husht se
g'sana ? There must be runaway slaves hiding about Hannah Rit-
ner's house."

" Go in there at your peril, hyenas ! " shouted Hannah Ritner,
throwing herself between the stable and the pursuers. " This land
is mine, and I will defend it with my life ! "

She had drawn upon her head a large leghorn hat, and as she
spread her arms across the stable-door and put her back against it
and threw her fine white throat and strongly pointed chin up, the
long elf-hair fell so wildly and so. dead black down from her pallid
face that both the men halted a moment irresolutely.

Lloyd Quantrell's ill-starred dog, however, dashed at Hannah
and barked his ill-tempered and short, snappish dislike. Lloyd him
self knocked the dog over with a stone, and it retired yelping a little
distance, and again, with one fore-leg extended and the other lifted
crookedly as if lame, raised its muzzle toward the stable, put its
tail out straight, and cast its eyes trancefully sidewise like a somnam
bulist.

The long hounds bounded against the stable as if resolved to
throw it down.

" Infernal dog ! " thought Lloyd ; " but a pointer's a hound, too,
bred on a spaniel. — Open that door, Hannah ! " Lloyd raised his
voice. " If their niggers are not there, I'll fill both these loafers'
hounds with shot."

" They shall not go in ! " Hannah Ritner cried.

" Interfere with us at your peril, young man ! " the taller of the
ruffians said, but without any temper. " We've suspected this place
a good while, and now we've got a warrant to search it. The dogs
trailed right yer."

He produced his warrant, and, as he walked to Hannah Ritner
and presented it, his companion slipped in at the rotten stable-side.

Hannah moved a little way to examine the warrant, and the
stable-door, pushed open from within, showed nothing there but a
lady's horse, all saddled, and nibbling at his fodder.

The two slave-catchers hastily examined the inside of the stable ;

64 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

their dogs, assisted by Albion, smelling and seeking everywhere, but
in vain.

" We may be mistaken," said one of the men, a little pale, and
hitching up his wet water-proof boots, " but we shall now search the
house."

"There's nothing there," Lloyd Quantrell sternly interposed,
" and now I'll pepper both your dogs with my gun, as I have prom
ised."

Lloyd started at a quick stride toward the wagon at the end of
the lane. He had walked but a step, however, when a voice was
heard to cry :

" Coom on ! Te niggers is here, poys, and te reward is mine, py
Jing ! "

At the end of the little lane, the black boy before observed, with
the old negro man upon his back, was receding and trembling before
Lloyd Quantrell's gun cocked at Andrew Atzerodt's shoulder.

" I shoost found tis gun in te wagon," Atzerodt exclaimed, "and
took it and headed off tese niggers after tey had walked ofer me in
tis lane."

The hunters and their dogs dashed forward ; the young man
was overthrown and the old man fell heavily to the ground, and the
wild dogs set upon them till dragged away.

When silence was restored after the baying thunder, the old
black man still lay where he had fallen, and the younger man,
bloody and nearly naked after struggling with the dogs, looked
down upon him in despair.

" Father ! " he cried, " is you hurt ? Oh, speak to me, father ! "

With a painful effort the old man turned from his side to his
back, looked up into his son's face with a convulsive shudder of his
lineaments, and saying, "Honey, I's mos' gone," straightened out,
stone dead.

The young man knelt, clammy with the sweat for life and free
dom, and raising his hands, clasped together, above his head, sobbed
out the words :

"Father! Daddy! Don't die now, when I'se carried ye so
fur. I'll go back to ole missis and take it all on me ! "

The old man's jaw had fallen ; his gray hairs only moved in the
mountain zephyrs ; he seemed worn out with age and terror, and
very quiet in the light of God.

" Oh ! " shouted the young man, turning toward the spectators of

WITCH OF SMOKETOWN, 6$

the scene, his hands still lifted prayerfully together, " kill me, won't
you, and let me reign with daddy? — Reign, Lord !" he screamed
with sudden, awful ecstasy, " and let me die and reign with father,
too. I kin die under de whip if I kin reign ! "

His streaming eyes were strained with this religious despair, till
their gleaming pupils grew small upon the great white disks of his
eyeballs. He was a sinewy, high-purposed young man, and the
dogs came forward and glared at him as if he might be dangerous
yet.

But as he prayed for human hands to give him death, his own
long toil in night and storm, bramble and mountain, carrying that
old man, and the excitement of his sorrow, threw him in a fit upon
the earth — blind, silent, desolate.

The handcuffs of the Logans were fastened on his wrists, even
before he fell, and while he appealed to human nature and to God.

" Off with him, while he's quiet ! " spoke the elder Logan to his
brother. " There's no reward for the older chap, and so we'll leave
his body here for the neighbors, or the birds."

The two short, thick-set men, tying the unconscious negro's
limbs, lifted .him on their shoulders and started to go.

" Stop ! " interposed Andrew Atzerodt ; " I caught dat nigger,
and want my money for him."

" The reward is three hundred dollars," replied the slave-dealer;
" here is a hundred for your share, if you put in no further claim."

He passed a bank-note to the haggard man, who looked at it
with fervor and accepted it, and then, turning to Nelly Harbaugh in
a moment of revulsion and triumph, he cried :

" I earn nothing ? Heigh ? I can't support a wife ? Heigh ?
Take it, Nelly, and I'll pecome a nigger- ketcher and make you rich,

PY Jing •' "

The girl seemed attracted by so much money. She hesitated.

" Off with you ! " hoarsely spoke Luther Bosler. " It is te Sab
bath, and I would not fight. But this insult to a lady excites me.
Flood-money to a woman engaged to be married to an honest
man ? "

His slow, intense exasperation was like some giant's aroused
power — infectious, because so deep and real. Lloyd Quantrell felt
it, and wresting his gun from Atzerodt's hand, he cried :

" Luther, I'm with you. We two can clean all three of these
ruffians out."
5

66 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

He looked at his caps and raised the bright twisted barrel. The
dogs perceived disorder near and growled ominously.

"You are too good a citizen, Bosler, to break the law," ex
claimed the slave-taker. " Let us go in peace. We only do our
duty under the compromise laws of the United States and the
warrant of the State of Virginia."

" Put down that man ! " Lloyd Ouantrell said to the speaker,
with the cool zest of collision in him. *

"I'll put him down," the mountain ranger answered, "at the
town of Harper's Ferry, and not before ! "

The two girls became alarmed at the scene before them, and
Atzerodt moved toward his horse.

" Go ! " spoke Luther Bosler, with deadly calm. " God's ven
geance hovers ofer tis guilty land ! "

" It will come to-night ! " pealed the deep tones of Hannah Rit-
ner, as she walked forward. " Let me prophesy with head uncovered,
as the Scripture commands woman to do ! "

She threw her hat upon the ground and turned her face to the
south. Her long, wild hair she threw behind her shoulders with
sudden nervous energy, and her large dark eyes seemed inverted
and gazing inward, and her tones were like a woman's who had never
spoken with human people, but had wandered alone, talking loudly
with herself.

" These are the two angels sent to Sodom "—she indicated the
slave-catchers. " Turn in, my lords, and tarry in my house and
wash your feet ! For ye are compassed round. The mountain
fires shall drown ye and yon city to which ye go. The cry of the
poor, waxed great before God's face, calls for destruction, and it
will not be put off. I see the chimneys reel, the hearth-stone shat
tered, the churches hollow, and the rivers flowing red. Escape ?
Ye can not ! Brimstone and fire shall mingle this night, and the
smoke of the country go up as the smoke of a furnace ! "

She ceased, as if still talking to herself. The dogs whined, and
the men looked at each other.

" She's crazy," said Lew Logan.

"Come, leave her," spoke his brother Ben; "we are twenty
miles from Harper's Ferry."

They, went at a rapid walk up the gorge, followed by Atze
rodt.

A moment after they had disappeared from view, Hannah Rit-

BEAVER CREEK DUNKERS. 67

ner, resuming her natural tones, turned to the remaining persons
and said :

" You will be late at love-feast. I thought to go there with you.
But I must take a long ride."

As they were getting into the wagon, she went past on a nim
ble-footed saddle-horse, dropping them a courteous farewell.

" It seem* to me I have seen a horse like that before," Lloyd
Quantrell thought; "she's mounted like a huntress."

CHAPTER VIII.

BEAVER CREEK DUNKERS.

ALL made spasmodic remarks, with no great intelligibility of plan
or reflection, on the foregoing scene — the law to capture and return
fugitive slaves having been in recent years established by Congress
with the aid of all the great statesmen and the President of the United
States, for the purpose of composing the country, which seemed,
indeed, perfectly tranquil now, excepting many such agonizing epi
sodes as that just given, but which it was thought unpatriotic and
disturbing to describe or discuss.

" What was your fortune, Katy ? " Lloyd asked as they came to
the top of a hill and saw before them a bounding prospect of fields
uptilted, and woods in plumes and crowns, giving every well-plowed
farm a human look, like hair worn strong, yet comely.

" Hush, Lloyd ! " Katy said, " it was not good ; so let me be still
and think of the Lord's supper till we come to church."

" Yonder is Beaver Creek Bunker meeting-house," Nelly Har-
baugh spoke to Lloyd, indicating nearly two miles away a low
white building like a long school-house half sunken behind a moundy
brown hill, and defined against a higher crest of green. At the
foot of the hills they descended, woods and notches in the bottoms
were signs of a stream there, and the far eastern horizon rose up
like a mighty rampart as if it were an ocean's confines.

"That is the Antietam country," Luther exclaimed, "and
Peaver Creek is a part of it. Our mother, Nelly, was from Antie
tam, put she loved Peaver Creek pecause she met father there one
love-feast week. Tey slept in te garret of te church, as us Tun-

68 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

kers do, and many a marriage, Nelly, comes out of tese homely ways
we haf of living like te tisciples, watching with our Master, and
eating of te Passover lamb."

" Passover ! " exclaimed Lloyd ; " that's a Jew jubilee of some
kind, I reckon ? "

" Yes, and all te early Christians were Jews. When te Lord
slew te first-born of all te Egyptians, te Jews in Egypt killed a
lamb and marked teir doors, so te angel of death would see te
lamb's plood-mark and go past. Tey always eat te Passover after
ward, and so did te Christian Jews, and so do we. Tunkers and
Moravians, I pelieve, is all that does it now. Te sacrament is not
te love-feast, put te Lord's supper. We keep te feast ; we kill a
lamb, and Jew and Catholic is welcome. We don't drive te hun
gry away like Saint Paul ; for it can't pe any harm in peing hun
gry-"

" Ah ! Luther, '"Lloyd exclaimed, "Judas was at the last supper,
and got the sop above all the others. Money was what ailed him.
Are not you good Dutch fond of money ? "

" Luther worships it," Nelly Harbaugh exclaimed, patting her
lover on the back. "He and his father want to be rich and noth
ing else. If I was rich I would want more than that : education,
admiration, and splendor. But I can make Luther love them, too,
and bring them to me."

" Money," Luther reflected aloud, " is te convenient result of in
dustry and care. Whatever else we want, money fetches it. We
Dutch puys land with it for our children."

Nelly blushed as he looked at her.

"Her first blush," Lloyd Ouantrell thought, "since I have seen
her. Then she loves that man ! She will not blush for me."

"We can not spend our money, Lloyd," Luther continued, "if
we keep diligent, pecause we have no fashions. Our clothes is te
same from year to year. We do not take usury, so we do not take
risks, and we do not go to law to maintain corrupting lawyers who
create quarrels ; Tunkers never sue one another. Te man who
cheats, cheats only himself. We never fight, nor swear, nor shave
our peards ; so we require no barbers. Our women work and do
not strain the men for their luxury. Children are plenty here, and
we puy more land for tern. Education is good if it does not make
people saucy and tisputatious and lazy ; occupation is te only thing
that peats education. Te world has plenty if people live simple

BEAVER CREEK DUNKERS. 69

and love their neighbor, who is their fellow-man. That was a fel
low-man tey carried back to slavery. No good can come of it."

Lloyd Quantrell had prejudices the stronger for his superficial
good-humor, and he flushed as quickly as he spoke :

" You Dutch and Yankees — for I reckon you're the same breed
— declare war on interest and property till you get some of it. I
can say that from some experience," Lloyd remarked apologetically,
for Katy had raised her large eyes at his suppressed tones, " because
my father was a Yankee, and once had your ideas, but shaving
notes and leasing my niggers are now his chief interests."

" You must be rich," Nelly Harbaugh exclaimed. " Have you
got slaves, too ? "

" Yes," said Lloyd, " fifty slaves, worth to-day thirty-five thousand
dollars. That is, my father is my trustee for them. My mother
left me her slaves. My father leases them in Charles County."

" Has your father slaves also ? " Luther Bosler asked.

" No. He took my mother's land and personal property. The
slaves are more salable. I suspect he took the less advantageous
property because he had prejudices like yours, Luther."

Nelly Harbaugh stared at Lloyd with all her might, hearing he
was so rich.

" Katy," she cried, with a breath from her fine aquiline nose,
"your lover is the richest man you ever saw. Now make him
marry you ! "

This time the blush was Lloyd's. He glanced at Katy, whose
face was turned toward her lap, and she, looking up, now showed
her eyes all wet with tears.

" Darling," cried Lloyd, " Nelly has hurt your feelings. You do
not love me for my money."

"Oh!" Katy murmured through her sobs, " der auram mon
hut koe kaimat."

" What does she say ? " Lloyd asked of Nelly, drawing Katy's
head into his hands.

" She says, ' That poor man has no home.' I guess she's think
ing of that lazy, runaway slave."

" We can go to the feast," Katy sobbed convulsively, " to the
Lord's feast. He must go back and be whipped. Ich con sell net
shtande"

" If he can stand it, you can, Kate," Nelly Harbaugh answered,
gayiy. " Lloyd has fifty slaves, he says. Did you hear that ? "

jO KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

" I wish," said Katy, " that he was poor. It's selfish, but I do.
For now I see that the fortune-teller's verse is coming true."

" What was it, my gentle dove ? " whispered Lloyd.

" I nefer saw so many doves, I think, as this morning," Luther
Bosler remarked, overhearing the word. " See them flying down the
pike before us ! "

They all looked out, and behold ! the doves were in the stony
road, trotting across it or perching on the worm-fence rails at the
sides, or flying like little living windmills straight before, picking
sustenance in the grass, tame and trusting, coy and fluttered, and
seeming to wonder why the dog Albion chased them so fiercely,
while his companion, Fritz, kept demurely at the wagon's tail as if
Fritz also had religious inclinations as he drew near church.

" Wild pigeons come by millions on the high Alleghany Mount
ains," Lloyd exclaimed. "These ring, and ground, and turtle
doves are plentiful. They can't sing, and yet that fortune-teller
thought so, for she ignorantly said to me :

' When them killest everything,
Still the turtle-dove will sing.'

"Nonsense!" concluded Lloyd Quantrell, still looking at the flying
doves with queer feelings at his heart.

"Here is Peaver Creek mills," Luther remarked, "where te
Tunkers paptizes."

A large stone mill with low door and hoisting-gear in the gable
stood on the right, and beyond it was a mill-pond falling across a
stone dam, and bordered by thick willows and tall sycamores, and
in the running waste below the dam were islets, over one of which
a noble water-oak spread its branches.

Beyond the creek a large stone house and some barns clung be
tween the water and the hill, and on the left of the road, by a store
and post-office, were a few other limestone dwellings and barns,
giving the hidden hamlet that picturesqueness and mystic social
drone in which old mills resemble old matrons with their spinning-
wheels and family brood.

People were seen going to other churches off on the right in
smart spring wagons or finer market carryalls.

Luther let down his bridle-reins and gave the lines to Nelly, who
drove the horses into the creek to drink while he crossed by a foot-
log. As the horses took their fill gratefully, the old mill seemed to

BEAVER CREEK DUNKERS. 71

sleep and snore ; two kingfishers flashed over the mirror of the dam
without a cry, and both dogs also drank, while still the gray and
brown doves fed along the road as tame as chickens.

" Going to the Antietam ? " Lloyd mused aloud, looking at the
clear water. " That is a stream of which I never heard. How
destitute is our country of history ! "

Luther climbed in as Nelly drove the horses through Beaver
Creek, hub deep, and the Sabbath doves again led the way along
toward the Dunker church, while in the fields were silent birds with
green wings and scarlet heads, peeping up to see, and dropping into
the blue clover again.

The church soon rose out of the ground, its limestone walls al
most as white as marble, and the people and carriages and riding-
horses were seen around it, and the graveyard appeared beyond
with its delicate white tombstones in the grass.

Coming nearer, a large, open, grassy space or common bordered
the road, and here Luther turned in, the low gable of the church
extending toward them its end door and semicircular white window
above. It stood a hundred rods back upon a little plateau, the
slopes of which were covered with small fruit-trees and a garden,
and below the garden was the graveyard. A fence and gate
divided the church from the common, and near the gate were hitch-
ing-racks, a shed, and water-trough.

Luther drove to the rack and tied his horses. A hundred or more
worldly looking rustics saw the Dunker family descend and pass
through the open gate, and gazed at Lloyd Quantrell's tall, city-clad
figure with surprise, hardly dissembled by politeness.

Nelly Harbaugh, gathering up her hoops and flounces, spoke to
several of these intruders as she passed through them. Little Katy,
with her eyes to the ground, took her brother's arm and passed in.

The meeting-house was plain and long, and its low ceiling ad
mitted no galleries. Wooden benches were stretched along its
width, and faced that only side which had no door, while two aisles
crossed each other at the middle of the church, entered by a door
in each of the other three walls.

The door opposite the gable was open, and looking there Lloyd
saw, to his astonishment, a great fireplace and an immense cook-
stove before it, and in the fireplace something was roasting from a
crane and hooks, while the stove was nearly red-hot, and large pots
were steaming upon it and emitting the savor of animal food.

72 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

The kitchen door closed in a moment, and Lloyd looked in
vain for the pulpit, but saw nothing resembling it, not even a plat
form.

A man came down a winding stairway in the corner of the
church, and closed a cupboard door there behind him, and, pass
ing to some naked tables at the blank side of the church, opened
a little trap in the wall and took out a Bible and hymn-book. This
man was dressed, like Jake Bosler and Luther, in a coat of dark
drab color, or rather pepper-and-salt mixture, and vest and trousers
of the same, the coat with tails to its square, jacket-like body, and
the coat-collar standing up.

As the man lined out a hymn in English, Luther Bosler took the
front seat on one side of the preacher, beside his father and other
Dunker men, and Katy took the front seat on the other side of the
aisle among the women, and, slipping off her sun-bonnet, sat in her
white night-cap, as it seemed to be, corresponding to the dress of
her companions.

Lloyd hesitated where to sit, till Nelly Harbaugh drew him into
a long seat at right angles to the preacher and to Katy and to the
congregation. Behind them was the cupboard door opening upon
the garret stairs.

" The church will be full of the family," Nelly whispered — "they
call the membership the ' family ' — and there may be no room for
us."

The singing had already commenced, and Katy's child's voice
and Luther's strong tenor were heard in the strain, and without
further delay Lloyd Quantrell, catching the tune, also dropped his
bass notes in, and Katy thrilled to hear the bold, manly music, going
to her heart.

The Dunker men and women turned their faces toward the
church corner to see the brown-haired, broad -headed young man
unaffectedly singing there, and then they looked at Katy, wonder
ing.

Lloyd Quantrell was a large man, several inches more than six
feet high, with a broad back, large hips, straight legs, and erect car
riage. His hands and feet were large and strong, his neck was
powerful ; his eyes were a greenish gray, very clear-sighted, with
large dark centers, and he had jaws full of strong, white, clean
teeth, almost too large for a gentleman.

A boyish expression reduced the strength of his features, some

BEAVER CREEK DUNKERS.

of which, as his mouth and jaws and breadth of cheek-bones, were
indicative of high animal quality, but his nose was thick at the
bridge and more solid than sensitive ; his ears were too small for
his face, and seemed to belong to a wroman, and his forehead was a
little beetling and rugged, as if things built their nests in it rather
than bathed in a limpid brain near by.

Flexibility was in that countenance, however, despite the might
of the features, but it seemed to be gayety and want of care rather
than want of strength, and at instants something like an idea, or a
purpose, halted a minute in the eyes, suffused with mischief, and
then passed on.

Ready, joyous, mildly imaginative, voluptuous, nearly tender —
one feared, while Lloyd smiled, that some day he might think and
frown.

He was now looking with a Marylander's patriotism at a kind of
worship he had never before heard of.

The preacher had prayed, and was saying something in broken
English, and one by one the brethren first, and then the Dunker
sisters, arose and passed by him and whispered, and he made for
each a mark in a book.

" What is it ? " Lloyd asked in a whisper.

" They're making a preacher," whispered Nelly Harbaugh.
" After love-feast they'll tell his name." *

The window was open near Quantrell, and showed the Blue
Ridge or South Mountain soft as a line of deep-green melons
with some dull citron in their rind, lying along the horizon, but
so near to the eye, it seemed as if they ripened on the window-
sill.

So limpid was the air, so soft the mountain tints, Lloyd thought
they were his morning thoughts reflected in the mirror of his con
science, and softly impelled onward by his delighted heart ; yet, as
he looked, shadows of clouds rippled those bars of mountain, like
swans in lakes, and they seemed transparent and to reveal their
dreams.

He watched them as if they were his own body and limbs re
flected there by the subtle medium of love, as it diffused from
Katy's eyes.

Tingling, warming, ebbing, flowing, he felt his blood quicken to

* A Dunker love-feast generally occupies two or more week-days. For
purposes of narration it is here condensed into a Sunday.

74 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

the love he encouraged yet forbade, and the mountains stretching
across the pastoral upland flushed, cooled, sparkled, darkened, and
thrilled with his own feelings.

He half closed his eyes and still more wondrous grew the illu
sion that, while his heart was here in the meeting, his form was
extended yonder, walling up the Catoctin Valley, and in a blessed
trance.

He saw the mountains breathe and expand, as he drank in their
air ; when he exhaled his breath, they seemed to fall like his own
chest ; he rubbed his eyes and challenged them with a look, and
then they seemed to dimple and smile like a child asleep, on whom
its mother looks and looks too near, so that her breath wakes play
fulness in its oblivion.

" Why is everything so painfully distinct, so full of meaning and
presentiment, so rapt, so haunted and so haunting ? " Lloyd asked
himself. " Is it love ? I will not have it so, but so it is ! "

The crowd outside the church increased in numbers and irrev
erence. They were playing games upon the slope, " Puss in the
Corner " and kissing-games like " Copenhagen," and now and then
loud laughter, or the scream of some hoyden, broke the quiet tones
of the preacher and the singing.

Within the church nearly every seat was full of communicants :
plain men in long, straight hair falling back upon their shoulders,
and beards unshaved and unshorn except the mustache, which none
wore ; women in well-fitting black frocks with a little cape sewed
upon them, and small white caps, almost transparent, tied beneath
the chin and showing the smooth hair combed within.

Some of these women were comely to look upon, with skins of
temperance and eyes of zest ; others were fat and dull, and merely
amiable ; and others yet were old and wrinkled, and submissive,
like women in whom beauty and life have ceased to strive, and God
draws near as if he were no foe, but one as familiar in the house as
once the baby had been in the cradle.

Katy sat there conscious, repentant, seeking, listening to the
words with submission, fluttered by worldly passions, ready to cry
out with pain, tender with gratitude.

Her beautiful head might have been the egg of the divine con
ception, waiting eternally to be born into life and goodness.

Her thick, dark hair left of her forehead only a narrow tablet,
made whiter by the straight eyebrows ; and, poised below, like

BEAVER CREEK DUNKERS. 75

moons upon the sea, her eyes gave night and glory to every
thing.

All the rest of her face seemed immature, but those great eyes to
have been finished in her childhood, and, like large posies upon a
slender stem, her delicate neck reached up to bear their weight. . Her
form was still a child's, barely budded ; her sloping shoulders and
long, thin arms, and apparent length above the waist, showed one
still growing and aspiring to more stature. Her small white cap
gave her the appearance of sitting up in bed. Lloyd saw her hymn-
book in her hand, and thought of her belief in witches, strong as her
faith in God ; and his brain framed the words :

" The dear little Dutch darling ! "

Turning to Nelly Harbaugh, he beheld a finer woman in every
thing but sensibility, to whose eagle strength Katy continued the
similitude of the dove.

Nelly had a Roman nose, giving masculinity to her face, a nose
which a man might have envied, so finely cut it was, and so like
leadership. Beneath it was an upper lip of almost equal strength,
and the blue eyes and heavy arched eyebrows equally became a
resolute, ambitious man's face. But the lower lip and chin, how
ever heroically modeled — the chin square — took the softness of
maidenhood. The eyes also looked longing, as for love.

Her form was strong, her shoulders could bear burdens, her
yellow hair was magnificent ; in her rude flowers and bright print
dress some of the style of her fine natural carriage was conveyed.
The hand in her lap was large but fine, and the arm beside it, which
Lloyd drew into his own, was modeled handsomely, and hard like ivory.

" Don't ! " Nelly whispered, "you sly, rich man. They're going
to make the preacher now."

There was already a commotion of some kind about the front of
the congregation, and new arrivals pouring in forced the mere spec
tators from their benches, and, their places being demanded, Lloyd
opened the stairway door, and he and Nelly went up a few steps
and could see over the heads of all.

" My Lord ! " Nelly Harbaugh whispered, " Luther is the new
preacher ! "

The elder minister or Bishop was standing by Luther Bosler, and
little Katy was between them. The minister shook Katy's hand,
and, putting his arm around Luther's neck, deliberately kissed him
upon the bearded mouth.

76 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

Lloyd Quantrell pulled the door nearly fast, to hide his involun
tary laughter.

"Don't mock us!" Nelly Harbaugh said, with a look of pain.
" I shall have to stand there with him when we are married, and
promise to do his work while he keeps the church together. They
don't often make single men preachers. Katy takes my place to
day."

Opening the door, Lloyd saw a procession of the members, one
by one rising and going toward the altar-space, and there each man
kissed Luther Bosler, each woman kissed Katy Bosler, the women
shook Luther's hand, the men shook Katy's hand, and so they passed
on, till Jake Bosler's turn came, and he fastened his wild, hairy face
to his son's mouth and rich dark beard, and coming away full of
tears and emotion, was heard to articulate :

" Luter — Himmel — mootter — Bi'm-by ! ''

Lloyd had to laugh again, and pulled the door upon his delight,
never having seen in his life one man kiss another.

" Excuse me, Nelly," he sighed between his spasms of laughter,
"but this grizzly-bear kissing really beats the Dutch ! "

" You must kiss men, too," Nelly said, " when you become a
Dunker. Oh, Katy will make you one ! She never gives up any
thing."

This increased Lloyd's laughter. When he again widened the
aperture, Luther Bosler was standing alone, and the brethren and
sisters were in prayer. As they rose and burst into singing, the
young Baltimorean again contributed his melodious voice, and Katy
stole a glance to see her lover, as far in piety as music would ad
vance him, singing straight toward her humble heart.

"Oh," thought Katy, " if he could only know how religion makes
us love ! He will love the world till God brings him to me."

She heard her brother commence to speak, and something al
most like pride started in her mind, that she had a brother great and
wise enough to be a minister.

Lloyd Quantrell also heard, in spite of the silly laughter and in
terruptions through the church-windows, the manly tones of Katy's
brother, reading from the Bible the epistle old Saint Paul dispatched
to them under the golden cornices of Corinth, in the day when, like a
carrier-bird, the Christian carried the straw from the manger to build
a nest in the acanthus capitals of the temple columns of the pagan
gods.

BEAVER CREEK DUNKERS. jj

With a slightly reproving look at the careless crowd without,
Luther read :

" One is hungry and another is drunken. What ! have ye not
houses to eat and to drink in ? Despise ye the church of God?

" As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do shew
the Lord's death till he come.

" Whosoever shall eat and drink unworthily shall be guilty of
the body and blood of the Lord.

" Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry
one for another.

" / would have ye know that the head of every man is Christ ;
and the head of the woman is the man."

Luther turned from the word and began to speak, plainly, slowly,
modestly.

He told of the long struggle to extricate the Christian life from
the pomp of ecclesiasticism and the caprices of theologians, and find
in it the example of the disciples.

Princes and armies surrounded the Lutherans and kept them
worldly ; the Calvinists imitated their enemies, and wanted rebellion
and conquest. Some found comfort in an intellectual formula like
"justification by faith," or "the republic of the saints."

A few simple men like Menno and Landis, some of them Catho
lic priests, some students by prayer of the four Evangelists, resisted
all conformity and formality, clinging to the holy life of the Son of
woman.

Like a little thread from the land of Palestine trailing to the
Alpine valleys, where the Waldenses lived in brotherhood, and
thence to the springs of the Rhine and Danube, the tradition of the
simple truth preceded the worldly Reformation which was irritated
by its perseverance.

The spirit of St. Peter with the sword, the spirit of St. Paul with
his dogma, resented the quiet faith of St. James, who was baptized
again, and mirrored his brother Jesus in his calm heart.

Burned alive, banished, forbidden sepulture, exposed in cages to
starve, torn between contending armies, the Baptist brethren, Swiss,
Dutch, or German, bided their time till William Penn, at the end of
one hundred and fifty years, heard of them, and opened the New
WTorld to those faithful sheep.

Non-resistants, submissionists, with an unpaid clergy, without
other doctrine than what Christ did, they preserved in their West-

78 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

ern vales the brotherhood of the disciples — not faith, not chiefly
hope, but greatest of them all, love, which could die, but could not
hate.

A tender intelligence and conviction spread from Luther's tones
and eyes, and Lloyd forgot his uncouth dress and shaggy hair.

Luther was animated, by his engagement to Nelly, to dwell upon
the family rest, where, at the table, every day, sat the almost visible
Christ, saying, " Abide with me."

Quantrell turned to Nelly, and her eyes were wet with tears.

CHAPTER IX.

THE SACRAMENT.

A SUDDEN rising of the congregation, and clearing of certain
benches, pressed the Bunker people back upon the spectators, and
again the twain withdrew into the staircase, and this time they
passed into the loft. It was lighted by the round window in the
end, and, looking down into the yard, they saw the parasites of the
love-feast eating bread, and meat, and pickles, and sweet things, as
they came in procession from the kitchen door.

The loft was divided by pine planks across the middle, and the
men's side, which they were in, was strewn with clean straw and
some straw mattresses, for the lodgers at the love-feast.

" It will be full," Nelly said. " The Bunkers love to imagine
themselves the disciples living together, like the Christian family.
How can I ever be good enough for such a life ? "

She seemed in real penitence and awe, and it occurred to Lloyd
Quantrell to test the depth of her feeling. He took her hand and
drew her to him, and in the low garret passed his arm around
her.

" Bo you love this obscure preacher," he asked, "so much that,
if I were to tell you I admired you, you would refuse for him — Bal
timore ? "

Her eyes shone, and next they flashed. She pushed him away.

" Bo not deceive yourself, Lloyd," she said, with dignity. " You
can not deceive me. Katy is your passion. If she were not, I
would prefer Luther Bosler to you."

THE SACRAMENT. 79

" You are complimentary, queen ! "

" You are rich, I suppose, but you have no ambition. He has —
to be a good man. That is better than being a play-boy. Oh, how
I love that man ! " Nelly exclaimed, bursting into tears.

" Forgive me ! " Lloyd spoke, in an impulse of respect and re
gret. " I had not given you credit for such feelings. Why do you
cry ? "

" Because I am so absolutely unworthy of him," answered the
girl, permitting herself to be caressed. " He is peaceful and just ; I
am full of restless things, and know that I am beautiful. Am L not,
Lloyd ? " she asked, almost with eagerness, suddenly drying her
tears. " You live in a great city : do I compare with the fine ladies
there ? "

" Few have such splendid style," Lloyd replied, slowly and with
judgment. " But it is no place for you. Men who would marry
you in Baltimore would not have the respect for you — they do not
possess the sober merits — that Luther has."

" What can I do ? " Nelly Harbaugh asked. " If I could make
Luther an ambitious man, and turn his mind to the world, we might
be made for each other. We are for each other. I love him with
fear and rest. But out yonder " — she pointed beyond the mountains
— " is a life that often calls me. I think I have talent as well as
beauty."

"• Beware, Nelly," Lloyd spoke low and sagely ; " you heard what
Luther read, ' The head of the woman is the man '-

" ' And the head of the man ' — my man — ' is Christ ' ; that con
demns me to be buried in these mountains — a Dunker preacher's
wife."

" But you are poor and he is prosperous. He has been indul
gent to you. He knows it will be hard to -reduce you to his image,
but, in love, he takes the chance."

The girl's face softened in all its bold and spirited outlines, and
she seemed profoundly moved.

" Why can't I feel religious ?" she asked. " Why won't I sub
mit ? What makes me fear when I ought to be so happy ? Last night
I would have married Andrew Atzerodt. To-day, engaged to the
man I respect above all in the world, I want to tear him from his
content and conscience."

She threw herself upon one of the freshly filled beds, with her
head in her hands.

80 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

Her almost extravagant splendor of form, and straightness of
neck, and spine, and limbs, and her length of tresses, in color like
the straw, Lloyd Quantrell beheld, with rising dislike and dread of
this woman continuing to be Katy's friend.

* Sis," spoke Lloyd, with cool familiarity, " you must be what
they call an adventuress. It means a woman who would rather fool
many men than not cheat herself. Be honest with this honest fel
low Luther, and quarrel with him to-day ! "

Nelly Harbaugh started up, and the spark of temper in her brain
gave passionate character to her countenance, which Lloyd admired
without losing his coolness.

" And you be honest with Luther's honest sister ! " the girl ex
claimed. " Take your advice to yourself. God knows I love Lu
ther Bosler, and always shall ! "

Jake Bosler's head appeared above the stairs looking at them,
both in ill temper now, and he said :

" Nelly — Lloyd — love-feast— Bi'm-by ! "

When they descended the wooden steps, the church had been
darkened by closing all the shutters, and some tin lamps and can
dlesticks gave, with their flame, the aspect of night to the curious
scene.

Every third bench had been turned over and made into a table
upon the other two. The front benches remained full of worship
ers, and the kitchen door, wide open, disclosed some beams of day,
and also a pantry of dishes and of jars, and the stove and fireplace
with diminished heat.

Through this door Dunker men were bringing white table-cloths,
and piles of tin pans and plates, and iron spoons and knives and
forks. All was clatter and decisive tread, yet with sobriety and re
spect.

After the tables were ready, large tubs were brought in, steaming
with broth, and meat and pickles and apple-butter were placed up
and down the table, and bread, in slices and quarter loaves.

Next two tubs were brought in and set one before the men and
one before the women on the front line of benches.

" What's coming now? " Lloyd Quantrell inquired.

" The feet- washing," whispered Nelly Harbaugh.

By this time the tables, covering much of the church space, were
occupied everywhere with waiting rows of Dunker brethren and sis
ters sitting neatly and by sexes. The dim light shone on the silver

THE SACRAMENT. gl

hairs of many, and here and there were sleeping babies at their
mothers' breasts.

Suddenly the Dunker bishop began to read the story of the last
supper, from St. John :

" Jesus riseth from supper and laid aside his garments."

At this two stalwart Bunkers arose and took off their coats, and
two women arose on the women's side.

" And he took a towel and girded himself."

The attending Dunkers wrapped towels around their waists, and
knelt by the tubs of clean water.

" After that he poureth water into a basin, and began to wash
the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he
was girded. . . . Jesus said, ' If I wash thee not, thou hast no part
with me.' "

The Dunker men and women on the front row were taking off
their shoes and stockings.

Jake Hosier's feet seemed to stray around everywhere as they
were disclosed under the lamp-light.

Little Katy's feet barely flashed a moment in the Dunker wom
an's hands, and the sound of splashing water was heard. An in
stant more, Lloyd saw the little girl's feet shine in the woman's
towel as they were being wiped.

Then the Dunker quadrant went on washing and wiping others,
till their own turn came, when they submitted to be also bathed and
wiped.

The men kissed every man whose feet they washed ; the women
kissed every woman after wiping her feet.

A disposition to laugh was deterred by the solemn reading of
the gospel — at times in Luther's deliberate voice :

" If I, then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye
also ought to wash one another's feet. Now I have given you an
example, that ye should do as I have done to you."

" Is that in the Bible ? " Lloyd Quantrell asked himself. " Then
perhaps these people are the only obedient disciples."

The feet-washing ended with a hymn, and then the love-feast
began.

" Lloyd ! " a resonant voice called. It was Luther Bosler, unable
to press his way to where they stood.

" Come, sir," Nelly Harbaugh whispered, " or they will all be
looking at us."
6

82 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

Hardly aware why, Lloyd followed the girl, for whom Katy had
kept a seat beside herself.

"You sit over here, Lloyd; Katy wants you to do so," Luther
Bosler spoke, showing Quantrell a place among the Bunker men.

These with kind countenances seemed to welcome him. In a
minute the tin plates down the table were filled with hot mutton
broth, and a man handed Lloyd a spoon and motioned to the full
plate before him.

As the young man put his spoon into it, three other Dunker men
did the same, all eating from the same dish.

With difficulty Lloyd refrained from choking himself with the
savory mouthful, such laughter shook his stomach.

" By George ! some Dutchman will kiss me next," Lloyd thought,
" and then I must either laugh out, or hit him."

But the broth was good, and the four men continued to eat to
gether ; and one Dunker gave Lloyd some pickles, another handed
him a slice of bread spread with meat and apple- butter, and a third
pushed over a cup of coffee.

Quantrell adapted himself to the strange conditions easily, ob
serving that all over the church, by fours, the men and women were
eating ; and he now remembered that it was at such primitive feast
ing when Christ had spoken to "one leaning on his bosom," saying,
" He shall betray me to whom I shall give a sop when I have
dipped it."

Quantrell had hardly thought of this, when a voice in broken
English rang through the church :

" And after te sop, Satan entered into him. Den said Jesus,
' Dat tou doest, do quickly ! ' And Judas had te bag. He den, hav
ing received te sop, went immediately out, and it was night."

A sudden, strange fear fell upon the young hunter.

He wondered if this did not describe himself, who carried the
game-bag, and had no right part in this solemn feast before the
crucifixion of his Lord !

Old legends learned in the Catholic college, old ghosts and mira
cles and coincidences, came back to his mind. The dim candles
and lamps seemed to be the same which shone upon the Last Sup
per, and these long-bearded, simple men were the real disciples, and
yonder women were the friends of the Madonna and her gifted boy.

" Where, then, is Christ ? " Lloyd Quantrell asked himself in
scarce admitted awe — "the Christ I shall betray?"

THE SACRAMENT. 83

He looked up, almost expecting to see the halo-lighted face and
searching eyes.

The nearest to them in beauty and pity and glory, were those of
Katy Bosler, looking at him !

A hymn was now lined out, as the love-feast was done, and
some one handed Lloyd a great hymn-book in the old German lan
guage. He looked at the title with astonishment, as the translation
had been penciled beneath the old black German text :

" The song of the solitary and abandoned Turtle-Dove."

He wondered if he could be dreaming.

No ; the words were really there, and the date and printing-place
of the book :

"EPHRATA, PENNA., 1747."

" Here, Lloyd," the voice of Luther Bosler said again, " Katy
wants you at the communion ! "

He found himself sitting on the front bench among the Dunker
men. A cup was in his hand filled with grape-wine, strong and
sweet, and in the other hand was a cake of curious bread. On each
side of him the Dunker men sat with the very expressions he had
seen in old engravings of the Lord's Supper.

" I haf desired to eat tis passover with you," spoke the resonant
voice again, " pefore I suffer. ... Dis is my pody which is gifen
for you. . . . Dis cup is te New Testament in my plood, to pe shed
for you. . . . Pehold ! te hand of him dat petrayeth me, is with me
on dis table ! "

Lloyd gazed up again. It seemed to be Katy's illuminated eyes
which had spoken.

He drank the wine, and the bread stuck in his throat.

Slowly there rose upon his mind a feeling of religious consecra
tion.

He had been called to the Lord's Supper like other fishermen of
old, and had dared to drink the blood of the Virgin and the divine
Father, whose love had overshadowed her. This day he had taken
part in the crucifixion of his Lord.

He thought his mother might be here, who had so fervently be
lieved all this mystery, and dedicated him to Heaven with her dying
breath. He looked among the women to see if one like her might
not be happy now, in the wondrous accident of his coming to this
supper and eating with these humble Christians.

84 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

Katy was all he saw, but the Dunker bishop was reading :

" ' Lord, why can not I follow thee now ? I will lay down my
life for thy sake ! ' '

A sense of wishing to be a nobler, gentler man, followed the
words, in the young man's heart.

" Verily, verily," continued the bishop, " the cock shall not crow
till thou hast denied me ! "

The cock did not crow, but a loud bark disturbed the wor
ship.

It was Hosier's dog, Fritz, standing in the kitchen door of the
church and barking for some one.

Lloyd's foot touched something soft.

Crouched at his feet, whither Albion had stealthily insinuated
himself, that dog was lying and looking into Lloyd's face with an
unsocial discontent.

The moment's serious feelings passed from the young man's
mind.

Lloyd rose and motioned his dog to leave the church, and led
the way.

The Bunkers had commenced to pray, and did not look up to
see him go.

Mingling with the idle spectators in the church-yard, who had
been fed like friends of the members, Lloyd fed the two dogs, and
looked at his own with some dislike.

This dog was of full English pointer blood and valuable. Lloyd
Quantrell's father, in a moment of unexpected generosity at the club,
had allowed five hundred dollars to an English gentleman for his
dog, said English gentleman having lost to Mr. Abel Quantrell one
thousand pounds in a night's encounter at draw-poker, and there
fore having no further use for the dog, which he had brought over
to assist him in killing a vast vision of American game.

He had gone to the club, met Mr. Quantrell and party, liked
their terrapin and wine, and, after an introduction to the pleasures
of the city, relapsed to his normal love of game, and particularly
of this rapid, bantering, bluffing, mettlesome American institution
which had been till recently unknown east of Kentucky.

With a full knowledge of the game of poker, and but little of
plover and partridge, the young man had obeyed a letter of instruc
tions from his father — in answer to his own for a further remittance
— by taking passage for Liverpool, leaving no lasting recollections

THE SACRAMENT. 85

of himself in Baltimore except this blooded pointer, which, in his
honor, was called Albion.

Albion was trim-built like all the pointer class, and, except for
his speed and activity, would have been a dandy among dogs. But
his strength of loins and hips, and the powerful curve of his hind
legs, and a certain blunt strength of neck as it solidly joined the
more delicate head, indicated him further as a pugilist dandy, such
as were not uncommon in those days, in Baltimore.

Withal, he was more alert than bold, and had his insinuating side.

Looking into his hazel, yellow eyes, soft yet with flame, as in the
Kentucky beauty, their pupils almost black like deep wells in am
ber, one said, " What depth of sensibility ! "

But closely watched, a sly, possibly sneaking management of
those beautiful eyes, arrested the critical student. They did not like
close watching, and would languidly close as if just dropping away
to doze, but would open half-way and peep, and, if the spectator
turned his head, would be found wide open, taking an inventory and
laying away gossip.

Again, the high blood and careful inbreeding of Albion, though
expressed in his warm head-colors and almost dainty white skin,
could, in the observer's skeptical mood, be spotted with a certain
manginess.

Superficially he was a beautiful white animal, with a small, deli
cate, lemon-colored bar on the back, and a head where the dark-
brown hanging ear, like a loop of lady's hair, fell from reddish,
deer-colored brows, whose warm tint extended around the eyes and
to the top of the brain, and back a little way on the neck, opening
to let a streak of white, with a diamond form between the brows,
go down the profile and cover all the muzzle except the brown kid
nose, so sensitive, familiar, yet precise, as if it were the organ of
fastidious taste, and found sublimated odor in a lady's palm.

But that white muzzle was spotted with a dirty gray, as if ob
scurer tastes in the animal had led it to eat the bird it betrayed to
the gunner.

Spots less objectionable, yet spots, like freckles on a gentleman,
went all over the white back and flanks, slight yet visible to exami
nation.

His flews just overhung the mouth without dropping, as in the
lips of a man with no unclean habit except a mouth full of tobacco-
juice.

86 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

And as for Albion's tail, it was like a cart-whip well flogged out,
beginning as if it were meant to be grasped by a large hand, then
dropping off to a mere string. It was still his courageous part, and,
although his eyes looked mild and delicate, when another dog came
along his tail would go out and up, like a wasp's sting, and, if that
was not alarming enough, he would stiffen his back, lift his jowls,
and show his row of grinders. Yet often he would affect sleep till
the dog had passed.

He spared no birds, but seldom took up a challenge even from a
terrier. It was generally remarked that he had a delicate barrel of
a muzzle, and an intellectual, literary contour, but often it looked hol
low as an exquisite's in consumption.

These defects in a valuable animal could have occurred to only
censorious people. Almost everybody beheld the finest pointer in
Maryland, soft yet with dignity, like a mistress, but a king's one.

At this moment his raveled ear, still raw and bloody, made the
dog feverish and snappish.

"I have heard," thought Ouantrell, "of the devil taking the
form of a dog, and I begin to be afraid of mine."

Jake Bosler, when the congregation was dismissed, introduced
Lloyd to many of the Dunker men, all of whom seemed to be neigh
borly and cordial, and asked Lloyd to come to see them.

Luther had received an order to attend some Dunker conference
at another church such a considerable distance off, that he requested
his party to get at once into the dearborn, and Jake Bosler took
Lloyd by the hand, and saying —

"Coom twict — coom, Lloyd — Bi'm-by " — Jake executed the
Dunker kiss upon the blushing Baltimorean.

They drove away to the south by a cross-road, and getting on
the great National road, turned off to the west and crossed the An-
tietam Creek at a mill-town, by a bridge of such unconsciously beau
tiful stone arches that it seemed never to have been made by man,
but to have condensed from the limestone mists, in the forms of
those old mill-wheels which stirred the sluggish current.

Between sycamores and willows the green Antietam, like a veil,
went winding among the corn-clad hills, and, at a cross-lane beyond
it, Luther turned up a scarcely trodden track where ledges of lime
stone cropped out here and there and crumbled into clover.

Passing through some corn-fields whose long barrels and plumes
were stacked in rusty lines, they saw at the side of another turnpike-

THE SACRAMENT. %j

road in a beautiful woods of hickory, oak, and chestnut, a square,
chunky brick church with a steep roof. The clean, park-like woods
revealed the limestone strata in parallel lines, and separate rocks
and bowlders strewn about ; and here, descending, Katy spread the
lunch from her basket.

Nelly Harbaugh was very attentive to Luther, and when he
went into the Dunker church she begged to go with him also.

"I am afraid to let you leave me an hour," sighed the girl;
'' there is such comfort, Luther, in being with you."

Then Lloyd and Katy strolled to a neighboring burial-ground,
and, sitting there in sight of the mountains, felt all the tender joys
of love compressed and ardent.

He told her all about himself, his temptations and his needs, the
instincts for a purer life within him and the consolation of this great
round day, hastening to its eve — the first eventful one in all his life.

" Lloyd," said Katy, " I feel all you say, too. But it is danger
ous for a poor girl to trust a man like you. I haf been thinking
about it, and I haf been warned."

" Katy," said Lloyd, "you have kept a secret from me. What
evil thing did that fortune-teller say ? "

"Here it is," answered Katy, "in English. I can make poetry
a little."

" Read it, you timid little goose ! "

Katy read, between shyness and a shudder, these lines :

" In this hand I see a ring :
Thou shalt lose it, pretty thing !
Wading for it down a brook,
Thou shalt find it by a book."

" What do you make of it, Katy ? " Lloyd asked.

" Some one will try to deceive me."

" I never will, my darling ! "

" Do you mean to marry me, perhaps ? " asked Katy, rallying all
her courage to her eyes.

" Yes. I have my father's consent to get. He is a Catholic.
But I will engage myself this day to make you my wife. Give me
your dear little hand ! "

She placed it in his with the excitement of delight and fear. He
slipped a ring upon her ringer which he had worn upon his watch-
stem.

88 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

" Katy," said he, " that was my mother's mourning and wedding
ring ; her father, the foremost gentleman in Maryland, left it to her
by his will. Take it with this kiss, and promise to be my wife."

"Whenefer you ask me, Lloyd," the girl replied with eyes
gemmed with bright tears. " You haf taken of Christ's sacrament
with me this day, and your heart is clean. We are near my moth
er's grave, who went to Antietam church."

He kissed her as purely as the fond young heart in passion can
intend, and then, opening her basket, she brought out her accordion.

" I had nothing else I loved so much as this," said Katy, "and I
fetched it to gif you. When you play it you will, I hope, think of
me ; for when you are gone, I can play it no more."

He felt the tears come to his own eyes as he touched the keys
and valves, and played a little love-tune in the fields of Antietam.

" What's that ? " Quantrell asked, when he had finished.

" Some other music, somewhere," Katy replied. " May pe it's on
te canal ; for te Potomac River is pack yonder through te woods."

" I thought I heard a drum and fife in the corn-field yonder,"
Lloyd spoke.

" I thought I heard soldiers' music too," Katy whispered. " Te
dog hears it, Lloyd."

The big gray mastiff stood with his ears up. Albion was fairly
gamboling, as if he danced to the mystic instruments.

The sound, if it were not the insects in the trees or cro^s, died
away, and only the Dunkers were heard singing in their lowly
meeting.

" Lloyd," Katy murmured, " let us go stand at mother's grave
and say te Words."

CHAPTER X.
ISAAC SMITH'S FARM.

A SMALL town of limestone, log, and painted brick houses, with
a sunny square in the middle, was near the Bunker church, and as
Luther and Lloyd rode the uncoupled horses into an arched spring
of water which gushed from the ground close by, a person came to
ask them if they could deliver a letter on one of the mountain roads.

" It's to a Mr. Isaac Smith, who rents our farm there," said the

ISAAC SMITH'S FARM.

letter-bearer. " We want him to send our cow up here to Sharps-
burg."

" I don't go that road," Luther replied. " My horses will pe tired,
and I shall cross te mountain at Crampton's Gap."

"I'll take the letter," Lloyd exclaimed, " for I shall leave you,
Luther, at the road this side the mountain, and walk down to Har
per's Ferry. I know Isaac Smith very well."

They crossed the Antietam by another blue-stone bridge of arches,
hidden under the hills, and late in the afternoon reached a wild road
which ran parallel with the Blue Ridge.

" I must save my horses, Lloyd, or I would trife you to te Ferry ;
put tey must plow pefore sunrise. Let me gif you a Tunker brother's
kiss pefore you go."

Again the bearded mouth of Luther met Lloyd's nearly hairless
lips. Nelly Harbaugh said : " Lloyd, we are friends : I forgive you,
and shall disappoint your fears of me." Little Katy received the
last kiss, and again the tears shone in her large eyes as Lloyd said,
" I won't go home, my darling, till I see you again."

He stood waving his hat till the rattle of the disappearing wagon
turned into that sound he had heard by the Antietam church — of a
fife and a drum, in the distance, toward Crampton's Gap.

" These mountains are haunted everywhere," Lloyd Ouantrell
said, and turned down the stony road.

He had not walked far before his dog became suspicious and,
growling, ran into the dogwood and alder brush. A woman on a
single- footed racker came toward him, rapidly riding, and, glancing
at him, reined her horse without stopping and pointed across the
mountain.

" Yonder is your way to-night, Lloyd Ouantrell," she cried—" to
the Catoctin Valley. This road is rough and dangerous, and spirits
are abroad upon it after dark."

" Let the spirits come, Mother Ritner ! I have a dog and a gun,
and have eaten the sacrament to-day."

"You will find that to-night," exclaimed the woman, "which
will change your destiny ! "

She was gone in a cloud of dust, and the sun, now sinking below
the North Mountain, left a cool shadow on the Blue Ridge like bil
lows on a sea. Lloyd walked rapidly, whistling for his dog, and
when Albion reappeared the big mastiff Fritz was in his company.
He stamped for Bosler's dog to go back, but the influence of the

QO KATY OF CATOCTIN.

pointer was still greatest, and both dogs bounded down the road to
the south and were soon out of sight.

" Dear little Katy ! " exclaimed the traveler — " to give me her
accordion and forget it was so heavy ! I have more money, too, than
it is safe to travel with — five hundred dollars — and Harper's Ferry
has hard people in it — Poles, Dutch, Jews, Scotch, the scum of the
earth ! "

He reflected that this day had made him softer toward one
Dutch family.

" Heigh-ho ! " continued Quantrell, " we know not what a day
may bring forth. I told my father, who called me a ' rowdy ' before
I left Baltimore, that I would marry any wife he would recommend.
I hope he hasn't taken me at my word, but he is quick on the trig
ger. Let me see ! "

He looked at his watch; and remembered that a train went
through Harper's Ferry to Baltimore after midnight.

" I will stay up for that train," said Lloyd, " and go and tell my
father I am caught and engaged. He believes in love-matches, he
once told me, and my mother never thought she had his real heart,
though he was kind to her. No, I must not waste a single day, for,
next to Katy's affection, I want my father's."

The road seemed to get a peculiar, reflected light from the
higher Elk Mountain as it kept well up on the lesser range, and every
object dwelt in as much distinctness as the evening cow-bells made
distinctest music ; yet everything startled the heart a little, while
keeping it in a sunset tone of ecstasy.

The log-houses grew small and seldom, and the stony farms
were dry. Sometimes small pines darkened the way, and made
Lloyd, as he entered their defile, keep his gun cocked.

" I can't be far from Isaac Smith's," he thought. " If it's not
the next clearing, I will get rid of this accordion, for my arm is sore,
carrying the rough-shaped thing."

It was not the next clearing, nor the next, and he was resolved
to hide the accordion somewhere or throw it away. Katy, he con
sidered, would not miss it, or would take a better one for it. Dark
ness was settling upon the twilight, and he was thirsty for water.

The sound of a flowing stream soon tinkled in the cool evening.
Lloyd knelt to drink of a blackish branch which crossed the road.
As he arose, a voice, from the dusk somewhere, cried :

" Halt ! "

ISAAC SMITH'S FARM. g!

" Isaac Smith's house — is it far? " Lloyd cocked his gun as he
spoke.

"Yar it is," answered the voice, not very welcoming, nor yet
confident.

" Thank St. Paul ! " exclaimed the gunner, dropping his caution.
" If you had said 4 No,' I should have thrown poor Katy's accordion
away. Now I can leave it here."

He stepped forward and saw a colored man standing in a kind
of lane, and exclaimed :

" Ashby ! who set you free ? "

" I don't know," answered the negro — the same who had been
carried back to slavery that morning from Smoketown ; " somebody
did it. Them yer ! " He indicated, with a shining something in his
hand, a sign of habitation up the lane.

" What's this ? " Lloyd asked. " A spear ? No, I see ; it's
Smith's fishing-gig. WThat are you doing with it, after dark? Rob
bing Smith ? "

" No," answered the negro, confused and uncertain. "I'sesot
yer. I don't know what fur. If you know them yer, I s'posen
you kin go in."

Lloyd's attention was now called to the dogs reappearing and
lapping of the brook. As he called them to him, Albion snarled at
the negro, who awkwardly brought his singular weapon down to
defend himself.

" Search on ! " commanded the gunner, and Fritz led the way up
the lane.

The moon and stars came out from some lowering clouds as he
advanced, and showed upon a low ridge before him some scattered
buildings, and he stopped upon a small bridge in the lane to listen
to some human sounds he heard. The stream under his feet ran
from an old log spring-house in a kind of bottom or hollow, and a
torch moved under some oaks at this spring ; and a torch, likewise,
on the crest of the field, shone upon some forms of men around a
little house. A metallic voice Lloyd was not unfamiliar with was
speaking, and the stranger caught only these words :

" If it is necessary to take life in order to save your own, then
make sure work of it. ... And look to no dissolution of the Union,
but simply to amendment and repeal ; and our flag shall be the same
that our fathers fought under in the Revolution ! "

" Why, that's dear old Smith's voice ! " exclaimed Lloyd. " Still

92 KATY OF CA7^0CTIN.

crazy on the subject of the Revolutionary War! I'm glad he's
home."

He continued up the rough, stony lane nearly to some low barns,
and, turning in at the top, entered a little yard, in which were fruit-
trees. A small log-house was built against the hill-side, with a high
porch along its eaves, and, between this house and a Dutch oven, a
small open space was rilled with men. Advancing among these,
Lloyd exclaimed, cheerfully :

" Mr. Smith — pep, I'm in luck again to find you here."

To his astonishment, a powerful hand immediately seized his
collar and held him tight.

" Bring that torch here ! " spoke the firm voice of Isaac Smith.

A torch came near, and, as it flashed upon Lloyd Ouantrell's
face, a person twisted his gun out of his hand and another person
seized the accordion.

"Father, it's Mr. Quantrell," spoke up the voice of young Wat
son Smith.

" How did you pass the picket ? " asked Oliver Smith, with a
wondering face.

" Why, friends," Lloyd said, "a black fellow at the gate found I
knew you. He wasn't as uncivil as this other nigger who has got
my gun ! "

Turning, Lloyd indicated a large, handsome mulatto man, who
stood looking at him with an alert, undismayed eye, unlike that of
any negro Lloyd had ever seen.

" Newby," spoke Oliver Smith, "go away ! Give me the gun."

It was good advice, for the laws of hospitality could hardly keep
the white Marylander in check when treated disrespectfully by a
slave.

" A man prowling through the mountains with a gun, on the
Sabbath-night, must give an account of himself, sir," spoke Isaac
Smith.

" Why, my dear old man, I came to bring you a letter from your
landlord, who wants his cow. I think I wouldn't have taken the
trouble, but that I was going to the Ferry to get the train. — Don't
look at me so hard, men ; the worst about me is — I'm hungry."

Isaac Smith took the letter, and, with a perplexed look, re
marked :

" I don't want to treat you uncivil, sir, if you came upon an hon
est errand. — Stevens, you and Mr. Kagi get some of that pork for

ISAAC SMITH'S FARM. 93

Mr. Quantrell, and take him to the spring-house and examine
him."

Greatly puzzled to know what it could all mean, Lloyd, with a
slavery-bred man's instinct for guessing wild, and being easily satis
fied, considered that Smith might be a lunatic keeping a sort of
mountain sanitarium for other lunatics.

The two men led him down the path to the old log dairy- with
its hooded roof, and, sitting there, looked at him intently and silently
while he ate some lean pork and filled his flask-cup.

" We can get three drinks out of this old thing yet, if we divide
fair," cried Lloyd.

" Take it all yourself," said the man addressed as Stevens, with
a certain cool, bold self-reliance.

" That will be cleared off the earth too, some day, I calkelate,"
added the other man, who had been addressed as Kagi.

" You mean whisky ? " laughed Quantrell, holding the glass up
to the torch, which now illuminated the old spring-house till some
bats or swallows there sailed out into the night ; " it's cleared off the
earth every rye-harvest now, and given, like man, to the worm."

" Cool chap ! " said Stevens, looking at Kagi.

" What's that about the worm ? " asked Kagi, not informed
about distilling processes.

" The 'worm" replied Lloyd, " is what alcohol ascends to spirit
through, and, so, another worm eats man before he can be a saint.
So here's to the worm ! "

As Quantrell raised the glass and emptied it, a look of dislike,
and then of pallor, came over Kagi's face. The torch in his hand
drooped nearly to the water, and oil or pitch ran out of it upon the
bubbling spring.

"He is not safe," muttered Kagi to Stevens.

" He believes, like me, in the world of spirits," Stevens said. —
" Give me your glass, Quantrell ! Here's to the Worm that distills
us to the stars ! "

As Stevens handed the cup back, Lloyd looked at these two
with an interest always inspired by self-contained men.

Both were of fine, if uncultivated, appearance. Kagi seemed to
be the more intelligent of the two, Stevens the more independent.
Lloyd felt that he had not made an impression upon either of them,
but Stevens seemed indifferent or careless to his approaches ; Kagi
was almost aggressive, yet disturbed.

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

Kagi was large, almost portly, with black beard, weather- exposedc
and long black hair. Stevens was not so tall but more symmetrical
and powerful, with military shoulders, straight, clean-made hands, a
head poised in conscious strength of animal life, a skin soft as a
woman's, dark-brown hair, beard over all his jaws, and hazel eyes
which were both contumacious and keen.

"Did Pop Smith buy the dark fellow I passed at the gate ?"
Lloyd asked.

" Traded for him," Stevens replied.

" Give 'em a little something — to boot," put in Kagi, shaking off
his heaviness.

Both men laughed.

*' Well," said Lloyd, " that was my idea of Father Smith, that he
was kind to people. That's why I can't understand his way of
treating me to-night."

" Have you got any slaves to trade him ? " asked Kagi, with in
terest.

" None I can control ; mine won't come into my possession for
more than a year."

" Quantrell," said Stevens, " Mr. Smith is about moving from
the farm. You got here just as everything was packed. That's
why you see so many people around ; moving a neighbor, you
know."

" Why, that's just it," exclaimed the young stranger, throwing
away all offense. " Let's go up and make him apologize."

" No," said Stevens, "he's peculiar. Go up and bid him good
night — unless he makes you stay."

" Can't stay," laughed Lloyd, gayly ; "I'm just in love to-day,
and going to ask my governor's consent, by to-night's train."

They found comparatively few persons now at the dwelling,
which was a miserable home for a man with six slaves — a long hut,
half buried in the hill, so that there was a mere cellar under its
high, rickety porch, and a small story and loft above. A candle as
sisted to reveal thus much, and boxes, trunks, and cheap valises, re
cently packed or emptied, were seen within this cellar. Not far
behind the house the small pines grew dense and black, and clouds
were hurrying in the sky as the winds rose and whistled.

" Is it correct, gentlemen ? " asked Isaac Smith.

"Fuddled," said Stevens.

"Mysterious," said Kagi.

KATY'S ACCORDION.

" Who is that young person making free with my girl's accor
dion ? " spoke up Quantrell, hearing the instrument awkwardly
played.

" That's Captain Cook," answered Isaac Smith. " He's quite
a cultivated person and a teacher."

CHAPTER XL
KATY'S ACCORDION.

A SMALL, stooping, light-haired lad came out with the accor
dion and looked at Lloyd through pale- blue eyes, which seemed to
feel his accomplishments.

Lloyd took Katy's gift and put his fingers to the keys.

A little culture, if learned in engine-houses and partisan clubs,
helps many a man through life.

Something about these people seemed still suspectful and for
bidding. Quantrell had tried his temperament upon them in vain,
and now he had only some rude tunes to lull them with.

He began to play " Home, Sweet Home."

After a few strains, other persons seemed to come in, as if from
the barns and corn-cribs and pine thickets. At first sullen, next
wondering, and soon affected tenderly, they lay in blankets upon
the autumn earth, or stood around in curious groups, while he
played the air that the simple and the cot-bred of the British races
know everywhere.

Some of the people who ventured near were negroes, strange-
looking negroes for Maryland or for the American States anywhere
— so wanting in politeness or even hospitality ; preoccupied, too, as
if with the morrow's house-moving occupations ; but these soon
felt the infection of the tender tune, and one young, handsome white
boy came up and sat by Lloyd upon an old hair-trunk and listening,
filled with tears at his bright eyes. Lloyd sang the words in his own
melodious voice :

" An exile from home, pleasure dazzles in vain,
Ah ! give me my lowly thatched cottage again ;
The birds singing sweetly that came to my call,
Give them back, and my peace of mind, dearer than all."

g6 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

As the song finished, a sob was heard at Quantrell's elbow. Wat
son Smith came up and said to the young man sitting there :

" Ned, what ails you ? "

" I've got people in Iowa and my own land there."

"Isabel" was the answer, in a broken tone.

"Play something, Mr. Quantrell," spoke Isaac Smith, "which
will remind us of the Sabbath and the heavenly rest ; for here we
have no abiding-place."

A camp-meeting tune, the favorite of his deceased mother, came
to Quantrell's memory and art, and in the cool mountain air these
simple strains ascended :

" I'm a pilgrim and I'm a stranger; I can tarry, I can tarry but a

night ;
Do not detain me, for I am going to where the streamlets are ever

flowing ;
I'm a pilgrim and I'm a stranger — I can tarry, I can tarry but a night !

" There the sunbeams are ever shining, and I'm longing, I am longing

for the sight ;

Within a country unknown and dreary, I have been wandering for
lorn and weary ;
I'm a pilgrim and I'm a stranger — I can tarry, I can tarry but a night.

" Of that country to which I'm going, my Redeemer, my Redeemer is

the Light !

There is no sorrow nor any sighing, nor any sin there, nor any dying ;
I'm a pilgrim and I'm a stranger — I can tarry, I can tarry but a night ! "

During this singing a torch had been procured, which showed all
the faces, even to the outer parts of the humble circle. There
seemed to be at least twenty men present, and not a single woman.
Of Smith's own sons there were manifestly three, resembling each
other even in their differences ; and two young men, addressed as
Thompson, of very pleasing countenances, Lloyd found to be old
Mr. Smith's sons-in-law. One of these, of a most cordial face and
manly figure, was looking at the stranger as he finished the last
tune, and Quantrell spoke up :

"Now, William — I heard friend Watson say 'Isabel' just now.
That's your sister, I reckon ? "

" You're right, sir," the young man exclaimed ; " my sister's mar
ried to him, and his sister Ruth's married to my brother."

KATY'S ACCORDION. 97

"Well, now, in honor of that union I'll play you one more tune
before I say 'Good-night.' "

Mr. Thompson hesitated.

" Do you know ' America ' ? " he asked.

"Is this it, William? "

Lloyd found in his mind the measure and the words, and other
voices joined in as he proceeded, till the last stanza pealed on the
mountain night in trembling tones the player never forgot :

" My country ! 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of Liberty,

Of thee I sing ;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountain-side
Let Freedom ring !

" Let music swell the breeze,
And ring from all the trees

Sweet Freedom's song !
Let mortal tongues awake,
Let all that breathe partake,
Let rocks their silence break,

The sound prolong ! "

Whites sang it ; blacks seemed singing, too ; but it was not, to
Lloyd's idea, a tune for blacks, though they might hear it.

At the resoonding end, where " God, the author of Liberty," is
appealed to, to keep us "in Freedom's holy light," and " protect us
by his might," Isaac Smith made all rise.

" We will pray in the spirit of that hymn," he said, " and send
each other on his way with God's blessing ! "

Lloyd looked around; and the words of the prayer impressed him
less than the manner of the listeners.

Stevens and Kagi were looking at Lloyd. Cook was stooping
by the accordion as if he meditated a tune after the prayer which
would put Lloyd's performances out of praise ; nearly all the rest,
whites and blacks, were standing or leaning with the expressions of
people at a funeral where the dead was being re-hearsed by the
preacher. Some had hands over their eyes ; others with eyes closed
seemed muttering responses ; a few knelt on the ground and bowed
low.

98 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

The imperfect light of torch and stars and fiery clouds showed
chiefly the Mosaic old man in the midst, surrounded by his sons
and sons-in-law, plainly praying, without the least excitement, in
the practical tones he might have used to order his farm-work to
be done. The words would have seemed full of feeling if the man
ner had not been so orderly and precise, and Lloyd remarked to
himself :

" Pop Smith isn't the actor he was on the mountain yesterday.
What can these people be so much interested for ? "

He heard himself alluded to, toward the last, as " the young friend
who, taking our hearts by music to home, admonishes us of them
whose hearts and homes are never recognized. Those dear tunes
of home, country, and heaven must be our only drum and fife, Lord !
— as here we tarry but a night."

A sob seemed to go around somewhere in the dark, and there
were sounds as of negroes in convulsive prayer. Seeking to separate
these mystic noises, Quantrell felt his hand grasped by long, bony
fingers, and as if still praying, Isaac Smith was talking to him :

" Go, young man ! The Lord bless you for the music you have
brought and the pious mother, perhaps, who taught you tunes so
comforting to these poor people ! Keep off the streets ! Don't
expose yourself ! Don't stand on the corners, particularly ! — Captain
Cook, go with him past the limits."

" I must be getting a reputation all over Maryland," Lloyd
thought, " for standing at the street corners in Baltimore. My gov
ernor lectured me about it when he sent me off 'gunning. Well,
now I am in love -I shall stop loafing."

" Will you take the accordion along, Quantrell ? " said Captain
Cook, looking at it wistfully.

" I would like to leave my accordion here and my dog Fritz,"
Lloyd replied, looking around upon the people, who still watched
him curiously ; " but, if you are going to move, they won't be safe."

" Oh," said Stevens, " Mr. Smith is only going to move to his
other house, across the road yonder."

Following the gesture, Lloyd saw a light a good way off, moving
at some windows.

" Is this the dog ? " old Isaac Smith asked, bringing Fritz for
ward. To Lloyd's admiration that sturdy mastiff made no resist
ance as Smith tied him fast to the railing of the little porch above.

"Copeland — Green," Smith spoke to two of the negroes, "put

KATY'S ACCORDION.

food and water by Mr. Quantrell's dog. — You will be sure to find
him here, sir, when you return."

As Fritz yielded to the gentle hand and firm control of Isaac
Smith, the highly bred Albion, seeing the companion he had misled
now tied fast and apparently in subjection, darted upon Fritz with
treachery and fury, and seemed resolved to get an ear for an ear. He
reckoned without his host, however, for Isaac Smith, kicking Albion
almost without effort, caught him also by the muzzle and tail as he
turned in pain, and threw him right over the railing. Half a dozen
persons below kicked him along their line, and, frightened almost
to death, the pointer fled down the lane.

" He'll go along with you meekly, now, Mr. Quantrell," Smith
remarked, without apology. " You'll never get much pleasure from
him, sir. The spaniel crossed on the cruel hound, however high he
is bred, does not get the stability of such useful and faithful domes
tic mongrels as this ! "

Putting his hand upon Fritz, that big creature set his head be
tween Isaac Smith's knees and wagged his tail.

" Come," said little Captain Cook to Quantrell.

" Good-night, my mountain friends ! " Lloyd Quantrell cried,
cheerily, at the head of the lane. " You're rough, but ready, I Know.
We'll meet, I hope, again."

" Good-night ! " rang out many voices ; and still the sense of some
dislike or doubt of himself seemed to linger in those sounds, and the
last looks from the by-standers had something predatory in them.

He felt this so instinctively that he walked very slowly and cool-
hearted down the lane, as if there might be an enemy behind him.

Near the gate stood a black man with the shining something
still in his hand, and to him Cook dropped a word.

"Now, Quantrell," said Cook, after walking some distance along
the road, " you'll find this accordion in the garret under the eaves,
if they can't find it for you. You owe to it more than you at pres
ent know. If I hadn't my hands full now, I would learn to play it
before you came back. Anyway, I know I'm a better shot than
you. You'll be proud some day that you knew me. Good-night ! "

" Good-night, Cook. With that good opinion of yourself I know
you'll be heard from," spoke Lloyd, laughing — " Come, Albion ! "

The dog now truckled low to Quantrell, and almost retarded his
way, so obsequious was he after his late contemptuous chastise
ment ; but his master was depressed in spirits from some unknown

I00 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

reason, and the animal's attentions did not compose the dangers of
the road.

A slight sense of bodily fear which he had been ashamed to rec
ognize in all these mountain wanderings, was over him to-night.
Those strange, unclassifiable faces he had just parted from were the
only ones he had been unable to reduce to fraternity ; and even his
music, while it touched them for its sentiments, had not softened
them to himself.

He, somehow, felt that Katy's simple instrument had been his
talisman.

Had they meant to rob him ? Were they following him now
with that intent ? Lloyd stopped to listen, and on the disturbed air
came the sound of the accordion, and a womanly voice to the old

tune :

(i The season's in for partridges,
Let's take our guns and dogs ;
It sha'n't be said that we're afraid
Of quagmires or of bogs,

When a shooting we do go, do go, do go,

When a shooting we do go."

" That fellow Cook's too simple to rob anybody," thought Lloyd.
" No, they must have been honest mountaineers, too inexperienced
not to stare at me. Besides, they all prayed — all but one or two.
Yet old Smith was working on the Sabbath-clay, spite of his re
ligion. I reckon he's one of those Seventh-Day Baptists I've heard
of, farther up the Antietam, who work Sundays and worship Satur
days. That would account for his praying more devoutly yester
day than to-day. Come to think of it," concluded Lloyd, " the
Seventh-Day Baptists, Luther told me, did not believe in marriage.
That may be why I saw no women on the farm. I would trust
Isaac Smith anywhere. The fact is, I have seen so many queer
things in the last twenty-four hours that everything looks queer to
me. Two men have kissed me, and I have had my fortune told ! "

As the dog came up with its insidious attentions now, the
singular explicitness of Katy's fortune, and the Aragueness of his
own, as told by Hannah Ritner, occurred to his mind. How could
all the game on earth rise before his gun ?

Not unless the wilderness was restored here.

But the prediction that Katy should lose a ring ?

Whatever that meant, it had for a moment — an evil, wicked

KA T Y ' S A CCO R DION. j o l

moment, which he dispelled with indignation as a wanton iciea tried
to enter his mind — been verified in his own experience.

Last night he had gone to bed all fluttered and fickle-hearted
after holding Katy in his arms.

To-day her pure, religious nature had made him see the woman
hood latent in her, and aroused a manhood higher than he thought
he possessed.

" God protect her, and lay me dead ere I can do her harm ! "
Lloyd Quantrell- fervently exclaimed, looking up at the agitated
wind and rain-clouds which seemed seeking to overrun heaven.

The dog Albion barked.

It seemed to him strange that after such a passionate prayer his
mind should again be suddenly possessed by worldly and selfish
thoughts.

In a few minutes he suppressed them, but only to be attacked
by other forebodings.

Now the recollection of Hannah Ritner's last prediction, that by
taking this very road his destiny would be altered, oppressed his
nerves.

The road was growing worse and worse as it wound down the
plateau through the hills.

Sometimes the Elk Ridge, almost transparent, would ride
through the night like a long, cylindrical billow, and seem to be
rolling toward him in phosphoric sparklings ; and then he would go
down into depths like midnight, where some small stream could be
heard hollow and distrustful, accompanying the road in some deep
wash or gulf, and in the darkness the great grape-vines seemed to
exhale a chill as they struggled up to the top branches of the bass-
wood, or rank and giant wild-cherry trees.

In other ravines the rocks fairly grew across the way, as if
planted in rows, and on the summits the gentle but melancholy
locust-trees shook in the wind which the angry and plunging moon
seemed to blow from its lurid bag.

A pale-faced woman would peep from some occasional hut
where the candle-light revealed her, and the turkeys roosting in the
trees would cluck together, like people laughing in the ague's clutch ;
but on the glimmering wheat stubble at the clearings the moon lay
with a circling, partial light, like an insatiate sickle, which wanted
next year's seedlings, too, before their birth, or Herod searching for
the scarce-born babes.

102 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

Then mighty rocks would overhang the road, so big that they
seemed masses of foliage, and for spaces the mullein-stalks stood up
desolately, and no more bent to the wind than aged maidens to a
smile.

At one level place a stream, winding through a kind of copse of
alder and brake, came but of the thicket tunefully, and spread itself
over sandy shallows, and compelled some soft grass to receive the
subdued light twinkling through old sycamores which kept the
clouds off with their speckled arms. Here, amid the willows, a
little log school-house stood in a sort of fork of the road, and, as
Lloyd rested on its sill, a screech-owl within, like the last school
master, raised a dreary, quivering wail.

Repelled with superstition from the spot, Quantrell proceeded
on, till at a summit there broke upon his view the lights of a town in
the mountains.

Even this sense of relief was accompanied by superstition, since
it seemed unnatural to find a town so high in the air as this mani
festly was, and right in his road ; but as he proceeded there opened
between him and the lights a deep, black, glistening gulf or wilder
ness, which he soon recognized, by white riffles or dark rocks, and
blacker heights hugging it round, to be the river Potomac.

Then he remembered that the town of Harper's Ferry hung
around the base of an inhabited height, like the mountain he was
descending, and that the town or suburb on the height was called
Bolivar.

Hastening down a frightfully torn road, the music of a brook at
its side was soon drowned in the roaring of the river, and a canal
and locks were on the river's border, barely leaving space for Lloyd's
road to creep beneath the mighty Elk Mountain that now began
to tower almost perpendicularly, and become a buttress to the Blue
Ridge which, two furlongs in advance, stepped across the river,
leaving a ghastly rift between.

The dog in real companionship shrank close to Quantrell now,
seeing the steeps above, amid the hurrying clouds, apparently fall
ing down to close the chasm and bury them ; while the wind,
caught in this funnel, went wildly to and fro, shaking the trees in
the crevices of the precipice, and rattling down roots and stones,
and the river raised its thousand riffling voices as if birds and wolves
in flocks dreaded to pass this storm-infested gap.

"Poor Albion!" Lloyd spoke sympathetically, "no wonder the

KATY'S ACCORDION.

103

dog's afraid ! This place by moonlight is like the devil's throne,
but, with storm threatening it, is like being swallowed by a sea-ser
pent."

He walked fast over the stony road till the great mountain was
as directly over him — stepping from Maryland into Virginia — as if
he had been between a giant's legs. Here, lying low to the water,
a covered bridge, almost concealed in the mountain shadows, re
ceived at once the road and a railroad, which, meeting each other
beneath the toppling mountain thirteen hundred feet above them,
ran into the bridge and shivered there side by side.

A lock-house was near the bridge and a bargeman's tavern, and,
across the wide flood, a thousand feet away, the railroad lights of
red, and household candles of Harper's Ferry, shone and reflected
in the water like jewels in an elephant's foot, whose great head and
back supported the higher town.

Quantrell entered the solemn bridge, and the river beneath him
seemed to sigh like the hurrying souls of all the Indian tribes
drowned here, even in the whoop of war and chase.

He emerged at a place where the bridge had two outlets, like
the letter Y, a railroad-track in each, and that to the left ended near
another bridge which spanned a different river, not visible before,
beneath the long Virginia mountain and the town. This river, the
Shenandoah, was almost as fierce and wide as the Potomac, which
it assisted to break through the mountain gate.

Lloyd took the other bridge outlet and came into the little in
habited strand or sill of Harper's Ferry, which lined two streets,
one along either river-bank. The bridge was the key to the town,
like a key to a trunk.

In the eye of the bridge and close by it was the gate of some
stately institution, all noble with lines of lamps and walks and regu
lar buildings, and between it and the bridge a hotel clung to the
narrow railroad passage. Opposite this hotel was a detached part
of the beautiful institution beyond, with similar walls of stone and
fence panels of musket-barrels or spears.

It did not need a Marylander to tell that this was the great war-
factory of the American Republic, where the muskets and rifles
which equipped its little army had been made since the rule of
President Washington.

The stately institution beneath the Potomac heights was the
national armory ; the detached buildings on the Shenandoah side

104 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

were the arsenal ; the two rivers meeting at the spot furnished un
ceasing water-power.

Leaving his gun and trappings at the hotel, Lloyd was directed
to a saloon where a stealthy bar was open Sundays. It was a little
place by the Shenandoah side, and, when he entered, it was quite full
of men, some drinking, some drunk.

" Here's one of tern tarn apolitionists, py Jing ! " cried a voice,
and a man came up to Lloyd sneeringly.

" You here, Andrew Atzerodt ! " exclaimed Quantrell. " Spend
ing your blood-money, I reckon."

" Tidn't I capture tat nigger, Lloyd ? " the tipsy fellow inquired.
"Tey want to take teir money back, pecause tey let him git
away ! "

" You here, Logan ? " Lloyd spoke up, seeing the two slave-
hunters, also sullen with disappointment and drink. " Then your
prey escaped you ! "

" Why not," answered the man, " when this Dutch braggart
stopped everybody in the road to proclaim he had tuk a nigger ?
We was waylaid and beat."

" Not me, py Jing ! " shouted Atzerodt.

" No," said a Logan. " you took to your heels. We was licked,
but we fought fur our nigger."

" Who did it? " asked Quantrell.

" That's what we'd give five hundred dollars to know."

" If I knew I wouldn't tell you," Lloyd replied. " Such fellows
as you, without any interest in slavery, do its dirty work."

" Go fur him, poys ! " screamed Atzerodt, getting behind the
Logans. " He's a spy and a nigger-lover."

The larger Logan came up to Lloyd, while everybody stopped
drinking at the bar and crowded around, hopeful of some " diffi
culty." His brother slipped around to Quantrell's side with a treach
erous face.

" I think you're the man who wanted to take that slave, Ashby,
from us at Smoketown," said Logan. " You wanted to fight me
there. Take that ! "

" Take that ! " exclaimed the brother.

Both struck Quantrell in the head with their hard fists.

" Take this ! " answered Lloyd, staggering but not falling, and
without raising his voice, while he planted a blow in the face of each
mountaineer, and followed them up with the rapidity of a pugilist,

KA T Y ' S A C COR DION.

105

his countenance more smiling than angry, and his strength pro
digious.

" Take this home to the children," Lloyd said as he struck
again. " Take it carefully ! Don't drop it and break it ! "

The meaner Logan was down in a minute, crying anxiously,
" Lew, he's armed ! " The larger Logan fought well and tried to
get in close and wrestle with Quantrell, whose skill kept him off and
punished him terribly. In a few seconds he, too, was down and
crying " Enough ! "

The landlord had meantime drawn a long revolver pistol from
the bar, but was too much interested in the fight to point it, and,
before he could determine what to do, Quantrell twisted it out of
his hand.

" Gentlemen," said, the man, " my license will be taken away
unless you all hurry out."

" Go out ! " spoke Lloyd, indicating the Logans, the pistol in
his hand. " Put that bridge between you and Harper's Ferry !
This gun may kill better men."

As they slipped out gratefully, Quantrell turned to the landlord
and spoke :

" Whoever is not ashamed to drink with a true American, is my
guest ! "

Silently, admiringly, everybody in sight came to the bar. As
they waited for the champion to set the health, he deliberately
raised his arms and shook them, wing-fashion, and crowed like a
cock.

" Cock-Robin cock of the walk to-night ! " exclaimed Quantrell
merrily, emptying his glass.

They drank with even more quiet awe, for they recognized in
" Cock-Robin " one of the dreaded Baltimore anti-foreign clubs.

When all had finished drinking, Andrew Atzerodt crawled out
from behind a barrel and executed a crow with all Lloyd's non
chalance.

" Where's my drink, Lloyd ? " he spoke, loudly ; " tidn't we tackle
'em, py Jing ! "

In the midst of the roar of laughter a stranger drew Lloyd away,
saying :

" Come, sir, this place is beneath a man of your courage."

Handing the pistol back to the owner, Lloyd walked with the
stranger to the hotel, and, giving him a cigar, drew chairs upon the

I06 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

railroad platform which extended on high trestles between the
Potomac and the armory-yard. The tall brick edifices, plots of
grass, high flag- staff, and chimneys, reposed among the lights be
neath the profile of the upper town, where a great rock, like an
anvil, overhung the Shenandoah, and the fiery-edged clouds seemed
like red-hot horseshoes shifted upon it by the blacksmith of the
Night.

" That is Jefferson's Rock, sir," said the stranger, in reserved
tones ; " I suppose you know it."

" No, my friend."

" Mr. Jefferson wrote his ' Notes on Virginia ' sitting up there.
My deceased father, who was a strong State-rights man, had a
tradition that some day a child would come and push that rock
over. It is nearly balanced, you see, by its own weight. Then, my
father said, the State-rights of Jefferson would be no more."

" Your county here is called Jefferson, I think ? "

" Yes. At the county-seat, a few miles south of this place.
General Washington's brother Charles settled, and his descendant
is my neighbor."

" Your name, my friend ? "

" Beall— John Beall."

" Why, John, that's an old Maryland name around Washington
city."

" Yes, sir," the young man, who was near Ouantrell's own age,
answered, with a subdued voice, like one naturally reticent ; " I am
of the McGruders and Bealls, Rob Roy's own blood."

Lloyd Quantrell put his hand on John Beall's shoulder affection
ately, and could almost feel the young man's reserved countenance
smile as Lloyd hummed the tune :

14 ' But doomed and devoted by vassal and lord,
McGregor has still both his heart and his sword :
Then courage, courage, courage, Grigalach !

" ' Our signal for fight, which from monarchs we drew,
Must be heard but by night in our vengeful halloo :
Then halloo, halloo, halloo, Grigalach ! ' "

"You sing as well as you fight, sir. You must be a gentle
man."

"Ah," said Quantrell, "that's the highest degree in Masonry,
I'm afraid not. Lloyd Quantrell is my name, however."

KATY'S A CCO RD ION.

107

"I'll take you for a gentleman, Mr. Ouantrell. My grandfather
was an Englishman ; he lived most of his life in Virginia. He
never would be naturalized here, though he was a Federalist and
disliked Mr. Jefferson. I went to England with him to see him die
there in his old Norman homestead. He said to me in his last ill
ness, ' The man who can fight without hate and sing without invi
tation is a citizen anywhere.' "

" Well, John, I'll answer to being a citizen, then. With you, I'll
be a Virginian. We can squeeze a small drink out of my flask."

" Thank you," Beall answered, accepting the Marylander's hand,
" but I seldom drink. I went through the form at the saloon in
compliment to your prowess. The fact is, I'm a communicant in
our Episcopal Church. A large family — my widowed mother's —
depend on me. I came here to-night for a poor neighbor who ex
pected to recover her slave. She is a preacher's widow, and had an
old negro man. His son, to satisfy the old man's wife, who lived
North, came down and stole the father. The son himself made his
escape not long ago."

" John," said Quantrell, " the old man has got his freedom. He
is dead."

" I'm not surprised to hear it," said Beall, unmoved. " He was
too old to run away. But I considered it my religious duty to unite
with others in offering a reward for his son Ashby, whose bold
deed in coming into a slave State to make a capture shows a fright
ful demoralization in negroes."

" What is he worth, John ? "

" Probably not as much as the reward, since the extension of
slavery has been defeated in Kansas. What an outrage on State-
rights was that ! "

With a warm invitation to come to his farm, Mr. Beall mounted
his horse in the street below, and turned him up the hill through
the middle of the town.

"A little inflexible," Quantrell reflected, "but a true-hearted
Virginian all the same."

He took a room in the hotel, where only a very tall and very
black negro, probably six and a half feet high, seemed to be awake.
The railroad agent, also a powerful man, was continually bantering
this negro, who seemed fully as independent.

" Ain't yo' nigger, noway," exclaimed this black giant, while
looking for Lloyd's key. "Jess call myseff yo' nigger fo' con-

108 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

venience. Want a better-lookin' man than yo' to be my moss-
ta!"

" So ho, now ! so ho ! " exclaimed the big white man, sleepily
holding up his red lamp. "Ain't you 'shamed, Hey wood ? I'm
'shamed faw you. Anybody can see you're no Vurgeenian by your
manners. Talkin' that a-way to a man o' my age ! "

" Dat's what's de fack," said Heywood ; " yo's too ole to be my
mossta. Yo's a ole widower. Don't you 'so ho' me: I'm a free
man, I am ! Don't go nowhar for nobody if dey don't treat me
right."

" I'm sorry faw you, Heywood. I hope your wife and childern
won't hear how you talk to me. You may be a widowaw, too, Hey
wood."

As the big man walked up the platform as mechanically as he
had been quarreling, swinging the red lamp, the gigantic negro,
paying no attention to Lloyd, seized a cloak and darted after him.

" Yer, squire, yo' ole dunce ! Moss Beckham, you put on dis
yer cloak. Doyouhyar? Dat cole wind '11 fall on to yo' kidneys.
Den yo'll be 'busin' of me mo'."

"I won't have it, Heywood," Lloyd heard the squire say;
"nobody can pet me aftaw spilin' of my feelin's. So ho, now! go
ho, Heywood ! "

"Dar ! " exclaimed the negro, " wrap it round yo' now and go to
bed. Gi' me de lamp. You sha'n't stay up no mo' dis night."

Coming back with the lamp, the negro selected a key and took
Lloyd to an upper room overlooking the town, promising to call
him for the Baltimore train.

" Does the squire own you, Heywood ? " asked Lloyd.

" No. De prejudice ag'inst free colored men is so big heah, dat
I's a kine of ward to him, to keep my property at Winchester. He's
de bes' friend I got. Ef I didn't sass him a little, reckon he
wouldn't like me ! "

"Here," said Lloyd, giving the negro a silver piece, "try, the
next time he tempts you, to answer the squire kindly. We can't
tell what word will be our last, Heywood, with them we love."

"Thank you, mossta. Reckon I will treat de squire better.
Why, he'd die fur me ! "

As the sound of the negro's feet ceased in the bare halls and
stairs, Lloyd drew off his boots and sat at the window, tired and
bruised, looking sleepily out upon the great Loudoun Heights and

JA YHA WKERS.

109

the dark, riffle-fleeced Shenandoah, and the mill-races on both river-
banks carrying strong water-power to State and private machinery.
The sky was cloudy and windy, and brazen lights contended there
with inky scud. The watchman at the granite gate-post below
locked up the armory-yard, and Harper's Ferry expressed no sound
but the hurrying, moaning rivers.

" Nothing has happened to-night to change my destiny," Lloyd
remarked, nodding. " I got away with the two Logan brutes
easily. I shall see my father at breakfast, and tell him, boldly, I am
in love. Will he oppose me? No. I am my mother's bequest to
him, and he does not despise beauty and virtue because they are
poor."

A low whine rang through the room.

" Lie down, Albion ! " Lloyd exclaimed. " I shall give you to
little Katy of Catoctin. God bless her ! "

He fell asleep, the high-bred pointer at his feet. His mother
came to him there in dreams, and seemed to say :

" Tired boy, sleep, for you have a long walk before you, and no
shoes."

He did not know how long he had been sleeping when a shock,
as if the Loudoun Heights had fallen, awoke him. A splitting, re
sounding, appalling noise thundered through the black village.

"Has a powder-magazine exploded ?" asked Lloyd, gazing out
and rubbing his eyes. " I couldn't have dreamed anything as real
and loud as that ! No, I see what it is now by yonder dim moon-
rime reflected from the Virginia mountain — a part of Jefferson's Rock
has fallen. Some infant must have been born here to-night and
pushed it over."

CHAPTER XII.

JAYHAWKERS.

His watch showed that it was about eleven o'clock.

From the street below came up a sound of loose, creaking
wheels and some footsteps, and the word —

" Halt ! "

Lloyd Quantrell looked down from his window in the close yet
damp night, and his sight slowly separated the objects in the little

IIO KATY OF CATOCTIN.

piece of street which has already been called the key of Harper's
Ferry, and which led from the bridge to the armory-gate in a nearly
straight line.

The saloon where Quantrell had been attacked, a little building
of wood, confronted this street near the bridge, and was probably
four hundred feet from the government gate. Between saloon and
gate some small private offices and shops clung along the arsenal's
wall, and the railroad tavern was a basement story lower on the
street than upon the railroad.

Another street, at right angles, ran along the armory gate and
yard, at the corner of which yard it sent off an oblique street, and a
short block farther on, a steep street, both nearly parallel to the Po
tomac ; while the first street, called Shenandoah, kept along between
the houses and cliffs till, at a far distance, it ended at another armory,
indistinctly seen by Lloyd, and called the Rifle- works.

Thus an armory closed up the town by either river, except for
the passage of the two railways, and only the second or steep street
led over the rough hill of Bolivar into the great upland Valley of Vir
ginia.

Before the armory gate some things were moving and shining
like steel, and suppressed voices spoke sententiously there :

" Open this gate ! "

" Who is it ? "

" Open this gate ! "

" Where is the key ? "

" You are a dead man ! "

" Oh-h — mercy ! "

" Make any noise, and you are a dead man ! "

With this strange colloquy there seemed to be a jumping up on
the wall, and a jumping down and a scuffle. Then came the words :

" That key, or you are —

" Oh, don't ! I'm the pore watchman ! "

" Never mind him," spoke another voice, firm and cool. " Bring
the crow-bar and the big hammer ! "

A rattling, twisting, snapping sound followed, and the word —

" March ! "

The wagon creaked again, the shining things in the streets moved
within the gate, and the foliage of shade-trees and the shadows of
the armory buildings swallowed up the episode.

" What brutes these semi-military officials are ! " Quantrell re-

JA YHA WKERS. 1 1 T

fleeted. " Drunken superintendents and privileged political clerks,
no doubt, who have lost their keys, and will conclude a Sunday's
excursion by sleeping in ' Uncle Sam's ' offices. But who could ex
pect anything better with Wise Governor of Virginia, and his Dutch
and Irish on top of true Americans ? "

He had nearly fallen to sleep again when there came a sober
sound from the open gate below :

" All's well ! "

A voice replied, like a negro's : 9 .

" All's well ! "

"I'm glad of that," muttered Quantrell, "for I thought every
thing was sick. Why, they're coming away quick ! Found the
demijohn empty, I reckon ! "

He was now able to perceive a small wagon drawn by one horse,
and it seemed to be nearly full of men, though others walked by its
side. They passed up Shenandoah Street, and seemed to divide at
the second corner ; and, at the gate below, there remained two other
men standing still, with something shining in their hands.

" Close the gate," said a voice within, " and halt everybody
now ! "

" Having had the horse stolen," Quantrell mused, sleepily, " of
course they lock the stable-door now. I think everybody hates the
government."

He noted the sharp, black rim of Loudoun Heights again, like a
ragged shell inclosing the oyster of the town, and the sighing, whis
pering rivers. As he dozed, voices in the still street seemed to say :

" Who goes there ? "

"Prisoner! From the bridge."

" Who goes there ? "

"Prisoner! From the rifle-works."

" All's well ! "

"Now," considered Quantrell, "these official parasites are con
cluding their spree by arresting all the sober men on duty ! When
I get to Baltimore I'll just describe in the 'Clipper' what sort of
rule Buchanan and Floyd and Wise have clapped on Old Virginia,
the mother of our Presidents. Meanwhile, I'll lie on the bed and
not be disturbed."

He slept longer this time, and was awakened by a wheezing,
grinding noise which made him leap to his feet and seize his gun

H2 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

and hunter's outfit and dash down the stairs. An engine and pas
senger train, pointed for Baltimore, stood at the station adjoining
the tavern.

" You scoundrel ! " Lloyd exclaimed to the negro porter, " why
didn't you call me ? "

" Couldn't hyar from de train," answered the negro ; " telegraph
wires all down somehow. Whar's dat ar' bridge watchman ? "

" Where is anybody, responsible ? " Lloyd exclaimed. " Every
thing seems left to one impudent nigger."

" Don' yo' say I ain't 'sponsible, now ! " the porter vociferated,
shaking his lamp. " I know my business ! Squire Beckham, come
out hyar! Nobody can't be foun', and I'm blamed by everybody."

The negro continued toward the bridge, and Lloyd threw his
dog into the smoking-caboose and climbed upon the train, which in
a moment proceeded along the river-side, and the engine entered the
bridge. He was settling down for a doze, when he heard clear voices
in the hollow cavity of this long viaduct :

" Halt there, or you are a dead man ! "

The engine had suddenly stopped, and continued to snore and
tremble as if it dreamed all this indignity to the United States mail.

" What do you want ? "

" Liberty. And we mean to have it ! "

" What kind of liberty do you mean ? "

" Like yours and mine. Go back ! "

The train started back with a jerk, as if the lever had been pulled
in panic. In a moment two or three persons came excitedly through
the smoking-car, from the engine, running and ejaculating.

" What's ahead there ? " Lloyd cried.

" Robbers, or lunatics, or Indians. Things with guns anyhow ! "
one of the railroad men replied, hastening on.

Quantrell jumped into the aisle and ran to the front platform
near the engine and looked ahead.

Three men, as they seemed to be, lined a railing in the bridge.
Bright metal shone in their hands. The light was afforded by a
lantern in the hands of a big colored man who had advanced beyond
the engine and seemed more courageous or less impressionable than
the whites.

"Halt! halt! halt!"

In rapid succession and with high nervous meaning had come
these words from the obstruction ahead.

JA YHA WKERS. \ \ 3

"Who's you?" hoarsely replied the great negro Heywocd,
slightly moving back. " Who you a-haltin' ? Free man, I am ! "

" Halt ! halt ! "

" Sha'n't halt for no such damned rascals. Free man — "

"Boom ! "

A loud report rang through the bridge, which made Lloyd turn
and look at his own gun, to see if it had not been accidentally dis
charged.

Before he could look from the platform to the track again, a hu
man cry, so piteous, so long, so profound, came from close beside
him, that it rang in his ears for years after this night.

It was the cry extorted by a mortal wound in the first violent
incursion into the house of life.

The negro, still clinging to his lamp, was running over the bridge-
ties in such terror as to put his late defiance and tardy retirement
to the blush. The train was also backing rapidly. As soon as the
starlight came down upon the platform again, Quant rell leaped
off.

" What is it, Hey wood ? " he called to the negro, whose face ex
pressed in outlines and dim eyeballs an agony insupportable.

" Death ! " answered the negro, staggering on.

"There -there's the man who shot him!" exclaimed the con
ductor of the train, indicating an agile figure which, between a walk
and a slide, came out of the bridge and seemed to have some short
weapon in the blanket he was wrapped in. As this figure went
rapidly toward the armory-gate, Lloyd Quantrell raised his gun and
fired upon it. yet with the want of aim which comes from an uncer
tain conviction. His mind was dazed, too, by a suspicion that he
had seen that youthful figure before.

The moment Lloyd fired, two shots from the armory-gate re
plied to his own, and one of them cut a strand from his hair.

" At last ! " Quantrell spoke, coolly, " I have seen something that
came very near changing my destiny — for life ! "

He put the railroad building and hotel between him and the
armory. The passengers were now generally alarmed, and were
peeping around the corner of the thin rim of buildings between the
railroad platform and the armory-yard. A water-tank for the loco
motives was at this corner, and some of the hotel people or passen
gers were exchanging shots from this cover with a group of people
who stood in the armory-yard around a small low building near the

114 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

gate. These people, whatever they might be, were distinctly heard
loading their guns.

" Come away from that corner and tank ! " Lloyd exclaimed.
"Those robbers are firing rifle-balls that will-go through these thin
boards."

" You think they are robbers ? " asked a very straight, clean-
ribbed man with a thoughtful but not at all excited countenance,
turning on Lloyd.

" Of course. Foreigners, I reckon, come to take the rest of our
liberties. They can't be Indians, so they must be robbers ! "

" O papa ! robbers ? Isn't it romantic ! Such mountains, too !
Such nature ! Oh, let us stay here all night and see what they
are."

A large, enthusiastic, handsome girl was sitting at the open
window of a passenger-coach. She looked at Lloyd with a beaming
countenance and a certain fine energy of impulse.

"Surely there is a hotel here, sir," she addressed Lloyd. " Can
we not witness this unexpected tournament ? Oh, it is so advanta
geous to be a man and see everything romantic ! "

" Here is one poor man, dear miss, who will hardly agree with
you," Ouantrell replied. " Hear the railroad porter's dying groans ! "

They listened, and sighs like a sick child's came from the little
station, and the words :

" O Heywood ! what will yo' wife say ? A exposin' of your
self, Heywood, when I should have been the man ! It 'twan't kyind
of you, Heywood ! It 'twan't thoughtful ! What kin I do without
you ? "

" Po' friend," the negro said, " look aftaw my chillen. Forgive
me for my sassy tongue. It's got me in this trouble, mossta. Oh !
kill me — I'm dyin' and I can't die ! "

" There, Light ! " exclaimed the lithe, quiet man, looking at the
girl. " You hear the real tones of romance ; the poor, sick notes of
glory. It is the poor, helpless people, the women and the servants,
who suffer for romantic ventures."

" Oh, that is dreadful ! " said Miss Light ; " I supposed they
died fighting gloriously. But, senator — papa — may they not be
Indians ? We have seen the Indians in their beautiful eagles' feath
ers prepare for war. I suppose these robbers, as this gentleman says,
must be foreigners — Italians, or Spaniards, or Garibaldians— in
beautiful costumes ! "

JA YHA WKERS. 1 1 5

"Here is one, perhaps," replied the senator; "look at him,
Light ! "

A young man with a short gun in his hand, a rough, slouching
hat on his head, coarse clothes, and a belt around him with weapons
in it, appeared at the head of the train and called out, in a some
what nasal tone :

" Conductor, bring on that train ! Our commander has allowed
you to cross the bridge and proceed."

"That a robber?" Miss Light remarked; " why, he's a mere
boy. He must be fooling you."

"That's one of 'em," spoke the conductor; "I know that's
one."

" Give me your gun ! " exclaimed the aged railroad agent, run
ning out and reaching for Lloyd's fowling-piece; "if that's one of
those scoundrels, I want his life. He's killed my pore, faithful serv
ant !"

The young man, who was not fully revealed in the imperfect
light of the train's windows, half raised his piece and said negligently
but frankly :

" Citizens are not allowed to carry guns ! We are in possession
of this town, and mean no harm to peaceable people. Put that gun
down ! "

Lloyd got on the train, out of the way.

" My friend," he said to the excited railroad agent, " I have shot
my last load off. We must wait for daylight."

"Who are you ? " cried the conductor again ; "we can't under
stand you. What is your purpose in this town ? "

"We want Liberty," spoke the young man, "and we intend to
have it ! "

" Oh, beautiful ! " exclaimed the senator's daughter at the win
dow. " So bold, and such a boy ! If he only had some beautiful
clothes ! "

"He'd look well in a good long shroud!" Lloyd Quantrell ex
claimed, grinding his teeth.

"I wont move my train," called the conductor; "one of the
railroad's servants has been shot on that bridge. I am responsible
for the lives of these passengers, and I am afraid to cross the
bridge before daylight."

The young man retired into the shadows of night like an appari
tion.

Il6 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

The pointer-dog followed and indicated him with its instinct for
an object doomed.

" Will you oblige me with your father's name ? " Lloyd asked
the communicative young lady.

" Oh ! with pleasure. Mr. Edgar Pittson. We are just going
to the capital for the first time. My father is a new senator from
the West. I have never seen the East. If it continues as sublime
and romantic as this, will it not be delightful ? Such mountains !
Such adventures ! Are they always occurring like this, sir ? "

" Ever since I have been in these mountains," replied Lloyd, be
tween excitement and amusement, " something wonderful has been
taking place. Perhaps they wanted to surprise us," concluded
Lloyd.

The people on the train and the platform were all this while in
the greatest agitation and wonder, while the town of Harper's Ferry
was in absolute sleep. A doctor, whose office was at the station,
alone had been aroused by the shooting, and he reported that the
negro was dying. The ball, entering his back, had passed entirely
through the body near the heart.

" Gentlemen," whispered the doctor to Senator Pittson and
Quantrell, " what can this midnight rebellion be ? We who live
here fear it is a bold and strong attempt to rob the armory of the
treasure-chest. Mechanics of all countries live here, and some of
them may be very desperate characters."

" Beautiful ! " exclaimed Miss Light Pittson, overhearing the
doctor ; " what contrasts and heroes exist in the East \ Washing
ton city must be full of such revolutions. How else could it be our
capital ? "

" Young gentleman," said the senator to Lloyd, " I have been
wondering if this tmeute to-night can have anything to do with the
Kansas troubles. I hope not, because the unjustifiable attempts to
subjugate Kansas and give it to the slave system have entirely
failed. She is on the threshold of the Union as a free State, and I
hope one of my first duties at Washington will be to vote for her
admission. It is for this reason that I would deprecate any such
invasion of Virginia as some of our free-State bands have retaliated
upon Missouri."

He conversed as quietly on this dread subject as if he had been
in his Western. settlement.

Lloyd wondered, and remarked :

JA YHA WKERS.. ! T 7

" Have you seen anything to lead to that idea, sir ? I am igno
rant of the Kansas troubles. The slavery question is a bore to me.
I am enlisted in the Native American question."

" I looked at that young man's gun just now. I think it is
a Sharp's rifle, a new Philadelphia carbine, loading at the breech.
A quantity of those rifles disappeared some time ago from one of
our Western States and have not been found. The persons re
sponsible for them fear some of the jay hawkers have got them."

" Jayhawkers ? Are they something like our ' Blue Jays ' in Bal
timore ? "

" Yes," said the senator, smiling ; " they were free-State young
men who got a taste of war and blood when the armed ruffians
from Missouri and the South invaded Kansas, and they could not
be composed to peace after the moral victory was won. They
went hunting for an enemy. They felt that they had beaten both
slavery and the United States Government which tried to foster it
in Kansas. Some of them invaded Missouri and took slaves out
and carried them to Canada."

" Who did that, Senator Pittson ? " asked Lloyd, with a flushed
face.

" I forget whether it was Montgomery or Brown. I rather
think it was Brown. He had lost a son or two when the Missouri-
ans invaded Kansas. He won quite a battle out there at Ossawatto-
mie. It seemed to bring out a latent pugnacity in him, entirely
foreign to his long and steady life. Perhaps it unsettled a somewhat
intense brain. Oh, my young friend ! war is very close to human
society everywhere. It is like the rats in the sewers of towns;
v/hole armies of them are hidden under the gentlest homesteads.
It is most unwise for our more warlike Southern countrymen to
bring the argument of force into the comparatively tranquil North ;
for the war-rat is under* every human skin, and at a pin's prick it
may come forth in eruption."

They were walking up the platform as they spoke, and stopped
to see the silent audacity of these unknown strangers, who guarded
the two bridges, sentineled the street-corners, communicated with
each other patrol-fashion, still held the armory gate and yard and
the arsenal, and all this while the town of which they were masters
slept, with its nearly five thousand people, in the funnel of the black
mountains, like dumb animals in a stall.

" This is indeed wonderful," remarked the senator. " My daugh-

H8 KATY OF CATOCTIN'.

ter, you perceive, has read romantic novels ; but what is taking place
here is a little more curious than any such reading of mine. These
strangers can not be a foreign enemy. Virginia can hardly have
seized the General Government's armory. Mere thieves would not
take such chances, for, when the brawny armorers in that town
awaken, Death will keep a holiday here ! Do you know what I
think I shall do ? "

Lloyd looked at him a moment by the variable lights of the
environment, and saw something in the senator's long, fine, quiet
face, which, in sympathy with Lloyd's own temperament, educed
the reply :

" Yes, senator ! You think you will go down to that gate with
your life in your hand and ask the miscreants there for an explana
tion."

The young senator — he seemed hardly forty — looked also at
Lloyd with mild-eyed penetration.

" How did you guess that ? " he said. " But you were right. I
am a fresh senator, without record or much ambition. I might save
life by interposing here, while night and sleep keep this thing yet a
nightmare dream. I can say, at least, I am a senator of the United
States — "

A loud, long, heart-searching wail came from the dying negro's
agony.

" Sir, you shall not go to that gate ! " spoke Quantrell. " Be
cause you are a senator you shall not go. Because, also, you are a
father ! I will go myself. A prophecy is already on my head — that
I shall see that to-night which will change my destiny."

" Magnificent ! " exclaimed a voice at his elbow. " O papa, I
could not stay and hear that poor man. So I have been fortunate
to hear this gentleman's gallant offering. Isn't he a hero ? "

" I fear, Light, he has been reading Monsieur Dumas and Mr.
Ains worth, like you, when he speaks of a prophecy and his destiny."

" I felt there was something like myself in him — like you, too,
papa — when I spoke to him so unconventionally. Something quiet
and unflinching. Something like Robin Hood and Fra Diavolo.
Who does he resemble that we know ? Of course he shall go and
demand of the robbers, ' What ho ! ' "

Both Quantrell and the senator had to laugh heartily at the un
affected enthusiasm of this large, somewhat masculine-statured
Western girl, who might have been eighteen, but was cast in that

JA YHA WKERS. \ \ g

mold between the handsome and the noble that is commonly called
"fine-looking."

" Miss Light," Lloyd said, joyously, " don't try to make an im
pression on me ! You might succeed, and that would be wrong ;
for I have only this day engaged myself to the prettiest maid in
these mountains."

" Splendid ! Romantic ! A hunter, a hero, a lover, everything
noble in one ! — Oh, he must go and challenge these robbers, papa ! "

As they walked along, talking and speculating, and waiting for
an opportunity, or for some decision, on the subject of these maraud
ers, the sky gradually became overspread with clouds and it grew
cold and chilling. The robbers within the gates had built a fire in
the small square building there, and could be seen stooping before
it, or counseling together.

" Are you an abolitionist ? " Lloyd asked Senator Pittson.

"No, no ; I am a Republican."

" A Black Republican ? " asked Ouantrell, suspiciously.

"That's a mere nickname. The few abolitionists also call us
names, because we will not assault slavery in the old States, or
break up the Union, so dear, I hope, to everybody. The Repub
licans merely reassert the doctrine of nature and of the founders of
the republic, that slaver)- is a colonial thing, not in the blood and
circulation of our system, and therefore not to be allowed in the ex
ternal, new domain of the country. It has taken the noble empire
of Texas, by colonizing there, and using American patriotic ambition
to acquiesce in the evil. It shall not so colonize and pervert the
noble empire of the Missouri. With pity for our countrymen tied
up in old slavery, we shall not pity ourselves if we give it our North
ern heritage."

" It seems to me, sir," Quantrell dubiously remarked, " that if
slavery is so bad a thing, it is in danger from your people every
where. Do you think a Northern man is as brave as a Southern
one ? "

" Not as fierce, but I think as brave. Not as decided, but I
think more persevering. They are not as conscious of their princi
ples as your friends are, because theirs are older and apparently
forgotten, while the tremors of slaver}' have raised new and glitter
ing doctrines which must perish if liberty is to live. When the
great power of Britain was exerted to suppress the young American
Republic, the only people they never overran were New England

120 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

and the Alleghany mountaineers. King's Mountain echoed to
Bunker Hill. Since that day, has come the West, the new power
on this planet, I believe ! "

They went in silence to watch the mysterious people again, and
Light Pittson cried :

" Why, look ! Papa, they are carrying spears. See how they
flash against that firelight ! This is glorious ! — When are you going
to challenge them, sir ? "

" This is a good time," Quantrell replied ; " I see the gate has
been opened to admit wagons and horses. Please keep my gun
and dog, Senator Pittson ! "

People crowded around to see what Quantrell, who had become
a man of leadership in the eyes of the passengers, meant now
to do.

" I don't like to see you go down there alone," the senator said.
" It appears too much like going vicariously for me, who suggested
it."

" Let me tie this ribbon to your jacket, sir," Miss Light ex
claimed. " I took it from my neck. Some lady always crowned
the brave knight."

She tied the blue ribbon upon him in real admiration.

" A moment," called Senator Pittson, as Lloyd started down
some rickety steps from the platform. " If anything happens to
you, who is to receive your property ? "

"My father, Abel Ouantrell, in Baltimore."

" And you are — "

"Lloyd Quantrell, his only son."

" Stop ! That man must not go. — I command you not to do my
errand ! "

The placid temperament of the senator was all lost now. He
attempted to rush after Quantrell.

" Hold that man ! He has a family upon the train. If he fol
lows me and exposes himself, I shall lose my life for him," Quan
trell replied.

The train-hands and passengers seized the senator and pressed
him back.

Quantrell kissed his hand to Miss Light, and bounded down the
steps.

" Oh, what a gentleman of romance ! " she spoke.

" He is a gentleman," said Senator Pittson ; " I had heard other-

LLOYD'S DESTIXY CHANGED. I2i

wise. Dear Light," he turned to his daughter, " do you say your
prayers ? "

" Oh, yes, papa.''

" Pray for that young man as if he were my brother ! "

CHAPTER XIII.
LLOYD'S DESTINY CHANGED.

THE armory- gate was open wide, and a carriage drawn by two
horses had already passed in, and four horses, pulling a large farm-
wagon, had stopped in the gateway.

" Jump out, you colored men, and take a spear apiece. We're
short of hands for a spell yet, and want you to do guard duty. Be
lively ! "

Certain negro men, impelled by others who carried guns,
dropped clumsily out of the wagon and almost immediately were
seen carrying sharp things on poles. The same nasal, military
voice continued :

" Get out here, colonel ! — You, too, old man ! Fetch in your
son ! All report yonder, to the commander ! "

Lloyd looked at the man, endeavoring in the moving crowd to
distinguish him, but, before he could be satisfied, the same voice
exclaimed at Ouantrell's ear :

" What ! You captured, too, minstrel ? "

The young hunter turned, and, recognizing the face, he spoke in
astonishment :

" Stevens ? "

" Anything you like. Come right to me ! Don't you put down
your hands, or I'll tickle your heart ! "

Stevens — the same he had drunk with at the spring-house, it
seemed — thrust a pistol at Lloyd Quantrell's body. There was no
doubt about his earnestness, and Ouantrell walked at once to the
pistol's muzzle, saying there :

" Then you're one of these robbers ? "

" Anything you like. You're my prisoner. Go 'lang there, now ! "

He pointed to some low buildings, and the gates behind him
closed with a jangling sound. In the same direction had gone the

122 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

other persons ; and Lloyd, getting the instinct of obedience from his
finely strung automatic captor, walked promptly up to the front of
the nearest building.

It had three doors, and the farther door opened into a separate
and smaller apartment, which contained only a bench and a stove,
and some persons huddling by the fire.

The larger room was nearly square, and contained two engines
to suppress fires — low engines on wheels, with hand levers at the
sides to be worked by double rows of men — and leather hose and a
hose-cart ; and also axes and other appurtenances of a fire company
hung up under the open-beamed roof. The floor and walls were of
brick, and were littered with arms, fagots, tools, and blankets, has
tily distributed there.

Ouantrell walked uninvited into the engine-house amid blacks
and whites, all armed and standing listlessly or nervously about,
and he picked up the fireman's horn :

" Put her right in now ! " shouted Lloyd ; " run her for all she's
worth ! Liberty s the bird ! "

"That's the case to-night," grimly spoke Stevens, "but you'll
cut no more loud capers like that, friend Quantrell ! This engine-
room is for the troops, white and black ; you must go into the watch
man's part with the prisoners."

Two fagots were burning in black men's hands in the engine-
house.

" Hold on ! " Lloyd exclaimed ; " what are these things ? "

The negro he seized the fagot from gave it up with mouth ajar,
and in the other hand held awkwardly a spear — the very fisherman's
gig, as the burning fagot showed, that Ouantrell had twice seen in
the Maryland mountains.

" Ashby," he said, looking up at the negro's face, " you here, and
a robber ? "

" I spec so," the negro hoarsely urged ; " dey say I'm one of 'em.
I don't know."

The fagot was seen to be splints of hard and soft wood bound
together ; the fisherman's gig was the pattern of many spears seen
in black men's hands or leaning against the wall of the engine-house
— bright, glittering spears, too small, sharp, and narrow for display.

"Stevens," spoke Lloyd, "what does this mean? Spears —
slaves ? Are you arming negroes ? "

" Arming everybody ! " cried Stevens, with a cool imprecation.

LLOYD'S DESTINY CHANGED.

123

"Slavery is war and everlasting captivity. We've armed the under
dog in the fight. The boot shall be upon the other leg."

The blood left Ouantrell's lips and head, to hear this hard avowal,
which seemed to the Marylander like hollow blasphemy, unmeant
and merely pretended.

"You will need an army, my indomitable friend, to carry out
that idea."

" We have got it," Stevens exclaimed, in something between
mockery and rapture ; " see it hurrying yonder in the spirit realm —
the cloud- bannered army of the Lord ! "

As he raised his hand toward the small, wind-driven clouds troop
ing down the pallid gulf of sky between the black banks of mount
ains, Stevens seemed in a species of ecstasy, yet cold, like fishes dis
porting ; and the weapons belted around him — pistols and a knife —
shone coldly red in the flare of the fagots which burned, alarmed
and drooping, like some of the negro robbers ; yet others of these
negroes had the appearance of boldness, like all the whites in the
band, and, taking in the scene an instant as carefully as his stirred
feelings would allow, Quantrell observed :

" Stevens, if you're a lunatic, you're a good one. And I suppose
you are the commander of these people ? "

" I ? " Stevens answered, self-scornfully. " Why, our commander
is a man so great, I am not fit to be his orderly sergeant ! I happen,
through want of better recruits, to be third in the command, but I'm
willing to be the last."

" Who is your captain ? "

" Come, you shall see him ; for he is talking to the prisoners."

As they stepped out of the cold engine-room, the night wind
came in a shriek down the long, grassy corridor between the great
armories, bringing some autumnal leaves from the regular lines of
trees, and, in the softened wind-wail which followed, was blended a
dog's inquiring howl.

" Albion ! " spoke Lloyd, as his dog came with obsequious glad
ness to his feet.

The narrow watch-room contained men standing and others
sitting, and all trying to get some warmth from the stove, for the
weather was unusually keen for October on the Potomac. A voice
of somewhat nervous tension, and of metallic sounding in that brick-
walled corridor, spoke up from among the group :

" Your name will be a help to me, sir. Are you his grandson ? "

124

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

" Ah — great-grandson, captain ; descended, sah, from his young
est brother, Charles, sah."

The person standing was a portly man who seemed endeavoring
to rally his spirits into some complacency as he spoke these sentences
in the nearly dark place.

" Lewis Washington, great-grand-nephew of General George
Washington," repeated the voice of hirn sitting, which thrilled
through Lloyd Quantrell and made him turn pale.

"And this is General Washington's sword, captain," spoke up
a prompt little voice. " I had the tact, captain, to make him show
it to me a month ago, and I said, ' We shall want that, for prestige ! ' ''

" And don't forget, captain, that Frederick the Great gave it to
old Washington," spoke up Stevens, over the heads of those stand
ing ; " he said it was from the oldest general in Europe to the
greatest of the age. We think another great man can wear it
again ! "

" No flattery, Stevens ! " exclaimed the metallic voice, low among
the huddling people. — " Colonel Washington, I will exchange you as
soon as it is daylight, and you can see to write an order, for any
able-bodied negro whatever. Your great ancestor's sword I will
fight with for liberty again. Did you ever hear of me ? "

" Ah, no, captain, sah," the voice of the portly man answered,
quite subdued.

" Then, sir, you are not as familiar as General Washington with
the great occurrences of your times. I have fought for American
freedom in greater battles than Lexington and Concord. To-night
I have come to make Virginia free, and travel on this mountain-line
as far as God will let me march, to startle slavery in the vales. I
went to Kansas by the trail and sowed my children's blood there,
and came away with a reward offered for my head. I shall go to
Texas by the pike, or make my head a premium again. I am —

The speaker had risen and come forward, and a way had been
cleared for him.

" I know you now, old fox !" Lloyd Quantrell interposed, stand
ing at the door by the light of one of the torches held by an armed
negro — "you are Isaac Smith ! "

Quantrell had already identified the voice, and now he saw the
gnarled and bearded visage of the mountaineer farmer stand in the
watch-house door, dressed as before, except in two particulars : a
great gray army overcoat with a cape attached dropped from his

LLOYD'S DESTINY CHANGED.

125

shoulders, and his head was covered with a heavy cap of wild-ani
mal skin, rimmed with shining leather. In his hand was an un
cocked carbine. He looked to be a rustic gunner or teamster out,
betimes, for game or work before the break of day.

" I was Isaac Smith for a stratagem," the old man replied.
" Now I am John Brown, and in that name I am come to cleanse
with blood, if necessary, the crime of slavery from the land."

" You, Pop Smith — crazy Pop Smith — are you Brown of Kan
sas?"

" John Brown of Black Jack ; Brown of Ossawattomie ! I see
you have more intelligence, Mr. Quantrell, than Colonel Washing
ton and these gentlemen."

He pronounced the " John " long and nasal, like Jo-aw-en,
dwelling upon it in that Indian guttural which abides in the reso
nant nomenclature of the land. A second torch held by a negro
revealed his Indian figure clearer.

Between his old army-cloak skirts a belt revealed pistols, and a
knife in its sheath, and the dress-sword hilt of the great Frederick
thrust in the belt.

" There he stands, Quantrell," Stevens exclaimed, " lighted up
by two native citizens of Virginia, both of African descent, and I
think you'll never forget him."

Quantrell had to look, for fascination and fear, and the plain,
nearly aged figure he observed by the directions, was illuminated by
the torches of that large mulatto man, who had seized his gun at
the mountain farm, and the sad-cast countenance cf Ashby, the
fugitive.

The dog Albion, snarling once loudly at his recent chastiser, and
crouching next to " point him " well, as if at some curious kind of
game, finally leaped and gamboled, in the apparent idea that a gun
ning party was about to start and take him along.

" He sees doves," thought Quantrell, in a moment of horror,
"and doves will be left to mourn this expedition."

Quantrell next saw at his elbow the small, stooping figure of
Cook.

" Why, Captain Cook," Lloyd exclaimed, " are you a prisoner,
too ? "

" Ha ! that's good ! " answered the childish little man. " Don't
you know I'm a captain in the provisional government? I took the
slave census of this county for Captain Brown. I spotted all the

126 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

big slaveholders, Washington and Allstadt, and now I'm going into
Maryland to arrest our neighbor, Mr. Byrne."

" You treacherous spaniel ! " Quantrell exclaimed, while his dog
snapped at Cook's legs. " To think I let you play on Katy's accor
dion ! "

" Take care ! " spoke Cook, cocking his gun. "You make the
mistake they made in Kansas about me — that I'm a little boy, and
not a shooter. Sir, my brother-in-law is the Democratic Governor
of Indiana, hating abolitionists like poison. But I'm a jayhawker
to the heart ! "

" What's this ? " exclaimed a harsher voice, " prisoners quarrel
ing with our officers ? This gunner-spy here ? — Go in there ! "

It was the dark, raven-haired Kagi, the picture of a bandit, and
he and Cook menaced Quantrell with their short rifles and urged
him toward the watchman's chamber.

" Oliver ! Watson ! Captain Brown ! " Lloyd called in the excite
ment of rage even more than fear, " are these cursed abolitionists
to abuse and confine me ? "

" We're all abolitionists, Mr. Quantrell," spoke Oliver Brown, at
Quantrell's side.

" We glory in the name," said the voice of Watson Brown, at
the other side.

" Pop Smith ! Captain Brown ! "

Lloyd had turned to the old Kansas chief, who was giving some
directions at the wagon side.

"Mr. Quantrell," observed that person, severely, looking up, "I
let you go at the farm, when my officers wanted to take your life.
You were instructed, sir, to keep off the streets. The first thing we
hear of you is a shot from your fowling-piece at my son Watson,
which I returned. The next shot I fire at you will be at closer
quarters, sir ! Then you walk into my headquarters and blow the
fire-horn, sir. Let me have no more of your rowdy capers, but go
in there among the prisoners ! "

As John Brown spoke, the fagots flashed into his eyes, and
something of a wild beast sparkled there.

Quantrell turned and fled into the narrow part of the engine-
house.

For an instant the fickle torches shone upon the fresh, un
tarnished spears of moving negroes, and low, firm, military com
mands were heard upon the night, and then the door closed and all

LLOYD'S DESTINY CHANGED. I2;

was dark except the reddening clay of the little stove and dark sky
coming in at a large round window above the watch-house door.

He heard a robber sentry pacing on the ground without, and the
call of " Halt ! " or " Who comes there ? "

Lloyd leaned against the door in actual terror — not merely the
fear of death, but the mental paralysis following these startling dis
coveries.

Not thirty-six hours had passed since he met this resolute
bandit on the mountains. Now he realized everything.

The strange and mystic sermon of Isaac Smith on the mountain-
top, upon war and military strategy, had been the personal cogita
tion of John Brown, the Border murderer, upon the campaign he
meant next day to begin in Virginia.

The fisherman's " gig " carried in the mountains by Smith's
sons was one of many spears, to arm negro slaves, who would be
unfamiliar with more complex weapons.

The boast of Isaac Smith, that he owned a certain number of
negroes, meant that John Brown controlled them for a war against
their masters.

The reflections of Smith on Broderick's death were incitements of
John Brown to his sons to revenge blood, shed by pro-slaver}r men.

The mountain farm of Isaac Smith and sons was the rendezvous
for a vast recruitment of abolitionists and negroes to drop upon
Virginia in a single night from the great Northern State close by,
and to aid John Brown, the fanatical bandit, to capture the tens of
thousands of stands of muskets in Harper's Ferry, and arm a
mighty insurrection !

Now Quantrell could understand the suspicious and even- harsh
treatment of himself at the rude mountain farm, his examination by
Kagi and Stevens, and the deadly danger he had been in, as a sup
posed spy, entering their lair in the very instant of their descent
upon a peaceful State.

He felt with agony and wonder that if he had discarded, before
he came to that farm, Katy Bosler's poor little accordion, and had
brought no music to be his intercessor, his body might now be
lying in the upland thickets for the mountain crows to pick.

This dark and superstitious Kagi was, no doubt, the second to
Ossawattomie Brown in command, and had power of life and death
over Lloyd and every innocent prisoner.

As these coincidences and emotions rushed together, the young

I28 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

man felt not wholly a sense of despair, but of mental occupation
too great and oppressive for his trifling- and heedless mind, to
which all his youth had been like a schoolboy's truant day, spent
amid the wild haws and mountain plums, and by the rivulets, ston
ing the birds. In a day and a night he had come to the great
crises of love, religious conviction, marriage engagement, fear of
death, and prophecy.

Had he yet seen that which could change his destiny ?

This question he asked himself slowly, and the sense of fear
slowly dissipated from his clearing and cooling brain.

He felt again as he had in the saloon, but a few rods distant,'
when he measured physical strength and address with the ' soul-driv
ers ' and slave-catchers there, and at every blow had rejoiced and
delighted in the perfect clairvoyance of his mind ; yet, with this trans
ference of purpose and returning courage, came also a cold, appetiz
ing instinct, like the shark's, for human prey, and he almost smiled
out of his late excitement, though he ground his teeth.

"If I ever get out of here," Lloyd Quantrell muttered, "death,
death to all abolitionists ! "

He felt so nonchalantly that he had found somebody to distinctly
hate, that he softly, musically, forgetfully, uttered the rooster's crow
of victory, as in the saloon when he smote the Logans down.

A dog barked at his feet.

" Ha, my faithful Albion, you here? " said Lloyd aloud, stooping
and lifting his dog in his arms. " Bark again, and I will crow again,
and they shall be our challenge : ' Death, death to abolitionists ! ' "

The dog replied right earnestly. The young man, with spirits
fully recovered, crowed clear and loud.

In a minute the chanticleers of Harper's Ferry were heard re
sponding, showing that it was nearly morn.

CHAPTER XIV.

LEXINGTON, NOT CONCORD.

THE watch-house was about twenty-four feet deep and half as
wide, and had windows on all sides except in the brick partition,
which was a solid wall, and which left the engine-house portion

LEXINGTON, NOT CONCORD. i2g

nearly square. The windows in this structure were generally of an
arched form, very high above the ground, being, indeed, segments
of the brick arches which composed the walls, and the watch-house
door was uniform with the two doors in the engine-house portion —
a broad double door with a wicket in it.

These high windows showed the dark sky, and from the room-
corners showed the blacker mountain shoulders and perhaps some
few garrets of houses up the cliff. In one of these garrets a candle
burned, and Lloyd wondered if there the infant was not being born
whose baby hand had pushed down Jefferson's Rock and fulfilled the
prophecy.

His mind reverted to the Bunker love-feast and that other babe
which had been born in a stable like this ; for the watch-house might
have originally been the stall of horses to pull the fire-engine.
Across the way was the inn of Nativity, perhaps, with travel
ers delayed, going up to their capital. "And here," concluded
Quantrell, "may be Herod's soldiery seeking the young child's
life."

A quiet awe fell upon him like the cold water of the Bunker
baptism chilling the convert. He thought of Katy's prayer for his
soul, and her solemn words inclined him to devotion now :

" God gif me this soul, and let it drink thy precious blood ! "

He put his hand to his eyes and repeated the first prayer he had
ever made with deep sincerity, though the words had been his task
at school :

" Parce nobis, Jesu ! Libera nos a malo /"

In asking mercy and deliverance from evil, he bowed his head
and added, " God bless Katy ! "

The dog began to scratch the door and to whine.

Quantrell touched something at his button-hole — the ribbon of
Miss Light Pittson.

At once the phantom of Katy Bosler seemed to disappear, and
the ardent and noble youth of the lady whose admiration he had so
candidly received, awoke a more worldly flutter in his breast.

" Something makes me want to see that fine girl once more,"
Quantrell thought ; " she called me her knight. Her father is a sen
ator ! "

The pointer-dog leaped upon him fondly and touched his cold
muzzle to Lloyd's face.

" If I had not seen Katy first, Albion," mused Lloyd, " I should
9

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

have fallen in love with Light. But the light in Katy's eyes out
shines hers.1'

He turned and walked back into the cell or corridor.

Talking in low tones together were several prisoners, awed and
suspicious, and iney looked up at Quantrell by the stove's poor
light, and some greeted him with a thin laugh and others ceased to
speak.

" Captain, ah : — sah ! " spoke a portly man whom Lloyd guessed
to be Colonel Washington, and who had begun his sentence with
courtly intentions, but judged it best to round up without saying
anything.

" I'm not one of the captains," Lloyd answered ; " my uncle
Quantrell keeps a slave-pen at Baltimore, and I guess that ought to
be guarantee for me, with you men, at least."

" Ah ! yes — sah ! " said the colonel, but hardly more considerate,
as if his suspicions had been satisfied but not his scruples.

" What's yourn ? " asked an old man who had been sitting, and
who started up and looked at Lloyd unsteadily. " Bitters ? Gin,
did you say ? Tansy ? Fi'penny bit — fi'penny bit."

" Watty ! Watty ! " interposed another man of age, but less in
firm, " you're not tending bar this morning. You're tuk, Watty !
— He's a little off his Americanus, sir ; I mean he's not just right in
his head, since he's been tuk."

" Fi'penny bit ! Come ag'in ! " muttered the old bar-keeper, set
tling to his bench

" And what are you, my friend ? " Quantrell asked of the third
person.

" Me ? Oh, I'm the armory bell-ringer. I've rung that bell thirty-
five year. I never missed but of a Sunday and a holiday. Dear
me ! ef Cap'n Brown don't let me go ring it at six o'clock, I'll go off
of my Americanus. What '11 old Ball say ? "

" Oh, yes, what will old Ball say ? " cried half a dozen voices.
" Old Ball '11 come and git tuk."

" Ah ! yes — sah ! " coincided Colonel Washington, not yet set
tled that he ought to say something. In the pause, after waiting
for him, the bar-keeper mumbled :

" Medford, Jamaikey, or Santycroo ? He-he ! All same bottle,
gen'lemen. Fi'penny bit — fi'penny bit ! Come ag'in."

" Watty has to git up fur the airly trade at the bar," explained
the bell-ringer. " You see they'll all git tuk — them airly birds — this

LEXINGTON, NOT CONCORD. 131

mornin' ; fur they'll come to git their drams, an' Cap'n Brown '11 git
'em all."

" An' git ole Ball, too — ha ! ha ! " shouted the great body of the
prisoners.

" Dear me ! " spoke the bell-ringer, again absently, " ef I can't
ring the bell at the minute, may be I'll git discharged. That would
set me clar off of my Amerzcanus."

The door opened, and three more prisoners were brought in, fol
lowed by three of the Kansas party, whom Lloyd identified to be
Kagi, young Ned Coppock, from Iowa, and Newby, the handsome
mulatto man who had been rude to Ouantrell.

" Cold night for October," Kagi said.

" Colder morning for you ! " Ouantrell spoke up, with deep mean
ing and dislike.

" Blathering yet, are you ? " Kagi replied, his cocked gun across
his lap, leaning to the stove.

" That worm is crawling toward you," Quantrell said, remember
ing the man's pallor and superstition.

Kagi showed the same ghastly skin for a minute amid his
long, dead hair, and then spoke in a tone of enforced quiet :

" Then that star is drawing near me."

He looked at Lloyd with a determination in which high fanati
cism was blent, and without further anger.

" No quarrelin' in the bar, gen'lemen," old Watty, the bar-keeper,
started up ; " drink with the house ! Whisky ? Ahalt's or Hor-
sey's? Lemon-peel? Fi'penny bit — fi 'penny bit ! Come ag'in."

" There, now, see what you 'II come to ! " Kagi observed, look
ing straight at Ouantrell and indicating old Watty with his head.
"Whisky will fetch you there. Slavery and whisky are distilled
out of each other."

" Did you ever drink whisky ? " asked Lloyd.

" No."

" Did you ever have a slave ? "

" I'm not that kind of a serpent."

" That's just what I supposed," said Lloyd ; " you're an ignorant
fanatic."

" Ah, sah — sah ! " put in Colonel Washington, a little apprehen
sive of a murder, and about to say something, but reconsidering it.

" Washington," spoke Kagi, " if you was worthy of the only ce
lebrity in your family, you would have them pistols of Lafayette and

132

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

the sword of the King- of Prooshey, and be leading this expedeetion,
instead of throwing it on to an old saint, like Captain Brown. Free
dom might build you up, as slavery has about buried you ! "

" Ah, sah ! " Colonel Washington exclaimed, with an instant's
asperity, and then after a pause concluded with great docility — " in
deed, sah, captain ! "

" Solgers," spoke up the bell-ringer, " what '11 ole Ball do to me ?
what '11 the sup'rintindon do ? I must ring that bell, or I'll go off of
my Americanus clar."

" Not this mornin' ! " spoke up the bright-faced, negligently-
dressed Coppock. " You and us and all can ring it, when slavery is
over. Then, I calkelate, it'll be glad enough to ring itself."

" He-he ! " chuckled a prisoner, " ole Ball— when he's tuk, what '11
he say ? "

A low laugh, somewhat suppressed by awe, went around the
humbler set of prisoners, and old Watty, who had been dozing,
started up, saying :

" What's yourn? I'm gwyn to close the bar and git some sleep.
Hollin ? Ole Tom ? Peppermint ? Be quick ! Fi'penny bit — fi'penny
bit ! "

"Ned," said Ouantrell, familiarly, to young Coppock, "you're
not a bad-looking fellow. Don't you know you'll be hanged for this
freak to-night ? What got you into it ? "

" Common sense, I calkelate ! " Coppock answered, amiably.
" If I saw you working and spending the sweat of your brow for a
man who stood over you with a whip and didn't pay you wages,
wouldn't it be my duty to interfere ? Wouldn't you interfere for me,
oppressed like that ? I think you would."

" Not for a nigger," answered Lloyd Ouantrell.

" I didn't see no exceptions made against negroes in my Bible,"
Coppock spoke, unexcitedly. " Nor in my Declaration of Independ
ence, neither ! Captain Brown — he was ready to throw his life in.
So I throwed in mine ! "

Coppock tightened his belt, full of arms, which he had loosened
while warming, looked at the breech-loading of his gun, and started
up.

" What do you think of my being heah ? "

The voice was that of the fine-looking but fierce mulatto man,
and he was looking right at Ouantrell, who replied with indignation :

" I think you will stay here, when you get your deserts."

LEXINGTON, NOT CONCORD. 133

" Thank you," said the man, armed like a Turk, with pistols, dirk,
and small, cunning rifle. " I know you mean I ought to die heah ;
but you never told as much truth in yo' life. Heah, in the county
of Jefferson, I was born. So was Mr. Kagi's folks. The paymas
ter's clerk of this armory is in the family that owned me. I run
away to be a free man ! I left behind me a wife I love as much as
you kin love yo' sweetheart, God knows that ! She's had nine
childern."

He stopped, still fierce, but trembling at the throat, as if agony
was close behind his audacity.

" Don't cry, now," Lloyd said ; " I can feel for you."

" I can't cry," spoke the man, with a proud intensity. " I come
heah to fight, not to cry. These rocks around Harper's Ferry, I's
seen so many years, is full of crows. Not a black crow that makes
his nest in them rocks won't fight for his young against the eagles
that tries to eat them. Do you think I could stay yonder in Ohio
when my little childern called me heah, and Captain Brown called
me, too ? I had to be a man ! "

" Oh, yes ! " exclaimed Watty, the bar-keeper, starting up, " I
reckon I'll sell a nigger a drink ! Brandy? (good enough for you !)
Tansy? Fi 'penny bit — fi'penny bit "

" Where is your wife now ? " Lloyd Quantrell inquired, interested,
notwithstanding his repulsion.

Newby, the mulatto, hesitated, and a furious scowl came upon
his brow.

" It's not my shame, nor hers," he continued ; " it's the shame of
this infamous slavery ! She's got another family of childern by her
master's son, and his and mine will both be slaves, unless I make
them free."

Unable longer to suppress his sensibilities and excitement, the
spirited mulatto arose and disappeared into the night.

" What do you think of that, Colonel Washington ? " asked Kagi,
turning his strong, almost gloomy countenance upon the chief pris
oner. " Is that man merely an intruder in the land of his birth? Or
has he here rights strengthened by wrongs — injuries which would
make you die for shame, or fight for shame ? "

" Captain, never did I hea' such rebellious and unconstitutional
opinions advanced, sah — ah, sah ! "

The legatee of the Father of his Country had reconsidered his
reply before he made it.

134

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

Kagi also departed, and Ouantrell asked Colonel Washington
what he expected Smith, or Brown, would do with his prisoners.

" Sah," answered the colonel, with a deep outburst of feeling,
" they'll sacrifice us all ! Men with no respect, sah, for the Constitu
tion, sah, can have no respect for human life or the ten command
ments—ah, sah ! "

The colonel was cut short by the entrance of William Thomp
son, the chief outlaw's connection.

" Mr. Ouantrell," said this young man, " there's a lady on the
train our chief has stopped, who wants to know why the cars can't
proceed. Her father has took sick."

" Light Pittson ! " exclaimed the prisoner ; " she asked me to do
her a service. William, you must get me permission to go. It is a
woman, dear to me already."

" Some of our superior officers will have to give you leave, Mr.
Quantrell. I'm only a lieutenant."

" Go see Captain Brown for me, or Captain Stevens ! You may
want me, William Thompson, when you will have no other friend
in the world. Do this, and then I will hear your call ! "

" I should like to do anything right, sir. But here is Captain
Stevens."

Stevens entered, and Quantrell addressed him with insinuating
heartiness :

" Cap, why do you keep that train, full of innocent passengers,
standing frightened and tired all night ? It's got the mail. You
might as well be robbing the mail as to be alarming all those
females. The Government and the women will both resent it."

" It's not my idee," said Stevens, shaking his head. " It wa'n't
in the plan of our campaign, neither. But here's the commander-
in-chief ! "

Isaac Smith, as Lloyd still named him, came in and looked
around calmly, like one settled in mind by warlike responsibility.

" What are you debating, Stevens, with the prisoners ? " he
asked.

" There are passengers out yonder at the station," young Thomp
son spoke, " who have sent me here to speak to Mr. Ouantrell and
get them permission to proceed to their destination. They are
hungry and some are sick. I don't see, father, why you keep them
there. They'll only join against us."

" Hasn't that train proceeded ? " the wiry, bearded bandit ex-

LEXINGTON, NOT CONCORD. 135

claimed ; " I have been inspecting.the posts, and supposed it had
gone on. Who stopped it ? "

" Watson Brown and Stuart Taylor. You told them to let
nothing cross the bridge."

"It was my oversight and their mistake," the leader said, with
a serious look. " All military orders ought to be obeyed, but with
intelligence. I have been made to antagonize the Government."

" And to murder a railroad hand — a black man, too — I have
seen him dying, Pop Smith," Ouantrell spoke, clear and indignant.
" You can not lose a moment in repairing a part of your offense.
Senator Pittson is on that train with his family. He told me he sus
pected you to be the unknown marauder here. His daughter has
sent for me to come to their relief. We'll go, old man, together ! "

Concluding kindly, as he had commenced sternly, Quantrell's
suggestion was accompanied by a stride forward and a hand upon
the old leader's arm. They walked into the night, and Brown or
Smith went up to his guards and spoke :

" Hazlett, Lehman, go find the conductor of that train — one of
you ; the other go order my son upon the bridge to let the train go
safely past. I will myself guard it across the river. — Bring your
light here, my man ! "

The negro Ashby, a little more at ease, came forward with the
torch, and it shone upon a raw-boned, tall young man, ten years
or more older than Quantrell, with red hair and dull, brown eyes.
Quantrell remembered him long afterward by his name being de
scriptive of the color of those forbidding hazel eyes — Hazle-tt.

" The conductor was too scared to go on when we told him,"
Hazlett said, slipping his carbine under his blanket, which was wound
around his body.

The other person, addressed as Lehman, was of black hair and
bright, boyish face, hardly of citizen age. He measured Quantrell's
strong form an instant and said :

" Captain Brown, you don't want this man. Put him on the
train and send him off ! "

He gave a significant look to Lloyd, who had the opportunity to
say to Lehman, also, soon afterward, upon the bridge :

" I'll do you a good turn, my boy. Take your own advice, and
never cross that bridge again."

"And leave my captain and comrades?" the boy replied; "I'll
leave my body on one of them rocks first ! " — pointing to the river.

136 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

This was after Quantrell had rejoined Senator Pittson's family
upon the train, whither Brown or Smith allowed him to proceed,
while looking for the conductor.

CHAPTER XV.

DARK, LIGHT, AND KISS.

THE train was nearly dark, as some of the passengers had blown
out the candle and whale-oil lamps, so as not to attract the aim of
rifles ; and, feeling his way along, Quantrell softly called :

" Light ! "

In an instant a woman met him and drew him to the vacant
place upon her seat, and said :

" My hero ! How noble of you ! — Papa, mamma, here is Mr.
Quantrell safe again."

Quantrell took her hand, and in the darkness placed his other
hand around the large and glowing form of the senator's daughter.

" Speak quietly," he said, leaning toward the backs of her par
ents, on the bench before him, " or all the passengers will crowd
here."

He felt the deceit he was doing, for it was to enjoy Light's so
ciety that he gave this counsel. She resented his endearment but
a moment, and in the obscurity sat within his arm, he only the
trembler.

The senator did not speak, but his wife inquired distantly of
Quantrell what nature of men might have taken the town.

" Oh ! sir, I know what you will say," Light Pittson exclaimed,
bringing her form and face around to Quantrell ; " I have consid
ered it all. They are Mexicans. See their blankets, and wide som
brero hats, and flashing lances ! Are they not rancheros, caballeros,
patriots, who have come to repay our ungenerous invasion of their
land ? "

" Indeed," said Quantrell, " they have come from half-way to
ward Mexico. They are Kansas buccaneers. — Senator Pittson, the
old man says he is John Brown."

" John Brown ! " Light Pittson exclaimed ; "that's a little plain.
Not the Black Douglas ! Nor Charles de Moor ! Well, John Brown

DARK, LIGHT, AND KISS. i^j

is simple heroism. And not Mexican ? Why, all the more ro
mantic, papa. He's our own American hero."

The senator did not speak immediately, nor turn his head. He
remarked after a pause, in which the young couple sat bolt upright,
enjoying the respectful flutter of their hearts :

" I feared some unbalanced, or overbalanced, man would stam
pede this nation, if violence in Kansas became chronic there. Our
prairie-grass blows eastward in the season of prairie-fires. Brown
has always trod a lonely and peculiar path, doing his own thinking,
projecting comprehensive enterprises out of no resources at all, and
self-confident enough to undertake the fulfillment of any forlorn
hope or old Puritan dream."

" You knew him, then, papa? "

As she leaned ardently forward, Ouantrell held her more
tightly.

" Shame, sir! " Light Pittson whispered to him. " Where is your
mountain beauty ? "

" It was predicted," Ouantrell whispered in her ear, " that my
destiny should be changed to-night."

A slightly accelerated breathing was her response, and a stillness
that was the bliss of pain.

" Yes," said the senator, reflectively, " I once visited John Brown
in northeast Ohio, near the town where he was raised. His father
was a pioneer of the great West, a poor man, a tanner, and a shoe
maker. Yet this son, John Brown, was then aiming to control the
wool-trade of all the West, and had a great flock of Estremadura
sheep, and had mercantile aims which spanned two worlds."

" What did he look like, Mr. Pittson ? " Lloyd asked, in the thrill
of both beauty and political feeling.

"Why, sir" — the senator seemed more distant than upon their
first acquaintance — " the scene he made that day to my boyish mind
was so romantic I never can forget it."

" Ah ! papa," Light said, " I get my romance legitimately."

"Yes, that legitimately, Light," the senator reflected, as if he
was smiling, too. " John Brown was then about forty-five years of
age. He had lost four of his children nearly at the same funeral.
He was walking along on that high plain — the highest between the
river Ohio and Lake Erie — with a large basket upon his arm full of
new-born lambs. In his great white coat-pockets was a lamb in
each. The mothers of the Jambs were following him toward the

138

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

fold, bleating. And what do you suppose he was thinking of, amid
those bleating dams and lambkins ? "

" Wool, I reckon," Ouantrell spoke, sullenly — " black wool."

" Yes, sir, something like that," the senator rejoined. " He said
to me, ' I was just thinking that if this Government did not do bet
ter, some day I would begin war upon human slavery and close it
out.' Strange that I should have remembered it to this night, for I
was myself a boy ! "

" He has come," said Quantrell, " if this be the same man. His
basket and his pockets are full of lambs. Their mothers will bleat
to-morrow when we kill them, on the threshold of Virginia."

" I am not surprised that Brown should attempt anything, but
that he could persuade enough men to follow him here within the
lines of Baltimore, Richmond, and Washington, is a matter of pro
found wonder, and it shows, my dear," he addressed his wife, " how
the anti-slavery agitation has caught the younger generation up.
John Brown considers himself the executioner. He has an indiffer
ence about life, in the furtherance of any extreme proposition, that is
particularly Puritan. I am not well, and yet I will try to speak to
him, useless though it may be."

" I will go with you ! " said Lloyd Quantrell, rising from Miss
Light's side.

"No, sir!" the senator firmly spoke. — "Detain him here, my
daughter. It is fit that I should risk my life for Abel Quantrell's
son, and discharge my debt to him."

Mrs. Pittson, accompanying her husband down the aisle of the
car, left Quantrell free to address her large, engaging, child- daughter
according to the strange rebellion in his heart. He took Light's hand
again, and said :

" It was to see you, Miss Light, that I, risked returning from my
prison, where I had intended to stay and see this outrage through.
Do you understand why we became so soon interested in each
other?"

" Romance — glorious, sincere romance !" Light Pittson spoke,
with earnestness that was both eloquent and mirth-moving. " We
met each other in danger ! Among mountains ! Going to the grand
capital of our free country. You were brave and handsome, and
became our herald to the bandits."

" Dear miss, it must have been something more than that. It
was for your father, and not for you, I took my chances with the

DARK, LIGHT, AND KISS,

robbers : I did not want him to be exposed. And yet, since I have
entered their prison, the thought of you, growing and growing in
my head — I think it is not yet my heart — made me come back to
see you again."

"Mr. Ouantrell, you wore my ribbon, and it was your knight
hood. You remember the knight who went down to the lion to
bring his lady her glove she dropped there. He threw it into her
face, because her intention was not romantic, and merely a bit of
coquetry."

" Then you are no coquette ? "

" Oh, no. A woman who would trifle with courage and danger,
and expose another for less than true romance, is the unworthiest
of her sex."

" Were you ever in love, Miss Light ? "

" No, indeed. The man ! love must have some fine romance
in him, whether for good or evil. He must be true to his ideal, Mr.
Quantrell. Papa is that kind of man : he admires candor, and says
hypocrisy is the only enemy of freedom ; that we need not apologize
for nature's deviations in us, and if we err should do so frankly.
Never to lie, nor conceal, nor evade ; to take one's side in the battle
of life, and let gallant conduct attest our honest motive."

" I believe with your father, Miss Light ; with him and his fami
ly, 1 must disagree upon the subject of to-iaight's outrage. I shall
take my part against the abolitionists with all my might."

" Splendid ! " said Light Pittson. " Who can blame you for
choosing your side ? If not a Paladin, be a Saladin ; and always
chivalric."

" Let me wear your ribbon, and I will try to remember your
father's motto. Does he know my father? "

" He must, I think. After you went down among the robbers,
he was quite overcome. I heard him say, ' The right half of him is
there ! ' He has been thinking about something ever since."

" Dear young lady — Light, let me call you — "

" Oh, do ! We Western girls are never formal."

" There is a right half in me. There must be also a worser
half. I have had no teacher. My aims are ignorant. I live by
guess. May I have your sympathy ? "

" Yes, but you must be true to your mountain damsel. No dis
loyalty, Mr. Lloyd."

"You mean Lloyd, Light."

140

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

"Well, Lloyd. It sounds like loyalty."

" And your name sounds like knowledge. I can be loyal to my
errors, but where shall I find light to show them to me ? "

" Papa says that errors are the only lighthouses, and that dan
gerous coasts are lighted by the wrecks they caused."

" Do you feel any real interest in me ? "

" I never was so attracted to a gentleman in my life. You must
not feel complimented by the truth."

" If I had met you one day before yesterday," Lloyd Quantrell
said earnestly, " I think I never could have loved any other woman."

She was not of the trembling kind of girls, her youthful body
too precocious and substantial to yield to nervous rippling, but his
ardent speech made her breathe audibly and be silent. A stranger
had spoken the first avowal of love to her.

" Answer me, " Lloyd Quantrell said.

" Oh, this beautiful Eastern land ! " she replied. " In this, my
first distant journey, I have found mountains and robbers, and had a
gallant gentleman make love to me. What — what romance ! "

" Add this to it," said Lloyd.

He kissed her.

She gave a scream, impetuous as her blushes.

" Don't be frightened, Light ! " spoke the voice of her father at
the car-door; " I'm not hurt, though I might have been."

Quantrell felt relieved that the scream had been passed to a
false account.

" Never mind, my dear," Senator Edgar Pittson said to his wife,
as they both came forward out of obscurity to more darkness. " He
did threaten me, and his manner showed an indifference to life I had
suspected of him when his self-righteous confidence is in com
mission."

" Who, papa — the brigand ? "

" Yes, it is John Brown — grayer, graver, commoner, but peculiar
yet, and walking to-night the loneliest of all his peculiar paths."

Mr. Pittson sank nervously into his seat, and wife and daughter
soothed him, while Lloyd persuaded the interested passengers to
give a sick gentleman privacy.

" I did not know I could be really scared so," the senator spoke,
after taking breath " He has a singular power over men's terrors."

" Indeed he has,' Lloyd Quantrell added. " I have felt it to
night, senator ; the maniac is dead in earnest."

DARK, LIGHT, AATD KISS. 1/j.I

"Wonderful romance!" Light exclaimed, and her mother re
proved her. " What did General Brown say to you, papa ? "

" He was at the side of the car, as Mr. Ouantrell had intimated,
and was commanding the unwilling conductor to cross the bridge
with his train. I introduced myself, and remonstrated with him
upon this extraordinary breach of the peace. He turned upon me
and demanded my name and business. When he recognized me,
he ordered me to get on the train and proceed, under pain of death."

" Afraid of your influence, Edgar ? " Mrs. Pittson observed, a
lady large, like her daughter, as it seemed.

" Oh, no. He called me a temporizer and a compromiser, and
said that if public men like me, from the free States, had done our
duty, he and his lads need not be in arms upon slave soil to-night.
' Go to Washington,' said he, ' and tell Congress that John Brown
has reopened the American Revolution ! ' His followers, like him
self, were no respecters of my person. But, see ! we are starting."

The train was really moving, slowly on squeaking wheels, like
timid people going tiptoe up stairways which creak the more for
their indecision. Looking out of the window, Quantrell saw the
mountain farmer walking by the conductor and his lamp — the con
ductor hesitating and downcast, the mountaineer with the step of
one oblivious to danger.

" I could kill him now," spoke Quantrell, half aloud.

" Oh,' no," the voice of Light Pittson answered at his ear. " Not
while we are under his safe-conduct. What a simple old man !
But, see, how venerable his beard is ! How much he seems deter
mined ! How considerate, but not for himself ! And this is Brown
of Ossawattomie ! Was there ever such a romance ? "

The train passed the sentries and messenger ; the sound of solid
ground was beneath the wheels. Quantrell lighted one of the lamps.
For a little while the speed was increased as if under fright, and then
the engine lost self-control and everything was arrested.

" They need not be examining the wheels and gear," Mr. Pitt-
son said ; " if Brown designed harm to any here, he would not have
hesitated to commit it."

" You think such a man can have any honor, senator ? " Lloyd
asked.

" Yes. It is the quality of the old Cromwellians to take life
without much sensibility, but to stickle at any deceit, compromise,
or false doctrine. This man Brown would have sat in Bradshaw's

142

KATY OF CA10CTIN.

place to judge King Charles, and would not have masked his face
when chopping off the king's head ; but he would never throw a
train from the track, to injure innocent people. His parole he never
would violate."

" Much as I hate him," Quantrell said, " I will not be outdone
by him. I was his prisoner, and am under some sense of parole. I
will return to Harper's Ferry."

" Nonsense, Lloyd Quantrell ! The parole John Brown intended
for you, I suspect, was not to return. He told me that he wished
there was not a citizen in Harper's Ferry ; that he only came for
arms, slaves, and slave-hostages."

" Nevertheless, I shall return," Quantrell said.

" Always my hero ! " Light Pittson exclaimed. " Yes, return like
Regulus, Lloyd, if they roll you down the mountains in a barrel of
knives ! I would always keep my word."

" My daughter," spoke Mrs. Pittson, a large, somewhat haughty
lady, " you call Mr. Quantrell ' Lloyd.' That is not modest."

" Mamma, it is very natural to say ' Lloyd ' to him. He calls me
4 Light.' This is not romance, mamma. I feel it."

They were all standing in the car, which a brakeman had fully
lighted. Lloyd observed that even under the late excited conditions
some of the passengers were fast asleep. He also saw that Senator
Pittson and wife were looking searchingly at him, with somewhat
different expressions, and, unable to decipher these, Lloyd exclaimed :

" Mrs. Pittson, Light is as modest as any young lady in the land.
That I would maintain with my life. Why we feel so near each
other we can not tell. Let me come to see you in Washington if I
live."

" My daughter is very young— too young for gentlemen's society
yet," Mrs. Pittson coldly replied. " I think this chance acquaintance
had better end."

" Mamma," pleaded Light Pittson, " it may be our destiny. Did
we seek this precious opportunity of romance? "

"Romantic girl," answered Mrs. Pittson, "what will restrain
you in Washington if you yield to these illusions of love upon a rail
road-train ? "

" Not love, but affection," Lloyd Quantrell spoke, taking Light's
hand and seeking her father's eyes. " Mr. Pittson, in our short
acquaintance we have both been in danger for each other. I like
you all. Miss Light is dear to me as your daughter. I have a great

DARK, LIGHT, AND KISS. 143

favor to ask of you, sir; but I ask it boldly and in all the light of
honor."

He glanced at the senator's daughter as he unconsciously played
upon her name. The senator stood nearly rigid, slender, and, as it
seemed, deadly pale.

" I know what you will ask," the senator said.

Lloyd Quantrell felt himself blushing, in spite of all his moral
courage.

" If you know," he continued, "you must read me very deeply.
I shall ask to repeat candidly what I have done covertly."

" Mabel," the senator turned to his distinguished-looking wife,
" Mr. Quantrell wishes to kiss our daughter."

" This is going too far," exclaimed Mrs. Pittson, flushing and
opening her dark, creole eyes.

" I do, madam ; I wish to kiss my beautiful friend good-by in
sight of her parents."

" No, it should not be," Mrs. Pittson commanded. " I must for
bid it."

The senator wore a strange yet touching smile as he contem
plated the young man with something between wonder and affec
tion. Almost automatically he spoke :

" It is the voice of nature, wife, and pure as nature ever must
be in candor such as his. Yes — "

" Edgar ! "

" Yes, Mabel — I say yes."

He made a motion with his foot a little imperious and turned to
look at his wife.

" Is this prudent ? " she whispered.

" No," said Senator Pittson, with a face made cheerful, as by his
will. " It may not be prudent, but it is real. Let it come in its
own way.'*

Lloyd took the youthful maiden's hand, her development so
womanly, her expression so child-like, as she turned her face upward
without fear.

" As I wear your ribbon, Light, take my kiss — openly, sincerely,
heartily, before father and mother. God bless you ! "

She stood looking at him in perfect admiration. Her mother
took his proffered hand with a countenance indicative of pride and
fear more than dislike. The senator wore a gentle smile, like one
whose decision his mind approved, and said :

144

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

" You have everything, Lloyd, but what you will lose."
To the last Quantrell saw that superb flower of woman, yet in
the age of the bud, giving him her whole romantic soul through her
great gray eyes. The train moved eastward under the mountain-
crags and cast its lights in the sluggish canal which wound beside
it. Quantrell was standing alone, between road, railroad, canal, and
the rocky gridiron of the river. He saw, a little way in the direc
tion of the retreating red lantern of the train, the bars of houses at
Sandy Hook.

" I'll wake my landlord up, and fill my flask, and tell him the
news," Lloyd Quantrell said, carrying his gun and game-bag.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE SUCK.

"THEY'RE fighting at the Ferry," Lloyd said to the landlord,
who arose half awake, and was not inquisitive.

" Always fightin' thar," the landlord replied, giving him some
new country whisky.

"Abolitionists have taken the Ferry," Lloyd explained.

" Then they'll git tuk," the landlord observed, as if the Ferry
was " tuk " every night. " Harper's Ferry is an ole suck."

"Suck?" repeated Quantrell, struck with the word; "how a
suck ? "

" That's the name of it. Injuns called it the Hole and the Suck.
Nobody ever gits out that gits in thar. Railroad stuck thar for
years. Gov'inent can't git out. It's the Suck."

" ' Sucks people in,' you mean ? "

" Yes ; ole Bob Harper tuk it up from Pete Stevens over a hun-
dered years ago. Pete had squatted thar years on Lord Fairfax and
couldn't git out. Bob Harper left his bones thar. The floods gits
it, the winds gits it, whisky gits it, and now, did you say, the abo
litionists has got it ? It'll be a suck."

" Old Isaac Smith and sons have took it," Lloyd said, falling
into the syntax of the place. " They and a band of abolitionists.
They're killing people there."

" Isaac Smith ? " the landlord said. " And sons ? Is them abo-

THE SUCK.

145

litionists ? They stopped with me when they fust come yer. They
come to Sandy Hook last July, an' said they was lookin' for minerals,
an' sheep-lands an' farms. Well, well ! Is them abolitionists ? I
thought they was Christians. They'll find Harper's Ferry a suck."

The landlord filled Quantrell's flask, put up his bottle, and went
to bed. Having slept there two nights before, the gunner sought
his own room mechanically, and stretching himself on the bed said,
sleepily, " False to Katy ! — not I " ; and then, it seemed to him, the
sun rose right into his eyes. He had fallen asleep, probably for
hours.

Nobody was awake in the hotel. He strolled up the road lead
ing from the river, and found himself in Pleasant Valley, between
the two mountain-lines, in rugged farm-country. He retraced his
road under Maryland Heights back toward Harper's Ferry, and
soon saw that picturesque village standing like the nipple above
"The Suck." The sun was just rising up the shining lap of the
Potomac, and shooting silver arrows at the little city, which stood
out like a target.

Harper's Ferry appeared between the two rivers, rising like a
great green mound, with a road dividing it over the top through a
ravine, and another road around the base of the mound ; and for a
little way up its scarp hung or clung the picturesque little town,
which also raveled along the upland road among borders of shade-
trees till it disappeared over the summit. This hill was several hun
dred feet high, and three or four churches, presented their gables
from its grassy face, as if their pulpits had been buried in the earth.
A spire or belfry or mountain graveyard added points of whiteness
to the green background or clear gray sky, and some stone walls and
terraces and bits of pasture-land where cows were quietly grazing in
the airy tops gave a faint sense of inhabitancy. To the right over
the Potomac the eastern portion of the mound terminated in a nearly
perpendicular crag, out of which grew a pale-green thicket of trees
and bushes, leaning almost horizontally. From near this abrupt
headland to the low cape of the mound extended the stately line of
low brick factories with high chimneys, and in the midst a lofty flag-
mast. These buildings in their continuation also turned the cape
and extended a little way up the other river, and below the factory
line ran railroads coming down the sides of the two rivers and meet
ing at a covered bridge of wood which spanned the Potomac on
arches of stone to the Maryland shore.

146 KATY OF CATOCTJN.

In overlapping rows of irregular heights the dormer-windowed
houses and other dwellings, more detached, caught in their panes
of glass the rising sun which shone through the rifted precipices up
the broad, islet-sprinkled, rock-barred rivers, making them seem
aisles of silver "between borders of green and russet. A canal
wound along the larger river like a silver cord under the bare crags
of Maryland.

Another bridge, starting from near the commencement of the
larger one, passed on slender abutments to the mountain above the
Shenandoah. This mountain at the cape above the mingling of the
rivers fell in perpendicular ledges or chimneys almost a thousand
feet to the woodlands which grew from its debris and spread toward
the eye in graceful wreaths of verdurous mountain, along whose sides
could be seen the eagles, vultures, and crows circling as if around
nests concealed in the rocks. For several miles these Virginia
precipices curled over the Potomac as if seeking courage to span it
and connect with the bald, scarred wall of Maryland Mountain ; but
failing to do so till far below, a valley found place in Maryland to
empty its creeks into the augmented Potomac between these hesitat
ing ridges.

Thus the town of Harper's Ferry slumbered at the base of its
own acclivity, between the jaws of grander mountains which threat
ened to fall upon it and drown it in a deluge, like that which had
probably broken them asunder. There seemed wanting, to com
plete the subjugation of the town, some mighty castle of the feudal
age to crown its dome of greenness. He who descends the Alpine
torrents toward the great plain of Lombardy may see sublimer
heights for the old Ghibelline castles which frown toward the Papal
sees, but nowhere else could he see two such rivers meet and go
forward like white-plumed cavalry to wash the old Catholic counties
of the plain of Maryland.

An autumn russet lay inwoven with the green and gray scarps of
the desolate mountains, like camp-fires which had gone out, in the
awe of what had seized upon the usually whistling and hammering
town in the vale. The crows and vultures chattered or circled in
wondering gossip or augury about the steepling chimneys of Lou-
doun Heights, as on that morning when Romulus and Remus
watched the birds of omen and spilled the first blood of brethren in
cuddling Rome.

The little city hugging the heights, familiar with deluges, forg-

THE SUCK. !47

ing arms for battle, and often sheeted over by the thunder-storms, was
on this day so commonplace amid its great besetments, that it stirred
no more than the water-snakes upon the surface of the river rocks,
which felt their cold blood grow tcrpid in the cloudy October air.
The insensate and the superstitious, the vulgar and the rapt, leth
argy and Nemesis, went together, as on that day when, at the walls
of Troy, a wooden horse arose ridiculous, but in the sky a serpent
shook the stout soul of the protesting priest.

The Shenandoah, in cool, green rapids and white ripples, came
around a shoulder of wooded mountain in a stately curve, and a
low stone dike, partly natural, held its current back, to guide the
water-power into two milling canals which formed green islands
under the mutilated heights of Jefferson's Rock. These islands were
inhabited by artisans and by toilers in the tall grist-mills there, and
the upper island was another Government armory, with a line of
workshops inclosed by a wall and entered by a bridge across the
mill-sluice. Within the wall, a cupola tower in the facade inclosed
a bell and upheld a flag-staff, and behind the rifle-works, next to the
river, a railway ran toward the great Valley of Virginia.

The sound of the Shenandoah churning among huge rocks and
moaning over the low dam never was unheard here in the busiest
days, and in the still dawn it seemed to speak a legend in the
voice of sobbing, like the legend of bondage by the rivers of Baby
lon.

Upon the summits above Jefferson's Rock lived the chief officials
of Harper's Ferry, in roomy mansions, and thus the double river-
gorge and rocky redan of the upper town maintained a feudal ap
pearance, and had that military air as of some castellated pass held
for a distant emperor by his various mercenary bands.

A little passenger-packet lay in the canal, with steam up, ready
to make her trip to Washington city through the many locks.
Looking up at the telegraph-poles, Lloyd Quantrell saw that their
wires had been torn and the broken strands hung near the bridge-
entrance.

" Poor Heywood ! " he said, thinking of the wounded negro ; " no
wonder he could not apprise me of the coming train. Smith's band
had severed communications. But by this time the night express
is nearly at Baltimore, and all Maryland will be aroused."

Within the entrance of the Potomac bridge a form with a spear
came out of the dark shadows -and sternly ordered Quantrell to halt.

148

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

" Ashby ! Is that your voice ? "

" Halt ! Ef you don't, I'll kill you ! "

The negro drove his spear close to Quantrell's throat.

" Kill me," said Quantrell. " Do ! because I pitied you when
your old father died. Because I was hated for taking your part.
Because I fought and whipped your catchers. Come here and look
at me, Ashby ! "

The darkness, growing familiar, showed the negro to drop his
spear and gaze at his prisoner irresolutely, He wore the old straw
hat his dead father had worn, but around his nearly naked body a
blanket was tied, like the other abolitionists' uniform ; his feet were
naked, and he limped.

" Kill the only man who can save you from a horrible death •
Ashby ! By noon to-day you and the men who have seduced you
will be howling on your backs for water to cool your wounds."

" What kin I do ? " the escaped slave exclaimed. " I come for
my daddy. Dey killed him and tuk me. De Kinsas men set on to
'em and give me freedom and told me to fight for my race. I must !
I know I'll die, but I must fight. Come with me, or I'll call Cap'n
Watson Brown yonder ! "

He raised and clinched his spear again. In the perspective of
the bridge-tube, Quantrell saw the forms of two more men. He
spoke with quiet decision :

" Ashby, I am going to buy you and send you North to your
mother. Mr. Beall has told me your story. Your mother never
meant to have you mixed up in a rebellion like this. You have done
your duty to your father, and I can pardon and pity you."

The kind tones brought down the negro's pike again.

" Where is the man who owned you ? "

" Over yer in Marylin."

" What are you sentinel for at this point ? "

" I was goin' with Cap'n Cook and his party over to git de guns
at de farm, but I limped so, dey leff me yer and tole me to take
everybody prisoners an' march 'em to de engine-house."

" March me there, Ashby. Tell Captain Brown's officers and
men that I was kind to you when your father died. You can help
me out of danger, and I will try to save your life in return for it.
Hide this piece of money to buy shelter, or food, or conveyance, if
you need them. Keep me this day in your humble care and watch,
and to-morrow I will not forget it."

THE SUCK. I4g

" Mosster," the negro said, " I'll do de best I kin for you, for your
kindness. My heart's mos' broke."

" Halt ! Who comes there ? " cried a bold voice from the middle
of the bridge as they advanced.

" Friend with a prisoner ! "

" Advance, friend with the prisoner ! Who is it ? " spoke the
voice of Watson Brown.

" Isabel! " resonantly answered Quantrell.

There was a startled motion, and the voice was not so bold, as
it stammered :

" Isabel ? What Isabel — not mine ? "

"Watson," said Quantrell, coming closer, "it's Lloyd, whom
.you met on the mountains."

" Who answered ' Isabel,' sir? "

The young man was stern and excited.

" It must have been an echo," Quantrell replied, carelessly, but
watching the young invader closely. " Your father let me out on
my parole. I've seen my friends off, and I'm coming back.''

" I know I heard my wife's name," repeated Watson Brown.

" It's probably an echo from the wind, my poor fellow — some
premonition — some spirit, such as the spirits Captain Stevens
sees."

" I never believed in such things before," the son of Ossawatto-
mie Brown muttered. " ' Isabel ' is my wife. She has a little baby
I never saw, sir. Where she lives, in the great North Woods, the
snow drifts into our bedroom and the wind moans in sounds like
that I heard, through the long winter soon to begin."

" You are cruel to Isabel, Watson. What are the moans of ne
groes to the call of your wife and baby-child ? "

" In God's ears they are the same, my soul tells me. I can't go
home while things are done that I have seen, even in Maryland.
Nine black men died and one killed himself near our mountain farm
since we have lived there ; all on slavery's cruel account. — Take
Mr. Quantrell to headquarters!" he ended, speaking to the ne
gro.

" That was a home shot I gave him," thought the Baltimorean.
" I heard him blubber ' Isabel ' to Coppock at the mountain farm.
What a fanatic ! Does he expect retribution for every negro moth
er's heart-ache ? That would take too long."

Still, he was out of temper, spiteful but not afraid, and when he

150 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

emerged from the bridge and saw Oliver Brown, hardly of man's
age, standing there in blanket and gun, he cried, with cold gay-
ety:

"Hallo, Oliver! I'm going to my prison. No wife have I to
pine for me. I hope you haven't."

" Yes, Mr. Quantrell. I'm sorry to see you back. I have a wife
that was with me in Maryland, and I took her and my little sister
back to New York before we should be in danger : her next little
boy will be a Marylander, I calkelate."

" Ah ! Oliver, wasn't that selfish, to remove your women from
danger, and start insurrection on ours ?"

A young connection of the Smiths, named Dolph or Dauph
Thompson, as Quantrell had observed, replied to this reproof :

" It was about this time of the morning, I calkelate, that -the
Border Ruffians moved on Lawrence in Kansas, eight hundred
strong. It was only two or three years ago. Artillery with 'em, too !
Mississippi rifles, you can calkelate. Georgians, Alabamians, Caro
linians ! They looked as if the pirates had took the poor-house.
Jeff Thompson, of Harper's Ferry here, and now mayor of the city
of Saint Joe, I calkelate was among 'em. United States Senator
Atchison addressed 'em— drunk, you can bet ! ' Boys,' says he, 'to
day I'm a Kickapoo ranger. If you find a woman armed as a sol
dier, trample her under foot as you would a snake.' A tiger was
on their flag. They broke the printing-presses, robbed the people,
pillaged from men and women, stole ladies' letters, blew up the
buildings, and sacked the town. I calkelate I know, for my brother
Henry shed his blood there."

" My brother Frederick," said Oliver Brown, "was shot in Kan
sas and killed. A preacher from Missouri murdered him. My
brother John was drove crazy by chains and cruelty. Our wives
was threatened with abuse and shame if we didn't leave free soil.
Through the streets of Leavenworth the scalps of men were paraded
on poles. In Bloomington a woman who spoke against slavery was
outraged by a troop. Where women couldn't live, men didn't want
to settle, and here we are, outlaws back from Kansas, starting the
war at the right end ! "

" Prospectin'-like," added Dolph Thompson, almost merrily.

Quantrell passed on, bitter yet awed, as the dim recollection of
past troubles in Kansas was made vivid by these survivors. He
thought to himself, " Perhaps they do mean to put us all to death."

THE SUCK. I 5 i

As he meditated, the voice of Stevens was heard from the armory-
gate : " No parley with prisoners. March your man right here !
Shoot him if he hesitates ! "

As Stevens spoke, his short rifle was in both hands. From both
bridges blanketed guardsmen emerged, with rifles in poise. By the
arsenal-gate Coppock was looking intently on, his belt full of weap
ons and his gun across his arm. The little wooden saloon in the
eye of the vista was being opened by its proprietor within, and
some of the band were watching it, also.

" March ! " spoke the negro Ashby, hoarsely, looking fear, yet
fidelity, at his prisoner.

John Brown, or Isaac Smith, whichever he might truly be, came
out to the gate and said to Ouantrell :

" I allowed you to go away from here, sir. You will be in danger,
and yet I warned you carefully. — Take him in there and see that he
behaves himself," addressing the negro. " He will not be discharged
again."

" Still tender on the mourning-doves, Mr. Smith," Quantrell re
plied. "Listen-!"

Two guns went off close by in the public street, and sounds of
running or hustling feet were heard.

" What's that ? Firing ? " interestedly asked John Brown.

As they listened, another gun went off, from the arsenal-wall
right opposite, and there was a loud cry of a man from up in the
chasm of the hill street. Quantrell looked up where this street met
the business street, and saw three of the blanketed men emerge, all
three with smoking guns.

" Dat time I got him ! " said a hoarse voice, as the negro, Newby,
quietly wiped his rifle-top with his blanket.

Another scream, or groan, floated from the railway-station, where
the negro porter had yet several hours to live.

These awful sounds in the still morning-time, blended by the
two rivers in their plaintive wail, were followed by repeated whin-
ings of a dog, and the pointer Albion made his appearance in the
armory-yard, crouching or gamboling high in the air, as if the word
" dove " had touched his soft and pliant ferocities.

" Spirits ! " said the man Stevens. " They're never far away !
The men has found some citizens with arms, and sent them spirit-
way. Now we'll get prisoners."

These sounds of war gave nervous impulse to the invaders in the

152

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

streets : their heads were more erect, their vigilance was renewed.
People came sauntering in and were halted and seized with a pre
cision which paralyzed resistance or curiosity.

The evening bacchanal with a parched throat, going for his
morning " cocktail," forgot his need when confronted by an open
rifle-barrel and a stranger in the wild garb of blanket, slouched hat,
and belted person, bristling with killing arms. The laborer coming
toward work on river, store, canal, or farm, saw this apparition,
and looking round in fear beheld its duplicate cutting off his retreat,
and yielded, limp and docile. The saloons, half open, felt the
absence of customers, and seeing these strange forms, both black
and white, their keepers dodged within, or, walking forth, were taken
from their bottles.

Occasionally some man and even woman would pass along and
feel queer at the unexpected sights, yet be without the understand
ing to pause or inquire, carried onward by a simple instinct which
preserved them from arrest. Again some fierce Caucasian laborer,
seeing an armed negro in his path, would raise the customary fist
to strike the helot down, and, with astonishment that made him
dumb, would find that negro brave and deadly, and meekly receive
from such a source his own favorite execration. The damning of
black souls by fellow-men was impotent that day, because the white
man's spirit had brooded over these black eggs and hatched them
to armed men.

There was a sound of hoofs before Quantrell entered the gate,
and a man with a pale face, whom he recognized as the village
doctor, dashed past upon a horse and galloped up the hill
street.

" Be firm but considerate, men," Quantrell heard John Brown
say ; " capture them who resist. Take no life unless your own is in
peril ! But we must hold our ground."

As he was marched toward the little engine-house, his guard,
Ashby, muttered :

" Dat man up de street is dead ; I heard 'em say so ! Mosster
Quantrell, what mus' I do ? "

" Get across that bridge, Ashby, as soon as you can ! Go past
Sandy Hook and cross the big mountain into Catoctin Valley. Find
Jake Bosler's farm, and say you came from me, and give my love to
little Katy."

" Dey'll kill me, won't dey ? "

THE SUCK.

153

" If you stay here, you are sure to be killed. This place is the
Suck, and takes everything to the bottom."

Entering the watch-house again, Quantrell found it uncomfort
ably full, and some of the occupants were complaining of thirst and
fatigue and hunger. Almost every moment some new prisoner was
brought in, and those previously confined scanned the new-comer's
person or timidly listened to the few who had volatility enough to
talk.

" What do you think they mean to do with us, Colonel Wash
ington ? " asked the young Baltimorean.

" Ah— sah ! " The gentleman spoke with such circumspection
that Quantrell with asperity said :

" Sir, our situation levels distinctions. You should play the man
here, and your suspicions of your fellow-prisoners are unworthy. It
is your own State, your native county, that is invaded. I ask you
for your ideas in our common emergency."

The gentleman replied, with subdued effort :

" Nothing in Brown's history is against my conviction that he
will kill us all, sah. I have been searching my poor, breakfastless
mind, to recollect what I can of his past in Kansas. I feel sure,
sah, that this is the same man who, the day after the abolition set
tlement of Lawrence was destroyed, took four of his sons and one
son-in-law, and grinding their sabers sharp as butcher-knives, they
entered a slaveholder's dwelling, sah, and took a father and two sons
out of there prisoners ;• and this old man shot the father dead, and
his boys — the same, no doubt, whom we see around this engine-
house — hacked the victim's sons to pieces with their sabers. The
same night the old man set his sons upon two other men, who had
been captured in their beds, and saw them cut down with as much
indifference as a wolf. The very abolitionists in Kansas denounced
such barbarity. Brown was then accused of meditating the massa
cre of the Kansas State Convention which was enacting a Constitu
tion. He had previously fought two victorious actions with the
slave-State settlers, and, being outlawed there, he invaded Missouri
and ran off mules and slaves, sah. The mules he sold in Ohio at
public auction, and the Yankees there, sah, bought them because
stolen. The slaves he stole there, may be in this robber army to
night, sah."

No rage was in this statement, but a memory barely struggling
above despair, and the revelation increased the doubt, and therefore

154

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

the numb dread, in Lloyd Quantrell's mind. He asked himself if
Watson and Oliver Brown could have done such wonders.

" Colonel," he whispered, " surely we can fight for our lives ? "

" Ah — sah ! " the inoffensive, hale, but broken man replied, " we
are like butchers' calves, sah. What I saw when taken from my
bed, sah, convinced me I was valuable for nothing but my slaves
and the slaughter, sah."

" Nobody drinkin' ? " spoke old Watty, the bar-keeper, among the
crowd. " I reckon I'll turn the lights down. They has -to be paid
for! Sherry cobblavv ? Brandy toddy? Fi'penny-bit ! — fi'penny-
bit ! "

"Watty! Watty! you forgit you're tuk. You're off of your
Amen'canus. Watty ! See all our neighbors comin' to call on us
—all tuk ! "

" All but ole Ball ! " echoed a few faint and tired voices. " What
will ole Ball say ? "

" Ole Ball '11 say, ' Who didn't ring that bell accordin' to my
orders ? ' That's what ole Ball '11 say. Then I'll be clar off my
Americanus f " •

There came floating down the gray and sharp October morning
a sound like musical vibration. The whine of a dog seemed to pro
test against it.

" Hark ! " spoke the bell-ringer. " Has Captain Brown dared to
ring my bell ? I've had the doin' of it so many years, to let another
do it seems like as if I was dead and heard my funeral-bell."

With another hesitation and twanging, like some tender bird
clearing its glottis of the mist, a bell directly above them began to
ring, and through the vales its strong and steady tones went art
lessly, in no imperious command, but mellow invitation, as if a cage
of linnets had awakened full-throated and tried their hearts in
song.

" It's the Catholic church," the bell-ringer said. ' ' It's the angelus
they're ringing for the workmen's early mass."

The sound of murmured prayers was heard among some of the
humbler prisoners. Lloyd Quantrell called aloud the words of morn
ing prayer as he remembered them at school :

" ' Gratiam tuam qncesumus Domtne ! Pour down Thy grace
into our souls ! ' "

" Amen ! " in whispers filled the little place.

" ' As we have known the incarnation of Christ Thy Son, by the

THE SUCK.

155

message of an angel, so may we come to the glory of the resurrec
tion. Per eundem Christum dominum nostrum ! ' '

" Amen ! "

The bell hesitated again, continued on a stroke or more, and
then a shot was fired.

The bell stopped, trembling ; a dog stopped howling, too.

Watty, the bar-keeper, burst into tears.

Tears came to many others at his example. Their depressed
feelings, violent superstitions, uncertainty, and fainting hunger, had
prepared all for some sudden burst of agony, and the little Christian
prayer had touched all hearts.

" Watty's off of his Americanus," the bell-ringer cried, coming
forward, a sob upon his voice. " Pore Watty ! He wants his dram."

" I try to 'commodate you all," the old bar-keeper moaned ; " sorry
I can't please none of you ! Pay me off and let me go ! "

His aged face and straggling hairs, vacant countenance, and in
offensive village ways, touched everybody. The bell-ringer wrapped
him in his arms, shed his tears upon the old vagrant head, and
seemed himself about to lose his homely self-restraint.

" Who broke the bell ? " articulated Watty. " I can't hear none
of 'em. They's a-callin' for orders, and I can't tell. Only let me
hyur you, an' I'll do my juty. Fi'penny-bit !— fi'penny-bit ! "

The bell-ringer, himself an aged man, but of some simple decision
of character, here threw himself against the watch-house door.

" You le' me out ! " he shouted. " I'm most off of my America
nus, and I'm not desponsible. I don't own no slave. I ain't done
no harm. Shoot, if you want to. But this pore man's got to have
his dram ! "

" Jimmy ! Jimmy ! " the bar-keeper muttered, nearly brought to
reason by his friend's exposure. " Don't take no account at 'em.
They fights as soon as they gets a little pizened. — Never mind yo'
money, friends ! Go out peaceable. Go, go ! "

As the guard opened the door, Ouantrell's dog rushed in, and
with a yell of pain — for Smith or Brown, the bandit leader, kicked
him, passing, and entered, himself looking poorly.

" Who is it making confusion here ? Citizens, this is no child's
play. Two men are dead already— one for not obeying orders, and
the other for carrying a weapon."

" I ain't got no weapon, but I've got a heart ! " — the bell-ringer
alone had the courage to speak in his fierce captor's face. " Cap-

156 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

tain, there's men here who want their food. They ain't used to
hollow stummicks."

" Every man who can send me a colored person for a recruit, I
will discharge," the leader said, like one of business propositions,
fixing one grayish-green eye upon the bell-ringer, and the other
doing the summarizing.

The perfect daylight revealed him now, tired after the night's
exertions, wiry, with one eye preoccupied and the other like a fisher-
bird's, the nose vulturous, and the mouth as hard as intense opinion-
atedness and severe reflection could make it in man.

He had his arms beneath his old coat-tails, and his cap con
cealed there ; and his unkempt hair flamed up like a beacon in
ashes ; and the fleece of gray and white beard made a blossom like
a snow-ball to his breast- bone. Without an ornament but the dress
sword-hilt of a king — no seals, no watch, no watch-guard, not even
a pistol now — John Brown seemed terrible by his simplicity and in
difference.

Unconstrained, natural, yet wild ; not entirely sane in the expres
sion of his eyes ; deliberate but unfeeling, ready to become domestic
or dreadful, like a house-cat to take a fit, he measured them all as if
he was ransoming sheep.

All felt that he could toss them back like lambs to their pens if
they sought to assail or evade him. His whole dress a slop-shop
might have rejected ; but the stringy frame within it, and lean, bushy
head, at once patriarchal and animal, gave him the sense of some
Calvinistic wolf — a savage qualified by theology.

" My blood," said this apparition, in a metallic, commercial voice,
"is precious to me — tolerably so." He paused, as if reflecting just
how much it might be worth. "Your blood I do not desire."
They felt a dread come over them as if it were merely want of appe
tite that retarded his meal. " But you are my hostages for the of
fenses of your disobedient neighbors, who have broken the laws of
God. This is war ! I mean nothing but right. But I mean all I
came here for."

Quantrell's chilled spirit recalled the curse of Hannah Ritner,
not twenty hours elapsed : " I see the rivers flowing red. Escape ye
can not ! "

"You may be a great man," said the bell-ringer, not unim
pressed, " and have your idees, but an empty stummick is a cruel
neighbor. It'll make a baby cry of a night. It'll make a wild beast

THE SUCK. 157

go catch food for its young at any peril. It'll do more than that "-
the bell-ringer dropped his voice to produce the full, pathetic effect
— " it'll make a nateral being go off of his Americanus!"

He put his hand on Watty's forehead, and Watty advanced to
ward John Brown unsteadily and placating :

" Drink with the house ! " he said. " Guarantee everything— to
come out of the same bar'l. He-he ! Medford rum ! Parson's flip !
Raw egg an' hell-fire ! He-he ! "

" There's a picture of slavery," said John Brown — " the slavery of
alcohol."

" I'm one of 'em," another prisoner cried, coming forward. " Ef
you doan le' me go git my dram, I'll take the rams an' git shot fight-
in' somebody."

His red eyes and unsteady hands told that his apprehensions
were real.

" I can set slaves free and take them far from their masters,"
John Brown remarked, looking at the two men like a magistrate
sentencing some vagrants ; his great mouth was firm, but his eyes
had a little thoughtful pity mixed with their contempt. " Slaves of
vile habits no man can set free. The thing these two men serve "-
he looked over the crowd — " whips and kicks them, even in their
sleep, and then they go and whip and kick their unfortunate fellow-
men ! Go with him " — he addressed the bell-ringer — " and order
breakfast for me for twenty men. I parole you to proceed to the
hotel for that purpose. If the breakfasts are not sent, my army will
hold you responsible when we take you again. — As for you," turn
ing to the second toper, " go home, but do not stop to poison your
self anywhere on the way."

Quantrell had a peep of this proceeding, and saw the bell-ringer
turn his eyes toward the bell-station and move that way, till a sentry
turned him off. He shook his head disconsolately, but took old
Watty's hand.

" Cap'n," Watty said to John Brown, " I'll mix you a Caner of
Galilee : sodee an' hock an' ole Sassaurek ! Then you'll feel so
good, you won't shoot nobody. He-he ! "

The lines of the invading "army," as Captain Brown had named
it, were now perfectly formed. There was a guard on the armory
green, another at the yard-top, a third at the gate, and men were
upon the bridge. Brown himself went with the hostages to the
public street and conferred with sentinels in the two arsenal build-

158 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

ings opposite. Shots were heard occasionally in the upper town, as
if citizens might be firing old loads from their guns or making ready
for resistance.

The breakfasts were brought over from the hotel, and Brown
invited the prisoners to partake thereof in the engine-house ; but
some nervous skeptic whispered that it might be poisoned food, and
only a few, among whom was Quantrell, took advantage of the re
quest. John Brown bowed his head before he ate, and seemed to be
asking a blessing upon his meal. Albion, seeking to steal a piece
of fried ham, ran against the great bandit's claws, and was thrown
toward the yard, but slipped over the old man's arm and ran beneath
one of the engines, where he howled dismally.

His meal being done, Quantrell asked permission to remain in
the engine-room, which contained no other prisoners. John Brown
made no answer, but went off to inspect his posts.

Quantrell began to think of Katy in Catoctin Valley, of Light
Pittson in Washington, of his mother in her grave, and of the new
and solemn feelings which had impelled him to intone a portion of
a public prayer.

" Am I infirm in my affections ? " he asked himself. " I feel no
guilt. Till Sunday I never was in love ; no ladies' man have I ever
been. Yet I seemed to make a conquest of the senator's daughter
as easily as of Katy. What do I mean ? "

He found the pointer-dog insidiously climbing upon him, and
drowsiness was in his brain ; so he drew the dog to a place beneath
a fire-engine, and, crawling there upon some leather harness and
blankets, fell asleep.

A loud discharge of guns, so close that they seemed to have
been fired at the engine-house door, awoke Quantrell, and he rushed
against the door and into the armory-yard, unconscious for a mo
ment of his whereabout. Nobody paid any attention to him in the
yard, and the guards there were crouching behind the stone gate
posts and handling their pieces as if to kill some expected foe. Avail
ing himself of the confusion, the young man ran across the open
plaza and along the railroad side of the yard, until he could look over
the iron railing and up into the town, by the Shenandoah street.

He saw nothing but blowing smoke in front of some high brick
stores, and an object fallen in the street, and feebly moving. In an
other instant the object was still.

The smell of brimstone was in the air. The streets were per-

THE SUCK. 159

iectly deserted except by dogs, which were smelling and snapping at
the fallen object — his own dog the most forward and conspicuous.

While Quantrell looked, a rifle sounded from one of the bridges
he could not see, and a piece of brick, or lead, or splinter seemed to
fly from the front of one of the tall houses in line with the armory-
gate. In a moment the front of this house flashed smoke and fire,
as if several guns had been shot off together. From the bridge
and the stone gate-piers, shots went responsive against the con
cealed enemy in the house.

Quantrell distinctly noted a difference in the quality of sound of
the opposing guns.

"Breech-loaders," he thought, "against the muskets of Harper's
Ferry. The Virginians have got arms."

He noticed that no store in the village had opened its windows,
though the sun was coming over the tall Loudoun Heights, some
hours high. As he looked at this sun, the crows, flying around the
chimneys of Loudoun Mountain, arrested his attention, and he
thought of the black man Newby's saying, that not a black crow
was in those rocks but would fight for its young.

" My God ! " spoke Quantrell, slowly, seeking with his eyes the
object fallen in the street again, " I know that man lying yonder.
It is a mulatto. It is Newby himself ! "

Obeying an impulse of mingled mercy and horror, Lloyd Quan
trell vaulted over a broken angle in the brick wall, and, with both
hands raised higher than his head, he ran along the public street,
exposed to the concealed marksmen from either side, but barely
conscious of their existence. A few shots, fired from the heights
around the Catholic church, rattled along the limestone crossings
and macadamized roadway and rebounded from the sloping traps of
cellar-ways. The golden cross above the Roman chapel seemed
also extending its arms in the truce of heavenly intercession and
flaming with perturbed light.

He reached the fallen object ; it was a human creature, tumbled
with gun in hand, and belted round with other carnal weapons, but
helpless as a turtle upon its back. Quantrell knelt and spoke the
sufferer's name ; a terrible wound was in his neck, out of which the
blood was gushing.

" Newby, can't you get up ? "

" Cap 'n Brown called me," the pale lips muttered. "I had to
be a man."

l6o KATY OF CATOCTIN.

Feet and chin stiffened together, and the first victim on either
side had been a black crow righting for its young.

Quantrell took up the negro soldier's rifle :

" ' Poor devil ! " he said ; " Harper's Ferry is turning out to be a
' suck.' "

CHAPTER XVII.

ASHBY'S GRATITUDE.

WHISTLING bullets past Quantrell's head recalled him to some
preserving fear. Looking down toward the armory-gate, he saw a
negro from the arsenal leveling a piece at him, and the ball grazed
his hair.

Quantrell retreated up the hill street, called High Street, and
while he turned his head to see if he was followed, his feet stumbled
upon something soft, and he was thrown to the sidewalk beside a
sleeping man. Scrambling up and seeing that the man did not
move, Quantrell touched him and found him cold.

" Oh, bring him in ! " a voice whispered from a neighboring
grocery ; " the Mexicans shot him there the matther of two hours
ago, and we're afraid to walk in the strate ; fur they fires at avery-
body."

A gun, thrown down in the shock of. being wounded, lay beside
this man, and showed that he had gone forth to kill. He looked to
be a herculean Irishman.

" This is the man that yonder Newby killed, no doubt," thought
Quantrell ; and, as he sought to lift the bulky and heavy form, he
felt himself seized and being dragged away.

Through an alley-way nearly opposite, which descended the
slope into an almost unoccupied lane, right under the engine-house
and wall, his captors bore him fiercely with firm hands and silent
purpose, and he made no resistance whatever, considering that he
had no arms and had sought to harm no man.

From various garrets, whose dormer windows partly com
manded this lane, the popping of guns came momentarily and
tore up the dirt around them, and scarred the long government
wall. A church-bell somewhere up in the town began to ring an
alarm, and over a broken place in the wall, some way ahead, a few

ASHBY'S GRATITUDE. l£)l

men carrying something weighty emerged and fired their pistols at
Quantrell's abductors. The latter shook Quantrell loose, but kept
him between themselves and the enemy, and began to fire their
short, breech-loading guns.

Lloyd saw that his captors were both negroes, and under high
excitement.

The fleeing white men made little response to the guns of these
negroes, but continued to bear off their burden ; and among them
Quantrell thought he recognized the young planter, Beall, and the
pale and frowsy Atzerodt.

" Git ova yer, or we'll kill you in de road ! " gasped one of these
black men.

" Git over ! " echoed the other, giving Quantrell a painful blow
with the butt of his carbine.

They forced him across a picket-fence and up a slope, in a little
garden or hog-yard, and near the top of this acclivity was a mighty
rock which had been walled up below by human hands and made a
cave or cellar for some adjacent house. Into this all three retreated
from the bullets, which began to come from everywhere.

The negroes, taking breath a moment, turned on Quantrell.

"Come," said a supple fellow named Green, "you got to die,
man ! "

He drew his gun and raised it.

" What ? " cried Quantrell. " Kill me ! What have I done ? "

" You are a soul-buyer an' a slave-trader ! "

" You keeps a slave-pen and sells men like me ! " the other ne
gro, who had been called Copeland, exclaimed, with no less sullen
ferocity. " We know you, an' you got to die for our brother New-
by ! "

Copeland raised his gun also. The despair of death fell upon
Quantrell's soul.

" For Christ's dear sake, men, don't murder me ! You are under
a mistake. My uncle is in that business — not I."

He had literally fallen upon his knees. The sense of dying in
that cave, of moldering in such a sty, of being hideously cut off in
youth and bloom and happy love, made him beg like a child. The
pugilist's bravado failed him in this test of death.

"De boot's on de oder leg," Copeland continued, while Quan
trell grasped the carbine and turned it aside ; " it's no harder fo' you
to die than fo' Newby, shot fo? his childern ! "
ir

1 62 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

" I have never bought a slave, never sold one ! " Quantrell gasped ;
" all my slaves are inherited, all well treated. Don't bring this
blood upon your hands ! "

" No man's well treated with his liberty and wages took away,"
the negro Green exclaimed, his rifle at Ouantrell's head. " We've
all got to die here. Your life for Newby's ! Say your prayers ! "

" Nothin' kin save you," Copeland spoke, his gun at Ouantrell's
heart ; " we made up our minds, when you said yo' family sold men,
to kill you if one of us died, and Newby's gone to heaven. Come ! "

At that cold word, so blank yet dreadful, ' Come ! ' Ouantrell's
heart and brain seemed to swoon. He said the Catholic names of
"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," and threw himself with arms outspread,
like the cross he surrendered his life to, upon his face and on the
floor of that foul cave.

The sound of both carbines exploding made him await in cold
awe the torments of some wounds. He felt nothing ; but feet were
treading upon him, as if men were wrestling.

" I pushed yo' guns up. Is he dead ? De Lord fo'give
you ! "

Raising his face at this strange voice, Quantrell saw a fourth man
in the cave contending with his enemies.

This man had a negro's face, but he seemed so bright and radi
ant in Quantrell's eyes, that the cry of Nebuchadnezzar appeared to
be ringing in that rocky furnace : " Lo ! I see four men loose, walk
ing in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt ; and the form of
the fourth is like the Son of God ! "

" Dat man didn't do no black man harm," said a voice; " dat
man's de black man's friend. He fought fo' me. He give me
money to git away wid. He's a kine man ! "

As this voice spoke, a piece of gold flashed in his hand — the
evidence of Ouantrell's kindness.

"He's gone dead," spoke the negro Copeland. "O Green!
may be we's killed a good friend."

" Ain't he no soul-seller? " answered Green. " It's a pity, then."

They gathered around Ouantrell's outstretched form.

" Po' man ! " said Ashby, the new arrival, feelingly ; " de on'y
kine words I got, in de Ian' whaw I was raised, dis man said to
me. Lord, raise him fo' me ! "

Quantrell raised his head.

The colored men looked down wonderingly.

ASHBY'S GRATITUDE. ^3

" Prayer, brother ! " said Green to Ashby ; " see how it's an
swered ! "

"Raise him, Lord ! " cried Ashby, loudly, in the ecstasy of relig
ious superstition.

" Raise him ! Raise him, Lord ! " the late assassins repeated
fervently.

Quantrell arose, pale as a ghost, and for a moment speechless.
He leaned upon all their hands. They watched him like a spirit.

Nothing but gratitude was in his heart, and he felt like giving
thanks even to his murderers, so violently had human power been
transferred in a few hours from white man to negro.

" Ashby, you turned their guns aside. I am not hurt."

"Come, den," Ashby shouted, " we's mos' surrounded. De
gate's held open for us a minute. Come ! "

Quantrell and the three negroes dashed down the slope, and a
wooden gate in the side-wall was held ajar. As they entered it,
bullets came from old stone walls and hanging galleries, from garret-
windows and from pig-pens.

They were in the armory-yard, and the gate shut fast behind
them, before they had been well discovered.

" Here," said the voice of John Brown as they reached the engine-
house, " you men are just in time. I want some loop-holes picked
in these brick w7alls."

As the sounds of the implements in the brick masonry and of
guns of different kinds made the place far from tranquil, Quantrell
asked himself how many of these bandits there might be ; though he
had hardly seen twenty in all, they acted as if they were an army.

" What is this thing of slavery ? " Quantrell questioned of a
somewhat depressed but not despairing man, whose only crime in
John Brown's eyes had been slaves.

" You mean its value in property ? "

" Yes, the strength or weakness of it. I never asked before, and
now see, for the first time, that it is the question of questions."

" In Virginia," said the farmer, " we have about five hundred
thousand slaves — half as many souls as the whites of Virginia."

" Souls," thought Quantrell, and added, " you mean that many
head, not souls."

" Wills, anyway," the farmer replied, " if what we see to-night
is representative. Maryland has ninety thousand slaves and nearly
as many free blacks, or say two fifths of all her—"

164 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

"Souls," Ouantrell finished; "we mean head."

<l I had rather have souls into them to-day," the farmer remarked,
" for their soul-fear is what may save our lives."

"That's true," Ouantrell noted ; "a nigger is a religious animal.
But what is the extent of the slavery in all this American Republic
which John Brown has rushed against ? "

" Four millions at least."

" Worth—? "

" Oh, a thousand million dollars, I reckon. Twice that, unless
this fellow gets up a black insurrection."

" Has slavery been growing? "

" Yes ; seventy years ago we hadn't but seven hundred thousand
in the country. They're growing three quarters to a million every
ten years. We're pore with 'em, and pore without 'em. Less than
thirty year ago Virginia was half minded to give slavery up, but
Missouri and Texas got into the Union as slave States, and it be
come too profitable to let the thing go. This man's raid to-day
cuts down the value of my niggers from a thousand dollars apiece
to six or seven hundred."

" Ditto ! " Quantrell remarked. " Yet I have seen times in these
few hours when it would have been cheap to me to give up every
slave."

" Dreadful times ! " the captive planter moaned. " I don't see
why they may not as well kill us as outrage us in this way ; my
stomach is in torture."

" Here, drink from my flask," the young man said ; "don't show
it, for there's not enough to go round, and we may want it yet
for— "

"Our wounds," replied the planter. "Sir, these men are
demons. When they took me, they had studied my house till
they knew every hole and corner of it."

"They come in hyur," spoke another person, "just befo' the
armory watch changed, and so they tuk everybody. That little Cook
sot it all up. We suspected him from the quare people that come
to his mother-in-law's up yer on Union Street. He totched a
school — "

" Taught it ? " questioned Ouantrell.

" Yes, totched our academy school up hyur by the Shinandoh,
and, of cose, he picked out of the childern all about the comin' and
goin'."

ASH BY 'S GRATITUDE. 165

As this man ended, Lloyd observed that one of the late slaves
of Mr. Washington had just opened daylight in the brick wall, and
suddenly a leaden ball from outside struck this spot and came
within a hair's breadth of Isaac Smith and dropped into Ouantrell's
hand, rebounding from the wall behind him.

" Here it is, Captain Brown," Ouantrell said ; " it's so hot I
can't hold it."

" Yo' kin pick away fur yo'self ! " exclaimed the frightened negro,
dropping his tool ; " I'll do no mo' of it."

As the negro slunk under the engine, his dreams of liberty de
parted, young Coppock took up the tool and began to widen the loop
hole. Two holes were thus made and manned, and balls came almost
momentarily in the place. Some of the captives shrank, and others
quietly looked at each other to give or take courage. The engine-
house door was kept ajar, and just outside of it the young marks
men, black or white, replied with their rifles to every enemy. Ouan
trell now realized that Smith or Brown was at least twenty years
the senior of every recruit he possessed.

" Is he a childish man to lead these boys," thought Ouantrell,
"or are these boys manful as himself, to seek such danger? "

Through the large round windows near the ceiling the balls
would come, ever and anon, making the brick-dust fly, or glinting
fire upon the metal of the engine ; yet not a person within was
struck, and old Brown paid nc more attention to these balls than if
they had been of paper and thrown at a schoolmaster. Sometimes
his look was anxious, and he asked a subordinate once why his re-
enforcements did not come. Finally, his son, Watson Brown, came
in, with a blanched look, and sank down upon his hams, speech
lessly.

" My son, are you wounded ? " the old man questioned.

" I think I'm hit," said Watson Brown, whose skin had become
the color of white dust in the street. " I feel queer, father."

Ouantrell had already opened the young man's coat and re
moved his accoutrements. He found a perforation in his garment,
and blood, and passed his hand around the lad's body. Watson
Brown seemed to have swooned, for he said :

" Is that you, Bell ? Oh, let me see the little fellow ! "

" Wake up, Watson ! " Ouantrell spoke ; " it's only a skin-
wound. There's no hole in you. Taste this whisky and you'll
be strong."

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

Watson Brown pushed the flask away. His face slowly flushed
up.

" Not shot ? " he spoke ; " no bad wound ? Give me my gun ! "

He was up, the blood warm again in his hopeful face, and his
belt of weapons in his hands.

" Go, my son ! " his father said, in a sort of dry interest. " Stand
by your companions ! We have a great cause."

The young man fastened his belt around his body, looked at his
gun and ammunition, and went cheerfully into the exposed yard.

" For all that," muttered Quantrell, sinking beside the planter,
and himself sick with the sight of blood, " there's a hole in Watson
Brown."

" Poor boy ! " exclaimed the planter ; " bad as he is, I pity him."

John Brown now walked into the armory-yard and began to
listen to the sounds of shooting.

" I hear my guns," he said to Coppock. " They must be my re-
enforcements. Or, perhaps, they have disarmed my men."

" Captain Brown," said Coppock, " why don't we hear from Cap
tain Kagi ? We're holding High Street corner open by sentineling
the arsenal wall, but nobody comes down from the Rifle-works ! "

" I ordered Kagi," said John Brown, " not to fire upon anybody ;
merely to hold his ground, and, if attacked, to retire upon us here.
He could not defend himself there till re-enforced."

" I calkelate he's surrounded," said Coppock.

John Brown opened the engine-house door and called two men
in from their posts :

" Hazlett, come here ! Bring Lehman with you ! "

The two men appeared, in military precision, belted, blanketed,
alert, and armed to the teeth.

" I want you to proceed to the Rifle-works and find how matters
go with Kagi. The citizens are behaving very badly, and you will
need a hostage."

He looked around and his eye fell on Quantrell.

"Take that man," John Brown concluded. "He is intelligent,
and will understand that your safety is also his."

" Come, march ! " spoke Hazlett to Quantrell, his dull hazel eyes
flashing unamiably.

"Go out in front," the bright-faced Lehman said, peeping at his
gun-stock critically ; " the man who can sing ' Home, Sweet Home '
can find his way back to it, I guess."

KAGI. 167

CHAPTER XVIII.

KAGI.

THEY went into the yard, and the watch-house was seen to
now have an overflow of prisoners, so that some of them were
loose and unarmed in the grounds. Stevens was in command
here, striding to and fro in the beauty and regularity of manly form
and accustomed soldiership. He glanced at Quantrell and spoke :

" Hostage, my boy ? Well, if you've got a guardeen angel, no
harm can come to you."

"Beautiful words!" thought Quantrell. "I know that I am
guarded, from heaven and from this world, by my mother and by
Katy's prayers ! "

He saw that the two bridges were still guarded, by Oliver Brown
and by William Thompson, and that the armory-gate was held.
An ominous lull in the spluttering firing seemed to have taken place,
and nothing stirred in the streets but hogs which had missed their
breakfast, and dogs which discovered some evil abroad but could not
locate it. Around the Loudoun Heights the crows were flocked
together curiously, and their cawing and croaking came down
through the chilly and spotted air like swallows' notes down a smoky
chimney on a rainy day.

" Turn that way, Quantrell ! " Lehman said, pointing up Shen-
andoah Street.

Quantrell looked back, and both men were watching him with
all the calculation of self-protection.

" If you make one jump to escape," Hazlett spoke, divining
Quantreil's mind, " I'll drop you in your shoes."

" He can't tell how to go, Albert," muttered Lehman, more gen
erously ; " I'll go ahead, and you bring up the rear."

Lehman led on, and soon they came to a yellow, plastered
school-house of two stories, with a cupola and tin globe on the roof.

" No school to-day," Lehman cried back to Hazlett. " It makes
me feel sorry that we've shut up the school. Here John Cook was
teacher, but the teacher's played the truant to-day. And the little
log school in Maryland — Will Thompson says they stopped that,
too, and that the little children begin to cry to see John Cook bring
in the arms and put 'em down by the desks."

1 68 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

As they looked at this shapely school, standing under the walls
of rock upon a little shelf of grass, like a child's toy banking-house
upon a cottage mantel, it seemed to Quantrell that there came out
of its open door a sound of children's laughing.

" Stop ! " he said. " Have the little ones had the simplicity to
come to school this bloody day ? "

Again, upon the air, or upon the haunted mind of Quantrell,
came children's gleeful laughter through the parted door.

" I think I hear children," Lehman said. " Never before did it
sound sad to me."

" Look in ! " suggested Hazlett.

At that moment half a dozen shots from muskets poured down
the street from sward, shelter, or steep ahead of them.

" Muskets ! " exclaimed Hazlett, his gun at his eye, peering for
an enemy. " They've got Harper's Ferry muskets from somewhere :
I know the sound."

" You're right ! " Quantrell spoke. " I saw them taking fixed
ammunition out of the very armory you were guarding. Men who
can be as bold as that, can fight you ! "

Retreating from the fire, they had ascended to the school-house
green, and in the pause their attenuated nerves seemed to tremble
with the peal of play-yard laughter again.

" Surely there are children there ! " Lehman exclaimed, his dark
eyes in surprise dancing upon his boyish face.

" Guardian angels for you, my lad ! " Quantrell thought to say.

" Then they are gone ! "

Lehman had put his ear to the open door, and all was still.

" This school is open for the war," added Lehman, with a pallid
smile. " If we have luck, we'll make a black folks' college on Jef
ferson's Rock ! "

Across the road they were advancing up, a band of men appeared
around a point of rock, and some signs of military trimmings were
in their caps and coats.

" Soldiers ! " exclaimed Lehman. " Albert, charge them ! "

With Quantrell pushed before, these two men undauntedly
marched on, firing rapidly as they proceeded. Hazlett felt a sharp
pain in his foot and stopped : his shoe had been ripped by a bullet.

" Bill," he said, "look there ! It's a whole company. We can't
get to Kagi by this road."

A large company of armed men, indeed, filled the road and part

KAGI.

169

of the bushy steeps in the debris of the mountain, but they had been
frightened by the decision of the two marauders, whom they prob
ably considered to be the skirmishers of a larger force.

Advancing with fine courage, the two men drove the company
around a turn of the road, and then swiftly fell back to the shadow
of the Catholic church, and, still driving Ouantrell before them up
the cliffs, attained a dizzy street of naked rocks which led them into
the High Street and well into the upper town.

They kept along the sides of this street wherever open lots or
paling gardens gave space, and so rose into the air till, at one point,
they commanded the great amphitheatre of rivers and yawning
mountains.

" What's that ? " asked Hazlett, looking up the Potomac. " Are
they our re-enforcements ? "

Following his eye, Ouantrell saw men down by the shallow7 river
as if intending to cross ; and military accoutrements sparkled gaudily
also there.

"I'm afraid -the country is up against us," Lehman remarked,
" but we've got our orders to obey and to reach Kagi, if he's alive ! "

There was a sadness in Lehman's face which gave his resolu
tion the beauty of courage. Hazlett, harsher, duller, without ex
ternal grace, had no less courage, but his promptness was like
ferocity, as if his nervous system could not carry in the tone of
nature the strain of the occasion.

" Young men," spoke Quantrell, " don't deceive yourselves. I
know, by the opportunities Captain Brown has given me, the small-
ness of your numbers. Around you are strong towns, and they
have marched upon you from Martinsburg and from Cumberland,
from Hagerstown and Frederick, from Charlestown and Winchester,
from Lexington and Richmond ! Yes, from Baltimore and from
Washington ! You look so lonely to me on this ragged mountain,
like little sprats in the jaws of a whale, =that I want to see you
escape ! "

" Here's John Cook's mother-in-law's," Hazlett said, pointing to
a house in the cross-street, called by the name of The Union of the
American States, so much imperiled this day ; " John's safe across
the river, anyway."

"It's just like him to return," the boyish Lehman answered;
"but I hope he won't, and maybe he won't, because his wife's safe
in Pennsylvania. I hope she'll draw him there."

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

" Lehman, were you ever in love ? "

" A little ; not enough to hurt. I'm glad no girl will break her
heart for me when — "

"You die," finished Quantrell. "I'm afraid, Lehman, you will
never see that lowering sun go down again."

"There's heaven, I calkelate," said Lehman, looking up ; "and
they say that's ever sunny. Mr. Quantrell, I wish we could get
somewhere down here among the bushes and rocks and hear you
sing ' Home, Sweet Home ' again. It seems as if I wanted to hear
it now. What is this music that it takes hold of people so ? Do men
make it up, or do they hear it from somewheres and remember it ? "

The dark-eyed boy, with no tremor in his voice or steps, asked
this question on the high plateau with the simplicity of innocence,
though beleaguered round till there seemed no outlet for him but
some miracle of wings by which he might fly into the gray and
hungry heaven he had spoken of.

" O men, why did you come here ? " Lloyd Quantrell asked,
almost in bitterness, thinking of scenes of cruelty he might live to
witness upon these men, as living and perceiving as himself.

"I heard a call," young Lehman simply said; "I thought it
came from God. If it came from the devil, that's another sin of
his'n to answer for."

" I heard an invitation," Hazlett said. " 'Tain't often I wake to
poetry or glory, but I thought this invitation was about right. I
hefted of it, and it was jus' comfor'ble like."

As Hazlett spoke, he balanced his carbine in one hand, for
practical examplification.

" How could John Cook marry a young wife here and become a
father, while planning all this blood and insurrection ? How could
he teach children in Harper's Ferry, and be so treacherous ? "

" Oh," Lehman answered, " God had his Hebrew spies. Love
grows anywhere. John didn't come here to get in love, but he was
lonesome, and love, I calkelate, peeped into the school-house. You
are sent to school, maybe, to study and improve your time, but'
some day you look up from your book and see a little girl swinging
her pretty feet as she hums, ' B-a ba ; b-e be ; b-i bi ! ' The book
flies out of your head ; the girl slips into your heart, and next thing
it's b-i by, and b-a ba, and by-o-baby by!"

Singing this like a lullaby, Lehman and his companions both
laughed cordially, but not long, for Hazlett said, reflectively :

KAGI.

I/I

" There's no doubt about John Cook loving his wife. If he
hadn't been a man of some ' sand ' she'd have weaned him from his
work. He did all the dangerous work : peddled books from farm
to farm among the savage dogs, and rinding where we had friends
or foes. If any negro had betrayed his talk, the white men here
would have burned John alive. John Cook's vain, but he's a better
spy than Major Andre ever was, and he never was trapped."

Thus talking, they descended open lots and fields between the
officers' dwellings on the high upland and the raveling houses of
Union Street, which continued toward the Shenandoah like another
town, unaware of Harper's Ferry proper. Many thickets of cedar
and pine, chestnut and brush, girted the hill-slopes between which
this street picked its precarious way, and so they kept somewhat
concealed until they reached an open rock right over the Shenan
doah, and so close upon it that only the roofs of the Rifle-works
beneath them could be seen ; bell-tower and chimneys, foaming
waste water, sycamore and willow trees, trim walls and comely
grounds, and, beyond, the river singing its plaint to the stern
mountains and captive town ; and far away, to the southwest, this
river ascended in light-green islets like an archipelago of moss in
crystalline cascades, miles upward, as if the forests had opened for
the blue horizon to melt through.

"What's that out yonder? " Hazlett exclaimed. " Is that Kagi?
They're firing at him ! He's not going without a shot ? "

" Captain Brown told him not to use force," Lehman said ;
" only to hold the Rifle-works if he could."

Rattling musketry from unseen places below, and white smoke
rising subsequently up the rocks, showed that a conflict of some
kind was taking place.

Following Hazlett's eyes, Ouantrell saw a few men in blankets
and wool hats, and carrying short guns, run along from cover to
cover, fired upon as they were exposed, but only pretending to fire
back, and as they reached the Shenandoah shore one of them threw
up his hands and fell into the river.

They all disappeared in a few minutes, and next were seen other
men, with longer guns, following from cover to cover until they re
placed the others near the river-brink, and there crouched down or
found some shelter, and proceeded to load and fire with great energy
and method.

In a little while there appeared at some distance in the river, men

172

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

wading, with their short guns held above their heads. There were
three of them whom Quantrell could see, and they sank deeper and
deeper into the brawling but treacherous-bottomed stream, some
times carried off their feet and swimming to a shallower part, where
they found foothold again.

One was a negro. Quantrell immediately identified him as the
man Copeland who had threatened his life in the cave.

The bullets of the attacking parties on the shore cut the water
all around these men, and the balls could be seen to strike and
make jets of water fly, and in a little while one of the white men put
his hand quickly to his breast, drew his gun, motioned as if to aim
it, and fell over in the current, and floated down toward the low cas
cade or breast in the stream.

At this scene the negro, who was also wading, lost self-control,
and began to plunge and stumble in the river, making his way to
ward a rock nearly exposed above the current, and plainly seen from
the shore by the ripple it made.

He climbed upon this rock, and, if he possessed a gun, it was not
now visible ; the bullets fell around him, and he faced the shore with
a gesture of both rage and dread, grasping the stone with one hand.

It seemed to Quantrell, as he looked at that tired human being,
with the open mouth and the eyeballs straining wide, that the wild
roar of the river was Copeland's panting breath, full of the heart
beats of despair.

A gun exploded at Quantrell's side, and, as if obeying it, another
gun immediately went off.

The people along- the shore, who had meantime become bolder
and bolder, hearing these shots, looked back and ran to shelter
again, but there was one man, indifferent to danger, or inflamed by
drink or rage, who deliberately waded in the water toward the negro
on the rock.

Hazlett and Lehman shot again at this pursuer, who turned
his face toward the shore, and, still wading, raised his hand de
fiantly.

By the time they had made ready to fire again, the man was
too close to the negro for them to shoot one without imperiling
both.

The man seized the negro, pulled himself up on the same rock,
struck the negro in the face a blow so powerful that it seemed the
spectators could hear it, and, as the mulatto, Copeland, came up

KAGI.

1-73

from the water gasping and struggling, it was seen that his assailant
had also seized his gun, and, pointing it at him, began to drive him
ashore.

" I reckon you fellows have got your match in these Harper's
Ferryers," Ouantrell said, turning to look at his guards.

They were both deeply attentive, yet cool ; Hazlett had fallen to
his knee to aim, and Lehman was drawing his gun to his shoulder,
and it seemed to Ouantrell that his bright black eye at the barrel
might set the powder off.

The black man was seized by strong and fierce hands as he arose
from the stream, and it was plain that he was being knocked down
and maltreated.

Into the huddle of men around him the rifle-balls of Lehman
and Hazlett were poured ; they took the ammunition from pouches
at their sides, loaded at the breech with quick motion, and fired
again and again.

The captors of Copeland broke and fled to the protection of the
Rifle-works, carrying the negro along.

"Come!" exclaimed Hazlett; "they will surround us in a
minute."

" Stop ! " said Lehman ; " where's Kagi ? "

"He's almost safe," Hazlett answered; "see, he's half-way
over ! "

Looking farther along the breast of the hurrying river, Lloyd
saw a form floating upon its back, with face turned upward, and
rapidly going down the current, yet by a method, so that it took ad
vantage of the eddies and expanded the distance between itself and
pursuit.

This man's arm held his gun aloft and paddled with one hand
and the feet, and when it seemed that he was about to go over the
falls he suddenly found a shoal, and stood up and looked at his gun
carefully, as if now ready for action.

Quantrell divined this man before he saw the long black hair,
portly figure, and manly proportions rise and be denoted.

It was Kagi, floating face upward, toward the unseen stars.

" He will not feed the worm just yet,'' Ouantrell thought.

As Kagi stood up, he became the only remaining object of fire
from the Rifle-works ; the balls fell around him, but did not seem
to strike near. He raised his gun to his shoulder, and the dark
scowl of his countenance seemed to be interpreted by his fine, belted

174 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

form, and elbows balanced beyond his hips, and the poise of his
bearded and long-maned head and neck.

" Why don't he shoot ? " muttered Hazlett, looking from undei
his red eyebrows with the greatest interest.

" Orders ! " whispered Hazlett ; " he's second in command, and
the adjutant, and he's too good a soldier to break orders."

The fire on Kagi was now extraordinary. Not only did the con
cealed men in and about the Rifle-works make him a target, and aim
with increasing coolness and care, but from the large island below
and its mills and tenements other persons were trying iheir skill
upon him and bringing him under a cross-fire, and from the heights
nearly over OuantreH's head concealed persons were shooting; and,
as he once looked up, he saw a woman of large frame, but almost
girlish face, aiming a rifle, and as it flashed she disappeared.

The nearly perpendicular crags were fringed with little boys,
some firing old horse-pistols, others throwing stones, and Kagi was
the only living object of hate to engage their attention.

It was now later than midday, a Monday after Sabbath rest,
when the energies of workmen were fresher than on other days, and
all these energies were madly alert to find and destroy the purloin-
ers of their wages, who kept the armories idle, and halted men and
governments. Having had a taste of blood, the furious instincts of
all were aroused for a full meal, and Kagi was the only game in plain
sight.

As the bullets, passing over the intervening thousand or more
feet of river, fretted the surface like hailstones, Kagi raised his hand
and pointed toward the Loudoun Mountain, and shook his head as
if to say, "I'm safe beyond the worm." Ouantrell, remembering
Kagi's apprehensions on past occasions, mentally translated his
gesture of contempt and confidence in that figure of speech.

Beyond Kagi, who was within a few rods of the farther shore
and its low strand of mountain debris and brush, there was a deep
eddy among large rocks, where the current could be seen foaming
mightily, and this he must cross to gain the wooded mountains and
their lonely depths. No dwelling was on that farther shore except
some fishermen's huts of drift-wood, and no clearing but a patch of
wild garden exposed to the freshets ; the solemn mountain reared
its head among the crows and vultures like some prancing horse
with insects flocking in its mane.

Kagi finally prepared himself for the endeavor ; his companions

KAGL

175

were all dead or taken at the Rifle-works, and he drew his belt tight,
raised his gun and blanket high above his head, and stepped into
the boiling surface and went down, down, until he sank from view !

" He's drowned ! " spoke Hazlett, breathlessly.

" No, he's come up," said Lehman, in a moment ; " he's a good
swimmer."

As Kagi rose it was seen that he was floating upon his back, his
head thrown backward, and his rich beard raised with his chin into
the air. His gun-barrel pointed upward. The river moaned loudly,
because all had ceased firing.

In a moment more Kagi had reached a gentle ripple, where he
could rise and stand.

" Thank God, he's beat them all ! " spoke Lehman.

As Kagi stood and shook himself like a water-dog, he looked
back no more, but straight upward, toward the ceiling of the day on
the mountain cornice.

" He's thanking his star now ! " said Ouantrell, between his teeth ;
" it's served him well."

" Great man !" young Lehman remarked, reverently; ''he's not
as good a soldier, maybe, as Captain Stevens, but full of head and
devotion. He's our statesman , we had a poet, too, but hes not re
liable, I calkelate."

They saw Kagi fold his arms and look around him, like another
William Tell, rejoicing in the freedom of the mountains. He gazed
everywhere intently, on earth and shore, flowing water and cold gray
sky, cloud and bird, and then raised up his arms and gun and en
tered the water again, where it flowed very deep against the rock-
bound margin.

"Another minute," said Lloyd Ouantrell, "and he'll vanish in
the woods.'"

Suddenly, from the thick bushes which partly shut in the Loudoun
shore, there burst a volley of sound and flame, so quick, so unex
pected, that it turned every eye away.

Men were seen there firing again and again.

" He's cut off," Ouantrell said ; "the worm has inherited him."

Kagi had disappeared ; the firing ceased.

" He's sunk ! " young Lehman muttered. "Oh, Captain Brown
has lost his best man ! "

" Look there ! " Hazlett gasped, with open mouth ; " he's swim
ming again."

176

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

In the rapid current under the shore Kagi's body was floating,
but not with the chin up; the rich beard had dropped upon the
breast ; the long hair floated like blackened weed in the eddies ; the
face was white as a silver coin, or the reflection of a belated star in
Morning's countenance.

With agitation and a sick stomach, Quantrell had produced his
flask of spirits.

" Poor soul ! " he exclaimed as he drank the draught ; " I drink
to the worm that distills him to the stars."

CHAPTER XIX.

FIRST CADET SLAIN.

" COME ! " exclaimed Hazlett to Quantrell, speaking with a pale
face and eyes yet muddier in color, as if these were not both of
the same hue. " Keep on before us, or we'll leave you with your
worm."

" You must be our prisoner back to Captain Brown," said Leh
man, also handling his gun, marksman-fashion.

"I've felt the fear of death myself to-day where I seemed to
have no chance at all," Lloyd replied, " and I don't want to see you
fellows murdered before my eyes."

He led the way up through the ravines and cedars ; bullets came
after them from the rifle-works, but they soon got into the grounds
of the commandant on the hill-top ; and, as the Potomac burst into
view, soldiery were seen upon the Maryland shore, marching down
behind the tow-path. Hazlett beheld them and turned pale.

" It looks like our bein' surrounded, Will," he spoke.

"I calkelate they're our re-enforcements," Lehman replied, his
boyish countenance looking toward that shore with a gentle longing ;
" but I wish we was over there ; for I grew to like Maryland.
What do you think, Mr. Quantrell ? "

" My lads, I shall see you all die before my eyes, like Kagi and
Leary, unless you can cross that Potomac bridge before yonder men
reach it. Your killing me won't save yourselves. Do, for mercy's
sake, run for the bridge ! "

" Not I," Lehman said, " without Captain Brown."

FIRST CADET SLAIN.

177

" He's got us into this," Hazlett spoke ; " we'll try to get to him,
and maybe we can cross the Shenandoah bridge."

They had now come on the flanks of High Street and were keep
ing down it, sheltering from observation wherever possible ; Quan-
trell going ahead, and the other two concealing their short guns in
their blankets and hiding their belts of knives and pistols.

Suddenly the sound of horse's hoofs was heard upon the turn
pike's stones, and before they could secrete themselves a fine-look
ing, martial-riding man was right upon them, going at a gallop.

Both Hazlett and Lehman dropped a hand to their concealed
revolvers and measured the man's body with an inner light of mean
ing in their eyes.

" Whaw aw they ? Whaw aw they ? " he cried. A rifle was over
his shoulder.

" Whaw who ? " Lehman exclaimed, with mischief-like inno
cence.

" The Arabs who have dragged my friend Colonel Washington
from his bed."

" Down yonder." Quantrell waved his hand toward the lower
town.

" I'll settle with them," hallooed the rider, " whawever they aw.
I'll die fo' my friend, sah."

As he pricked his horse on, Hazlett raised his pistol.

" I'll drop him in the road," said Hazlett; "it's against orders
for citizens to carry arms, and that man's a trained soldier. Look
at his square, straight shoulders."

Quantrell struck the pistol down with his hand.

" Don't kill that man for risking his life for his friend," he en
treated. " Every life you take will be reckoned against you. Kill
me, if you want a life ! "

While Hazlett stared muddily at Quantrell, as if going to cut
him to pieces, a voice was heard calling :

" Come on ! come on, heah ! "

They saw the negro Ashby, who had climbed the hills from the
river, and all hastened toward him.

"De armory's mos' tuk," he said. " Dey got Thompson off'n
de bridge. Dar's no way to git to Cap'n Brown now but by de big
gate, an' solgers is stoppin' up boff de bridges. Cap'n Brown says
come quick and bring Cap'n Kagi's comman' to him."

" Kagi's killed, Ashby," Quantrell spoke ; " he and all his men

j^S KATY OF CATOCTW..

but one— Copeland, the mulatto. What will happen to him the
angels fear to know ! "

" O my God ! " the negro sighed, in agony of fear and sorrow.

There trotted in their midst the pointer-dog Albion, insinuating
and mysterious as ever. His muzzle was as straight out as his
tail ; his leg pawed with nothing, kitten-like ; his fine white spots in
the brown neck seemed like flies in stale liver at butchers' stalls ;
the outcast life of a single forenoon had gone thus far toward de
moralizing animals and men.

Albion rather fawned upon all the party, and showed a suspi
cious recognition of their friendship, which may have led Lehman
to say :

" Albert, I shall go by the upper yard. Twon't do for both of
us to be took. You go by the town and take these two men along.
One of us, I calkelate, if not both, will get to Captain Brown that
way."

The two men clasped each other's hands.

" Fight, Will, and never be taken ! " Hazlett said.

" I'll do my best, Albert. If the worst comes, we've got friends
across the river — and friends up yonder, too ! "

He looked to heaven, and a tear filled his bright eye.

" Forward now, both of you ! " Hazlett exclaimed; as Lehman
disappeared down the raveling face of the heights, and he drove
Ashby and Ouantrell down the road before him, his rifle and eye
equally sentient and ready.

" Ashby," whispered Ouantrell, " by hurrying, you may cross the
Potomac Bridge before the troops in Maryland seize it. Remember
my directions ! Go to Bosler's, in Catoctin Valley. Here is all my
money. Let Luther go and buy you, and hasten to me."

" Mosster," said the negro, taking the gold pieces with fear,
" what makes you trust me ? "

" The fear of God ! " said Quantrell. " Something in this world
is wrong, and I want to lend to the Lord."

" God bless you, mosster !" said the negro, huskily; " I'll try to
git away, faw yo' sake ! "

No sympathetic light was in the man Hazlett's eyes, and he
watched them both with a merciless energy, the greater because he
was now wholly self-dependent.

Quantrell remembered the acts of rowdyism he had assisted in
toward unarmed and helpless foreigners, and wondered if it was in

FIXST CADET SLAIN.

179

the remembrance of mercy to save his life. He remembered the
contemptuous idea he had entertained of the courage of " Yankees,"
whom he had nearly included among the " foreigners," and asked
himself if he dared, even with the negro Ashby's neutrality, or
possible help, to fall upon this hard, self-reliant, unadorned fellow in
the rear, and contend with him to the death.

He turned twice, with this thought in his mind, and, steady as a
common, regular soldier of the line, Hazlett was looking at him with
his eyes, and, Lloyd thought, with his wrists too, so supple were
those wrists with weapons and sensibility.

" He is a Western man," mused our hero ; " all of them are
Western men. What is this West I have heard so little of in my
geography ? When did it arise ? And is it all for abolition ? "

They now had entered the short, closely settled, down-hill por
tion of the street, where shops, sign-posts, small bay-windows, low
er areas and ladders into back yards, upper verandas, mechanics'
stalls, flights of stairs toward precipices, overhanging dormers,
flaunting clothes on clothes-lines, and all the accompaniments of a
disturbed or suddenly deserted town, closed around them tattered
and grimy in the narrow throat of Harper's Ferry.

Guns and pistols and old blunderbusses began to rattle again in
the hollow depths of the place, and the rain drizzled from the spotted
sky above. At the foot of the street they saw the dog Albion,
which had. rushed on before, barking at a hog that was too familiar
with the dead body of Newby, lying there.

No forms were to be seen in the street, but the heads of some
men appeared beneath the stoops or basements of porches, all
turned down toward the dead negro and the street which crossed
that one Ouantrell was descending. The reason for this was plain
when, in a moment, two men, like Brown's followers, stepped out
from the arsenal side there and fired up the street.

The men down in the intrenched and recessed basements of the
shops returned the fire in another instant.

" This way ! " Hazlett called, hoarsely, pointing up the hill to the
right.

A scrap of street found lodgment in there, and, going the same
way as the High Street, soon left it far below.

In the intensity of the moment Ouantrell saw all things in the
view — the chimneys, the chickens picking garbage in the street, carts
uptilted at the curbs, plastered walls, and stone and brick escarp-

ISO KATY OF CATOCTIN.

ments on the roofs, uneven pavements of blue limestone, wild chil
dren yet without breakfast screaming or sleeping up the tenement
halls and alleys ; and, finally, the Catholic church at the cornice and
ridge of everything, holding its pale golden cross to the moody
heavens, and by its side the bell, suspended in a derrick of timber,
seemed to be taking a second nap after having called in vain for
others to arise.

Again the Shenandoah was seen beyond the mills and islands,
cowering as it ran beneath the great gnarled mountain. Again, the
mighty, scarred form of Maryland Heights reared back like a be
headed buffalo. The blended rivers, breaking in ripples over grid
irons of rock, went down the mountain vistas like fugitive hosts of
dead-faced people, flying from the wrath of Nature ; or the volcano's
lava-channel in the sheen of the moon.

But in this general awe there was indifference too — the indiffer
ence of the great to the little, of the torpid to the quick ; the indif
ference of the basking crocodile to the bees upon his jaws ; the in-
considerateness of mountains, after their convulsion, to the writhing
of the birds that serpents in their bowels charm ; the languor of old
geology in its nap of cycles to the newsboy's darling revolution of
some few people slain in riots.

John Brown had made no impression upon the trance of Nature.
The hollow ear of heaven bending overhead considered him not —
he, nor the perishing insects he had disciplined for another skirmish
in the brief antiquity of freedom.

" Ashby, I see the men in Maryland yonder. You have time to
cross the bridge — just time, not a moment to spare ! "

" Come on, then, and go before ! " cried Hazlett, descending the
ragged natural steps from the church to the street.

As they crept down these steps, shot rattled in the High Street
below, and Quantrell and Ashby hesitated.

" I'll take a shot," spoke Hazlett, with a deadly zest for combat
in his heavy eyes ; and, stepping down, he raised his gun and fired
up the street.

" I left my mark that time," Hazlett said, surveying his work and
opening his rifle-breech. " Now for the next slave-catcher ! "

He had barely spoken when a ball or wad, or other instrument
of percussion, struck his cartridge-box, and it began to explode, like
Chinese fire-crackers. One by one' the deadly projectiles broke
forth, each with its cylinder of lead, and Hazlett sought in vain to

FIRST CADET SLAIN. jgi

throw it away from him, but the belt would not come loose. He
danced in a frenzy of endeavor and apprehension, balls tearing his
clothes, others whizzing near Ouantrell's head ; and the sight was so
ludicrous that, as Lloyd threw himself down, he began to laugh till
the tears came to his eyes.

" He's all fired out, I reckon, now," Ashby exclaimed, as the ex
plosions ceased. " What mus' I do ? "

" Run for the bridge ! Tell him to run with you ! Remember
Crampton's Gap, the Catoctin Valley, and Jake Bosler's farm."

" I'm goin'," said the negro. " Come, Mr. Hazlett, fo' yo' life ! "

As Hazlett turned to look at Quantrell, the latter had a rock in
his hand.

" I'll kill you if you come here !" Quantrell cried ; "your carbine
is empty and your cartridges are all gone. Keep off ! "

Hazlett slipped across the street into the lane by the river. In
a moment Lloyd saw him appear in the space before the armory-
gate, where he hesitated, as if thinking to turn in. The negro Ash-
by dashed past him and ran toward the bridge.

Being fired upon from the houses and hill-tops, Hazlett affected
to be aiming his empty piece, and, stooping down and backing off,
he finally disappeared behind the corner at the arsenal, and next
was seen upon the bridge, running after Ashby at the top of his
speed.

Both men ran, and Lloyd followed them with intense interest.
He felt that the colored man's life had already been interposed for
his, and might be his hostage with Destiny again.

The soldiers on the Maryland shore were very near the bridge,
also, and now began to run toward it, firing their pieces.

It was a race for life with Hazlett and his dusky associate.

In another moment Quantrell saw both these men emerge from
the distant end of the bridge, and steal along the base of the heights
toward Pleasant Valley and the roofs of Sandy Hook.

" I've made a banker of a negro, who has every inducement to
run away," Lloyd Quantrell said, " and yet, I don't believe he will ;
for, queerly enough, I never heard of a negro committing a breach
of trust."

He peeped around the abutments of rock and houses at the foot
of the stone steps.

Some townspeople were huddled beneath a low porch, looking
down intently at an object they also sought to raise.

1 82 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

" That may be Hazlett's victim," Quantrell thought. " I'll see."

He came unarmed with raised hands among them, merely say
ing " Prisoner," and looked down at the form of an athletic, bleed
ing man on the stones of an old stoop or arcade.

Quantrell recognized the horseman who had been galloping to
save his friend ; he was shot in the shoulder and neck, and was al
ready dead, yet warm.

" Lay him back, that-a-way, like a ossifer ! " said one of the men,
rifle in hand, seeking to see both the street-corner and the dead man.
" He's a West-P'inter, an' they likes to die with their shoulders stiff."

Stretched out upon the stones of Harper's Ferry, the first gradu
ate of the United States Military Academy, to perish in the conflict
of slavery, lay trembling in the rich red chevron of his heart's blood.

"George Turner loved Lew Washington," spoke another man;
"they was chums. They liked their juleps jess the same; one
would mix for t'other, and t'other preferred his'n to he own. It's
true he died tryin' to shoot, for he was, as you may say, a eddi-
cated ossifer."

" Take him off the street, friends," Quantrell said. " Lay him in
the house. Greater love hath no man than this — that he lay down
his life for his friend ! "

CHAPTER XX.

GAULT HOUSE.

" THREE citizens already killed ; -that is, two citizens and a nig
ger," Quantrell heard remarked, as he slipped across the Shenandoah
Street to the railroad there, and, passing behind the arsenal, gained
the exposed saloon on the railroad-track, where he had fought the
Logans only sixteen hours before.

He now saw a sign over the door of this single-story frame sa
loon, " Gault House."

It was a cheap, perishable building, without social position or
appearance, and yet, in the inconsistency of time, it remains down
to the author's day, one of the three unimpaired monuments of
ruined Harper's Ferry : these three monuments are the Catholic
church on the hill, John Brown's Engine-House or " Fort " in the
desolate armory-yard, and this saloon by the Shenandoah bridge —

GAULT HOUSE. ^3

representatives of the three active principles of our century : Tra
dition, Revolution, and Alcohol — other words for Faith, Hope, and
the Poor-House, or Charity ; and now, as of old, the greatest of
these is Alcohol or Charity.

" Let me in ! " cried Ouantrell, and, the door opening, he leaped
in, and there was instant darkness.

" Who are you ? " said a familiar voice.

" Why, Mr. Beall, I'm Mr. Ouantrell, who made your acquaint
ance last night " ; and there arose upon the dark the fine, natural
tones of our hero, singing :

" Glenorchy's proud mountains, Coalchuirn and her towers,
Glenstrae, and Glenlyon, no longer are ours :
We're landless, landless, landless, Grigalach ! "

The song brought admiration and low inquiries, " Who is he ? "
and John Beall vouched for Ouantrell's courage ; and when Lloyd
told that he had been a prisoner, and what he had seen of Kagi's
band falling, and of Turner's death but an instant before, all breath
lessly listened, and then the back door was thrown open.

It was seen that a narrow and railed veranda ran along the back
of the saloon, overhanging the foaming Shenandoah far below, and
this veranda almost gave access to the Shenandoah bridge, whose
rock abutment adjoined the saloon.

" Mr. Quantrell," spoke Beall, his face serious to the verge of
gloom, " a few of us are holding this place with the greatest cau
tion, because we believe it to be the key of the situation. We keep
the front closed and have fired no shot from here, because the ene
my with his rifles, from the engine-house, can riddle this thin build
ing. We expect to kill him — all that there is left of him — when he
retreats across the Potomac bridge. He must pass right in front of
this house to get to the bridge, and we want to kill ever}' man he
has ! "

The suppressed energy of the speaker called Quantrell's atten
tion.

" Why, John," he said, " you would pity the poor devils if you
had seen them, as I have, falling in the river, lying in the streets,
hungry, absurd, misled, weeded out."

" No," replied Beall, trembling, " I want to kill every man of
them ! We're lying low here, to shoot them down at their last
chance ! We let one scoundrel pass just now, lest we might draw

!84 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

every rifle in that engine-house upon us and spoil our full revenge,
sir."

" Indeed, you're a Scotchman, John, and Highlander too, I reckon.
But, of course, I'm with you. Where's William Thompson, the
raider who guarded the Shenandoah bridge ? "

" Taken. He's over in the hotel."

Beall's eyes smoldered, and his eyebrows and mouth were both
drawn straight and hard.

" How did you capture the bridge ? "

" From this saloon. We crept upon the guard, an unsuspecting
fellow, and getting him fast, sent a detachment across the bridge to
kill any who might escape from the Rifle-works."

Not a smile nor gratulation was in all this ; a devout Indian,
reciting the fate of the enemies he had doomed for the manes of his
father, might have been less intense.

" I saw them die, John. It was a terrible scene."

" I should like to have witnessed it. But the leader is still
yonder! "

He pointed to the engine-house, with a face drawn so hard to
gether from the jaw to the skull, that every feature seemed to be a
plain line. Reflective hate lay coldly there, incapable now of other
joy.

Quantrell looked at the other occupants of the sinister place — at
the saloon-keeper, with long, fox-red beard, who was continually
stroking it, and with eyes wide apart.

" Forty drops," said the saloon-keeper. " Come up ! "

He went behind the dusky bar and set the bottle out, and peeped
through a hole in the shutter at the engine-house — laying hand,
meanwhile, upon the long revolver there, which had been in Lloyd's
custody the night before.

"They 're all caged in the engine-house," the saloon-man said.
" Hello ! yonder's one coming down the yard."

They peeped successively at the hole, and, when Lloyd's turn
came, he saw in the vista of the armory-yard two men, one with a
gun, keeping the other man between him and a party of armed men,
who now and then fired a shot, but, seeking not to injure the host
age, they did no execution.

" That's Lehman ! " Quantrell exclaimed. " And, upon my word,
the fellow running is Andrew Atzerodt ! "

"Here, gentlemen," the warm-bearded saloon-keeper spoke;

GAULT HOUSE. 185

" we'll close the back door, and that will darken the room, so we may
see, and be unseen, out of the glass door, by keeping back from the
light a little."

He raised the blind, and they could all see.

The landlord brought out his pistol, which was nearly as long
as one of the outlaws' rifles, and it had a skeleton breech which
made it a veritable gun to rest against his shoulder. He rolled the
great steel chamber, charged with six slugs like Minie balls, between
his thumb and finger, to see if it was true and well oiled.

" I hope there's a dead man in every cartridge," he said. *' That's
my pious design."

They all gazed at the boy Lehman, skirmishing with twenty
enemies. The balls from the hills and town would tear up the
ground around him and cut twigs from the elm and maple trees,
and Atzerodt would fall upon the ground till Lehman's rifle covered
him, and then he would start up with wide, imploring arms, only to
be paralyzed by the open muzzle of the rifle.

" That boy's dead game," the saloon-keeper said ; " but our
friends are shooting very poor."

" Lehman don't want to kill anybody," Ouantrell said. " He can
drop a man with every ball, if he wants to."

They now observed one man at the angle of a building behind
Lehman, deliberately aiming at his back. The pistol exploded, but
only Atzerodt fell down, and lay like one stone-dead.

Lehman turned upon the man, whose gun was how uncharged,
and raised his rifle at him.

The man fell on his knees.

" Now he'll blow his head right off ! " said the saloon-keeper.

As they looked, in the excitement of almost mortal suspense,
they saw Lehman knock the pistol out of the man's hand and dis
appear behind the same angle of wall from which his assassination
had been sought.

Atzerodt jumped up and ran at the top of his speed.

The man whose life had been spared, rose to his feet and quickly
reloaded, rammed and capped his pistol, and started in the direction
Lehman had gone.

" Forty drops," said the saloon-keeper. " Come up ! "

Every man around the bar had a weapon of some kind, and they
drank with the zest of hunters. Beall alone was abstinent and
brooding.

1 86 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

" Will this insult upon Virginia ever be wiped off? " he said to
Quantrell.

" We entertained your invaders in Maryland," Quantrell replied ;
" that must be atoned for."

All looked carefully at their weapons, like fishermen inspecting
their tackle. The splutter of gunnery in the street was continued.

" Gentlemen," spoke Quantrell, "I want to see the fate of little
Lehman, and, by your leave, I'll make a dash for the railway-sta
tion."

Before there could be objection, he had opened the door and
closed it behind him.

A very few steps brought him upon the railroad bridge, and he
looked in wonder at the changed scene around him.

Men were everywhere — upon both bridges, on the strands of the
rivers, upon both shores opposite, and crowding the railway-station
and fringing the hills ; and from every safe place guns were shooting
at the little engine-house in the armory-yard, which began to show
the marks of a bombardment : its doors were ripped and splintered,
the trees around it clipped of twigs and steins ; and yet it was lan
guidly returning fire from, the fresh port-holes and from the partly
open doors, where now a man could be seen crouching and another
standing.

As Quantrell came to the station and hotel, he heard a voice
cry:

" O Heywood, speak ! What will yo' po' wife say to me ? — He's
gone. He's dead ! Now get me a gun. I want a robber's life ! "

Lloyd saw the negro porter lying still, and felt his body, which
was already partly cold.

"I know whaw I can find a pistol," spoke the mayor of the
town and station agent ; " I'll git it and return."

He dashed toward the Gault House saloon, and Quantrell swung
down the railway trestle-work to the Potomac strand and crept along
that churning river, stooping low. There were men lying flat upon
their breasts from point to point, seeking to send a shot into the
engine-house, and nearly every trestle-post had thus its revenger.

Running fast, the Baltimorean soon had passed most of the ar
mory buildings, but was arrested by the whizzing of a ball within
an inch, as it seemed, of his head.

He glanced across the river, in Maryland, and saw a puff of
smoke rising from a place along the lower mountain-side ; beneath

GAULT HOUSE. jg/

the smoke was a human form. Quantrell's eyes were keen, and he
made out the person to be his late assailant, little Captain Cook.

If Cook it was, he had a fall in greatness, for shots from Har
per's Ferry hills passed over Quantrell's head, and the person upon
the mountain was seen in another instant to be rolling down the
slope and then to lie quite still.

Lloyd's attention was immediately drawn to a man running from
the upper end of the armory-yard right into the brawling and, at
places, dangerous Potomac.

From pool to pool, and eddy to eddy, and from rock to rock,
this man continued on, rapid, lithe, active, and manifestly meaning
to ford the entire river or to perish in it.

The reason was soon manifest : a large body of armed men, in
compact order, came across the armory mill-race and fired a volley
at the fugitive.

He fell and lost his gun, but in a moment was up again, and he
crawled upon a dry rock far out in the river and feebly held up his
hands.

Quantrell could see, even then, a cheerful look, like a smile, upon
his almost child-like face.

" Lehman ! " was Lloyd's inward recognition ; "I'm glad he sur
renders — his eyes are so beautiful ! "

The firing ceased ; but one man was also rapidly wading the
river toward Lehman, and something about him seemed familiar.

" Why, that's the man," Quantrell inwardly remarked, " whose
life Will Lehman saved but a minute ago. It's natural that he
should want to save the poor lad's life."

The man went on and did not hesitate, for Lehman continued
to show the genial countenance of one submitting to capture, and
to spread his hands apart in the hallowed way our common Saviour
died.

The man came right upon him but did not grapple with him.

Lehman seemed to speak to him pleasantly, and Lloyd thought
he could see the boy's large eyes bright with pain and gratitude.

The man suddenly pulled a pistol from his pocket, pointed it at
Lehman's face, so close that he nearly touched it, and fired.

A cry o£ mixed exultation and horror burst from the soldiers on
the shore.

Lehman fell upon the rock helpless, with a great hole in his
face.

1 88 KATY OF CAl^OCTIN.

The man returned the pistol to his garments and drew a knife,
and began to cut the skirts and pockets from Lehman's clothes.

By the stillness of the form upon the rock, Lloyd knew that
Death, the invisible vulture, had as instantly alighted there.

The man now waded ashore, bearing papers and other things
taken from the dead man.

" Fall in, Martinsburgers ! " the command rang out ; " we'll carry
the engine-house next ! "

They marched down the armory-yard, and Ouantrell was left
alone.

He also waded into the water and made his way toward Leh
man.

The boy lay silent upon the stone, the roaring rapids being his
lullaby. His head had fallen backward, and his hairs were toyed
with by the cool waters.

" Will, look up ! I'm your friend ! "

The late tired legs of Lehman, which had walked all night and
day upon a willful yet immortal errand — crossing the river to and
from the farm three times in one night and morning — clasped the
stone in the rigid manner of one who meant to hold fast and to bear
testimony.

How solemn, how awful, seemed the sighing waters to Quantrell,
waist-deep in them ! No noise besides filled the air. It was as lone
ly as being drowned, to stand alone beside this uncomplaining man.

Quantrell bent over the rock, but only once.

What he saw there was too horrible for him ever to repeat.

Steadying himself upon the stone, Lloyd saved himself from
swooning, though sick to the temples. He dipped his head into the
waters, but, when he lifted it, some of Lehman's blood in the water
fell down upon his hands.

" He asked me to sing, ' somewheres down among the bushes and
rocks,' the words of ' Sweet Home.' I'll do it among the waters and
rocks, for it will be his only Christian burial."

Quantrell raised his voice and sang :

" Home, home, sweet home !
There's no place like home —
There's no place like home."

" Poor lad ! " he finished, " there's no home for him now but
where he 'calculated ' it was ever sunny."

GAULT HOUSE. ^9

With a tear in his eye, Ouantrell turned to the shore, and when
he gained it he looked back once, and Lehman lay there still, like
one of nature's bowlders rolled in the deluges of time.

As Lloyd picked his way down the armory-yard he marked the
powerful water accompanying the long line of shops, conducted be
hind them in a stone canal and, after driving wheels and cogs,
grindstones and automatic turning-lathes, drills and trip-hammers,
the mill-water then gushed beneath the ground, in arched places,
to be used in a second line of shops, and then to fall back into the
Potomac.

Here a gun-stock had fallen to perfection every eight seconds ;
every day of earnest labor manufactured sixty muskets ; the doing
of death was the soulful motive of the town ; but to day it was all
distraught that barely two of its white men had been killed with
arms in their hands.

As he drew near the little engine-house, our hero dropped be
hind the office-buildings just west of it ; a lull had taken place in
the firing, for the grimy operatives from the rail way- shops of Mar-
tinsburg were to charge John Brown's little fort.

Ouantrell saw them deployed to assail the nearest, or watch-
house end, on three sides at once.

A man was slinking out of the column, and Ouantrell recognized
him.

" Contemptible assassin ! Give me your gun."

It was the man whose life Lehman had saved, and who had re
turned the gift with death.

There was something queer about the gun he had wrested from
the man ; it came open at the breech, as if there was a hinge in the
barrel.

" Pooh ! " exclaimed Quantrell, " this is one of Hall's Harper
Ferry rifles, a Yankee invention, thrown out by the regular army
board."

He threw the gun down, yet lived to see the day when the
" breech was more honored than the observance " of military boards ;
for by a similar needle-gun the winding-sheet of Napoleonism came
to be sewed by Germany. America fought her great civil war
loading muskets at the muzzle, when she could have been foremost
of the nations with a Yankee breech-loader, thrown out of Harper's
Ferry by military bigotry, twenty years before.

In the quick revulsions of a day of action and hunger, intemper-

1 9o

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

ance and fear, mystery and passion, Lloyd Quantrell had ripped a
plank out of the porch of a small building labeled " Superintendent's
Office," and crying, " Come on ! " he dashed among the foremost of
the militia, from whom a mighty yell went up.

To the yell the response was the throwing open of the engine-
house doors.

Half a dozen boyish men, with John Brown at their head, stepped
upon the sward and poured a little volley into these hundred hercu
lean militia.

Among the defenders Quantrell could see the ashen face of
Watson Brown, rallying up from death and standing by his rifle.
His father waved the sword of King Frederick and called " Fire! "

It was but a minute that this startling picture of a handful of
farm-boys, directed by an old man's face in which was the very
delight of battle, lasted upon the afternoon. The militia, after a
broken fire, dispersed with groans and curses ; and some, in the
frenzy of fear, leaped the high brick wall behind the block-house,
astonished at their own feat of strength.

As the defenders retired, they dragged one boyish form back
with them, which had settled down upon its hands, as if the liga
ments of the tough limbs had all at once given way : the face, of
unspeakable emotion, was that of young Oliver Brown ; he looked
like one caught by some reptile and bitten in twain, while he was
yet rejoicing.

Quantrell pushed in the round-topped windows of the watch-
room end of the engine-house, with the plank he carried, and forced
the plank over the window-frames.

" Break out ! " he shouted, raising himself by the wrists to the
window-level ; " they won't fire on you ! "

He also leaped over the tall brick wall and fell into the River
Street, exhausted.

In a few minutes the released prisoners from the watch-house
also came up.

" Where's Washington, and Alstadt, and — ole Ball ? " Quan
trell asked.

" Why, ole Isaac Smith — he picked all them big fish out half a
hour ago and tuk 'em in the engine-house part. ' I want you,' he
says. ' And you ! And you ! ' He's got nine or ten, I reckon, in
thar, yit."

Lloyd returned to the Gault House saloon around the arsenal

GAULT HOUSE. igi

wall, and at the alley there lay the dead Newby still, staring at
eternity.

A strange quiet had fallen upon the town since the determined
action of the bandits and their easy defeat of the burly Martins-
burgers — several of whom had received wounds ; a quiet partly
induced, too, by the cold-blooded slaying of Lehman, which few had
seen without compassion and awe. There were none in the streets
but the dead, and all private attempts to storm John Brown's fort
ceased from that time forward.

Entering the Gault House, a man escaping from the interior fell
in the dark into Quantrell's arms.

" Let me go ! " the stranger cried ; " I've lost my poor black
ward. I'll have a life for Hey wood ! "

The door closed upon him, and Quantrell breathlessly asked for
liquor.

" Forty drops ! " said the saloon-keeper. " Come up ! "

It was now that Beall, the young Virginian, shook off a portion
of his hard demeanor and commenced to ask Lloyd the particulars
about Smith's or Brown's band : it seemed to have a charmed inter
est for him, less to appease his indignation than to awaken a latent
thirst he betrayed for individual feats of danger, and to concentrate
his mind upon the chief enemies of his State and neighborhood.

" Tell me, sir, as nearly as you can, who are the leaders in this
foray. We must be sure to kill the right ones ; the residue will do
for the gallows."

" Next to Isaac Smith," replied Lloyd, " who calls himself Brown,
was Kagi, who lies dead up the Shenandoah ; but the best soldier
of them all is the third in command, Captain Stevens."

" We'll mark him ! " muttered Beall. " What is that coming
yonder ? "

They looked through the window, keeping well back in the dark,
and saw four men coming out of the armory-gate ; two of these
were unarmed, and one hoisted a white cloth attached to a stick.

"That's Kitz," said one of the voices in the dark; "t'other's a
citizen. It seems to be a flag of truce."

"I know the men behind," Quantrell added— " the two with
rifles ; the boyish figure is Ned Coppock. He's a handsome fellow,
and good-natured. The stoutish, manly fellow is Aaron Stevens.
He's a lion."

" Get your gun," Beall said. "The time's come for it ! "

1 92

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

"All steady, now," remarked the saloon-keeper; "no one must
speak. I want to let him have every ball."

He raised the skeleton-breeched revolver to his shoulder and
took aim, the rest standing silently in the rear.

Right on walked the four men, the two hostages covering the
two raiders in front, until they came abreast of the hotel beneath
the station, when, at a word from Stevens, the hostages stepped
upon the flanks, thus opening to the saloon-keeper's revolver the
bodies of Stevens and Coppock.

Quantrell, in spite of his late vow of " Death to abolitionists ! " felt
that he would give the world to cry out and plead : " It is a flag of
mercy. Do not kill them ! "

Proud of bearing, full-bearded, his brown eyes keen but independ
ent, his military shoulders carried erect without effort or stiffness,
his dark-brown hair adding to the warmth of his bright skin and
red, youthful lips, Stevens had his gun across his shoulder ; he kept
his eyes upon the bridge before him, and walked on as confidently
as a regular soldier upon parade.

None in the saloon looked at any other person ; this man was so
strong, superior, and chieftam-like that the light of human eyes
shone only upon him and seemed to glaze him into a Rembrandtish
brightness and halo, and they could almost hear his broad lungs
breathe.

The great pistol went off — once, twice, thrice ! Quantrell shut his
eyes.

Once, twice, thrice again, it spoke metallic decision, and with
that regularity and interval of sound which showed the perfect nerve,
deliberation, and aim of the firer.

The saloon was full of sulphur-smell, but of little smoke.

Quantrell opened his eyes.

There lay on the ground, a few paces from the door, an effigy
or broken stalk of man, nothing of it moving but the broad chest,
and that with a snarling, convulsive sound and struggle.

The hostages were not to be seen. Coppock was entering the
armory-gate, and there a little band of the raiders poured out from
the engine-house, and he and they fired with spirit, but only to draw
upon themselves a roaring volley from near the bridge, like that of
soldiery.

" Forty drops," said the saloon-keeper, wiping his piece with a
yellow silk handkerchief. " Come up."

GAULT HOUSE.

'93

Amid exclamations of " Glorious ! " " Grand ! " and the sucking
of liquids and the shaking of hands, Lloyd Ouantrell opened the
door and, despite the glancing of bullets over railroad-iron and street-
gravel, he fell upon his hands and knees and crawled toward the
prostrate form.

He saw in an instant what errand Stevens had walked forth
upon. The Potomac bridge was full of soldiery just come from
Maryland, and to these Stevens must have been sent with a propo
sition of surrender or truce, when the unrespecting assassin had
emptied a revolver into his living frame.

" Now some other citizen will surely be killed," Quantrell re
flected, " not only to avenge this dead comrade, but the raiders will
kill to protect themselves from massacre. I reckon their blood is
up."

A sound came from the large form stretched upon the ground.

" If you are a man and I am but a dog, come to me ! "

There was in this sound something of involuntary \voe, like
mortal agony soliloquizing to its pain, or the " loud voice about the
ninth hour" on Calvary, saying, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?"

A woman from the hotel ran toward the prostrate man, careless
of danger in the strong impulse of her pity, and Quantrell also rose
to his feet.

They lifted the body up ; it was limp, and had nothing whole to
stand upon — shot in the members, the trunk, the head, and having
received, like a target from a practiced hand, every ball where the
marksman thought fit to deliver it.

" Save him ! " screamed the woman ; " he belongs to some home,
maybe."

Quantrell raised the body to his shoulder and slung it there like
a dead deer, and stalked away with it to the hotel where he had
slept.

" Kill him ! Drown him ! Tear him to pieces ! " yelled many
voices, in the safe hiding of the station.

" Curs ! " exclaimed Ouantrell, facing them once, " go yonder and
kill at the engine-house, where you are fifty to one ! "

As he entered a room in the hotel where he was directed, an
other man came forward and said, cheerfully :

" Aaron, do you know me ? "

" Good-by, Thompson ! " sighed the bleeding form.

" You are not going to die, Aaron ? "
13

1 94 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

" Not me," Stevens muttered. " Oh, no ! Good-by \.o you ! "

" Who tells you that, Aaron ? "

" Spirits," whispered the man, swooning away.

The room filled up with drunken, excited, or cowardly individ
uals, uttering imprecations, insulting William Thompson, the pris
oner, and threatening to throw the body of Stevens out of the win
dow. Quantrell picked out a little guard of weak but better meaning
men, and by a doctor's aid cleared the room.

" Thompson," he said, after this exertion, " what labor you have
taken to make all this misery ! "

" I didn't come, Mr. Quantrell, on any picnic. You and me will
only die once. I'm just as ready to die for man now as I was yes
terday."

" Don't you want to live ? "

" Of course. Life never was as sweet to me as it is at this min
ute, because it's so uncertain now. But I brought my life along
and put it in the cause ; and, if it's wanted, I'll give it to Liberty."

" Nonsense ! " exclaimed Quantrell. " Liberty to slaves, not one
of whom has had the courage to fight for his own salvation ! "

" No nonsense, Mr. Quantrell, to the many millions more still to
be born, and to look back, perhaps, to this day's sorrows for their
deliverance. W'omen don't fight for their freedom, neither, but still
have men gone to women's rescue. It was because slaves didn't
fight that we came to fight for them."

The door here burst open, and a young man entered with a gun.
He looked around an instant, and approached the helpless man upon
the bed.

" Villain ! " he suddenly cried, "you've killed my kinsman, George
Turner, and I'm going to kill you this minute ! "

Before any person could interfere, he had pulled the trigger, with
the muzzle of the gun at Stevens's throat.

The lock fell, but the cap did not explode.

Stevens had been stripped naked, for the doctor to dress his
wounds. As Quantrell sprang forward, he observed the fine hazel
eyes of Stevens to be wide open, and gazing with a most undaunted
calmness into the assassin's face.

The other man blanched before that unshaken fortitude and al
most eloquent contempt. Well he might have been alarmed, also,
at the wounded man's athletic breast, solid arms, great shoulders,
and Apollo-like strength in everything ; his white body flawless ex-

GAULT HOUSE.

195

cept where torn by lead, and his soul reinhabiting that mangled
frame, like an eagle returned suddenly to its nest.

" If I had a gun and could get off this bed," said Stevens, with
out an inflection, " you, and ten more like you, would jump out of
that window ! "

Quantrell sprang upon the intruder, who had already retreated
before Stevens's steady gaze, and Lloyd put the door behind him.

"You're a great man, Stevens," Lloyd Quantrell said, looking
down at the hero in admiration. " What made you wake just at
that minute of danger? "

" My guardian angel," Stevens sighed, and closed his eyes in
slumber again.

Quantrell locked the door and stretched himself upon the floor
within it, and also slumbered a little while. He went to sleep, and
he awoke to the continual spluttering explosions of fire-arms.

As he was relieved by other persons of the watch in this prison
er's place, he stepped out to the railroad platform in time to see an
old, stout man peep around the water-tank, desperate to have a shot
at the people in the engine-house.

The moment this man peeped, there came a sound of wood
ripped by a ball.

" Tey've hit te tank ! " exclaimed the voice of Atzerodt, at
Quantrell's elbow.

" They've hit the man, too," Quantrell said ; for he had seen the
large form of the old gentleman pitch forward and fall upon his
head, and there lie motionless upon the planks of the platform he so
long commanded.

People dragged the old gentleman back by the legs and laid him
beside his negro servant, stone-dead ; black and white man, loving
each other in life, in death had not long been divided.

" The Mayor of Harper's Ferry," thought Quantrell, " pays for
the violation of the flag of armistice. I believe Ned Coppock fired
that shot for Captain Stevens."

It was now the middle of the afternoon, and whisky had done
its work on many an empty stomach, while combat had made cou
rageous men fierce, and cowardly men bloodthirsty.

A cry arose : " Kill that prisoner ! Fountain Beckham's dead ! "

If the utterer of this instigation had desired, in the same breath,
to call it back, he would have been too late.

The dead mayor had been of a large family connection, and his

I96

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

cousins and nephews heard the cry of " revenge," in Virginia na
tures, where Scotch and pioneer traits and traditions lay ever near
the passion for private feud and retaliation.

The hotel quickly filled up with young men who had not dared
to expose their bodies, like the late rash and loving old man. The
woman who had befriended Stevens threw herself before young
William Thompson's body, and begged his life in vain. He was
pushed and dragged toward the railway platform, and, for every
hand which impelled him onward, another held a pistol to kill him.
Voices derided him ; and other voices raised the yell of battle, thou
sands of times repeated in after-years among these "blue-ridged
hills."

" To the bridge ! To the bridge with him ! Kill him ! Kill
him ! "

Lloyd Quantrell saw his pointer-dog leap joyfully among the
murderers and bark with all his venom, and show his yellow eyes,
and shake the flies from his blood-clotted ear. Lloyd saw the dirty
visage of Atzerodt, crazed with the liquor his blood-money had pro
cured, waving his fluttering hands and full of white-livered zeal, and
heard him shout :

" Hang him ! Hang him to te bridge ! "

The crowd swayed and reeled forward, and the woman threw
herself in its path only to be pulled aside. Toward the Potomac
bridge it went, and skirmishers before it, and stragglers behind,
were seen to be picking the locks of rusty fire-arms, and trying flints
and percussion-caps, in all the ardor for human prey. The black
birds at the chimneys of Loudoun Mountain circled there, indiffer
ent to the carcass that was being prepared for them by mankind.

Lloyd Quantrell determined to labor for that man's life. He
caught a glimpse of Mr. Beall at the outskirts of the mob and
called to him :

" Let us save his life for the law — and for shame ! "

Beall shook his head, and muttered, with skull and chin pinched
together at the thin lips :

" No, sir. He has dishonored Virginia ! "

There were, however, some plaintive old Germanic faces there,
ready to kindle to compassion when Quantrell raised the cry :

" Give him a chance ! Don't murder him, gentlemen ! Don't
let us disgrace Virginia ! "

" To hell mit him ! " cried Atzerodt. " He kilt a good man."

GAULT HOUSE.

197

" Revenge for Fountain Beckham ! "

" Revenge for George Turner ! "

" Revenge for Tom Boerly ! "

These victims' names arose like tongues of fire amid the tiny
streams of pity.

"Give him a trial!" shouted Ouantrell. "You do not know
who he is. His blood may splash you all."

" Oh, yes, take time ! " said a tall old man. " The law will
stretch his neck."

" Don't kill him here," cried the woman's voice ; " the court will
try him soon enough ! "

William Thompson had not spoken ; his face was pale but with
manly submission in it, and yet the love of life rose to his temples
in a great fervor, once or twice.

A man pointed a gun at him ; Thompson put his arms around
the man and held him close to his breast and spoke across his
shoulder in the partial silence of the hard-breathing murderers :

" Let me say a word. Then kill me if you ought to ! My blood
will never put out the fire started here to-day. A thousand lives
like mine won't do it — no, not a hundred thousand ! Murder won't {
count in favor of sin. Let all your slaves go free ! That's all wej
ask. It's cheaper in the end ! "

" Down with the abolitionist ! "

" Kill the blasphemer ! "

" Shoot the vile fanatic ! "

They tried to tear him fast from any other man. Severed from
one, he grappled to himself another, in the piteous search for some
one feeling breast. He spoke no more, except to cling to living
frames and cover his own with living hearts. The contest drew
tears from some, and others closed their eyes.

Finally, several men seized him by pinioning his arms, and then
with their united power hurled him from them.

Half a dozen guns went off. He tottered and fell upon one
hand. More guns were discharged.

" Father ! " he cried, looking toward the engine-house, which
was concealed by the hotel-building.

They fired upon him again and again.

His eyes, in pain of death, without a friend to call to, fell upon
Lloyd Ouantrell :

" Mr. Ouantrell ! Brother ! "

igS KATY OF CATOCTIN.

" Drop ! drop into the river ! " Quantrell shouted, and pointed to
the cool water below.

The dying man tottered to the edge of the planks and slipped
through the hollow places there and fell into the roaring Potomac
current.

" I'll carry the white flag this time ! " Quantrell said. " Nobody
can save him but John Brown ! "

He raised his hat upon a rod and walked straight into the
armory-gate and disappeared in the engine-house.

William Thompson floated down the current a little way and
lodged against some stones.

A discharge of fire-arms from the bridge stilled his hopes and
pains forever.

All the rest of the afternoon his body was used for a target-
match between the gunners, shooting from the bridge.

CHAPTER XXI.

ABEL QUANTRELL.

MONDAY morning, at Jake Bosler's farm, found corn-shucking
and fruit-drying, pickling and stewing sweets, the deep occupation
of the women, of whom there were three, since Hannah Ritner had
come over from Smoketown, uninvited, at an early hour, driven by
Job Snowberger, the Baptist monk, whose Kloster (convent) name
was Father Philodulus.

Job had grown up in the nunnery at Snow Hill, just over in
Pennsylvania, and was nearly the last of the Monks of Seventh
Day. He worked in the fields with threefold energy of Sundays,
but his Saturdays were deeply religious ruminations, varied by the
singing of Beissel's Ephrata music, of which he was believed to be
the last living renderer.

To look at, Philodulus was a long, thin man with little peeping
eyes, and one side of his baggy face seemed cunning and blushing,
and the other side mystic and austere. He called Hannah Ritner
" Shweshter (sister) Marcella," and paid great deference to her,
while that large, considerate lady called him, according to her
passing vein, "Job," "Job Snow," and "Philodulus."

ABEL Q'JANTRELL. 199

At the sound of "Job ! " uttered with Hannah Ritner's full decis
ion, the hermit celibate would start up like a soldier to his arms ;
at the practical address of "Job Snow," he would look wise and
reproved ; when Hannah called him " Bruder (brother) Philodulus,"
blushes came to his froggy, loose skin, and he seemed about to fall
upon his knees.

Job, the monk, was now sorely tempted, for Nelly Harbaugh,
with mischief hardly delicate, had planted herself on one side of
him and had pushed him back against the wall, while Katy Bosler
was on Job's other flank, and the kitchen dresser kept her from
moving farther, and just in front of Philodulus was a wash-tub into
which they all were peeling fruit, and across the wash-tub from Job,
holding him fast, was Hannah Ritner with her great Jewish eyes.

" Bruder," exclaimed Nelly Harbaugh, summoning Job's atten
tion by hitting him with her knee, and then leaning over and taking
his thin, furzy beard in her hand, " would you take me into the Sie-
bentager and let me be your own little nun ? "

" Nay, unfer shamed, barefaced ! you would possess the whole
kloster soon."

The mystic and austere side of Job's face was, nevertheless, trem
bling a little, and he leaned toward Katy Bosler's large, modest eyes,
and then the cunning and blushing side grew all dimpled as he
piped in his high, falsetto voice :

'• Sister Kate, you would not ask me that ? "

Katy, full of laughter, cried :

" Oh, you would not invite me ! I'm too little."

" Unshuldich" breathed the old bachelor, "sweet innocent, I do."

"Job Snow!" Hannah Ritner spoke, with recalling common
sense.

" There is a difference," the brother said, throwing away the ap
ple and dropping the apple-peeling in the tub ; " te invitation of
Nelly is to mock me. Unshtcklich ! " (Nelly had taken his hand
with well-feigned rapture.) " I turn to Katy for to git purity. Te
world will take advantage of so much goodness, and in our quiet
convent we live like Him of old — like Yasus."

" Philodulus," Hannah Ritner spoke in her low, great voice,
" when our sex is old and poor, then invite them to your rest ; but
the world would misunderstand young converts, like these maidens,
appearing at Snow Hill."

" Nay, Sister Marcella, te first of te Vorsteher Beissel's tisciples

200 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

was two married women, and one of those, Maria Sower, was very
beautiful. It was her beauty he resisted with all his prayers, but
half his psalms her beauty was- te music of."

" Sing to my eyes, Job ! " Nelly Harbaugh entreated. — " Han
nah, he daresn't look at me without blushing."

" Oh, sing to my love ! " Katy involuntarily added, " and I will
play, Job, on te accordion."

"That is gone, Kate," said Nelly Harbaugh ; "you've given all
your music away."

" Nay," Job Snowberger said, " I'll sing for Katy te mourning-
dove piece py Friedsam, when his soul was at peace, and love
plagued it no more."

" Philodulus," Hannah Ritner sighed, "love plagues to the last.
Often, in my girlhood, have I seen the Dunker nuns, at Ephrata and
Snow Hill, carrying a lamb to which they gave the name of ' Yasus,'
and dandled it upon their knees — it was the substitute for Nature's
human babe, and they professed to be in a mystical union with its
divine namesake. But while the women at the nunnery played the
mother with these substitutes till themselves grew old and withered,
how many of the monks fell away from grace and married, long after
domestic happiness had passed its day ! "

" I am te last," said Job Snowberger, "and I will persewere."

" Pure, good man ! Kiss him, Katy, and encourage 'him to per
sewere."

Nelly Harbaugh, speaking, grasped Job Snowberger's head in
both her strong hands, and kissed him down upon Katy, who sat
imprisoned there ; and she, seeing no escape, and somewhat in the
mischief of the moment, also gave the monk of fifty -five a little timid
kiss.

He looked from one to the other in rapid changes of austerity
and weakness.

" Unshickttck — improper one ! " he spoke to Nelly Harbaugh ;
and then, turning to Katy, his face melted in all its harsher lines as
he gave back her kiss and piped high, " Unshuldich ! " — the in
nocent.

"Job ! " spoke Hannah Ritner.

He looked at her, thus in Saint Anthony's temptation, and burst
into tears.

Katy was frightened. Nelly was studying Philodulus, the monk,
with joyful analysis.

ABEL QUANTRELL. 2OI

"My children," Hannah Ritner said, looking with tender humor
on the scene, " whichever way you go with Love, cr go without him,
he makes you cry. His pleasantest mood is spring, with little
showers of tears. His summer zest is thunderstorm among these
mountains. If Love deserts you, it is winter and frozen tears. But
if he never comes at all, you cry, you know not why."

She looked at the poor man and gave him some cider to drink,
fresh from the press.

" Brother Philodulus, swallow your tears, as they drop into the
cider; for they will come up many times again, and, after all, the
tears of love are sweet — even those we shed to reject love."

He sat down at her counsel, and behaved like a little boy, doing
whatever was requested of him ; and while they continued to peel
apples, pears, and quinces, a sound came in at the window —

" Ah-coo-roo-coo-roo ! "

" It is te doves," Katy said. " It's most time, I think, for tem to
go South. Tey are waiting for te young ones to pe smart enough to
fly. Tey puilt te nest last April. Come see it, Job."

Job Snowberger's hand Katy confidingly took in hers, and led
him out to a low apple-tree nearly touching the house.

Upon a crotch of this tree, lower than their heads, sat, in an
humble nest of dry grasses, two brown young doves. Above them,
on the same bough, sat, side by side, the parent birds, unfluttered
by visitors, and in brown and chestnut plumage and slate-colored
crowns, cooing together.

" Ah-coo-roo-coo-roo ! "

The little family had no brilliant marks upon them except a
patch of bare pink skin under their chestnut-colored eyes, and toes
of brownish red clinging to the boughs. A little purple warmed
their breasts, which beat like Katy's little form beneath her brown
gown.

" Ah-coo-roo-coo-roo ! " murmured both the old doves and the
young ones, also, as Katy came near.

" Tey are full of love, Job," Katy said ; " tey will fly down among
te chickens and eat, and drink out of te trough py te horses. Tey
are shy, but not suspicious. Two eggs is all te she-bird lays, and
she hatches out of tem always a he-bird and a she."

"What for?" Job Snowberger asked, with his austere side ag
gressive, after his late display of weakness.

" O Job ! " said Katy, " why, you know — to love one another ! "

202 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

Job's half- shut eyes looked down at Katy with an idiotic smile
as he murmured, half harshly :

" Unshuldtch ! "

"Oh no, Job. I'm not ' innocent ' like I was yisterday; I'm in
love, too."

" Unshicklich, Katy ! "

" No, indeed. Jt can't be ' improper ' if it comes like religion,
dear Job. That's te way mine come to me."

" Ah-coo-roo-coo-roo," assented the she-dove from the tree, and
sidling down the bough toward Katy.

" Te she-dove never trifles with another he-bird," Katy said,
"like so many other kinds of birds. I've set and watched
those, ever since te i$th of April, when tey come here from te
South. He's all attention to her, too, and cares for no bird
else."

" Ah-coo-roo-coo-roo ! " emphatically, from the tree, as the male
bird trailed his wings, and puffed his breast up large, and paraded
before his lady, and then fed her from his own bill.

" UnshickHch /" improper, intimated Brother Philodulus, with
a feminine turn of his head. " Katy, I can do something tender,
too. I can sing the turtle-dove psalm."

" Do, Job ! My mate has taken my music with him, or I would
help you a little."

Job Snowberger, with a straightening of his lean figure and an
expression between ecstasy and childishness, piped in the German
tongue a little psalm we may translate together :

SEVENTH-DAY DUNKER HYMN.

" Coo-roo," the turtle-dove complains,

Whose spouse comes never near,
And leaves her, with a mother's pains,

Un-nested all the year:
" Coo-roo-ah-coo," the birdling true

Doth with itself condole —
So does the dove of Yasus coo

In every lonely soul.

" Coo-roo," the stricken monk or nun

Within the kloster sighs,
By human sin or love undone,

And hid from human eyes :

ABEL QUANTRELL. 2O3

" Coo-roo-ah-coo ! " that mate untrue

Still fills dear Yasus' place,
And you can hear the turtle coo

In her despairing face.

" Coo-roo," beside Ephrata's brooks

And in Antietam's vale,
Comes in between the martyr-books

The tender human tale :
"Coo-roo," to Peter Miller, too,

To Beissel and to all —
The turtle-dove so soft will coo,

It seems like Yasus' call !

" Coo-roo ! " in vain we fly from Love,

And world and flesh attack,
In vain we kill the human dove

And set the Sabbath back ;
" Coo-roo-ah-coo ! " Love will undo

The washing white of springs,
And only Yasus never knew

How strong the turtle sings.

"Coo-roo ! " in Zion's wooden house,

In Kedar's shingled cells,
Softer than lowing of the cows

The note of passion wells.
" Coo-roo-ah-coo ! " like wood unto

Whereon was Yasus bound,
Our prison seems ; and every coo

Tears wide a bleeding wound.

" Coo-roo ! " sing, more celestial Dove,

In notes aye pure and clear,
To drown this strong, terrestrial love

And help us persevere !
" Coo-roo-ah-coo ! " dear Yasus, who

No frailty turned aside,
Thy Dove set in the himmel blue,

And keep our Church thy bride !

Job Snowberger's singing had method in it, and caused himself
to weep. Katy saw him standing there in his coarse, home-woven
and home-dyed clothes, sewn together by the hands of women who

204

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

had no deeper interest in man than as a fellow-laborer, and she took
her needle and pieced him together, saying —

" Dear Job, you have got nobody to love you. "

" Unshicklich ! " exploded Philodulus, referring to the needle
work, and then, raising his bashful eyes to Katy's face, he qualified
the remark to " Unshuldich"

" Nobody will love me," Job exclaimed, " but Sister Marcella, and
she only loves me to send me on arrands. I'm only one of her nig
gers, and she has many of tern. Katy, can't you jine the kloster
and help me persewere ? "

" Ah-coo-roo-coo-roo ! " The doves had sidled together in the
apple-tree.

" Why, dear Job, I am in love already. I am engaged to a young
man. See, his mother's ring is on my finger ! And he has took my
accordion. Oh, I am so happy ! "

" Unshicklich ! Unshuldich, too ! No good will come of it,
schwester Kate ! Oh, come and jine the good Siebentager and help
me persewere ! "

Job had already burst open his late repairs ; for, indeed, his
clothes were too small for him. and his emotions had the effect of
wind in the laden apple-trees, bringing all their ripeness to the
ground. He threw his arms around Katy, and, in ecstasy of groans
and tears, piped high :

" Oh, can't we persewere together, Katy ! It is so hard to per
sewere alone. I can't remember nothing : the music-writin' gits
blotted; the saw-mill runs wrong; the fullin'-mill wants ile, the
cider-press tastes of rotten apples. Come, come, schwester, to
Schneeberg and te heilich life ! "

" Ah-coo-roo-coo-roo ! " very firmly, from the dove family in the
tree. '

" Don't kiss me so hard, Job ! " Katy cried, fighting in vain
against the tall man's impassioned caresses. " It's real Unshicklich
in you, for I'm going to marry another man."

" Oh, who is it ? He must be some sinful one."

" No, indeed, Job ; it's a Mr. Quantrell! "

" Hallo ! " spoke a strange voice. " How do you know me, in
deed ? — And what rummaging are you engaged at, Snowberger ?
Fine hypocrite, you ! "

" Perse werin'," Philodulus said, sheepishly ; " we was persewerin'
together."

ABEL QUANTRELL. 205

" No doubt," said a strange lame man, standing before them ;
" persewering and perspiring, too ! — Young woman, you're in a fair
way to become a convert, unless your people look more carefully
after you ! "

" Who is it ? " Katy spoke ; " I do not understand."

" You ought to know me. You have just mentioned my name.
I am Abel Ouantrell, of Baltimore. And where is Hannah Rit-
ner ? "

"Here, master !" spoke an eloquent voice at the window; "I
heard you were coming, and had you directed to this friend's retired
farm ; for I was all alone at Smoketown, and the time was full of
portents. O master, if I ever needed help and a strong hand to
lean upon, it is to-day ! "

" Sho ! Sho ! Ninon, I see you are nervous to-day. Cube
yourself ! The root is the soul. Cube yourself ! Some unusually
Quixotic undertaking, perhaps ? O child, I feel for you — extract
ing the cube-root of all this wrong, without the help of man ! "

" Be tender with me, master. Oh, come and counsel me ! The
time is so short ; the mountains are so dark ; I can not read beyond
them. I am so lonely ! "

He led her toward the dairy, near the creek, and on the grass
they talked together until Nelly Harbaugh took out chairs for them,
and then they talked still on, "till Luther came in, at dinner, hearing
the sounding of the bell, and put up the strange gentleman's horse
and buggy.

Mr. Abel Ouantrell came in to dine, and looked at Katy and at
Nelly with a sort of sardonic admiration. At Nelly he looked with
bold favor ; at Katy with no more interest than as at a hoyden child
he had found in an old man's arms.

Katy was afraid of this strange man, and some great distress
seemed overhanging in his wonderful appearance here, the very day
after her lover had come and gone. She was too umvorldly and
ignorant to understand that she had been guilty of any error, or to
know how to extricate herself, and be recommended in his eyes.

" I will leave it to God," said Katy, inwardly. "He must know
what to do with me."

Nelly Harbaugh was soon in a running skirmish of merry and
satirical talk with Abel Quantrell.

He was a man not to be forgotten nor confounded with any
other, and even the splendid carriage of Hannah Ritner seemed to

206 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

lose its superiority under Abel Quantrell's plain but strong address
and countenance.

In the first place, he was a deformed man : one of his legs was
shorter than the other, or the foot was clubbed ; for he walked by
the aid of a cane, without labor or any look of pain, and with a cer
tain enforced erectness which had imparted a spirit of will, or de
fiance, or triumph, to the carriage of his head, the swell of his nos
trils, the firm parallels of his eyebrows and lips, and even to the
poise of a dark wig, younger in tone than the lights in his eyes,
which were faded, spite of their fateful and inflexible cast.

His face was all shaved clean ; a standing collar barely showed
the gray hairs brushed beneath his throat upon the parchment-
colored sinews there. At times, unconsciously, or from habit, he
thrust his hand into the clean, starched, simple bosom of his shirt,
and then he seemed, to those observing him, like one whose back
was against a wall.

But for his lameness he would have been a man above the usual
stature, and at this table he was easily the chief, as if a magistrate
had come in, but not to depress anybody's spirits. His face was
without any ruddy color, and the black wig gave it a certain pallor
as if he were older than he seemed.

No Christian resignation was in Abel Quantrell's portrait — rather
the heathen philosopher's stoic will and coolness. In repose, he
seemed an orator with something in his bosom to defend, and cov
ered there by his pallid hand ; out of repose, his face assumed a
certain earthiness and self-love, sometimes to the degree of coarse
ness, and this may have been why Nelly Harbaugh soonest grew
upon easy terms with him and drew from him some particulars of
his career.

" You seem at home among us Swiss and Dutch, and find your
way about like an old nochber? "

" Yaw^yung maidle" Abel Quantrell said, " I came among the
old Dutch before your mother had a beau. I was the square root
extracted from a small New England family of thirteen — the oldest,
my little mother — and as I had kept them poor to send me to col
lege, I needs must feed them all. ' Cube yourself, Abel/ said I ; ' a
few years at school-teaching will make you a lawyer, and then you
can educate your little brothers and sisters, and set them on the
way to love and independence.' Sho, sho ! The Scotch-Irish bar,
at the town where I taught their college, passed a rule, especially

ABEL QUANTRELL. 2O/

for me, that no school-teacher could enter at the law. They knew
I was too poor to sit with my legs out of a lawyer's window study
ing for two years, and let my mother starve ! "

" What did you do, sir ? " Luther Bosler asked, sitting, like his
father, at the table in his shirt-sleeves.

" I merely cubed the radius," Abel Ouantrell said, with a firmer
grip of his upper lip upon the lip below — that lip which seemed
beaked, while his nose was straight as an index-board. " I rode
over into Maryland and sat up with the bar of the nearest county
there, judge and all, and played a good hand at cards, and staked
my quarter's salary. They asked me a sleepy question or two at
daylight and passed me into the law. So I extracted the square
root of Pennsylvania smallness and moved my habitation to an
other Dutch county."

" Te Bunkers do not go to law," ventured Katy Bosler.

" Bi'm-by," Jake Bosler ejaculated, fearing that they had already
leanings that way.

" No, bright eyes ! And that was what took the square root
out of my triumph. I could get love in too generous measure, but
business never came. Here sits a pupil of mine : let Ninon tell the
rest."

He turned to Hannah Ritner. She swept his pallid and volcano-
scarred face with eyes of woe and pride, and answered :

" Master, you found your only client, after waiting long — in a
murderer. He had taken a human life, but by his crime you and
your mother's brood found food. His case was. so bad that they
gave him to you to defend him, in mockery of your hard condition,
for you received not one penny for your toil."

" Sho, sho ! " from Abel Quantrell ; " I cubed myself, though."

" The eloquence of genius in the occasion of despair burst from
you like a torrent. The murderer became, in your impetuosity, your
only friend. His dark and stony nature poured forth the springs of
fervent tears. The judge sat trembling, your rivals were astonished
and abashed. All German-derived people, after that, went to you
with their suits and cases, and found you just as God. You left us,
then, for greater fields of use, and, by prosperity, you fell to be a
man ! "

" Nothin' but persewerin'," from the old-maidish face of Job
Snowberger, with his sheepish and insinuating side still set on
Katy.

208 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

"Job Snow" Hannah Ritner commanded, "be more respectful
to my dear master ! "

" Bi'm-by," meaninglessly from Jake Bosler, who executed the
parental feat of throwing some corn " slappers " with his fingers into
Katy's plate, a yard distant.

Only Nelly Harbaugh seemed to blush at this homely method of
serving food.

" Teacher," Nelly said to Abel Quantrell, " which is best to live
for — affection or greatness ? "

" I have had all my happiness in career," replied the old man,
with his pallid hand in his bosom, laid firmly on his heart. His
eyes, ranging around the table, rested with some kindling embers
of power upon Luther Bosler. " My career, for a quarter of a cent
ury, was to fight Power. Sometimes I fought it when it was right
ful power — not often. For power, as I found it in my exile in
these Middle States, was the power of old sociability, of cliques
and lodges, of amiable ignorance and deadly prejudice resisting in
novation. This dull majority had sat upon my heel ; I turned and
bruised its head."

" Soon-down, Luter. Bi'm-by ! " from Jake Bosler, toward his
son, glancing at the half-plowed fields.

Jake had taken off his shoe, and was examining his not very
sightly foot with an eye to stone-bruises. No spirituality in the
conversation bribed him from thrifty thinking on his crops.

" Retaliation is not the spirit our Lord changed this wprld in,"
Luther Bosler said, his dark eyes intelligently following Abel Quan
trell.

Hannah Ritner's eyes shone with all their might of compassion,
as she turned on Luther, before the old man could speak the repar
tee his folded lip concealed :

" Sir, Master Quantrell 's retaliations were never upon the weak.
He soared among the eagles in his indignations. We humble Ger
mans he led by the hand as high as we could go, and there \ve saw
him battling with the power enthroned in the sun. He defended
slaves escaping over the free-State line. He assailed Freemasonry
in its brutality toward a human life. He broke the power of igno
rance in Pennsylvania and made Education one of the tyrants there,
with the power to tax, like forked lightning in its hands. We slug
gish Germans did not always understand him ; we had not his mer
curial sensitiveness to the injuries of simple multitudes — of women,

ABEL QUANTRELL.

of illiterate children, of poor, black slaves. But we felt that some
thing of Messiah had come among us with righteousness in his
hands, and we set him in the seats of power until — "

" The lower Yankee interest in his nature made him desert you,"
said Abel Quantrell, bitterly. " Yes, Ninon, I gave myself to career
like the bright, impetuous waters of the Blue Mountains, which at
last subside in the shallow and malarious estuaries of the bay. I
laid down career, and I am dead. Look at me — whited, withered,
wigged, and limping ! Have I not thrown myself away ? "

" No, master ! " the woman answered in fervent eloquence. " The
world has captured you, but not your principles, and, like our old
German emperor, Barbarossa, you sleep in the cavern till the free
dom of our land shall awaken you."

" I have a son," the old man said. " In him I may awake, but
never again in my enfettered self."

Katy cried, before she could think : " Oh, he was here ! We took
Lloyd to love-feast. He eat with us Dunkers last Sunday."

" Sho, sho ! No doubt he multiplied the base and height of
himself together and the product by the breadth. The cube result
ing is still a baby's block."

" He is a manly lad, master ! " said Hannah Ritner, with her
great eyes downcast. " Something of his father is there."

" Yes," said Abel Quantrell, languidly, " the complement of his
father : he will be as rash to support power that is false, as I was to
attack it. In my rowdy son, I see the compensation of my own self-
indulgence."

" It is not true ! " Katy cried ; " Lloyd is a gentleman. He eat te
Passover ! "

"I guess he's purty bad, Katy," Job Snowberger said. "He
ain't a-persewerin'."

"Job Snow!" from Hannah Ritner, "where is your char
ity ? "

" Come, Ninon," said Abel Quantrell, with lessening interest in
the subject ; " I must have my game of cards."

Luther Bosler and his father went back to the field ; Katy and
Nelly and Job Snowberger went to fruit-peeling again; Hannah
Ritner and Abel Quantrell had chairs under a tree near the creek,
and a barrel-head furnished them a table ; from the dwelling they
could be seen playing for Spanish silver pieces.

Katy was still and troubled, Nelly Harbaugh no less preoccu-
14

2IO KATY OF CATOCTIN.

pied and silent, and Job Snowberger, the only talking quantity left,
got no reply for his chance remarks.

" Katy," he said at last, "you is so still, I think you want to
come to Kloster Schneeherg."

" Oh, you old fool ! " Nelly Harbaugh spoke, " what does she want
with your old stupid nunnery? We women want career."

She glanced at Katy, who looked up, her eyes full of tears, and
said :

" Nelly, what makes me so ignorant ? "

" Goodness," Nelly Harbaugh answered.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE YANKEE.

TILL late in the day Abel Ouantrell played euchre with a spirit
compounded of gain and hazard, his opponent sometimes requiring
to be stirred from her abstraction, yet seeking to engage him with
all her irregular solicitude.

Finally, the old man, as she studied a careful play, closed his
eyes, and when she was ready, he did not respond.

The sun was growing low, and Hannah Ritner placed her chair
so as to shield him from its glancing rays, as they were dandled on
the South Mountain's crest.

" Oh, that this day would bring its result ! " she sighed aloud.

A head was in her lap and a kiss upon her hand ; she looked
down, and Katy Bosler was kneeling on the ground.

" What is it, simple child ? "

" My ring," whispered Katy, " He wants it."

She pointed at Abel Ouantrell, sleeping.

Katy held up the mourning ring of Lloyd Ouantrell's mother.

" Fortune-teller ! " said Katy, " this ring Lloyd's mother was
married with. Oh, must I lose it, as you told me I would ? Can't
nothing save it for me ? It is all I haf, since I gif Lloyd my accor -
dion."

Hannah Ritner looked at the ring.

" It is sanctified by death," she said. " Lord rest the soul who
made this ring so dear ! "

THE YANKEE. 211

" Lord, let that soul be kind to me ! " responded Katy, fervently.
" I only want to gif myself to Lloyd, and nothing selfish haf I got
but love— te first of love I ever felt. How strong it is, Mootter Han
nah ! "

" Drive it away, my child ! Exert your mind to be free ! Rings
like this were never made to be worn by poor, ignorant girls. Give
this ring to me, and I will wear it for you, and then it never may be
lost."

" You, Mootter Hannah ! Haf you got te power to keep it always
for me ? If I gif it to you now, maybe I will lose it, all py myself,
and pe foolish."

" Hush, Katy ! " Hannah Ritner pointed to the sleeping sire of
Lloyd Ouantrell. " Leave it with me to conjure with awhile."

She slipped the ring upon her hand, and Katy stole away.

Abel Quantrell opened his eyes and said :

" The square of self is but half selfish ; but the cube of self has
higher walls than angels ever scale. Plato, with all his divine reach,
could never solve the problem which had baffled the oracle of
Apollo."

" Dear master, what was that ? "

" To start with one's self-indulgence and multiply it into a sacri
fice ; to double the cube. Geometry, no more than an oracle, can
do it."

"Master, you have always defended the poor."

" Sho, sho ! Too often from pugnacity, reasoning from them to
my own fancied injuries. The humility of the Nazarene never was
in me. He who seeks to save his life shall lose it, Ninon."

" Master, have I not been seeking to save my life by losing it ?
Are we ever all unselfish ? "

"You have been, or sacrifice has no God, my child! If ever
love was willful, suicidal, and martyr-minded, it was yours. I offered
you myself, and you refused me : with every right to me, you sent
me on my career and blessed me as another's bridegroom, and
turned back with all your glorious powrers of body and of heart to
be, like Hagar, the bride of the wolf, and your habitation in the
wilderness. What have you been recompensed in ? "

" Career, my master. I saw a work to do."

" Sho, sho ! I know what that has been : to take the place of
danger on the Underground Road and save a slave or two, whose
escape to freedom only aggravated the sorrows of the rest, and

212 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

made the bloodhound Federal laws invade the North. A hundred
Quakers have done as much, Ninon."

" Master," said the woman, " I have gained knowledge. I have
predicted things which came to pass. I predict that, before you
leave this humble farm, the brazen door of bondage will resound to
the sledge-hammers of our daring smiths ! "

As she spoke, fervidly, she seemed to swoon, and her long hair
fell downward to the ground.

He placed his arm around her, and she pushed it away.

" No more of that, master ! I am in the very labor of my life-
work now, and my soul is in the depths of travail ! Oh, be a just
man to your son ! He loves you."

" He is too brave to need my justice," Abel Ouantrell said.
" Like me, he will not bow the knee to man, and be ashamed of
Nature — bountiful and wise in him. Justice is for the common
place ; freedom and independence are for heroes."

His face, being animated now, had lines of coarseness in it, as if
he was of the satyr's type, and mocked conventionalities.

" Shall I be just to you, Ninon ? " continued Abel Quantrell,
when he had restored his hand to his bosom, and was restfully
proud again.

" I have been just to myself, master."

"How?"

" By my spiritual gift. I am your wife."

" Sho, sho ! "

" See, sir ! The dead deliver to me the rights I would not ask
for. She who has sought to lose her life, has saved it."

His faded eyes fell upon the wedding-ring, which she had dropped
into his palm, upon her hand.

" Magic ! " said Abel Ouantrell ; " how came it here ? "

" Wafted ! " Hannah Ritner spoke ; " the day of my agony,
when my martyr-fires, perhaps, are lighted and my chain is forged,
the ring I had refused slides down the rainbow to my feet."

" Are you one of those Spiritualist fanatics, Ninon ? Sho, sho !
There is no divination in geometry. Three times from the base is
the cube. It was my son you got that ring from."

" No, master ; but from the child he gave it to when he engaged
himself."

" Sho ! He had visited no lady when he left Baltimore six days
ago. I have found a wife for him, and that brings me here."

THE YANKEE.

2I3

" He has found love here, master. You may give him another
Wife, but not the one he loves."

" Who is it ? "

" Little Katy, who sits in yonder house of log and stone ; the
Dunker farmer's child."

" Sho, sho ! No need of marrying there. He can love in one
place and marry in another — "

" And have remorse, like you, master? "

" How do you know that ? "

" I heard you bring it from the woodlands of your sleep, saying
that self-indulgence never could be expanded into a sacrifice."

The old man raised his club-foot and looked at it bitterly.

" There is a gnawing in my bosom, Ninon, but it is the decaying
principle of life. I am sixty-seven. That self I accuse myself of is
the selfishness of career. If I have sacrificed others, here and there,
it was to keep the greater compassion in view, and change the sys
tems by which wrong and tyranny were possible. I resigned most
passionate love to plant myself in the domestic circle of border-State
slavery, and to work its downfall by the social foothold I obtained.
My son must marry to strengthen me in the same labor, and make
Maryland a free State before I die."

" You will marry him to a religious woman ? "

" Yes, to a Catholic. The strength of slavery in Maryland lies
in the old Catholic counties and families, and in the increasing col
lege and conventual institutions of that Church. There was a time
when Carroll, of Carrollton, took me by the hand, when we Anti-
masons came to Baltimore to overthrow the power of President
Jackson. There lie latent in his church resentments against all
forms of ruffianism, of which human bondage is the chief. I have
sent my son to Catholic school and worship. For me all gates to
heaven are too narrow ; by freedom I will go in, or be the specter
of Heaven's own injustice, agitating at the gate ! "

He spoke with sardonic quietness, yet without quietness of
soul.

" Master, is there not the Jesuit's method in your plan ? ' The
quality of mercy is not strained.' It passes no suffering human
creature, to do some greater good, beyond. By Jesus came compas
sion in the world, and by politicians and by pontiffs came religious
craft. The New World was given to tyrants, and its native millions
thrown into slavery, that they might be saved from greater damna-

214

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

tion. I predict, with truth in my soul, that one brave man this day,
without scrip or raiment, and his life for the stone in his sling, will
strike every false system down, and be the hero of the world."

" You wander, Ninon ! Sho, sho ! you were always wild of mind.
Had there been such a man, he would have come to me."

" You were a politician, master, and he came to me. Oh, I fear
I may have done wrong, that good may come of it ! "

Abel Quantrell took her head upon his shoulder. She resisted a
little moment, and was still.

" How much you have suffered, Ninon ! "

" I have died, master, and am raised from the grave. When you
married, I prayed for your wife, but all was death to me for days.
I came to this world again, people thought a little crazy."

"Always a little above this world, child."

" That I might not be a burden and mockery to my great politi
cal relatives, I crossed the State line and lived in a little hut. The
children came to me for curiosity, the mature to have me tell their
fortunes ; my cottage light was the polar star of a thousand slaves."

" All this time, Ninon, I was mismated. Disgrace followed me,
also : my brother moved beside me, and became a negro-trader ;
my son became a corner-lounger and a bully. Sho, sho ! My heart
sought you out in the dreams of sleep and in the nervous wakeful-
ness of the night. Why did you not take the square root from our
troubles and send for me ? "

"You were married, master. A great thing had purified my
heart."

" I know, my child. How noble you were, there ! Behold my
wretched residue of marital ambition ! I am too old to love you
now."

" Master, it was from you, in the days of our passion, that I drew
the example to think on others' wrongs. The old Dutch sects —
Quakers in other respects — felt no offense at human slavery. I took
up the work when you relinquished it. My labors are almost ended.
— What man is that yonder, master? "

As she arose, in all her strength and stature, Abell Quantrell saw
that she was trembling.

" Sho ! Joan d'Arc," he said, tenderly, " beneath your armor I
see the poor child still."

A black man came forward with Nelly and with Katy ; he was
half naked, and nearly dead with fatigue.

THE YANKEE.

215

" Speak, poor man ! " called Hannah Ritner. " You were with
Isaac Smith across the river ? "

" Missy, dey's fout all day. Mos' all is tuck an' killed. Two of
us got away — and what was left in Maryland. Mosster Quantrell
sent me."

He produced gold pieces.

" Good Lord ! " cried Nelly Harbaugh ; " this is the runaway
nigger, and he must have stole the whole reward for himself."

" Missy, Lloyd tole me to come to Bosler's farm and give dis
money to Luther to buy me with it. He wants to save my life and
own me."

" Yes, do buy the pore man ! " Katy cried. " He's known nothing
but misery."

" I'll attend to the matter," Abel Quantrell observed. "Ninon,
put yourself across the Pennsylvania line without delay ! Has this
weakness brought on a civil war ? "

Hannah Ritner was the picture of one dying, yet struggling to
live.

" Go with her," Abel Quantrell continued, speaking to the negro
Ashby. " I am anxious to gratify all my son's wishes at this mo
ment, foolish as they may be."

" Why ? " asked Katy Bosler.

" Because I have picked out a wife for him, little Dunker ! and
would persuade him to my will."

He called for his carriage and servant. Hannah Ritner and Job
Snowberger drove away with the negro Ashby.

Suddenly Nelly Harbaugh cried, as Abel Quantrell also passed
from view :

" \\.2&y, f ergesht ! where is your wedding-ring? "

Awakened from the stupor of several minutes, Katy looked at
her hand and screamed.

She ran to the house and rang the bell loudly for the field-hands
to come home, and then started up the stairs.

" Where are you going, Katy ? "

" To git a-ready for Harper's Ferry and to see Lloyd."

2l6 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

CHAPTER XXIII.
JOHN BROWN'S FORT.

As Lloyd Ouantrell entered the armory-yard with a signal of
truce, his quickened apprehension took in the Washington family-
carriage on the grass riddled with bullets, the engine-house doors
splintered as if by lightning, and at least four short barrels of rifles
pointing at himself from the door-crevices and the brick loop-holes.

Expecting each instant to meet the fate of Stevens and wallow
on the ground, a hulk of broken bones, he exerted his empty hand
with an earnestness which enabled him to gain the door un-
shot.

"Captain Brown, they are killing your son-in-law, William
Thompson ! He cried to me for help. None but you can save
him ! "

At the moment he spoke a shower of balls made a circle around
him, and the rod, on which had been his hat, was twisted out of his
hand by a bullet which benumbed his whole arm, and from the
wood and brick of the engine-house chips and brick-dust were
struck. The door opened, and unseen hands pulled him in.

" Prospectin', heigh ? " a merry voice said.

" Your brother, Dauph Thompson, is being murdered on the
bridge. Listen ! "

The sounds of many guns, a faint women's wail, and a cheer
without a note of joy in it, followed by a sort of silence such as ani
mals keep whose food has suddenly been thrown into their dens, re
lated some horrible story.

Dauph Thompson turned pale, and still his voice was cheery :

" Willy murdered ? They wouldn't do that ! "

He threw open the engine-house door sufficiently to crouch in
the sill, and said pleasantly, yet troubled :

" Prospectin'."

In a moment something appeared protruding on sticks and poles
from the corner of the hotel and station, where the town mayor had
exposed his life.

" That's something to draw your fire, men ; don't be foolish ! "
John Brown's settled, metallic voice spoke from the top of a fire-
engine, looking through an arched and shivered window.

JOHN BROWN'S FORT. 2\J

Dauph Thompson stood up in the doorway and turned his face
inward ; it was pale, as if he had a mortal wound.

" Don't mind me !" he said, in mournful pleasantry. " I'm jess
prospectin'."

" What is it, Dauph ? Are you hurt ? " Ned Coppock cried,
throwing his arm around his comrade.

" Ned — it's Will's clothes they're showing — full — of his blood ! "

'• Murderers ! " muttered Coppock. " Don't cry, Dauph. He
give his all, and all is over now ! "

" O Will ! Never to see you more, my brother ! "

" Yes, Dauph. This is not all the life that good men live."

Wiping the tears from his eyes, and shaking Coppock's hand,
young Thompson turned his face to Captain Brown, and spoke
pleasantly as before :

" Prospectin', father — jess once more."

He looked at his gun, closed his lips and opened his nostrils, and
a slight flash of spirit, more sportsman-like than serious, came from
his eyes.

He stood erect in the crevice of the door, and raised his gun to
his eye.

It went off, and with it he spun around, as if from its rebound,
and fell upon his face on the brick floor.

Coppock turned him over, and called — •

" Dauph ! "

" Prospectin'," replied a faint voice, and his bosom filled with his
heart's blood.

He had been shot, courting death, with a miner's phrase upon
his lips, and had found the eternal treasure where the streets, they
say, are paved with gold.

"O Isabel!" a moaning voice came from some muddy and
travel-stained clothes upon the floor " Oh, water, father ! "

" Be composed, my son," spoke the steady voice of John Brown.
" Your wife's brothers have both died like men. Die the man, like
your brother Oliver ! "

He gave the order to close the doors and risk no further lives,
and to keep the prisoners back,

Ouantrell would have been killed, to expose himself at the door,
so he retired to the side of Watson Brown and leaned Watson's
head upon the cold form of the dead Oliver.

" Drink of this flask, my lad."

218 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

This time the suffering man did not resist the life-infusing
draught.

"Give some to Oily," muttered Watson Brown. "He is so
cold."

Quantrell counted nine prisoners sitting around the edges of this
nearly square room — which, as has been said, was some twenty-
four feet upon a side ; the watch-house, under the same roof, was
now deserted by friend and foe.

The prisoners had nothing to do, but seek to get a little rest by
sitting upon a narrow sill or coigne, like an abortive bench, which ran
around the chamber a little above the damp floor. Some of them
John Brown had permitted to shield themselves with the leather
hose or any other fireman's traps which would divert a bullet. All
the prisoners were tractable and worried ; some nodded for a little
while ; others ventured a word occasionally with the chief raider or
some of his men ; and one or two had a thin, genial phrase to say,
parrot-fashion, rather as formulse to keep up luck, than to court
any popularity.

" Ole Ball " was seen to be a heavy, bacon-fed, middle-aged
man, probably of the large Virginia connection of George Washing
ton's mother, and he paid great deference to " Cappen Smith," for,
notwithstanding his own admissions, and the assurances of his men,
the greatestSbewilderment still existed as to the true name, location,
or purpose of the bandit chief, and, with dogmatic loyalty to hear
say, the Virginians believed John Brown to be still Mr. Isaac Smith,
carrying on some little game.

" Josephus ! " Ball would say, when a bullet struck one of the
engines and disported itself among the wooden girders above,
" Cappen Smith, that was close, now ! "

A Maryland man, with a little smiling shiver, would on such
occasions add in a small, cowed voice :

" Zip ! Be on your gut vivy ! "

Mr. Washington had so far recovered from his melancholy as to
make a suggestion at long intervals, directed ostensibly at Captain
Smith's safety or comfort, but with a generous providence, also,
which embraced himself.

" Ah, captain, sah ! " he said, soon after Lloyd's entrance, " don't
your son want a doctaw ? "

"My son knows his duty, sir, and makes no complaint," John
Brown remarked, inspecting his revolvers.

JOHN BROWN'S FORT. 219

"But, ah, captain, sah ! He did ask faw wataw, and captain —
ah ! we all want wataw greatly, captain."

"Your fellow-citizens, gentlemen, have killed my men sent on
errands of our mutual benefit, and I will take no more risks till my
re-enforcements come. — Here, men, back that fire-engine against the
door, and stretch these ropes across the jambs ! Put the engine-
tongue so as to hold the door against a battering, and run the other
cart forward ! Wake up those recruits underneath the engine and
let them earn their living ! "

The recruits consisted of a few slaves gathered from neighbor
ing " estates," as the farms were called ; and these negroes, debarred
from any other excitements all their lives than Whitsuntide or " a
licking/' were now expected to take an intelligent, indeed, heroic
view of their first opportunity, and the white prisoners faintly smiled
at this proof of a natural incapacity for self-government.

" Cappen Brown," said the master-machinist of the armory,
heretofore described as " Ole Ball," "don't you think it's an ongrate-
ful time for these men and brethren to be a-snoozin' and leave you
to earn their salvation ? Josephus ! cap."

A ball went whizzing among the men and peeled the rafters
above.

"Zip ! " said the Maryland man, in an awed voice ; " be on the
quivivy now!"

" Ah — sah ! Torturing — sah ! " from Colonel Washington.

"The disciples," replied the gnarled old woodsman, in his
shrill key, " went to sleep the night on Gethsemane, when their
Master asked them to watch with him one little hour. They were
continually sleeping, sir, until he requested them not to get up any
more, for, said he, ' the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is be
trayed into the hands of sinners.' "

A piece of glass, sheared off neatly by a bullet, went sailing
through the room. The four men able to stand by their arms re
turned the courtesy, and the place stank of sulphur, and every palate
was coppery and hot.

" Zip ! Be on the gut vivy" the Maryland man was heard to
say, and shudder in the smoke.

" Josephus ! Cappen Brown, how you kin remember Scripter ! "

" Nothing remarkable about that, sir, for I studied for the Chris
tian ministry before I was of age, till an inflammation of the eyes,
sir, sent me back to my tan-yard."

220 KATY OF CAT&CTIN.

A nail came whistling through one of the sky-windows and
played a little tune as it tingled on the levers of one of the engines.
The negroes, working there, fell on the brick floor again. The
voice of John Brown was heard to say :

" No man is fit to fight for human nature who despairs of it.
This world slept in trespasses and sins when the unwelcome Re
deemer came. And why should these ignorant slaves, whose fore
fathers came to Virginia in bondage the same year my ancestor
came to Massachusetts in the Mayflower, be awake, when we
alone, of all the Mayflower's children, are awake to their injustice ?
That is why I am here, prisoners — to awake this land ! I expected
these slaves to awake last. If a thousand years to the Lord are
but as a day, may not these three hundred years of bondage be but
as a night of sleep to these? "

"Bang!" "Bang!" "Bang!" "Bang!"

The four guns in the hands of Brown's surviving fighters went
off sequentially, two at the port-holes, two at the doors.

"Josephus!" spoke Mr. Ball, "the place smells like a bad ror
egg ! "

Answering shots brought down a little shower of flattened lead
upon everybody.

" Zip ! " said the Marylander's quaver of a voice. " No use of
bein' on the qui vivy yer ! "

" Water ! Father ! O my God ! " a breath sighed up from
Watson Brown.

"Ah — captain. Your son ! He is thirsty," Colonel Washing
ton appealed.

"My son is a brave man," replied John Brown, firmly. "'I
thirst,' gentlemen, was the cry that let the Christian era in. Your
fellow-citizens, to whom we meant no wrong, but justice, give these
dying soldiers of mine the hyssop and the sponge of vinegar to cool
their thirst."

" Don't weaken for me, father ! " gasped the ashen face of Wat
son Brown.

" O man ! " Lloyd Ouantrell cried, " are you, who rebuked me
for killing a dove, so merciless as to hear your son howl like this ?
And quote your Bible, too ! "

The usual momentary salute came tearing through the little
fort.

Captain Brown peered out of the door, and the balls struck

JOHN BROWN'S FORT. 221

around his stiff hairs and stooping shoulders. He carried no gun,
and returned like one who had merely been examining the weather-
indications.

" Men," said he, "be careful now of your ammunition. My re-
enforcements may be somewhat late. What you are to guard
against is a sudden rush upon you, or the establishing of a rifle-pit,
or a blind, within easy aiming distance of this building. That you
must not permit."

" Captain," said one of his men named Stewart Taylor, a cool,
freckled lad, " how many re-enforcements do you expect ? "

" It is only a question of time, Taylor," Brown answered.
" There may be thousands of them."

" We've got the promise of them," a taller man exclaimed ;
"and we're four good men yet, besides our commander."

" Yes, Anderson," the leader remarked, stroking his long beard ;
" we are in stout walls, well armed, and nothing but cannon can
batter down our fort, and these prisoners forbid their using any
cannon."

He looked around upon the nine or ten discomfited men, hang
ing or crouching there, like hams in a smoke-house when the bear
family pay it a visit ; and the free negro, Green, the surviving one
of the pair which had menaced Ouantrell, remarked :

" Their lives, I guess, ain't worth no more than our'n ! "

"No, Green," John Brown replied, "prisoners must take their
chances ; this is a war."

Ed Coppock gave a reassuring look at the prisoners and walked
out upon the lawn, where his rifle was soon heard to crack. He re
turned, laughing, pursued by musketry which made the doors sound
like rats gnawing through them.

" I gave that Gault House a shot," he said, " in remembrance
of poor Stevens."

" Isabel, are you here, dearest ? I can't see you ! " — from the
pale lips of Watson Brown.

" Drink, lad," said Ouantrell.

" Oh, it comes out of my wounds ! " the sufferer cried, putting his
hand upon his stomach. " I can't hold anything."

" You have asked me a question, Mr. Quantrell," the indurated
father observed, returning back along the course of the conversa
tion — " why I could reprove the killing of a dove, and permit the
killing of a man, even of my son ? "

222 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

He came over and felt of Watson's bleeding abdomen, and
covered Oliver's dead face with a blanket, and, regarding both with
an interest which, in its very practicality, was pathetic, he con
tinued :

" Blood is so precious that no man should take it for amuse
ment ; and it is the most wholesome sacrifice to the Lord. On
Abel's bleeding altar came the approving fire from heaven, while
Cain, whose sacrifice of sticks God did not respect, fell on his
brother and slew him. The sole question of bloodshed is : ' In
what spirit do you shed it ? what is the motive of your sacrifice? ' "

" Zip, cap'n ! Be on the qui vivy ! " from the Maryland man.

" Oh, kill me ! O my Bell ! " from the tortured Watson.

"Your cause is just, my son. Bear it like a man," John Brown
proceeded. " Now, sir " (to Quantrell), " it is permitted to man to shed
the blood of animals for his necessities. ' Have dominion over them,'
said the Lord in the beginning. Yet every sparrow is counted, every
lamb is measured out, and, in the dove's domestic love, is heaven
made emblematic : the Holy Spirit's peace. As I have rebuked you
for killing the inoffensive dove, I call this nation to account for its
cruelty to our fellow-creatures. In either case, sir, the interference
may have been gratuitous ; but blood of mine, and of the humble
doves of peace, in Kansas, was shed before I began."

"Josephus! Cappen Brown, you don't shoot us down yer, be
cause out yonder in Kinsas there was a fight, do you ? "

" Zip ! Be on your qui vivy ! "

Colonel Washington's hired black servant had a considerable
wool-clip taken out of his head at this point.

" I want water, too," he exclaimed, in his terror. " I'm chokin'
fo' it ! "

" That fellow — ah ! " Colonel Washington exclaimed, in a low
voice, to Quantrell, " came to this resort too willingly when Cook
and Stevens ordered him ; it would be — ah ! — retribution, sah — if he
did lose his life, sah."

"Mus' we die heah of thirst, an' de rivers full of water?" ex
claimed the negro man, lying beside his abandoned spear.

" There is a river," sighed Watson Brown, " whose streams shall
make glad the city of God. Oh, let me swim there — in the Au Sa
ble ! — Bell, Bell, bury me by the water, dear ; I want to lap it, dar
ling."

He opened his eyes, and recognizing Quantrell, added, manfully:

JOHN BROWN'S FORT. 22$

" Yes, bury me by my comrades, by the river-side, away from the
cavalry."

" By the Au Sable, did you say, Watson ? Where is that ? "

" It's too far," spoke the boy, deathly sweat upon his forehead ;
" by the. Kaw ; that will do. Or by the Shenandoah. I fought by
both streams— where father said it was right."

The evening came down upon this little scene — of the mysteri
ous invader and his four remaining soldiers, standing by their guns
against the assembling country. Toward night the firing became
merely drunken about the streets, and Brown let a prisoner or two
go out from his little ark, but neither dove nor raven returned again ;
and the whistling of trains, opposite and above the town, indicated
the coming of more and more troops ; but still John Brown believed,
from time to time, that they were his " re-enforcements."

He evidently believed this, because he would confer with his men
— Anderson and Coppock being the more intelligent of these — and
he would, with the woodman-scout's carefulness of ear, compare
the sounds of rifles in the distance, and say, " Surely they are my re-
enforcements." His men had such entire trust in him that they of
fered no suggestions nor criticisms, and did the whole of the fighting
self-directed. His only order, from time to time, was, " Don't lose
your interest, men ! Don't be surprised ! My re-enforcements are
not far off." A rifle was seldom in his hand ; he sometimes drew
the sword of King Frederick ; but the negro Green, alone of his men,
was suspicions of the white prisoners. Quantrell counted these and
sounded some of them upon the propriety of a coup de main — to
grapple with this old man's three whites and one negro, and throw
open the doors and call for assistance : it was no longer practicable,
for the prisoners, while not less apprehensive than in the morning,
had become cowed in all their being, as from the short-learned habit
of obedience.

"Why, friend," whispered Quantrell to one of these, "has one
day made white men slaves ? What would a hundred years not do,
then ? "

" Don't you feel cowed, too ? " asked his fellow-prisoner.

" I must admit that I do, every time I re-enter this place and fall
under that old man's influence. But why are not his little band, en
veloped by a world of our people, also made timid ? "

" Crazy, I reckon ! "

" Fanatics, yes," said Lloyd — " no doubt they are ; but if they

224

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

represent many abolitionists like them, what will be the fate of
slavery? This old fellow has the self-deception of Mohammed ; he
is the prophet of God to all these boys : they pass, fighting, to his
paradise."

" I can't be kept much longer ! " from the dying Watson Brown ;
" I shall see Fred and Oily, over there, by the river. — Bell, let me kiss
my little boy and go ! "

" See there ! " Quantrell said, " he is worse than a fatalist. Who
paid him to come here? He would get none of our land and own
none of our slaves, if he should prevail. Fanaticism in its purest,
most ignorant and simple form, is behind and in these men. I never
would have believed abolitionism could amount to this."

" Dreadful ! " moaned the man ; " I've leaned agin this yer brick
wall till I'm damp as a goose, and my head's as sore with thinkin'
as t'other end is of tryin' to soften this ar brick. I didn't never think
I could think so much as I have this yer one day."

" How much thinking," said Lloyd, " has old Smith given to this
thing ? He began it when he was a young man."

" Oh, he's a smart old scoundrel. But if the Lord will let me
out of yer, I'll promise him to think about nothing for the rest of
my days ! "

And so darkness fell upon the dead, upon them in bonds, and
upon the living fanatics. Silence followed the darkness, except
when Watson Brown cried out in pain and delirium.

At length there came to the door, after some parley, an officer of
a company from Maryland, a plain-speaking, German-derived man,
whom Brown had met in his rambles, perhaps, and he said :

" Cap'n Smith, I don't bear no malice to ye. Where in the world
did ye come from ? Who air ye ? What did ye come hyar for ?
Now, Smith, surrender, and make no further trouble. Ye're agin
the law — you must know that."

" If you knew who I was — what I have gone through against
this thing of slavery — you could understand what brought me here,
sir," the leader replied. " I have tried to send my proposition sev
eral times to them in command against me. Who is in command ? "

" Why, Governor Wise, of Virginia ; he's near by, they say, and
the United States marines from Washington ; they'll be yer soon.
Jist at present thar ain't no commander, ezackly."

" Then, sir, I shall not surrender to a mob, to have my few men
here massacred — before my re-enforcements come."

JOHN BROWN'S FORT. 22 5

Later on, the same kindly disposed militia captain sent a doctor
in, to see the suffering son of the bandit. He said he could not de
termine anything without a light. Brown would not permit a light ;
it would expose his position and the number of his command, and
he might be taken unaware before his " re-enforcements " could ar
rive. It was agreed, however, to prevent, if possible, firing upon
the engine-house for the night, lest the hostages might be injured.
The doctor promised to send in some anodyne for Watson, but it
never came.

A fear now seized the prisoners that, in the storming of the en
gine-house, they would have the double danger of being killed by
their friends or massacred by their captors ; and, this being mooted
to Brown, he said :

" In war, prisoners are subject to all the dangers of the belliger
ents. I will send you to the rear as far as I can. Keep against the
back wall there."

" Oh, can't I git a brick that ain't so much kiln-dried," from the
man of sore body and soul — " a brick that's a leetle damp — outen
the mold, like, and that would give just a leetle ? "

" Have to be on the qui vivy to find that," another sore voice
from the darkness.

" Josephus ! " another voice, like a snore, "if the Government
work is like this night's, I shall resign and settle as fur off as Kin-
sas."

" This night," expressed the voice of weary agony, " O darling,
kiss me and say, ' Husband, go ! ' I am so burning ! Water, Lord
Jesus, water ! "

" Patience, Watson ! " the old man's voice. " Your father does
not intend to sleep. — Keep ready, men ! The enemy is treacherous
and cruel."

All the night long they heard this old man, alone in his responsi
bilities, keeping up the weary vigilance of his men, and sure of " re-
enforcements."

Ouantrell, busy with all chords of sensibility, from religion and
the creeping dread of death to love and retaliation, asked himself,
at last, the meaning of Hannah Ritner's prophecy :

" When thou killest everything."

He had killed nobody as yet, nor was like to do so.

He tried to nod, but his mind kept recurring to things of life —
his father's half-withheld affection, Light Pittson's warm attractions
15

226 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

and romantic admiration for himself, and Katy Bosler's nestling con
fidence and love.

The cool yet thirsty night passed away, and cloudy dawn came
in at the hemispherical window-tops.

No food, no certainty, no solution.

Watson Brown had been rolling and vomiting and talking of his
wife and baby all the night. His father was more of a satyr than
ever, with spiky hair and matted beard, and powder-stains upon his
long muzzle of a nose. No other apprehension than anxiety about
his " re-enforcements " was in his cold, gray eyes, no tremor in those
lean, muscle-jawed cheeks — nothing less than primeval, aboriginal,
provincial, warlike purpose, from Hebrew to Scotch Highlander, was
in his square mouth and stone-cut eyebrows.

Taking his rifle, he said to his men : " We will exact terms and
be allowed to cross the river with our prisoners, or we will join our
companions in the heaven of the merciful and the brave ! Let no
man be a craven now. You have been faithful soldiers. Sometimes
re-enforcements fail, but ours must come. They are promised where
it says : ' Strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth
unto life,' and 'he that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that
loseth his life for the truth's sake shall find it.' "

Sounds of all kinds broke the early morning air — the crowing
cocks, the soaring crows, the railroad's whistle, halloos, cries, and
huzzas ; and, finally, there came the sound of men marching past
with solid, regular tread, upon the grass and graveled walks of the
armory-yard.

The raiders were all looking through port-holes and doors ajar,
and Stewart Taylor spoke :

" I never saw soldiers like them. What are they ? "

" United States marines," said John Brown.

" We're not fighting against the United States," exclaimed the
taller man, Anderson, " but against slavery."

" The United States," said John Brown, " protects slavery, and
is protecting it now, with the marines we pay our taxes to sup
port. "

Directly afterward, while the earliest sun stood in the gateway
down which the blended rivers rushed to extinguish it, a rap came
on the engine-house door, and a voice, official, not loud, but with
reserve in its tone, spoke :

" I want to see the commander here ! "

JOHN BROWN'S FORT. 22 /

" I am that man," John Brown spoke, promptly, coming forward
with the sword in his hand and the rifle leaning beside him.

" I want you to surrender to the United States authority, of which
I am an officer."

" What terms am I offered ? "

" You will be protected from the populace, and handed over to
the civil authorities of Virginia for trial."

" They would hang me and my men."

" With that I have nothing to do. Do you surrender? "

" I demand permission to cross the river on the bridge, and at
the farther end of the bridge I will let my prisoners go, and we
shall then have to fight for our lives. I consider this fair, lieuten
ant."

" It is inadmissible. You must surrender."

" I will not surrender. I will die here, resisting the United
States ! "

" Take the consequences, then."

" We are ready."

"Are you John Brown, who fought at Black Jack in Kansas? "

" Yes ; I was there. Were you there, too ? "

" I am Lieutenant James E. B. Stuart, of the First Regular Cav
alry, which prevented you renewing the skirmish."

" Why, I know you, sir. And now you know, lieutenant, how I
came to be here."

" You won't surrender, Brown ? "

" Not on your conditions."

" Very well, sir "—in a tone of indifference.

" Stand to your arms, men ! " the metallic voice of John Brown
exclaimed. "Distribute yourselves to the best advantage. We
shall not yield to such terms."

"Captain Brown," interposed Taylor, respectfully, "I did not
come here to fight the United States."

" Nor I," said the other man, Anderson.

" We have fought well, Captain Brown, but we can't fight our
country," Taylor continued. " Our Canadian constitution reads,
' Look to no dissolution of the Union, but simply to amendment
and repeal.' "

"Yes, Captain Brown," added Anderson, "and further it says,
' Our flag shall be the same our fathers fought under in the Revolu
tion.' I was the first man, captain, to come to Maryland with you;

228 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

I helped you find the Kennedy farm for our headquarters. I have
made war upon Virginia, but not upon the United States."

" Do as you please, men. I shall fight. In Kansas my son sub
mitted to the regulars, and was marched in chains under the burn
ing sun, fettered to a dragoon's horse, and he lost his mind."

The two men, Anderson and Taylor, unbuckled their belts of
arms and threw them aside, set their rifles in a corner, and retired
without fear or haste to a space within that corner, in line with the
doors.

The dying son of John Brown sought to raise himself and take
a gun ; but his eyes glazed, and he could not see. Ned Coppock
went to his relief, and put Watson's head upon his lap.

The negro man Green, troubled but not dismayed, exclaimed :

" What will become of me ? Colored men ain't got no country
an' no flag."

" Stand by your gun, Shields," young Coppock replied. " I
won't see you imposed on. — Captain Brown, we're three left."

He resigned Watson Brown's care to a colored man, and came
forward with his rifle.

" We are three," said John Brown, firmly ; "but we shall have
re-enforcements."

As he spoke, the old man vaulted into the upper works of the
engine, crouched there, and bent his eye to his rifle.

Green knelt at one side of the engine, and Coppock at the other
side, each sheltered by a wheel.

The two dead men were used by some of the prisoners as de
fenses, among other articles.

In the intensity of that moment, John Brown turned to his pris
oners and remarked, calmly :

" Your safety, gentlemen, is in not changing your positions dur
ing the assault."

Probably every prisoner there muttered or thought of some act
of his own, or said some reverent word.

Lloyd Ouantrell thought of the negro man he had saved, and of
the Dunker sacrament he had taken.

Regularly moving men were heard outside ; their side-arms were
heard to rattle to the decision of their tread, and the words —

" First file, forward ! — second file, forward ! "

These came close to the doors ; their very breathing could be
heard. The ragged port-hole revealed them to a few within. So

JOHN BROWN'S FORT. 229

could the prisoners be heard to breathe, and the shivering voice
muttered like a spell to its own fears :

" Be on the gut vivy ! "

" Number one and two ! " from outside.

In an instant fierce blows from great hammers were delivered
upon the door, and the weight of those hammers expelled the
breaths of the men who swung them through the air.

The door trembled with the weight of those blows, but was
large enough to distribute their power, and ropes stretched within
made the door recoil. Only some ragged parts of the door fell with
the shock of the sledges.

Quantrell saw Brown looking down his rifle-breech, keen as a
squirrel looking along a bough.

" The first eight from each file — forward ! " spoke the same voice
of high nervous energy, in tones low pitched.

In a moment a tremendous sound came from the door as if a
cannon-ball had struck it. The very building seemed to quiver.

"Are you ready, men?" from the bushy, squirrel-eyed bandit
leader.

" Ready, captain ! " from two cool voices, of one black man and
one white.

" Lord-a-mercy ! " and groans from the fugitive negroes of the
neighborhood who were back among the prisoners.

" Back ! " from the open air. " Forward, now — smart, and all
together ! "

The door seemed to split and to lose cohesion in all its bolts, yet
hung by the upper hinge ; and below, where it was unhinged, a
bright flash of daylight came in, and the legs of men in blue were
seen.

" In there, number one ! Next man — file second ! In with you !
Use the bayonet ! "

As the first marine came stooping through the fissure of the
door, the colored man Green discharged his rifle ; the man fell with
a cry, and was dragged back from outside.

" In with you, number two ! "

As the second marine came in, Coppock's gun went off ; the
man stumbled, but fell forward. Smoke, ascending from these rifles,
filled the engine-house and slowly soared upward, and John Brown,
lying along the top of the engine, was concealed in the smoke.

Lloyd Quantrell saw a small man in officer's dress creep in the

230

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

broken space at the bottom of the door, and peer around like a rat
as the smoke arose.

Suddenly this man, by two switches of a sword in his hand, ex
torted loud cries from both Taylor and Anderson, who had ceased
to fight.

"Murder! Oh!"

" Quarter ! God ! "

Ouantrell saw this small officer's elbow and bright blade thrust
vengefully again and right into the bodies of the same unresisting
and unarmed companions, who fell howling to the brick floor.

His attention was for a moment diverted from this marine officer
by a second one, possibly superior in rank to the first, who came
half-way in and also peered around, and whose countenance was
manly but unexcited.

The rifle of John Brown was leveled at this man ; Ouantrell
looked to see him fall dead.

Brown kept the officer under his merciless aim a second, and
then, seeing more marines come in, he put his rifle down and drew
the sword of King Frederick.

His act was beheld by the first marine-officer, who had been
looking everywhere, under strong excitement, as for the leader of this
foray.

This officer drew his bloody blade, bounded upon the side of the
engine, and with all his might slashed the old leader across the head,
and then, by an upward blow, delivered with the whole fury of his
feelings, he stabbed John Brown and felled him to the hard floor of
the engine-house.

Hands seized one of the engines and hurled it forward. The
door fell entirely outward, and the daylight shone upon the little
prison and its huddling and furious or frightened beings : upon
the smoke, the cries, the curses — the living, the groaning, and the
dead.

The next thing Ouantrell saw was the rush of a great multitude
from the railroads and the river. They came with shrieks of —

" Hang them ! hang them ! "

While groping his way out, Quantrell saw the maddened lieuten
ant of marines, who had killed Anderson and Taylor and stabbed
John Brown, strike one of his fellow-prisoners, a respectable old
Virginia gentleman, with the flat of his sword.

" Shame, sir ! " cried Quantrell.

THE FREE-STATE LINE. 231

The maniacal officer turned upon our hero and smote him, also,
with the flat of the same sword.

Quantrell staggered backward and fell into a strong pair of arms.

" What ! Bruder Lloyd. You here ? "

It was Luther Bosler. He kissed Lloyd fervently in the Dunker
fashion.

The next minute Lloyd Quantrell 's bleeding face was passion
ately kissed also by Katy of Catoctin.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE FREE-STATE LINE.

WHEN Luther Bosler and his father came in from plowing at
the premature sounding of the bell, the news of an insurrection at
Harper's Ferry had been confirmed, and Katy was almost distracted
by her lover's danger and the loss of her ring ; while Nelly Harbaugh,
whose strong, worldly nature kindled at the great neighboring event,
prodded Luther Bosler to take both the girls to Virginia.

" Nay," Father Jake Bosler entreated, " wass is de use ? Ich con's
net goot afforde. Te wheat-ground ain't a-ready, Luter. Stay
away from worltly contintions. Trouble comes time enough. Bi'm-
by."

" Fader," Katy spoke, " Lloyd's there : sell is olles"

Saying " That is all," she broke down, and Nelly Harbaugh
cried :

" Dawdy Jake, you're hard on Katy : she's nervous ; she's grow
ing ; it's a delicate time of life for Katy."

Jake Bosler took his child in his arms and called her " leeb " and
" dowb" while the turtle-doves at the window made their plaintive
" ah-coo-roo-coo-roo ! ''

" Katy," he said, " you is too good for te city mans. Stay with
fader, and pe te likeness of my City to my poor heart till — Bi'm-by."

His eyes were full of tears as he called her the only likeness of
his dead wife. Katy threw her arms around his neck, crying :

" Oh, my heart pulls both-a-ways ! But Lloyd pulls it the
most ! "

" Jake," spoke Luther Bosler, after reflection, to his father, " tese

232

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

great events happens py us for some good purpose. We must not
fly from te Lord's works. I'll put two hands in my place, and take
te girls."

" No, Luter, stay home. I'm daddy, and I forbid you."

" I'm minister ofer you, Jake, and you must opey."

" Tere's your gal, sohn Luter — Nelly's giddy. Keep her at home
and to work, and you'll haf her to enjoy. Take her into te world,
and she'll find temptation. Bi'm-by."

Luther took up the Bible and called to prayers ; he prayed for
Nelly and for Katy, and for peace in the world.

" Now, girls," he said, arising, " we'll make some pusiness out of
all this. Harper's Ferry is, maype, full of hungry strangers. You
git to work and cook pies, chickens, ham, whatefer will sell, and I
think I can pring home to fader more money than plowing prings."

Jake Rosier seemed placated at this business outlook, and went
to the stable to give special bedding to the horses for the jour
ney.

All night the girls and hands stayed up to cook, and before day
light the big wagon, with two seats in it, was moving down the South
Mountain side. Climbing the mountain, they saw Burkettsville's
spires come out of the valley mists, and in Crampton's Gap the early
partridge cried " Bob White ! " Katy slept in Nelly's lap.

"Pure child," said Nelly, "her worldly love is fresh, Luther, as
a new-laid egg in the hen's nest ; what will it hatch ? "

"Experience, dear. If you are in love, it will be the same."

" Luther, you are too wise a merchant to be a Dunker preacher.
You will get rich if you take to the world. Oh, take me to see a lit
tle of the world, before we settle into everlasting Sabbath ! I want
experience, too — what Lloyd's father called ' career.' There is no
want of love for you, my darling, in my heart, but I am not made "
— she blushed as she thought of her own vanity — " to be always un
seen."

" No," said Luther, "you are peautiful, Nelly. You shall pe seen
of children, healthy like yourself, and one of those is more career
than any man can have. To be a mother, supreme ofer a family — it
is experience only one man efer had, and that was Adam, from
whose side the woman came."

She blushed at the moment's anticipation of purely brought
motherhood ; but suddenly men started up between the cross-roads
in Crampton's Gap and seized the horses' bridles.

THE FREE-STATE LINE.

233

" Money ! " exclaimed one — a slight, stooping youth, with pale
blue eyes ; " we want your money to buy subsistence."

Around them were seven men, one a negro, and all the rest
white — travel-worn, stern young men, and revolvers were in their
hands.

"You are fugitives from Harper's Ferry," spoke Luther, looking
at them out of his large, sluggish eyes. " We have food and plenty
of it ; take, and pay, if you can. But we carry no money in this
country."

They ate like famished men, and inquired about all the roads to
the free State.

" Walk on te mountain-ridge," said Luther; " it is wooded and
not often steep, but you may get thirsty for water. When you de
scend to the springs, look well for enemies. Beware at te free-State
line of te kidnappers, who are probably lying in wait for you. Get
well into Pennsylvania before you descend te mountain — yes, twenty
miles."

They apologized for rudeness, and went up into the mountain-
ridge, northward, while Luther turned at the guide-post in the Gap
to the south, and threaded the narrow Pleasant Valley by the wind
ing cascades of Israel's Creek. They fed at the Bunker church
yard, at Brownsville, and as they drew near Harper's Ferry, be
fore sunrise, the roads became crowded. All the country was up,
and Sandy Hook was like the center of a great camp-meeting. Sol
diery were waiting at the bridge, travel from everywhere stopped at
this ragged point, and time continued to bring more and more
crowds. The old man, Isaac Smith, had suspended the Western
world to the wand of his mysterious will.

Luther sold out his load before he crossed the bridge, and awaited
the preparations to storm the engine house. They saw the marines
formed, and the quiet Colonel Lee giving the signals to the marine-
officers from a place in the armory-yard ; and then the rush of thou
sands to the captured stronghold.

After Katy found her lover, they still paused to see the dying son
of Brown led out, and Lloyd Quantrell gave him water, which ran
through his wounds ; and so, in time, Watson died in Coppock's
arms, peacefully and unconscious.

Colonel Washington was the hero of the delivery, and his gest
ures, when returning felicitations, had the grandeur of his origin.
The mob ran his hired negro into the river Shenandoah and

234 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

drowned him there, and desired to tear John Brown to pieces, also,
but he, from his blood and bruises, exclaimed to the better officer
of the marines :

" Sir, I had you covered with my rifle ; I expect you to protect
my life, as I protected yours."

The officer saluted the brave old man. " Captain Brown,"
said he, " I thank you ; in return, I will protect you with my
life."

Very soon the queer old captive was complacently conducting
an argument with the Governor of Virginia, a man of great roman
tic sensibility, who had already planned, on this hnente, a political
campaign to make him President of the United States ; and the two
delightfully vain characters were entertaining reporters, Congress
men, and militia-captains with their sallies : but around one lay his
dead — sons, sons-in-law, and comrades ; and his political campaign
would lead to nothing but the scaffold, to which he had the task to
give dignity, if possible.

He turned out to be poor as pauperdom itself, without the means
to transport himself back from the slave States to the free States,
had he ever repented, and he had begged the little money for this
expedition as the last enterprise of a disappointed but once promis
ing career.

The bodies of his sons and connections were either taken by
surgeons to the dissecting-room at Winchester, or buried with their
comrades in a pit across the Shenandoah, where they lie near the
unending grief of the plaintive river — poor bones of boys assembled
by a wizard, to be the last relics of a mastodon age, and ever curi
ous to moral, mental, and political science.

Those followers of Brown who survived, fitted to his situation
with the anatomical symmetry of his own ribs ; they continued to
accept the leadership of his dignity, phttosophy, and consistency, as
they had followed him upon that forlorn hope to which his sincerity
had given infatuation and plausibility.

Ned Coppock, taken with his smoking gun, soon became a hero
among his captors ; Stevens was put together, like a bloody puzzle ;
and these two were sent to Charlestown jail, eight miles away, with
Captain Brown, in a wagon, as also the negroes, Green and Cope-
land, while the pursuit of the seven fugitives went on in the Mary
land and Pennsylvania mountains.

The whole land was finally convinced that John Brown had

THE FREE-STATE LINE. 235

made his insurrection with an " army " of only twenty-three men, of
whom ten had died fighting.

It might have been possible to treat John Brown's raid as with
out full moral accountability, and thus to have remanded it, by the
contempt of justice, to the silence of a lunatic asylum ; but the poli
tician at the head of Virginia became the instrument to connect this
little affair with the mightiest revolution of the age.

Governor Wise summoned the military of Virginia to arms, upon
the belief, or pretense, that Brown's was only a portion of a general
insurrection and abolition invasion ; and the little court-house place
of Charlestown became, for five months, a garrisoned spot during
the trials and executions of Brown and his survivors, while the ex
ample of Virginia led to the arming of every slave State, and thence
proceeded the fomentation of the scheme of a separated republic, to
assure the safety of slavery.

To Charlestown, therefore, let us soon proceed with our story-
people.

Katy Bosler, after fondly receiving her lover, cried :

" Te accordion, Lloyd ; where is it ? "

" I left it at the old bandit's farm, Katy."

" Oh, goodness ! And, Lloyd, te fortune-teller, who said I
should lose my ring, has run away with it to Pennsylvania. O
darling, what shall we do ? "

" Go after them both, Kate, if your dear little heart is troubled.
I have enlisted in one of the military companies to put down this in
surrection, and we are ordered to cross the river and see if the enemy
is at his stronghold."

" Come on, then," said Luther Bosler ; " I'll trife by John Brown's
farm, and go home by Solomon's Gap."

As they were setting out, the English pointer appeared, profuse
in his gladness of rejoining friends ; and to Katy he was ever a flat
terer, cringing at her feet and licking her hand.

" The hound loves you, Kate," Lloyd Quantrell said ; " I'll give
him to you, to keep at the farm in remembrance of me."

At the school-house in the marsh, boxes of arms were found,
ready to be transported to Virginia. At the little rugged farm, they
found many evidences of the conspiracy : letters torn to pieces in
the short, thick pines, and arms and lead in the tenement of logs
across the road ; discarded bundles, boxes, and bags ; and on the porch
the dog Fritz stood tied, and hardly disposed to permit intrusion.

236 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

Lloyd attempted to go by this dog, to look for Katy's accordion,
and Fritz seized him by the garments and held him fast.

" Hallo ! " Quantrell said ; " why, here's the last of Captain
Brown's recruits, and determined as all the rest."

" Fritz is a faithful friend," said Luther Bosler ; " not as valu
able a dog as yours, Lloyd, but more reliable. Katy will gif him to
you."

"Yes, Lloyd, if I find you took good care of my accordion."

Quantrell disappeared into the loft of the small cabin, and there
he found the humble instrument under the eaves.

" Here it is, Kate," he cried, returning; "you little goosey, what
makes you fear? "

" Now go and find her ring," Nelly Harbaugh spoke ; "it was
your mother's ; it will make Katy your wife. Hannah Ritner has
gone to the Siebentager Nunnery, only a clay's ride from here, in
Pennsylvania."

" Shall I go, darling? " He turned to Katy.

" O Lloyd, do go ! De letsht naucht wars orrick dtmkle."

" Dark was that night, also, to me, bright eyes, when I expected
to be killed and never see you more."

" Lloyd, your father says he will marry you to a Cordullish — a
Catholic, one hochmoot un retch. If you do not find my ring, I
shall believe it."

" Dear old father ! But he can no more make me love another
than he can love me, dear. How does he know this strange Ritner
woman ? Why, now I see something ! "

" What is it, Lloyd ? "

" That pony she rides I have seen in my father's stable. He,
like Hannah Ritner, is an abolitionist."

As they paused to let the horses blow on Elk Ridge Mountain
summit, the vale of John Brown was seen behind them, stony and
steep, and before them the verdurous Pleasant Valley, with its stone
farm-houses and apple-orchards, and, like a great, green vine swung
low, the South Mountain drooped to Crampton's Gap, to give ad
mission to the Catoctin Valley.

" Katy, good-by," Lloyd said ; " don't ever fear for me, gentle
child ! Never in love before, I could not forget you now, if every
interest declared against you."

" I shall nefer let you go," the child said, with a resolution he
had not observed in her before. " Since you haf come, Love has

THE FREE-STATE LI.VE. 237

took possession of me. I will pray ; I will persevere. I don't see
how I am to get you, Lloyd, but I don't dare to lose you."

" O Katy ! " exclaimed Nelly Harbaugh, " the difel of love is
striving in you as I never saw it before. I could not be so head
strong."

" Nelly," spoke Katy, in the tempest of her woe and courage,
" you can never love like me ! "

Procuring a horse from a Dunker farm, on Minister Luther Bos-
ler's request, Quantrell made his way to Smoketown, and entered
the garden of Hannah Ritner.

The cool mountain-brook gurgled through her lot ; the gourds
hung from the arbors ; the bees were humming drowsily in the hive ;
but stable and dwelling were empty of furniture, and the mountain
behind the house was streaked with the foot-tracks of escaping
slaves.

The neighbors told him that the fortune-teller was a great trav
eler, especially into Pennsylvania, and was now reported to be in
Chambersburg.

Quantrell put his horse in Hannah Ritner's stable, and lay down
to sleep alone in the little hut. He was very tired, and not until he
had slept off his burden of fatigue did he begin to dream.

He dreamed that his mother's lost wedding-ring was a great
wheel or tire of mourning gold, with black enamel in its rich yellow,
and he was trying to roll it like a hoop up the mountain ; but it
weighed heavily upon his sinews, and he felt it overthrowing him
with its backward gravity ; he cried for help, but all the response he
could hear was a little baby's cry, until, when he had given up hope
and resigned himself to be crushed by the black and gleaming cinct
ure, a pike or spear was hurled from above, as if out of the sky,
and it transfixed the mighty ring, like a dart ringed by a golden
quoit ; at once the ring was fractured, and the black enamel upon
it was detached like a separate hoop, and went thundering down
South Mountain with a sound like rolling fire, and he could hear it
plunge into the Antietam Creek and sizz there, like the red-hot stones
which, at hog-butchering time, the farmers boil their scalding hogs
heads with.

Dart after dart came ringing from above — the very pikes, it
seemed, that he had seen in boxes that day at the bandits' rendez
vous — and each of these entered the other lucent rim of virgin gold
remaining there, which, like a mirror, flashed the heavens back, and,

238 KATY OF C A TO C TIiV.

becoming magnified to powerful proportions, this ring contained an
inscription, " Pure Union."

Ouantrell was afraid to look up and see what valkyrias or spirits
had hurled those lances into the nuptial band ; but, as the golden rim
grew more and more distinct, he began to see faint faces reflected
from the sky — faces with blood upon them : the ashen face of Wat
son Brown, the bloodless blue lips of Oliver Brown, the raven
beard and wounds of Kagi, the hollow sphere of Lehman's skull, the
mute, appealing countenance of William Thompson, and others he
feared to pause and think on.

He a\voke : at the little window of the cabin a golden-ringed
light of a burning piece of pine illuminated a group of faces pressed
against the panes. Quantrell raised a yell of dread.

The light was extinguished ; steps were heard receding.

" This is a witch's den ! " thought Ouantrell, his heart bounding
in his breast ; " surely I saw the faces there of old John Brown,
of Ned Coppock, and of Hazlett, Cook, arid others of their
band."

He entered Hagerstown next day, and found the whole popula
tion talking of the raid, and looking at himself and at all strangers
with suspicion. Large rewards were out for Cook and others,
guessed at or known, and Isaac Smith, or Brown, had been seen by
half the people in the town, hauling away the boxes of arms he had
received by rail from Chambersburg.

To that place Quantrell fearlessly proceeded, taking a round
about course through a famous kidnappers' settlement called
Leitersburg, within sight of the Pennsylvania boundary-line. Here
the tavern was beset by wild-looking borderers, and Ouantrell nar
rowly escaped being made to stop and fight.- according to the
chivalry of those times ; he " treated " liberally at the bar and was
relieved to find that the Logan brothers, whose chief rendezvous
this was, had gone off in the South Mountain to hunt for John
Brown's fugitives.

Resolved to keep his word to Katy, the young man slowly con-
tinued on to Chambersburg, a flourishing shire town, twenty miles
within Pennsylvania, and there, too, the excitement about the great
abolition raid was universal.

Hundreds of people stood before an old, low warehouse with
derrick windows, where John Brown had stored his Kansas rifles
so long before employing them ; and threatening groups molested a

THE FREE-STATE LINE.

239

plain boarding-house on a back street, where the recruits for
Brown, and that redoubtable captain himself, had been accommo
dated with Christian shelter.

The keeper of this dwelling bore the same family name as Han
nah Ritner, and was said to be a daughter-in-law of a former Gov
ernor of Pennsylvania, but Lloyd found such apprehension and
terror in the family that he could get no information of their
mysterious connection, though he thought, when he said he was
the son of Abel Ouantrell, that they took a suspicious interest in
him for a moment.

The Governor of Pennsylvania was a Democrat, of the same
political party as the Governor of Virginia, and would manifestly
deliver any of Brown's band up to the jurisdiction they had
offended. The Pennsylvania public considered Brown's greatest
offense to have been the purloining the sword of General Washing
ton ; and it was thought hardly less culpable to have provided a
" nigger " with bed and board in a white family.

The person that all popular vengeance was now directed against
was little Captain Cook, the forerunner and spy of the raiders, and
he was believed to be in the very county of Scotch and Irish settlers
where Quantrell was now wandering.

Considering that Hannah Ritner might be at the Seventh-Day
Baptist kloster or nunnery, Lloyd, several days after the raid, turned
his horse southward and began to approach the bright bounding
hillocks of the South Mountain again. Toward evening he entered
an old German hamlet called Funkstown, near the clove of the
mountain, where the source of the Antietam Creek ran out, dis
colored with the ores of iron from an old furnace in the gorge.
The aspect of the region was romantic, yet sinister, as if the near
contact of slavery had caused premature decay and human degra
dation. He was eating his plain supper in the tavern, at the en
trance to the little town, when he heard the sound of many feet in
the small sitting-room and bar, near by.

"Don't be afraid of me, boys; I won't do you any harm," he
heard a not unfamiliar voice say.

Looking out, Quantrell saw a mob of little boys, trembling in
the presence of one hardly bigger than the least of them.

This childish figure had his hands tied behind him, and was
dirty and disordered, like one who had been living in the holes of
foxes, or crawling on the earth like the serpents there.

240

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

"Eat your supper," spoke a practical voice; "we must have
you in Chambersburg Jail to-night, so be quick."

The speaker had a low, mercenary sparkle in his eyes. His
victim's long-fringed orbs of blue shone out amid his dirt, and gave
him some of the pathos and dignity of fate.

" Poor Captain Cook ! " Ouantrell exclaimed ; " to think that he
can be, in the eyes of any law, a worse being than his captor, that
vile slave-taker ! "

" If you mean Ben Logan," cried a plain man at the table, " I
pray you not to speak so loud. He has his slave-pen close by us
here, under the mountain, and in this clove the runaway slaves
generally come down, thinking they are full ten miles inside of a
free State. Logan takes them here, and gets his blood-money ; and
he has a band of lads he has demoralized, who would stop at no re
venge."

Nevertheless, Ouantrell made no concealment of his person ; the
slave-taker looked at him with some dislike, but it was now all sub
ordinated to the avarice of a thousand dollars' reward.

"John," said Ouantrell to the boy, who had washed his face and
was eating like a famished wolf, as he stood before the drinking-bar,
"what did you quit the safe mountain for?"

"Starvation!" replied Cook; " my companions were dying for
food, and I quit them to find it."

" You might as well have sold life dear ; you will surely be exe
cuted."

" They surprised me," said Cook, the food sticking in his throat,
as his feelings rose. " But for their treachery, I would have taken
a bloodhound's life for every ball in my revolver."

" Oh," said another captor of the boy, complimentarily, " he
fought like a wild monkey. Four of us was atop of him at once, and
the fattest feller had jest to fall on him and knock the breath out of
him before he would give in."

" I pity you, Cook," Quantrell said ; " though you, also, played a
treacherous part."

" You may well pity me, sir," the frail little man said, with swim
ming eyes ; " my comrades have no great friends, and can die with
sincerity, while my distinguished relatives will ruin my fame to save
my neck, and I shall be hanged all the same."

They took him to Chambersburg Jail in the pleasant autumn aft
ernoon. The news soon came that Hazlett, too, was recaptured at

THE FREE-STATE LINE.

241

Carlisle ; but the brother of Coppock, and another son of John Brown,
and two other whites and a negro, under the kind vigilance of Han
nah Ritner's friends, escaped to Canada.

As Ouantrell was walking up into the gorge at Mount Alto fur
nace, looking at the spot where Cook had been taken, after an ex
citing struggle, an employe at the iron-works said :

" Are you aware that the patron of John Brown is a relative of
the chief captor of this Captain Cook ? "

" How so ? "

" The papers say that the great abolitionist, Gerrit Smith, gave
the land in the Adirondack woods, where John Brown's family live.
Now, Gerrit Smith married the daughter of Colonel Fitzhugh, of
Hagerstown, and she is the aunt of that other man who, with Logan,
took Cook away to claim the reward. So the aunt helps Brown and
his band to come here, and her nephew sells him to Virginia."

"Strange," said Ouantrell, "what coincidences lie in this short
vale of the Antietam ! We may be on the brink of a great strife, and,
if so, the hurrying fates that have encamped in this small district
may keep it still in their commemoration."

Ha next rode down the strong brook of the Antietam, to the old
Seventh-Day Baptist nunnery.

It stood in a crevice of the mountain foot-lands, where a meadow
bubbled up in copious springs which, fashioned into a bed, wound
in a strong brook between the long brick monastery and the low,
massive, white-plastered church, and then, caught up in a mill-race,
turned two old Bunker mills. The dwelling, or kloster-house, was
nearly a hundred and fifty feet long, and of a delightfully broken
form, with a great - chimneyed, squatting kitchen in the middle,
flanked by long conventional wings — on one side a cool porch and
several doors, the other side more primitively German, with little
lines of windows, and over the center dormers rose the naked cupola
and bell. The gurgling brook, talking at its birthplace, described
such gossipy rounds of flowing, that all the parts of this settlement
seemed to be in a circle, and fruit sprang out of the earth as if here
was some old corner of Paradise, neglected but uncursed. The hu
mid spring meadow was tinted with blue sedge and flowers, and a
pond in the midst was their looking-glass. Woods and rocks shut
in the church, and its two doors that separated the vexing mystery
of sex ; cultivated hills hid the nunnery from the south ; the cedar,
fern, ailantus, catalpa, apple, and pear trees gave grateful shade ;
16

242 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

and milk and cider showed their butteries and presses to the covet
ous eye of the homeless tramp, for whose terror a sign was put on
the door, which none of his brotherhood was ever known to heed.
Close by, the graveyard showed the tombs of the Snowbergers, for
whom Snow Hill (berg) was named, and of their Ephrata-reared
friends ; and the South Mountain, losing its coherence here in Penn
sylvania, described great hillocks and cones near by, and in the
south showed the blue promontory in which it crossed the free-
State line, and then swerved irresolutely away.

Quantrell looked everywhere for some human being to speak to.
Finally, he saw people — women and men — off in the fields reaping
late hay and preparing winter ground. He remembered that it was
the Sabbath, when the contrary zeal of sect impelled even the lazy
Seventh Dayers to exert themselves, lest they might be thought to
respect the Sabbath they had discarded.

He spoke to some of the women, but they paid not the least at
tention to him — old, fat, dull women, like winter apples, never ripe
nor mellow ; they wore their hoods of figured brown or black calico,
and plied their rakes, and seemed between a blush and contempt of
man.

"Are you Job Snowberger ? '' he addressed the solitary man
among these ancient pullets.

The man looked at him, with a countenance where gallantry had
been suppressed and curiosity flagellated, an envious, simple smile,
and proceeded to whet his scythe.

" Are you deaf, or only a fool ? "

"Unsktcklich!" exclaimed the man, with a piping cry, like a
disappointed child's, and his mouth turned toward the women.

These came upon Quantrell with their field implements, all
shouting German words together, and one or two looked as if desir
ous to fight a man, if merely for the novelty of encounter.

" I'm a-tryin' to persewere," cried the man, with tears of temper
in his eyes, "and he calls me Norr."

The women raised their rakes and hoes on Quantrell.

" Poor fellow ! " Lloyd said ; " the last rooster on the hill, and
protected by the hens ! But don't be violent, my beauties. I only
want to find Hannah Ritner, for little Katy Bosler."

" Wass f " exclaimed the man, "is Katy persewerin' ? Unshitl-
dich ! Does she seek te Kloster and te heilich life ? O yube-
lee'"

CHARLESTOWN.

243

" Week gae ! " cried the old women, turning back to their work,
as if disgusted with such enthusiasm.

" I'm Katy's beau — Lloyd — and I want to find Hannah Ritner,
and get Katy's engagement-ring."

" Weck-gae ! Depart ! " cried Job Snowberger, again in tears.
" Shweshter Marcella is in Ohio. Katy is in sin. You are in mis
chief, and you'll persewere in it. Te ring of Bosler's child is lost in
te spring."

He pointed to an old dairy by the nunnery-kitchen, and, falling
tearfully to his reaping, began to wail a piping psalm.

" Gone mad betwixt love and scorn of love, I reckon," Ouantrell
said, walking to the dairy-house.

Lying there on the floor was Andrew Atzerodt, beside the troughs
of water, an empty bottle at his side. His snore was relieved by the
falsetto of Job Snowberger in the meadow, sounding like a babe's
complaint.

Quantrell bent over the spring, and in it the light, falling upon
some tin or metal object, described a shining circle in the bubbles.

" That's what the poor lunatic meant by Katy's ring, I reckon,"
Quantrell said ; " he's 'gone ' on Katy, like myself."

Atzerodt aroused, and looked up wofully.

" Here, you vagrant fellow, come back with me to Virginia, and
to your coach-maker's trade ! "

"Never!" answered Atzerodt; "I'm doing nothing now but
hunting niggers and apolitionists, and running pet ween te lines."

CHAPTER XXV.

CHARLESTOWN.

As Atzerodt and Quantrell walked into Charlestown, Virginia,
after many delays, they found it convenient to take one of the side
streets, and avoid the herds of militia; for the entire State had
knocked off work, and was making Brown's immortality with more
than the directness of superior intelligence.

It had suited the prevailing opinion there to assume the gravity
of a great injury, too deep to permit any other State to share it. The
inhabitants, talking on the subject to strangers, adopted a reserve

244

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

which showed how the sensitiveness of slaveholding had destroyed
personal individuality, and banded into almost maudlin one-minded-
ness, like Niobe and her family, a society scarcely beyond its pioneer
period ; for a house where Atzerodt stopped to peep in was, like
many others, composed of recently hewn forest logs. He drew
back in a moment and exclaimed :

" Py Jing ! tere's te black man with te white face ! "

Quantrell approached the shutters ajar, and, at the first adjust
ment of the light within to his eyes, he cried :

'• Why, that's John Booth, the actor, my friend and school
mate ! "

A young man with a large, intelligent face, given pale contrast
by his rich, black mustache and curling black hair, was reciting in
the middle of the floor, listened to by males and females with the
greatest interest.

" It's te very picture of te man I rode with in my dream, py
Jing ! " Atzerodt continued.

The reciter within ended his task with these lines, given with
robust and nearly impassioned vehemence :

" Heroic matron !

Now, now, the hour is come ! By this one blow
Her name's immortal and her country saved.
Hail, dawn of glory ! Hail, thou sacred weapon !
Virtue's deliverer, hail ! "

" Look, Lloyd ! " whispered Atzerodt. " Py Jing ! he's got a
knife in his hand, shoost like te black man with te white face ! "

The young actor did shake above his head, and apostrophize it
fervently, a glittering thing — continuing :

" Did not the Sibyl tell you
A fool should set Rome free ? I am that fool !

Hear me, great Jove ! and thou, paternal Mars,

And spotless Vesta ! To the death, I swear,

My burning vengeance shall pursue these Tarquins !

Valerius, Collatine, Lucretius — all —

Here I adjure ye by this fatal dagger,

All stained and reeking with her sacred blood,

Be partners in my oath — revenge her fall !

CHARLESTOWN.

245

Up to the forum ! On ! the least delay

May draw down ruin, and defeat our glory.

On, Romans, on ! The fool shall set you free ! "

Loud applause followed the reciter's tragedy-selection, from
the same author whose piece of " Sweet Home " had been the bat
tle-march of John Brown. In a moment the actor came out, fol
lowed by some of his more intimate admirers, and he called affec
tionately to Quantrell :

" My dear Lloyd, where did you come from ? "

" Maryland, John. And you ? "

" From Richmond. I threw up my engagement at the theatre
there when I heard of this outrage, and enlisted in the Grays ; and
I am here to stay till these myrmidons are hanged and Virginia
avenged. Let me introduce you to my friends — Mr. Arnold, Mr.
O'Laughlin, young Master Herold,and Mr. Fenwick, of the clergy."

Quantrell hesitated about introducing Atzerodt, who was un-
shaved and shabby, but he saw that Booth's following was hardly
more genteel.

Arnold he had seen, as a Baltimore bread-baker's son of the old
German stock ; O'Laughlin, as a runner in that city, of the opposite
political party. Herold was a mere lad from Washington, modest
and wondering ;. and Fenwick, who wore a black suit neatly buttoned
to the throat, and had a silver watch-guard, was a fresh, square-set
blonde, with the dignity of the Catholic novitiate priest that he was.

"Who is your friend, Lloyd?" asked the actor. "We are all
Virginians here."

"This is one also, I believe — Mr. Atzerodt."

Bo^oth shook the common fellow's hand with such kindness that
he stammered out :

" Say ! Vere is dat womans dat said ' Sharge ! ' te night we
rode up te Short Mountain ? "

" What does he say ? " asked Booth.

" Oh, he had a dream, when he was tipsy, and so he is tipsy now,
and he thinks he saw you in that dream."

" Oh, some people are carried away by the acting," remarked
Booth, considerately, as they walked along. " Now, do you know,
I don't set much value on acting ? This is what I like— real cam
paigning. Here is meat for your John Howard Paynes to write
about — the coming of the Tarquins to this beautiful valley, their
murdering of its yeomanry, and inciting servile insurrection ; and who

246

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

would not prefer to be Junius Brutus, to either the author or the
player of his part ? Think of the time when the hero of a convul
sion like this will be the subject of poetry, and, as he jnflicts revenge
for Virginia's injuries, he utters the motto Jefferson gave the shield
of the insulted State, ' Sic semper tyrannts ! ' • Thus ever with
tyrants ! ' "

Halting as he spoke, Mr. Booth put his foot upon a stone riding-
step at the curb, as upon a tyrant's head, and again raised his white
hand and eloquent face to the sunlight.

Quantrell now saw that Booth had been drinking a little, and was
unusually aggressive.

" The stage," said the divinity student, Fenwick, much impressed
by Mr. Booth's trained pulpit manner, " has never illustrated morals
as it might do, Mr. Booth, in gentlemen bred for it, from religious
homes like yours. That, perhaps, is why actors seldom realize in
private life the affected virtues they delineate. Yet there is no rea
son why an actor may not be a hero, too."

" He can't be, Father Fenwick " (the " father " a deferential ref
erence to the youthful priest's canonicals) ; " the actor is a closet-rat,
a caged-up hawk. He must make so many paces to the rear, turn
and fence, or strike, at such a distance from the foot-lights, go off
by this or that numbered slide or exit ; and all that preparation to
deceive or impersonate is called ' study.' Here is the nobler theatre
of the roads, the cross-paths, the ravines, and the country maids.
If I had been at Harper's Ferry, there would have been a chance :
I am the best shot in the profession ; I can jump like a circus-rider.
My study has not been of dog-eared play-books, like my father's
other sons : I have qualified myself for a soldier and a champion.
With two or three good drinks in me, I would have been the man
to give old Brown's party the start they wanted, and tell off an
equal number of brave men with them, and chase them up the
canal side of the river, killing as we went, or dying in our blood.
What a death, or victory, would that have been ! "

His animated, yet hardly egotistical manner, made its impres
sion, and O'Laughlin said :

" Wilkes, I've seen you fence, and jump, and spar, too, and I
know how you parley vous of it."

"And, John, I've seen you ride the devilishest horses in Harford
or Howard Counties," Arnold added, " and you never got throwed
neither."

CHARLESTO WN. 247

"You ain't a bad man to be out with for a scrimmage, after mid
night," added Quantrell, " as I have found out."

The recipient of these compliments took them with a good na
ture which had yet a manful health in it ; he was not a tall man, but
of strong-welded, equal bodily parts, the arms showing large muscle
under his soldier- sleeves ; and he was a little bowed in the legs, but
this was only noticeable when one measured him for athletic utili
ties. His figure was so gentlemanly that he never would have been
suspected of any physical affectations or prowess, but for his own
reference to those subjects, which Quantrell, who knew him long,
ascribed to his having drunk some liquor. The soldier-clothes and
pompon hat he wore admirably became his trim figure and striking
yet harmonious face, lighted by fine black eyes and in all its features
clear and considerate.

" Py Jing ! " exclaimed Atzerodt, " I played on te theatre, too ! "
" You ? " from Quantrell.

" Yes, py Jing ! I built the biggest band-wagon for te circus dat
ever started from Fergeenia. It was shoost as long as dis street.
It held most a hundert music-players. I trove it, py Jing — "

"And what then, old fellow?" Mr. Booth asked, with mis
chief in his eye, throwing an arm affectionately around the boy
Herold.

" Why, I trove it into a ditch, py Jing, and proke te heads of
tern tarn horn-blowers ! Hya, ya ! "

All laughed loudly at Atzerodt's manner and terrier-bark of a
laugh ; and so they walked along, noting the straight, ridgy turn
pike town, with its houses of brick, limestone, or logs, turned side-
wise to the narrow sidewalks, and in the distance the Blue Ridge,
or South Mountain, rising from the wooded fosse of the river Shen-
andoah.

In a depression of Charlestown stood the brick, porticoed court
house, opposite a tavern, and the stone - and - brick jail opposite
another tavern, and diagonally opposite the court-house. At these
corners was all the semblance of militia pomp — sentries, guard
houses, officers of the day, colonels, and generals ; orderly sergeants
riding, self-important, on errands of mighty insignificance ; horses
tied to racks, and warriors bowing and scraping, ogling and sus
pecting. There was apparently some Satanic plot, in the air or un
der ground, to bewizard this sturdy, steady, demi-German popula
tion.

248 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

Rumors of coming abolitionists to rescue Brown and his six
men were of daily and nightly verification : frenzied people came in
who had seen marching columns ; from the house-tops of Charles-
town signal-lights and bale-fires had been distinctly noticed ; anony
mous letters threatening more insurrections came through the post ;
the United States Government was as fully suspended here as if Vir
ginia meant to cast it off ; and the mails — those nerves of healthy
life or the torturing pins of political neuralgia — were manipulated,
assorted, and controlled.

Thus, as the secret of a murder, extending through a large fam
ily connection, discolors the world to them, the cry of the unpaid
laborers rang forever in the ears of those who had inherited the sys
tem, and two insurrections in one whole generation had been met
somewhat as if expected — the injury was felt to be proportionate to
the hazard of the institution.

Of all places in the world, except Mount Vernon, here was the
spot to point the lesson of John Brown — the family settlement of
General Washington's younger brethren, who had crossed the South
Mountain barrier, not as the " Knights of the Golden Horseshoe," but
as the knights of shoeless herds of slaves, to mix this degraded labor
with the old German tide of voluntary labor, from Pennsylvania, and
up the long valley, between the mountain parallels, to drive the dis
colored tide till, in the ignorant white race of the far Southwest and
the hopeless black race there, phosphatic death seemed rich for the
chemist of Revolution, to come, with his burning acids and hot re
torts, and manure the New World with human bones.

The streets of Charlestown were labeled with the Washington
family's prenoms, and in the churchyard there lay their dead ; and
the foremost of that name, which King George had put a bloody
price upon, wras but yesterday the captive of John Brown, the abo
litionist, who desired to exchange him for " a nigger."

Was it this despair of pride, in a system as fleeting as the rob
ber's booty, which occasioned all this military pomp ? Or was it the
self-deception of the Pharisee, which exalted to self-respect, and
even to didactic and reasoning retort, the dying and impenitent thief
beside the unfriended martyr ?

This discrimination, which is the first of political crimes, is also
the foundation of public hypocrisy — the classifying of men from the
standard of one's own righteousness; and there was nothing so
righteous in its own esteem, in all the nineteenth Christian century,

CHARLESTO WN.

249

as the insulted slavery of Virginia. Like Lucretia of old, it fain
would die, in this instant of such perfect purity as to have become
rapine's victim.

No face in Charlestown showed this expression of almost antique
and fateful yet holy reverie like John Beall's, whom they met before
the principal tavern, and whom Ouantrell introduced to Mr. Booth.
His settled features, straight lines of brow and mouth, and reserved
address, were those of a man against whom, alone, the whole insult
of Brown's raid had been directed.

He accompanied the party to a drinking-room, but would not
partake ; and, while they stood there, a tall, slim young person,
straight as an Indian, and looking straight also as an Indian's arrow,
walked up to Mr. Booth.

" May I speak to an actor? " he said. " I recognize you as Mr.
Booth. I have never been to the theatre but once in my life, and I
shall never forget it. It would be such a pleasure to say, when I
go home to Florida, that I shook the hand of the son of the great
Booth, who must be, I think, a greater actor than his father."

" No offense, my young friend," answered Mr. Booth. " What
did you say your name was ? "

" Powell. I came to Virginia, sir, to attend a Baptist school,
and be, like my father, a preacher ; but I like excitement a little, like
all the boys, and, as I peeped one night into the theatre, and heard
your grand — may I say, sir, your majestic acting ? — so, also, I slipped
off — with the money that was to do for me all next term at school
— to see the great John Brown raid. I won't detain you, sir, after I
have expressed my great appreciation of your acting."

"Oh, take a drink with us," said Booth; "here is another
preacher — Father Fenwick. He's a Catholic, and you're a Baptist
— and I'm paVt Jew. So we can't quarrel."

The respectable elements of this group soon found each other
out ; the Baltimore companions of Booth had been so attentive to
him that their cause of interest was soon manifest : they wanted to
borrow money to meet their expenses and get out of town. Atze-
rodt and little Herold struck up a friendship, and went off together ;
and Mr. Beall, the clerical student Fenwick, and Booth and Quan-
trell accepted an invitation to visit the prisoners in their cells.

The prison, on the public corner, seemed a respectable dwelling,
with an extension of a more sinister appearance on the side street.
A " reception-room " was within, and the partly open door thereof

250 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

showed a boyish lad leaning upon his elbow at the window, and in
terrogated by one of several important-seeming men.

" That is said to be the Democratic Governor of Indiana," spoke
Beall ; " the boy is that infernal scoundrel Cook, his brother-in-law.
Gentlemen, they are all abolitionists, or the same family would not
turn out two kinds of professions."

Ouantrell saw that Cook's face had the bitterness of death in it.

" John," the Governor was speaking, " why have you never writ
ten to your sisters in these two years ? "

•' Ashbel, events too exciting had occurred to me. There was
nothing to write that you, or they, could have felt any sympathy for.
I had been forced into this cause."

" John, your parents never brought you up to herd yourself with
assassins."

" No, Ashbel, I went to Kansas to practice law. As I crossed
the prairie with a youthful friend, strange horsemen rode up to us
and asked us what State we hailed from. ' New York,' replied my
innocent companion. At that, the challenger shot him dead. I had
my rifle with me, and, as the cowards rode away, I emptied two
of their saddles. For that a price was set upon my head, and I was
hunted down, and I found John Brown's outlawed camp and joined
his cause. Love came to me in my lonely and dangerous outpost
at Harper's Ferry ; like you, I have a wife and son."

He broke down in a sob which touched the Governor's heart.
He sprang forward and cried :

" John, I have come to save your life. I will stand by you. But
you must repudiate these ruffians who seduced you to this busi
ness."

They passed along and entered a comfortable cell. John Brown
sat at a little table reading his Bible aloud to a man who reclined
upon a bed.

The old woods-fighter was in discolored and rag-rent dress,
having been too consistent to accept other clothes from those who
lived by the toil of slaves ; his wounds were healing, but his scalp
was still bandaged up, and his face showed bruises.

The other man on the bed was a dreadful object, as the balls
remained in his head and body, and between his gashes the pallid
streaks of health were like the white stripes in the American flag.

" Captain Brown," Quantrell said, " here is a young priest who
takes an interest in you."

CHARLESTOWN. 2$l

John Brown looked up at Fenwick, while extending his hand to
Quantrell.

" Of what persuasion, sir ? "

" Roman Catholic. You would not reject my prayers for that,
Captain Brown ? "

" No, sir. But do you believe human slavery is right ? "

" I think so, captain."

" Then you are a priest of the devil, sir, and need not bestow
your prayers on me ! Who is this fine-appearing young man ? "

He turned from Fenwick, and looked up at Booth.

" That is an actor, the son of the great tragedian, Booth."

" An actor ? I have never seen a play ; life was too serious and
engaged with me. — I hope, my young friend, that you may act your
part, if occasion ever calls you to do so, with reference to eternal
things. In my situation, with but a little while to live, it is my only
comfort to feel that none of the poor and destitute consider me their
enemy. Applause I have none ; I am but little understood ; yet
here " — he touched the little Bible — " I do not find my condem
nation."

Booth looked down at the old man with a respect which had no
feeling in it, but he said, in a plausible tone :

" Captain, give me your autograph. Men like you do not live
every day."

There was no paper, and Mr. Beall found a piece of a letter in
his pocket, which he handed to Booth, and then subsided to his
pinched brows and chin, and most hopeless face.

John Brown took up the pen, and slowly, silently wrote :

" /, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this
guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as
I now think, vainly flattered myself that, without very much
bloodshed, it might be done."

As the four young men put their heads together to read this
piece of writing, a resonant voice at the cell-door spoke in a slight
German accent :

" Captain, your dinner is ready ! This way, sir ! "

They all looked up, and there met their gaze a large, black-eyed
man, with a tray of victuals.

All looked down again but Quantrell ; he stood, staring at this
coarsely dressed servant in open-mouthed astonishment.

252 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

" Where — ? " he finally spoke, in a low tone.

The man raised his finger to his lip, and looked at Quantrell
with the intensest meaning.

"I know you, surely," Quantrell said, almost breathless; "you
are —

" Silence ! " whispered the man, with a stately motion, far above
his roughly marked face and ignoble dress — " silence, by your
mother's spirit ! Let me pass."

John Brown took this person's arm and hobbled painfully from
the cell.

When Quantrell turned again, with a countenance ghastly in its
wonder, he found Booth and the nearly helpless fellow-prisoner of
Brown conversing strongly :

" Spiritualist, are you ? " sounded the voice of Booth. " Well, if
I had you to do with, I would take you at your word, and, like the
witches who dealt with spirits of old, I would burn you at a pile of
fagots ! "

The man. shot all to pieces, but cool as a red fall apple punct
ured by the wasps, answered, as well as he could talk :

" Kind fellow you are ! Now, if I were to meet a bad, black
eye like yours, going through a woods, I would give you a
broom ! "

" A broom ! " said Booth, looking puzzled at Stevens, the dis
abled captive ; " what would I want with a broom ? "

" To get a-straddle of it," concluded Stevens, " like the witches
you ride with, and go to hell ! "

At these invincible sounds the young priest, Fenwick, crossed
himself hastily, while Booth and Beall looked down at Stevens with
strong hate.

" Keep out of such company, my boy," Stevens remarked to
Quantrell ; " they have no progress in them."

" Progress — what is that ? "

. " Heaven is nothing but progress," Stevens said ; " my educa-
( tion was nothing : don't you suppose heaven will be a school to
I me ? The spirits of my love will be around my desk ; old angel
1 friends will teach me music ; I shall read, and know, and progress
(onward. That's my belief. My sweetheart left it to me when she
, passed away."

As they left the jail, Quantrell asked the kind-eyed jailer :

" Who serves the meals to Captain Brown ? "

OATH-PLIGHT AND TROTH-PLIGHT.

253

" An old Dutch baker out in the town ; he sends the captain's
meals in by his people."

Lloyd Ouantrell was silent. He knew, however, that the person
with the tray of victuals he had seen in the jail was either Hannah
Ritner or her ghost.

He hastened to the baker's house, on a back street ; they knew
nothing of any person answering to the name, or description, or dis
guise, of Hannah Ritner.

Katy's ring was lost again : would she ever find it by " search
ing for it down a brook " ?

CHAPTER XXVI.

OATH-PLIGHT AND TROTH-PLIGHT.

AT the south end of Charlestown a small limestone brook re
lieved the sunny situation and watered some Virginia lawns, and
near its turnpike bridge and ford was a mill and tannery, agreeable
to the sight and smelt, with the dripping water-wheel and the cord-
piled bark. Here, wandering together, Ouantrell and his three com
panions came upon a large wagon, and in it were Luther and Katy
Bosler, and Nelly Harbaugh.

Lloyd rushed upon the party, and his later friends were surprised
to see him not only kiss the slight, childish, large-eyed lass, but also
kiss her sluggish-eyed, bovine- moving brother.
" Dear Katy, where did you come from ? "
Luther answered, as Katy sprang again to Lloyd's arms :
" Lloyd, we are huckstering a kittle. Te rules is against coming
to Harper's Ferry from Maryland, so we cross te pridge at Berlin
and cross te mountain at Keyes's Ferry, and we sell to te soldiers
here."

" Breaking the laws, bruder ? And you a minister ! "
" Such laws as Fergeenia has on this occasion," replied Luther,
dryly, " are te laws of insanity. Tere is no tariff petween te States
of our Union, and I am an American citizen. If Fergeenia had pet-
ter laws, John Brown could have stayed at home." .

" What, sir ! " exclaimed Mr. Beall. " Is this your return for
Virginia hospitality ? "

" I am feeding Fergeenia, I think," replied Luther, plainly. " Tere-

254

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

fore, I am not guilty of any inhospitality. What one thinks, he is re
sponsible to himself and his Maker for."

"There are things thought," exclaimed Booth, sternly, "which
are worse than bold crimes."

"Assuredly," answered Luther, "and that is why I have no tis-
guises. I do not come here and agree with everypody and pe a
spy. I say te man who is in te jail, to-day, is truer to justice than
te judge upon te bench ! Te plood he shed I do not approve of —
put we, Lloyd, haf seen innocent plood shed too. Remember te old
daddy on te mountain, dying to get to freedom — "

"O Lloyd," cried Katy, "your fader has pought Ashby, and
we've prought him to Charlestown ; he's in a Tunker family's house,
close py ! "

" And here's a letter from your father, Lloyd," Nelly Harbautrh
cried, returning a most respectful and admiring look Mr. Booth
gave her. " We expected to find you, before long."

As Lloyd read the letter, Booth engaged Nelly Harbaugh in con
versation, and Hugh Fenwick, the semi-fledged priest, talked, with
deference, to Katy Bosler ; while Mr. Beall interrogated Luther Bos-
ler in his intense, unrelieved way, and with a fierceness his low tones
just concealed. The letter said :

" My son, I have bought you another slave at your request. I
present him to you, according to such law as there is for property
in our fellow-kind. Your own money I keep for you. The cube of
human bondage is Golgotha. Find that word in your dictionary,
and don't forget it ! I sincerely hope John Brown will be hanged —
as he is too valuable to live — like the prize steer. To spare his life
would give Virginia another generation to patronize this Union. I
hear that you are enlisted among the cavalier train-bands ; I ex
pected as much from you, my son, and I would rather see you walk
promptly to your place, in the files of slavery and disunion, than to
remain of an uncertain mind. The quicker every arms-bearing man
is resolved, the speedier will be the issue. The request I make of
you is, not to bestow your heart anywhere at .present; and, as for
your hand, remember that your mother's pride of family was her
only sin. Your father, ABEL OUANTRELL."

When Lloyd, with feelings of affection, anger, and distress, folded
this letter, he was drawn to Luther Bosler's side, and to Mr. Beall,
browbeating Luther. The words he heard were :

OATH-PLIGHT AND TROTH-PLIGHT. 255

" I can have you whipped, and drummed across the river, for the
sentiments you express ! "

" Do so. Us Tunker brethren are numerous in this valley. They
have never aroused to the voice of conscience upon this subject.
Perhaps they might, if you would whip one of their ministers, like a
slave."

Luther's countenance, as he spoke calmly before the pinched,
pallid, and tortured arrogance of the Anglo-Celt, bore no ill resem
blance to one of the rougher Christian disciples under the whip-
master.

" Stop them ! " commanded Nelly Harbaugh to Booth ; " Luther
is my friend, and shall not be imposed upon by that man."

"For you I will interfere," answered Booth ; "your friend must
be a gentleman."

By the aid of Fen wick, who saw Katy's anxiety, Booth and
Quantrell appeased the combatants, and they went to see the negro
Ashby, whose unfortunate arrival had given Quantrell a new subject
of annoyance.

He was at a Bunker family's humble house on an unfrequented
cross-street, and, as they entered, an officer came close after to the
door, to arrest a negro suspected of having voluntarily given aid to
John Brown, and borne arms under him, and accused also of invad
ing the Stale of Virginia to carry off a person held to ceaseless servi
tude — to wit, the author of his own being. The penalty for the first
of these offenses was death ; of the second, imprisonment for life.
The negro Ashby, sustained by his religious ecstasy, heard of the
fate awaiting him with a dignity surprising to Lloyd Quantrell.

" Mosster," he said to Lloyd, " I'm yours, and I don't want you
to lose the money I'm bought with; but I'm tired of life. My ole
mommy died when she heard of daddy's end. I wants to go in de
cell with Green and Copeland and be hanged, and go to glory ! "

" He ought to be hanged ! " spoke Beall, with smothered fire of
indignation. " He confesses to bearing arms."

" Oh," cried Katy Bosler, " hard man ! He saved my dear Lloyd's
life. When you come to die, maype a black man's love may pe
your only friend ! "

" Mr. Booth," cried Nelly Harbaugh, "you go to the door and
deceive the constable, while Lloyd gets the negro off. — He's worth
all you paid for him, Lloyd ; and, if he's hanged, the law won't pay
you."

256 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

" You shall be obeyed," answered Booth ; " if the constable per
sists, I'll throw him out of the house, and my Richmond company
will stand by me ! "

Quantrell started with the negro through the back garden, and
led him by the winding creek to the railway, and on toward the
north ; and, meantime, Katy Bosler threw herself upon Mr. John
Beall, and by sighs and entreaties prevailed upon his modesty, until
Booth came in and reported the officer to have been thrown off the
scent. Luther Bosler had gone off to attend to his market collec
tions, and Mr. Booth, seeing Mr. Beall's predicament with Katy,
claimed a kiss for his good offices also, which Katy called on Nelly
Harbaugh to bestow. In a little while Beall's sense of Virginia hos
pitality overcame his severity, and he took a gentle interest in Katy,
whose merciful nature had also greatly affected " Father " Hugh
Fenwick.

Nelly Harbaugh, with a strong interest in these young worldly
men, influenced Katy to prevail over Luther and let them both re
main in Charlestown till his return with another load of provisions.

Luther's merchant instincts were now fully aroused, in view of
this unexpected home-market and the calls of his approaching mar
ried life, and he kissed his affianced good-by and started toward
Harper's Ferry, with Beall and Booth in his wagon.

Lloyd and his new slave had walked two or three miles, and then
they left the railroad near a mill, and continued through the autumn
fields, Lloyd meditating how to get his dependent across the Poto
mac into Maryland. They finally came in sight of a peculiarly-
shaped brick house in a grove of trees, secluded from the sur
rounding farms, but from its limestone swells could be seen the
broad gateway of the rivers at Harper's Ferry, as they broke the
mountain ramparts through.

" ' Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to de
struction," Quantrell said; "and yonder it seems to be."

" Dis is Walnut Grove, mosster," spoke Ashby, out of his deso
late meditations, pointing to the house with the blood-red end and
the cool white piazzas suspended in the middle; "de Bealls lives
yer."

"Who are these Bealls," asked Lloyd — "so serious and in
tense ? "

" I've heerd," replied the negro, "dat de first of dem was a ole
Scotch Covenanter, who come to America after killing a archbishop

OATH-PLIGHT AND TROTH-PLIGHT. 257

in Scotland — wasn't his name Sharp ? He was a-tryin' to make de
Scotch somethin' else dan Presbyterians. A few of 'em caught him
at a bridge, and dragged him out of his carriage and murdered him.
So de first Beall run away to de Potomac ; he was one of de red
Macgregors, dat is called in Merrylin Macgruders. Ever sence dar's
been on deir faces a white look, an' a borrowin' of trouble, an' ex
citement about blood."

Ashby was bestowed in an out-house by a colored domestic
girl, and, before Lloyd could call out the family, Beall and Booth
drove up with Luther Bosler. The latter went to feed his horses,
and Ouantrell and the other two went into the house to partake of
some liquor.

" Here is some of grandfather's port wine," Beall said ; " he was
the grandson of a baronet ; I was his favorite among his daughter's
children, and he gave me his name, John Yates. To-day I feel
troubled and excited, and I will try a glass with you, friends."

" You have behaved like a knight," Booth cried. " Let us drink
together to some toast with a great purpose in it. What shall it
be?"

"Virginia hospitality," Ouantrell said. "Against his princi
ples, Mr. Beall helped me in my personal desire to save my negro's
life, because he had saved my own. I shall never forget it."

"I accuse myself," said Beall, "of incivility in granting you so
grudgingly what my natural impulses would have freely given.
You were right to reward this disobedient servant for your life. —
Gentlemen, I have taken a real affection for you both; but the
occurrence of this abolition invasion has strangely aroused me. Do
you know that with all the hate I hold for this man, Brown, I have
an admiration for him I can not control ? "

" I admit it, too," Booth cried, unsteadily, for he had been drink
ing too much. " Monster as he is, I am fascinated by his dramatic
crime."

"It was what we Scotch — we Bealls — call ' the bloody or deadly
foray.' When one of these is made against us, we try in vain not
to revenge it. My blood tingles now to take life for life."

He spoke with suppressed tones, jerkingly, and not a ray of
cheerfulness was in his soul.

" Poor, insulted Virginia ! " Booth exclaimed. " Lloyd, don't you
feel for John here ? It has bitterly humiliated him. Let us drink
to this sentiment and swear to it, also— we three young men, nearly
17

258 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

of the same age, devoted, determined, brave ; ' The South, if trouble
ever comes upon her, to revenge her; Virginia, if occasion ever
offers, to invade her invaders ! ' '

They raised their glasses — those three, the two Marylanders and
the Virginian. Said Quantrell, " My father has written to me,
'Walk promptly to your place, and do not be of an uncertain
mind.' "

" Drink and swear ! " spoke Booth ; " ' Sic semper tyrannis ! ' —
Virginia shall be avenged ! "

As they drank with strong feeling, Luther Bosler appeared in
the door.

" Resolutions taken in wine," he slowly remarked, " had best pe
carefully considered. Lloyd, I will carry you to the cars at Berlin."

All present judged it prudent for Quantrell to go, while he could
get the negro off and be himself unsuspected.

As he disappeared in Luther's wagon, Mr. Beall said :

" I think Quantrell is a man of principle. I have seen how
brave he is. Can he mean to marry that pretty Dutch child ? "

" If he loves her, it is his own pleasure to consult."

" But she is quite ignorant ; and that brother of hers is a huck
stering Hessian."

" I have known Lloyd Quantrell since his childhood," Booth
added ; " my father, the tragedian, and my grandfather, who was
an Englishman, like yours, were both present when Abel Quantrell
came over from Pennsylvania to be admitted to the bar of my
native county. They sat up all night at Belair to play cards.
Years afterward, the father, who is a great man, but a voluptuous
one, with remarkable power over women, became the idol of a lady
of both fortune and descent, of one of the best families we have in
older Maryland, and originally Quakers. Lloyd's father was a Yan
kee, with some Irish stock in him, making him poet and intriguer as
well as Puritan ; and that Quaker sweetness often breaks out in
Lloyd's rough nature. It is said that Abel Quantrell never loved
either his wife or his son, up to their warmth of affection for him.
If the old man crosses Lloyd's love-affair, Lloyd may let the girl go,
for he reveres his father."

" And break her heart ? " asked Beall. " That won't be right."

" Why, John, you are very innocent of things of gallantry. Men's
hearts sometimes break in love ; women have little willful hearts,
and adapt themselves to situations."

OATH-PLIGHT AND TROTH-PLIGHT. 259

"We do not believe that of our mothers, ' said Beall ; *' as far as
we can see, love is the whole of life to them."

Booth hesitated.

u You are right, John. But we do not see women — at least not
in my way of livelihood — like our mothers.". . .

Next day Lloyd Quantrell entered his father's house in Balti
more. It stood in Old Town, as that part of the city to the north
east was called, across the tumbling Jones's Falls, and as he ap
proached it he passed the residence of the Booth family in the same
part of the city — a broad, brick dwelling with marble base.

Quiet and comfort were the expression of this semi-neglected
part of Baltimore, once the seat of fashion. The dwelling of Abel
Quantreil had been the town-house of his wife's old colonial family,
whose frequent relations with politics and finance brought them to
Baltimore from across the bay, to live a portion of the year, and
here, dazzled with the eloquence and independent nature of Lloyd's
father, the heiress naturalized him into Maryland by a marriage,
but found him half an alien to her heart.

The same longing with which she died, to have the full and ab
solute love of her husband, her athletic son had inherited ; and now
he came hungry to his father's door for a father's love, after all the
mighty experiences of Harper's Ferry.

After he had bestowed the slave, Quantrell approached his
father's library, and heard men's voices within. The first voice
thrilled him well ; it was that of the new Western senator, Edgar
Pittson, saying :

" Depend upon it, they will force their convention early, and con
tinue the excitement at Charlestown, Virginia, until the Southern
heart comes all fired with passion to that convention, and they will
hold it at Charleston in South Carolina. They will there demand a
Southern presidential candidate as security for slavery, and break
up the convention rather than take a Western man ; and after having
left everything in suspense, they will convene again in Baltimore, to
capture this State by the alternative threat of breaking up the Union.
Can Maryland be relied upon, Mr. Davis ? "

" Yes," said a musical yet nervous voice, like a bass-violin's ;
" although the Native-American cause is gone, it will answer still in
Maryland to compel the Democracy here to profess a Union spirit.
This night we show our power in Monument Square. Come, and
you will see how soiled is the outer fringe of slavery's garment. I

26o KATY OF CATOCTIN.

must use the rowdy to save Baltimore to the Union ; for Baltimore
is Maryland."

"Anything, Davis," said the voice of Abel Quantrell. " Sho ! use
anything to keep the deluge back. The cube of the cut-throat may
be the military genius, though I doubt it. The square of a riot may
be a battle for the Union, though I fear not. But you are all there
is of Maryland until the north star moves over Baltimore, and then
you may throw off your dark-lantern mask and show the Know-
nothing to be the Emancipator ! "

" I am consuming for the hour," said Mr. Davis, in low, deep
tones ; " I saw no way to keep back the Loco-foco power in Balti
more but by catering to this Native-American prejudice. The nat
uralized foreigners always joined the Democracy, and for that I hated
them. The devil shall have Maryland and me, before we shall be
Democratic prey ! "

" I sympathize with you, Mr. Davis," spoke Edgar Pittson ;
" your virtues are too great to classify you as the Artevelde of all
these rough guilds and clubs ; but the time is a shifting one, and
we need all the ground we can get to stand on. We shall nominate
early, also — not later than next May — and our candidate, I think,
will be Lincoln."

" Oh, no — Seward ! "

" Sho ! " said Abel Quantrell ; " put not your new wine in old
bottles ; Seward has been too long in honors and office, Henry ; he
lives too far East. Go to the West, where John Brown lived and
thought so long and undauntedly, until his old teeth fell out and
grew up armed boys. The cube of old political success is compro
mise. We have had one Fillmore. I wish we could run Henry
Winter Davis — or John Brown."

" Or Abel Quantrell," added Mr. Davis. " Old friend, you have
been a great comfort to me in my lonely battle here, made under
my semi-false position. Your son has been my devoted follow
er."

"My son," spoke Abel Quantrell; "what pride I take in my
son ! How brave he is — how indifferent to the world ; how well he
honors his father and his mother ! Surely his days shall be long in
the land which the Lord, the God of Freedom, will yet give to him.
Oh, let me hear the sounding of his voice, like Isaac waiting for his
Esau's tones ! "

" Father, I am safe : God bless you, sir ! " Lloyd Quantrell cried,

KNO W-NO THINGS. 26 1

his eyes all blind with tears as he threw himself at his father's
feet.

Abel Ouantrell, moved somewhat by the sudden onset, put his
hands upon Lloyd's head, mechanically and coldly.

" The hair is the hair of Esau," he said, " but the voice is the
voice of Jacob."

CHAPTER XXVII.

KNOW-NOTHINGS.

" FATHER, don't treat me so. I have been in great troubles, and
the hope of seeing you, sir, made me want hard to live. I do want
to lead a better life, and I have found a pure young woman who has
promised to be my wife ; and both of us require a father's blessing.
Give me your heart, father ! "

" Sho, sho ! " the old man said, looking a little moved at his son ;
" the square of love is marriage ; and the cube of love and marriage
is incompatibility. Cube it — cube it ! Look into the third produc
tion, son ! You love : well enough ! You many : desperate step !
You live long together : the cube is not one flesh, but wood or
stone."

" I am your son ; there can be no doubt of that," Lloyd spoke,
looking around at the other witnesses, in wounded pride and chal
lenge.

" None, Lloyd," spoke the kind tones of Senator Edgar Pittson ;
" your father called you his Jacob, the father of all true Israel's race.
He did not mean to accuse you."

" If he had called me Esau," faltered the young man, " his words
would not have seemed so cold. Some way, I can not get father to
love me, gentlemen. I know I have taken to sad companions — "

" Have I ever rebuked you, my son ? Sho ! "

" No, sir. Why have you not ? It was a father's privilege ; and,
had you done so, it would have been a proof of your affection for
me. I wandered away because you never restrained me. It was
too plain that you had no interest in me, father."

" Come, Lloyd ! " spoke Congressman Davis, a little exasperated
at the son's accusations. " Your father is as just as Heaven's vice
roy here ; and you know it."

262 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

" I wish he were not so just," the young man sobbed, with one
long, soul-drawn sob ; " then he might err into loving me, who have
no mother ! "

" Dear Lloyd ! " the voice of Mr. Pittson said, with tender emotion*
in it — " to be motherless is the worst. My rugged, gentle brother,
look out on Nature like your father, and take joy in her ceaseless
maternities. There are love and grief and separation eveiy where."

" Oh, if my mother was here now," Lloyd Ouantrell spoke, " she
would have encouraged me in my first pure affection since she
died ! "

" So will I, my son ! " Abel Quantrell reflected aloud, with some
curious sympathy. " Let me walk leaning upon your shoulder, for
my old club-foot is numb. Come Edgar, too ; since you young men
have met, and liked each other so, I'll lean upon you both."

He stood upon his staff, and threw an arm around the shoulders
of each, and paced the room to and fro. Henry Winter Davis, with
his fine intellectual sight and handsome profile, looked up approv
ingly.

" I lean on Law and Nature, like Bacon of old," came the sar
donic voice of the old man out of his lifeless countenance ; " the
support is all human aspiration can find ; but where, my God ! is
Liberty ? "

" Here," answered the young Senator Pittson, whose face was
like that of Liberty's self upon a silver dollar, not wrarm with color
but fine with ore — " here are three of us, and you can cube yourself !
Do not regret, but feel God's providence to be wider than all the
casualties and refractions of man's nature, and taking every aber
ration into his illimitable system of systems ! You may have been
the roving comet, crossing the orbits of the purest stars, or the rash
meteorite flung upon Pleiades or earth ; and still the scar on you will
be greater than upon them, while in them the wonder of your falling
is their incentive to a higher and wiser piety. We know God made
you in his most subtile alembic, and that the material was better
than gold ; for we feel philanthropy and resistance to oppression to
warm your setting sun and flash in the ashes of your lonely hearth
stone, like the dying prophet's face kindling in the radiance of the
promised land."

Lloyd felt so rejoiced at this eloquent tribute to his father that
he kissed both the speaker and Abel Quantrell. Mr. Davis was also
showing the sympathy of fellow-genius upon his usually abstracted

KNO W-NO THINGS. 263

face, to hear the nearly chiseled words of Senator Pittson rising into
such sculptured forms, yet ardent as life itself.

" Sho, Lloyd ! " Abel Quantrell cried, " you have learned man-
kissing among the Dunkers — woman-kissing as well, I compute.
That's where I learned it, too, beneath the Bunker caps. Like
father, like son ! But you never imitate my better examples, Lloyd.
I dare say you hate old John Brown, and the torch of insurrection he
waved."

" I hate his cause with all my soul ! I admire his courage.
Wicked people set him on."

Abel Quantrell took one hand off Lloyd's shoulder, and, reach
ing for his stick, leaned only upon that, and upon Mr. Pittson.

" Edgar," said he, " resent that statement. I expect you to
do it."

" No, sir " — Mr. Pittson took Lloyd's hand and continued to lead
him in their chamber excursion — " Lloyd spoke with perfect hon
esty. Remember that your son may have the indignations of his
birthplace, as you brought here others from the free Green Mount
ains. The incursion of John Brown was supported by no law what
ever, except that which he and a few others made out of air. Time
may excuse him ; fanatical partisanship is preparing to do so now :
but I am a senator under the law, and can take no part in such a re
bellion, though it may have started, like Satan's, in heaven ! I do
not say all were wicked people who advised John Brown, but I do
say that the calm and legal steps we Republicans were taking, to
manoeuvre slavery away from its respectable supports, have been
pestered by John Brown's incursion, so that we are being manoeuvred
by slavery away from our own strong base, in the outraged conserva
tism of the country. How will John Brown's raid compensate us
for the wrongs of Kansas ? At this moment Mason, Davis, Bright,
and others in the Senate, are preparing for an investigating commit
tee upon John Brown's self-commissioned and gratuitous act, with
the purpose of destroying the Republican party."

" They can't do it," Mr. Davis remarked, rising up. " The more
stirring up the slavery-Democracy makes, the more Republicans
there will be."

" Mr. Davis," spoke Lloyd Quantrell, with modesty yet direct
ness — " often have I listened to your burning speeches with the feel
ing that you were sincere as truth itself. I never knew that the
Native-American mask covered a Black Republican ! "

264

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

" Then learn it of me " — Mr. Davis turned imperiously on Lloyd
— " that I would rather wear the mask of the devil than lose my hold
on Maryland, to help the Roger Taney Democracy to power ! Yes, I
would rather defend old Brown himself, for invading my own late
home, Virginia, and support Horace Greeley for President here in
Baltimore."

The impetuosity of Mr. Davis's reply showed that he had drunk
at the well of Abel Ouantrell's deep but boiling temperament. He
was a Baltimorean in all respects — of well-nursed mustache, skin
where the bright and sallow, the sanguine and bilious contended ;
aristocratic lines of countenance, a little pointed, perhaps hardened,
by impulses which had turned to prejudices, and party combats
which had soured to hate, and by a certain bluntness somewhere
between volatility and sullenness ; but, when his nature rose, a spirit
of power and magnificence possessed him like the dark and gold of
the oriole bird, whose yellow wings of flight flash from a sable
breast.

Time and faculty, resistance and a somewhat false position, had
muddied the springs of a generous nature, and kept him, with the
instincts of liberty and refinement, a prince among brawlers, and he
had come to recognize the omnipotence of events as above all rea
sonable endeavors to extricate himself from his momentary environ
ment ; and, therefore, the John Brown raid amused him, if it also
perplexed him, because, while weaning young followers, like Lloyd
Quantrell, from his side, it brought the terror of a general insurrec
tion of the slaves to his political enemies.

Before Lloyd could excuse himself for rudeness within his father's
walls, he, like Mr. Davis, was arrested by a strange and aggressive
attitude of Abel Quantrell, his father, toward Senator Edgar Pittson.

The old man had concentrated the whole of his satyr-like atten
tion upon this slender and shining-visaged guest ; his mouth was set
in the deepest scorn and resolution, and his hollow nostrils seemed
breaking into articulate speech, so full of expression were they ;
and his faded eyes caught the dead, black shadow of his wig, and
looked on Edgar Pittson as the ghost of Samuel from the tomb
might have scowled on Saul.

One hand was upon his cane, his back against a table, and with
the other hollow, almost transparent hand, he seemed holding some
thing to throw into his visitor's face.

Mr. Pittson did not return the look of Abel Quantrell with either

KN 0 W-NO THINGS. 26$

defiance or astonishment, but stood with his head slightly bowed and
his countenance almost negative, like one receiving a sentence with
resignation, or, as Lloyd Ouantrell thought, like that passive respect
with which the young Smiths on the mountains had heard the lect
ure of John Brown when our hero first made their acquaintance.

Abel Quantrell slowly lowered his menacing hand and put it into
his bosom, and, after a moment's waiting, spoke :

" Do you dare hold those compromising sentiments in my pres
ence !— you, from the unfettered, unconstraining West, which has
honored you above your condition, and put the future of liberty and
of labor in your trust ? "

The young senator looked up and met that overbearing inquisi
tion firmly, but without offense. His face had the beauty of a silver
die, with every lineament fresh from the engraver's stroke : brown
hair, flowing from a fine forehead to his low-set ears ; beard prema
turely silvered beneath his jaws, and hanging there in fringes like
goat's fleece ; mouth of cleanliness and courage, the upper lip almost
too long, but the chiseled chin pendent to it with more delicacy, and
in the nose was a faint tendency to match the eagle's beak ; but,
back of its bridge, the eyes drew far, like archers at the drawbridge
bending all their strength — eyes of that same silver-gray which per
vaded his complexion, the orbs of public life trained to think while
shooting, and to have such nice relations with speech and hearing
that every sense of man seemed in those clear gray eyes alone, placid
under their brown-furred brows. His head was drawn a little back
habitually as if receiving knowledge and attack ; and above his slen
der, spare form, like the greyhound's, this kingly, harmonious head
inhabited its own firmament :

" In the monarch Thought's dominion —
It stood there ! "

" Strange," said Senator Pittson, " that you radicals quarrel
with every road but your own, which will lead to emancipation !
John Brown showed more animosity to me than to any other per
son, as Lloyd Ouantrell knows. He had taken offense at the lawful
action of my party, and perhaps at its numbers also ; for some men
never can be right unless they are hermited and irregular, and there
they show an incapacity to enjoy the fruits of freedom after those
fruits are picked, because the people do not sanction agitations ex
cept for tangible results. The skirmish-line of life is the barbarian

266 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

line ; sometimes your skirmisher can bring on an action, but in that
action itself he disappears. So will all you uncompromising aboli
tionists disappear if John Brown shall have brought on a war. Pru
dent men of the multitude, like Lincoln and Seward, accustomed to
the training and restraints of legislatures and courts, will be required
to save your country. Do you understand me now, sir? "

He turned with a respectful flash of his eyes upon Abel OuantrelL

" Whom have you stigmatized ? " Abel Ouantrell hissed.

" None, sir. I left off nicknaming when I became a man."

" ' Satan's rebellion ' ; ' the wicked people who set Brown on ' — you
know wrhat persons those stigmas include. You have defamed —

" Not one," Senator Pittson replied ; "none that you can mean,
by word or thought. But, sir, you must not discharge one set of
slaves, and create another. I claim for my reason all its responsi
bility and free course. Giving you honor, as is my duty, I shall in
all public measures act as if my superior did not stand upon this
globe ! "

As the two men faced each other, the moral spirit of the younger
rising and the physical rage of the older subsiding, both Mr. Davis
and Lloyd were attracted by a something common to them both, as
if between them was a place of fascination which could cause them
to fight, like two duelists crossing an open but secluded spot which
tempts their professional rivalry to the point of deadly onset.

" Come," said Mr. Davis, " we must not fall out on mere terms.
Lloyd, go your way, if you mean to leave my fold, but keep my con
fidence ! "

" Father," Lloyd spoke, " how can you treat Mr. Pittson so in
your own house ? Oh, he has a daughter that is so lovely ! I could
almost love Light Pittson, father."

The old man sank into a seat, his late excitement gone.

" Mr. Pittson, when shall I see Light ? Her face was before me
in my danger and captivity, and it was a great comfort, too. It did
not seem like any young lady's face that fluttered my heart ; rather
that rested me, and looked up to me for guidance."

" Sho, sho ! " from Abel Quantrell ; " you are on forbidden
ground ! "

"No," spoke Mr. Pittson; "come in that spirit, Lloyd, as to
your child or sister, and Light will find you a blessing."

That evening Lloyd Quantrell strolled into a liquor-store in Bal
timore, kept by one Martin, a companionable person from the old

KNO W-NO THINGS. 267

St. Mary's Peninsula of Maryland, and together they attended the
great Native- American meeting in Monument Square. Such an out
pouring of rude yet well-attired and solvent native men later times
never knew ; it was the apotheosis of the '• rowdy," that culmination
of physical spirit and national jealousy on the brink of ideal issues
and against insoluble foreignisms.

The cold German, the mettlesome Irishman, had swarmed dur
ing ten years upon the settled land, and the power of their naturali
zation was already felt at the ballot-box. It was not in the nature
of American boys to submit.

Great cities like New York had passed under the aggressive
strangers' yoke, and Baltimore had been made the citadel of resist
ance. The mastering soul of slavery partly set this later contest on,
but courage and patriotism were no less the instincts of the rowdy ;
his fathers had made a land, strangers were unmaking or remaking,
and the very Jews of native stock were marching in the " American "
lines ; the Germans of eighteenth-century descent were deadly ene
mies of the nineteenth century's German importations ; the latest
Irishmen had taught fighting, and were getting the worst of it from
Irishmen's native grandsons.

Toward the tall white pillar to General Washington the defiant
and triumphant " Native Americans " moved in lines of sword and
fire, in clubs, without any other purpose than battle, by fist or
weapon, by steel or shot. The insignias on their transparent lan
terns told the purpose and the degree of refinement of the time :
"The Blood -Tubs," "The Red Necks," "The Pioneers," "The
Regulators," " The Tigers," " The Ashlands," " The Spartans,"
"The Black Snakes," "The Gladiators," "The Rip-Raps," "The
Eubolts," "The Plug-Uglies." With battle-axes, and in red shirts
or grenadier hats, they marched as grim as executioners.

As these, soldiers in all but discipline, strode past Lloyd Quan-
trell, many a torch or awl-spear was brandished toward him, and
the shout raised, " Come, Lloyd ! " " Why ain't you marching, big
one ? "

He shook his head, and his heart was cold.

Finally came his own club, " The Cock Robins," marching from
curb to curb, in broad lines of perfect form and step, sons of men
01 superior condition, and as confident of their righteous principles
as guildsmen in cities ever have been, from Genoa to Ghent ; their
blazing sulphur and shooting rockets brought Washington's statue.

268 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

on the summit of its candle, out into the prominence of a saint upon
the Roman altar, and to every lad there he seemed giving them his
benediction. This excess of light fell suddenly on the broad shoul
ders and rugged head of the idol of the club, Lloyd Quantrell, rising
upon his long, straight limbs in sight of them all, the humanization
of the cock they marched beneath.

A mighty cheer arose.

" Hip ! hip ! " from the captain.

" Hurrah ! " roared the two hundred throats.

As these loud cheers, repeated thrice, seemed the very onset of
battle, the young man's heart swelled high, and seemed to him to
burst. Recollections of a hundred combats and sacrifices, of war
like friendships and assistances, of courage put to deadly tests, and
convictions never till now disturbed, brought a feeling like exile and
apostasy to Lloyd Quantrell's soul !

" Come ! come ! fall in ! " the fierce command rang down the
lines, addressed to him. The flaming column swayed and stopped ;
the fifes and drums were stilled.

He waved his arms, so that his elbows might hide his eyes, and,
while the tears streamed down his cheeks, he called in broken but
loud and manly tones :

" No ! never — any more — old boys ! "

The latest form of prig may smile at pathos here, unconscious of
his own father's service in just these associations, the rudest and
most ingenuous of his life, perhaps, when his country was no more
to be reasoned about and sublimated than his sweetheart or his
mother, but its profanation by skeptical philosopher or foreign sav
age, alike, brought down the swift clinched hand, and armed young
organizations, like the call in the Marseillaise song.

" What ! \vhat do you say ? " hoarse, excited words broke from
the ranks. : .

" I say, ' No ! ' No Henry Winter Davis ! No John Brown abo
litionists for me ! "

The lines were broken ; the clubsmen rushed upon their refract
ory member and seized him with rude affection ; a torch was forced
into his hand, and he was pushed into the ranks.

Amid a wild huzza the music and the march started up, and be
fore Quantrell could dry his eyes or find an initial point of rebellion,
he was in front of the great square base of the monument ; and
when he looked up to see Washington at the summit, resigning his

KNO W-NO THINGS. 26g

commission at Annapolis, he saw his father, Abel Ouantrell, cutting
off the view, and introducing Henry Winter Davis as " the Samuel
Chase of Maryland to-day ! "

The orator stood forth in the August of life, barely turned his
forty-second year, and pride and preoccupation worked together in
his countenance till it seemed to have caught the Voltaire-like mis
chief of old Ouantrell 's wigged and upholstered face, as the latter
leaned near, like a statue in wax, with his bloodless palm in his shirt-
bosom. The Governor of Maryland, Mr. Hicks, of the Eastern
Shore, stood wonderingly by ; the Mayor of Baltimore, Mr. Swann,
a Virginian by birth, looked on approvingly ; the senator from Mary
land, Mr. Kennedy, educated in that Virginia town where John
Brown now lay in jail, presided at the meeting. Over their heads
was suspended a shoemaker's awl as long as a sword.

The awl was the favorite symbol of the monster meeting. Near
by was a blacksmith's forge upon a wagon, hammering out awls ;
transparencies bore signs like " Third Ward — awl right " ; " Seventh
Ward — the awl is useful in the hand of an artist " ; " Eleventh Ward
— the votes awl counted." .

What was this awl, the peaceful tool of the cobbler, doing at this
fierce political meeting?

It was the stealthy and convenient weapon to punch intrusive
foreigners with, as they crowded upon the polling-places ; and by
that instrument, here publicly recognized in the presence of Gov
ernor, mayor, senator, and congressman, the city of Baltimore had
been governed several years. The slavery question had broken up
the old national Whig party, and out of its ruins an irresolute local
majority had turned their fury upon the foreign opposition.

Mr. Davis addressed himself to the connection between the Gov
ernor of Virginia and the foreigners ; for that Governor had checked
Native-Americanism by his election, raising the slavery question to
the fore-front. A man no less dogmatic had put the slavery ques
tion under his nose at the point of a pike.

" Pikes and awls, Lloyd ! " spoke the liquor-dealer, Martin, at
Ouantrell's elbow. " Won't it be guns next ? "

" The awl must make shoes for soldiers soon, I fear," Quantrell
replied.

Never had Mr. Davis spoken as he did that night, his seat in
Congress being at issue, and the accusation of covert abolitionism
already raised against him. He denounced the opposite party as

2/0

KATY OF CA TO C TIM.

" hoping to retain power by the fears of one half the people for the
existence of slavery, and of the other half for the existence of the
Union. . . . False to their mission," said he, " as the portress of hell
to hers, and ready for the purpose of retaining their hold on power
to let loose on this blessed land the Satan of demoniacal passion !
... I am stronger in my district," he exclaimed, "and in the State
of Maryland, in any appeal I may see fit to make to the people, than
all the banded power of the Legislature bound into one man."

Robust, scornful, fierce, magnificent, his oratory and temper
were the exact mirror of the meeting he addressed, and proved the
dangerous power of the public platform or " stump " to educate,
crowds. Had he ordered those men to demolish any public or pri
vate building, they would have done so after a few sentences from
Henry Winter Davis ; and yet this man, in what he was truly aim
ing at, was as lonely before those masses as Galileo with his con
victions of science before the superstitious priests. He could abuse
his enemies, but never advocate freedom and opportunity for black
men.

It was this sense of moral impotence in Baltimore which made
his sentences fall like the lash of flagellation upon himself; and,
when he had done, he looked at the electrified thousands as if he
would like to kick them out of his sight, and nothing delighted them
like that expression.

As Lloyd Quantrell, with his sensibilities all disturbed and his
enthusiasm frozen, passed along that night into the Old Town quar
ter, a man addressed him in a foreign accent :

" I do not beg. I give you zis ring."

A priestly-looking man, in shabby priestly dress, was speaking.
A little ring was on his finger, and he held it under a street-lamp,
continuing :

" I tell you why I do zis : I starve for bread."

" Foreigner ! " thought Quantrell, his Native- American repulsions
not all gone. " Why do you come here, friend, to live on us ? "

" I came for justeece," exclaimed the man ; " I want justeece for
my mothair ; my fathair's name for me ! "

The man's black eyes shone ; his face was thin and haggard.
He pressed the little ring into Quantrell's hand.

" Only two dollair,'' he said ; " not to sell it you, but to borrow
on it. I know you, sare ; you live there."

He pointed to Abel Quantrell's house.

NEW FACES IN THE VALLEY.

271

"Let's see," said Lloyd; "two dollars. I have only got one,
but I can borrow another here, for I see June Booth at the win
dow."

He stood opposite Booth's residence, and at the open window
thereof sat the very likeness of the noted dead tragedian, smoking
a cigar. As he stepped toward this person, the stranger cried :

" No, no ! Not one cent from there ! Nevair ! "

He was gone, with Lloyd's dollar in his hand, and the ring left
in Lloyd's palm.

As Quantrell looked at the ring that night, he found the letters
chased within it :

"J. B. B. TO HIS WIFE, CHRISTINE, 1814."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

NEW FACES IN THE VALLEY.

HAVING sent his new slave Ashby out of harm's way, to be the
foreman of his other slaves in the lower Potomac country — forward
ing him thither, with Katy's dog Fritz, through Lloyd's man-dealing
uncle — Quantrell returned to Charlestown and witnessed the conclu
sion of John Brown's small, wide-surging act. Nothing had hap
pened in the history of English America to produce the same pro
found impression, except the defeat of Braddock and the treason of
Arnold ; and John Brown's work had the mystery and subtlety of
the last and was followed by the panic of the first.

The magnitude of slavery's interest — hardly less than four thou
sand million dollars — the sophistical statesmanship and political
economy created about it, which involved the ridicule and self-re
spect of leaders long self-deluded ; the peace and safety of white
society, and the patriotism of compromises, this beggar-man had
treated as common obstructions and idolatries, like some captain of
Mohammed bursting into an old religion and state, cimeter in hand.

Beggar he was, by all the evidence, having begged from town to
town the few dollars for his expedition, and procured his arms by a
misapprehension almost like deceit ; with neither scrip nor raiment
for his intrepid journey, no change of clothes, no provision for his
needy family in the cold mountains of New York on winter's brink ;

272 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

and recruiting chiefly from the children of his loins, and holding
none of them to be better than any vagrant negro in his command.

Lloyd Ouantrell had followed John Brown so closely that he,
almost alone, with his Vermont father's business eye, discerned the
reality of this naked martyr.

His friends, Booth and Beall, adopted the current view — that a
great conspiracy existed, of which Brown's band was only the cou
rageous tail, and therefore they held the North responsible for a pri
vate deed.

Quantrell saw in John Brown's lonely act the isolation and ex
posure of slavery, which could incite the poor Northern whites
against it — those who, possessing the vote-power, would compel the
Northern rich to follow them speedily ; he began dimly to discern
the meaning of the distant Kansas contest — wage-labor against
forced labor — he saw that his father's work was bearing seed, and
that abolitionists \vere no longer the philosophers and the idealists
only, but the simple, the deadly farmers of the North and West.

He resigned himself to the universal fear, and resolved, for his
property, his prejudices, and his indignation, to act with that Demo
cratic party he had so long hated, and to proselytize for it among
his Native-American friends.

He felt the clearer to do this because his father had written : " I
expected as much of you, my son ; and I would rather see you walk
promptly to your place in the files of slavery and disunion than to
remain of an uncertain mind."

" Dear father! " Lloyd thought, " nothing he has ever said to me
seemed so warm with compliment ! We can differ and respect each
other more."

Then there came the kind desire of his father, added to the same
letter, with the confidence of a chivalric opponent :

" The request I make of you is not to bestow your heart, and,
for your hand, remember your mother's pride of family."

No other command had Abel Ouantrell ever laid upon his son,
who had many a time longed for a father's warm commands.

While other sons had chafed under parental restriction, this son,
deeply affectionate and consciously his father's mental inferior, had
pined for obligations and for the love which imposes them upon a
son.

The first command his father had given him, in proud respect
had been to go to battle for his convictions.

NEW FACES IN THE VALLEY.

273

The next — a request so kind that his tears came to read it twice
—was the great old father's desire that Lloyd should withhold his
heart and hand.

" My heart," cried Lloyd in the depths of his soul, " is gone be
yond my reach. Can I give my hand to Katy and break my dear
old father's sole injunction ? No, I must wait. I will not disobey
him. He asks me, too, in my dead mother's name ! "

This conclusion was enjoined on him by another parental confi
dence : his father had named to him the lady of his choice.

The disturbance effected by John Brown's raid in the old settled
lines and communities near by, hardly the local scandal-monger could
enumerate or follow. It created an imperial theme where, for a hun
dred years, the torpor of slavery and the milking of cows had blended
with each other's patriarchal thoughts, as when the herds and herd-
men of Lot and Abraham once looked up and saw rising from the
plain of Jordan the alluring mirage of the sinful cities of the plain.

New, willful people came and camped by the Shenandoah. The
girls saw finer and bolder men than had filled the measure of their
ambition. Soldier-clothes invaded homes of piety and humility, and,
while the women yielded to the trance of idleness and compliment,
their fathers and brothers grew fuddled with strangers, and heard
new doctrines of morals and disloyalty.

What a temptation for Nelly Harbaugh when she found her so
ciety desired by the actor Booth !

Luther had arranged with Nelly to baptize her into his church,
and his loving mastership had already begun to soothe her soul to
peace, when here appeared a wiser admirer yet, all eloquent with
youth, beauty, and worldliness.

By Luther's sunburned and unshaved face and rough Dunker
cloth the form and countenance of Booth seemed like a prince's in
military uniform beside some giant peasant-recruit of his hereditary
subjects.

The large, tender eyes of- Luther were worth all Mr. Booth's re
finements, but too often of late they had worn the dull coin light of
avarice. He had seen a great, neighboring opportunity to make
money, and his heavy Bavarian-French nature had kindled to it like
his military forefathers to the stranger's loot.

" Miss Nelly," spoke Booth, as he was giving the girls a supper
at the principal hotel, with ale and wine among its fall birds and new
venison, " do you think I would go away to make five dollars a load
18

274

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

huckstering, and leave for a single day a noble face like this, fit for
Queen Semiramis ? No, I would be too proud and jealous ! "

" Hush ! " said Nelly, as Booth looked with all his serious and
insinuating interest into her face. " Not one word against my lover.
You do not know how hard it is to make five dollars."

" Tell me," said Booth ; " I feel such an interest in you. It is
the interest I would feel in a noble treasure hidden for years in the
mountains ! "

" It took me," Nelly answered, with a cold blush of modesty,
like one at last looked down, " six whole months to make five dol
lars, when I wanted it to buy a pair of shoes ! "

" Oh, shame ! " said Booth ; "and I was making my three dollars
a day as second walking-gentleman ! "

" Your father left you that rich chance ; I have heard of him.
But I could only make thirty cents a day, and could only find work
at seeding and harvest, hardly four weeks in all ; and rain, or too
many laborers, or woman's ailing, would throw me out a day here
and a day there, so it was winter before I had my shoes."

" And dress becomes you so wonderfully ! I have paid much at
tention to dress for ladies. Nelly, I could make you the sensation
of Richmond or Washington — yes, of Baltimore ! "

As his eye roved over her fine throat and commanding profile,
her abundant length of hair and length of trunk, Booth clasped his
hands and seemed to tremble.

" You actor ! " Nelly spoke low, with her eye on tender Katy, to
whom Mr. Fenwick was modestly attentive — " I am not to be car
ried off my feet by your artful praise, for in my own land and station
I have been courted by many."

" Let me see your native region," Booth appealed ; " I hear it is
not far from here. Though you are engaged, and to a real good
fellow, who will take all the care of you he knows, perhaps I may
find your counterpart in the Catoctin Valley, and not go away all
broken up. What lovers have you had ? You almost tempt me to
turn farmer."

" I have had all the poor young men around to come to see me
and propose ; nearly all the widowers of a marriageable turn ; sev
eral mechanics ; a preacher out of nearly every sect. The mer
chants' drummers from the city generally want to run away with
me. More than one married man has offered to be divorced to
get me."

NEW FACES IN THE VALLEY.

2/5

"And temptations often?" Booth spoke, with the gentlest re
spect.

" No ; insults, but no temptations. I always knew my value ; I
know it now, sir ! "

She turned to her admirer with the reserve and bodily self-respect
of a greater person than one in a half-cotton print. He did not
flinch, however, but distended his eyes in the greater rapture, slowly
saying :

" No woman on the American stage can do that ! "

" What ? "

" Give the expression to language that you can do, Miss Har-
baugh. There is a fortune for you, and a world-wide fame as an
actress ! "

" Oh, do not tell me that ! " the woman said, fighting down an
other rapture in her own face — "do not be a devil to me ! I tell
you, sir, nothing can separate me from that child's brother, to whom
I am engaged ! "

She pointed to Katy Bosler.

" I know it," said Mr. Booth, with a shadow of deep regret ;
"not even your duty to the talents which nature gave you for a
mighty life ! "

Katy, no prude in the joy of her new love, readily yielded to the
invitation of the two young men to visit her home, in which her pride
and hospitality were innocently excited ; and Lloyd's absence she
did not weigh in her duty to his friends. Mr. Booth obtained two
buggies through Mr. Beall's good offices, who had been much taken
with Katy's goodness and beauty ; Hugh Fenwick driving Katy, and
John Booth driving Nelly, they left Charlestown the day Quantrell
spent in Baltimore.

Eight miles to Harper's Ferry and eight to Crampton's Gap let
them down over the mountain rim into the brown and gold bowl of
Catoctin Valley ; and, as they moved toward Jake Bosler's farm in
the exhilarating air and restful sceneries, the young priest-student
spoke to Katy of religious life, and love made benevolent to human
creatures.

" Are you, too, of te old Dutch like us, Mr. Fenwick ? "

" Say ' Father Fenwick ' — it's more agreeable to me from you,
Katy; you are so like a dear child. If you can't say that, say
' Hugh ' ; for I must be either your spiritual or your familiar friend,
and ' Mister' is neither."

KATY OF CATOCT1N.

" Oh, then, I'll say ' Father Fenwick.' Tell me about marrying
people and about wedding-rings."

" Dear Kate ! marriage never was sanctified till after Luther's
death."

He crossed himself, speaking of Luther, and Katy cried :

" Luter dead ! Our Luter ? "

" Martin Luther, the apostate, Katy."

" Oh, I guess I didn't know him, Father Fenwick."

" Marriage was first celebrated in the church by Innocent III,
having been a mere civil contract before that ; but the Council of
Trent, meeting while Friar Luther" — crossing himself again —
" passed to his flames, ordered and fixed it fast."

" Oh, it did ? " observed Katy ; " I'm glad of that."

" Then, my child, marriage was made one of the seven sacra
ments, conferring grace, and forbidden to clerics ; and all clandestine
marriage, also, was forbid."

" Seven sacraments ? " observed Katy ; " not all at once, I hope !
Not wine seven times of a Sunday ? "

" No, little Pope Innocent ; marriage was then taken into the
church, like the dove taken back into the ark, and made one of seven
holy things, like Penance and Holy Order."

" I learned a little penance at school one winter," thoughtfully
added Katy ; " but our Luter he's a penmans that's wonderful !
Luter can shade letters like a sign-painter. Gracious ! don't you
squeeze me that-a way ! "

" Kate, you are such virgin mold and mind, I would like to
educate you. No flower transplanted would grow more nobly.
Oh, if I had you at old Saint Thomas's Manor, far down the Po
tomac, I at the Jesuits' old palace there and you in the pretty
school right by, my studies would be relaxed by the care of your
education, and, like the Carmelite sisters who lie buried in the gar
den, I could lean above you, my sweet sister, and guide your soul
and mind ! "

" Eferypody wants to make a nun of me, Father Fenwick ; Job
Snowberger is crazy for me to come to Snow Hill, and you want me
to go to Saint Thomas's ; but I want to marry Lloyd."

The broad-chested, fresh-skinned, hale young novitiate looked
at Katy pityingly :

" We are forbidden to interfere in courtships, but Lloyd, my
Katy, is dreadfully robust for your gentle nature ! I grant his open

KEW FACES IN THE VALLEY.

277

temper, but are you a being prepared for him, to wear with him in
the long round of life ? "

" Oh, maype I can learn some time, Father Fenwick ! Maype
you might help me. My gracious ! tere is a horseshoe m te road."

Before Hugh Fenwick could stop, Kate was over the buggy-
wheel and back again with the cast shoe.

" Hoofeisa! That's good luck always," she cried, "and now,
maype, I'll find my wedding-ring."

A growl and loud bark came from under the buggy-seat, and
the pointer-dog Albion burst from under Katy's gown and jumped
into the road and ran after Mr. Booth's carriage, into which Nelly
Harbaugh had him taken.

Hugh Fenwick now displayed his prying scholarship on the sub
ject of finger-rings, mixing his traditions and science superstitiously,
like the young Jesuit he would be.

" The ring, my mountain flower, is in our church fidei sacra-
mentum, the badge of fidelity. Levinus Leminus held, and so did
Gellius, a holy philosopher, that an artery or vital nerve stretched
from the ring-finger to the heart."

" My heart's empty," sobbed Katy, "ever since I took it off."

" That was a grave error, little penitent ; many married women
will never remove their betrothal ring even to wash their hands. In
Spain the giving of a ring is a legal claim to a husband in her who
can show the ring. The Holy Father wears the fisherman's ring,
and seals his letters with it."

" Yes," cried Katy, " and a wedding-ring cures fits and a sty on
the eye, and fetches up girls out of a swoon. No girl without a
ring-finger, to put te ring on, can marry safe. Te fortune-teller told
me I should lose my ring, and then she took it from me herself. I
can only find it py te Bible now, and I must find te Bible in a water-
brook where there never was any books, Father Fenwick."

Katy's head leaned convulsively upon the gentle divinity student,
who told her of the solemn beauty of his church's ceremony, the
priest in rich pontificals, the clerks in surplices carrying the holy-
water pot, the basin, and the sprinkler to bless the golden marriage-
ring.

" ' Ego conjungo vos in matrtmonium. Our help is in the name
of the Lord. Lord bless this ring, which we bless in thy name, that
she who shall wear it, keeping true faith unto her spouse, may abide
in thy peace and will ! ' "

278 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

Hugh Fenwick made of a silver ring he wore a circle around
Katy's finger as he pronounced this copy of the ceremony, and,
blessing it with his finger, he kissed the bruised little hand and then
the lips of Katy, trembling himself.

The pious nature of the child was swayed to the strange, strong
words, and, seeking about her for additional help, she found the
horseshoe at her feet, and held it above both their heads.

" Father Hugh, you'll marry me to Lloyd, won't you, if nobody
else will ? "

Katy clung to him in the emotions of fierce will and fear alike.
He felt her large, swimming eyes shine in on him with power.

" Why me, Katy? I am a Roman Catholic— a Jesuit to be— and
not of your mountain sects."

'•' Lloyd is a Catholic. I will pe what he wants me. I'm no-
pody, and God gif him to me. Oh, promise me you will pe our
friend ! "

He hesitated as the carriage stopped at Jake Hosier's gate.

" Ha, Fenwick ! What's this — a conquest? "

It was Booth who spoke, seeing Katy with her arm around
Fenwick's neck.

" Promise me ! " cried Katy, indifferent to who looked on. " I
will not let you go."

" Yes, yes ; if it ever becomes my duty I will be your ghostly
friend."

Luther Bosler and his father had just come in from the field,
and Luther's wagon was loaded for another huckstering trip to
Charlestown. Nelly Harbaugh saw that her affianced was worn
and haggard with his double labors, and she took him in her long,
strong arms with real affection, sharpened by almost maternal com
punction.

" My poor, willing slave, are you laboring so hard for me ? I
am not worthy of it, darling. But I have thought of you with a
full heart. Oh, I love you so painfully, so fearfully, so selfishly ! "

Fenwick and Booth looked on with surprise at the exhibition of
devotion and tears from this late worldly beauty of the country, and
Booth said to Fenwick, so that Nelly heard him :

" Every attitude she takes shows the natural artist."

" Well it may, sir," cried Nelly, turning on Booth, with tears like
rage as well as pity, in her telling eyes ; " if Nature ever taught me
well, it was to love this man ! "

NEW FACES IN THE VALLEY. 2/9

She threw her arms around him again, and, standing almost to
his own height, kissed him and still wept.

" Dearest," Luther said, tenderly, "why do you cry? We have
not parted many hours, but in an hour more I must go away again.
Tere is money to be made, and Decemper is almost here, when we
will pecome man and wife."

" December ? Oh, my love, my teacher, it is too far away ! I
am afraid something will happen. We are not what we were in
peace and content, before all these strangers came."

" Not what we were, Nelly ? Revolutions could not alter me
when I have started out. Tisturbance is love's mutuality, driving
us together, like when te Indians infaded our Dutch forefathers, and
te women and men tefended each other. This revolution is for our
good. Men will see te danger of slavery, and times will grow better
when it is gone."

" Who wants to go ? " pleaded Nelly Harbaugh. " I have been
a slave, too, working in the corn-fields among the men. It was my
joy and independence, and I would be your slave, also, for all the
hard and steady life of the farmer's wife. But do not leave me so
much ! Do not love money more than you love me ! Take me to
Virginia with you to-day ! "

" What, Nelly ! Are you so impulsive ? I thought you was keen
and worldly. Time prings good discipline. Waiting is surely not hard
for genuine love. Here are visitors, and we owe tern hospitality."

He indicated Booth, who was looking critically on, and the dog
Albion snapped at Nelly's feet like another mentor. Jake Bosler
remarked, vaguely :

" Eferyting coom right, maype. Bi'm-by. "

Booth spoke to Luther with manly equality, just cordial and no
more ; but to Luther's father he was attentive and respectful, and
he soon became the attractive personage of the farm. Hugh Fen-
wick hung the horseshoe over the dove's nest, and heard the doves'
" coo-roo," and remarked that the young doves were big enough
to fly.

While Nelly and Katy went to make some special dessert dishes
for the distinguished guests, Mr. Booth challenged Luther and Fen-
wick to gymnastic feats upon the lawn at the tree where the doves
roosted.

He bared his arms, and the white muscles there seemed like
blue-veined marble, and each great globe of sinews swelled like a

280 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

human brain, as if the thinking culture of this young gladiator was
in his arms, and not within his skull.

He raised himself upon the limb of the apple-tree, and, by alter
nate arms, singly, until his chin was higher than the bough ; and he
vaulted over a stone wall by one hand and wrist without running,
and raised a grindstone to the level of his shoulders, none of the
others being able to do the same ; and he also outleaped them both
upon the level — and so Nelly Harbaugh found him, with coat off and
sleeves rolled up, the hair black and strong upon his arms and
breast-bone, so that it might almost have been combed, and his
knees slightly bowed, though not sufficient to affect his erect, com
pact stature.

" Why, sir," cried Nelly Harbaugh, " you are training for the
circus, and not for the theatre."

" O Queen Nelly ! I am training in the athletic school, like my
father. He and Kean drove classical acting off by the splendor of
their combats, dying all slashed to pieces and with broken blades,
but fencing yet with hand and foot and tooth and nail."

For the first time at Bosler's farm the girls were taken into din
ner, society-fashion, on the arms of Booth and Fenwick, to the
blushing confusion of these twain ; and Nelly and Katy saw with
curiosity the strangers eating nimbly with their forks. Katy had
always been told that it was politeness to eat with the back of her
knife, instead of with the blade to the mouth, as Jake Bosler did.
Jake, however, took no note of methods, except the method of the
clock and of the sun-dial ; and, passing up his plate for animal fuel,
whereby to plow and sow, uttered the suggestion —

" Bi'm-by."

Fenwick asked the blessing at Luther's request, sectarianism
being only superficial in this region, and the girls watched the intel
lectual play between the young men — the Jesuit, the Protestant
pietist, and the Oriental-looking type of Booth, where may have
been a distant trace of Jew. Luther and Booth were seeking to
draw each other out, and Fenwick was the moderator between
them — too prone to agree with both, as if some moral weakness re
mained in the fixed intentions of his clerical career.

Luther, on the whole, furnished the strong meat of the discourse,
unsuspecting of Mr. Booth's persuasive line of inquiry.

" You think, then, friend Luther, that John Brown was not alto
gether inexcusable ? "

NEW FACES IN THE VALLEY. 28 1

"Not excusable; for in our faith, no man can do war and pe
right, neither offering nor resenting violence. We submit, consid
ering oppression the least of evils. But few do submit on princi
ple, like us, and in human nature John Brown was te least selfish
of soldiers. He had no interests at stake, no chance ; nothing but
te moral example of his failure and tespair."

" A strait-jacket and lifetime in the lunatic asylum would suit
him ! " suggested Booth.

" He is too proud to take that refuge," Luther said. " He re
sented it when te Ohio lawyers came to his help. That would be
the meanest of all, and Governor Wise is too honoraple a man" to
put a sound head like John Brown's among te maniacs. Te Scribes
and Pharisees in their spite nefer offered to treat Jesus so."

Hugh Fenwick was prompt to make the pious sign, and he ex
claimed :

" Compare John Brown to Jesus ? "

" But for Jesus no man would be in John Brown's shoes now,
saying over te words : ' Take no thought for your life ; for te mor
row shall take thought for te things of itself, and sufficient unto te
day is te evil thereof.' "

"Oh," said Fenwick, "authority, not caprice, must order these
things — Washington or Rome ! "

" But tey never do. King George nefer ordered General Wash
ington. Te authority that counts te sparrow's fall said also, ' Be
ware of men, for tey will deliver you up to te councils, and ye shall
pe prought pefore governors and kings for My sake.' "

" O Luther," Nelly Harbaugh sighed, "why don't you choose
a public life ? It is so comforting to hear you talk."

" Indeed it is," said Mr. Booth ; " he's up in the lines, too ! — But,
Luther, wasn't it great conceit for Captain Brown to take this stu
pendous task upon himself ? "

" Ah ! " exclaimed Fenwick, " the Puritan never goes to a con
fessor to assure his intentions. He is a secretive, treacherous
mover ! "

" Whoever does anything original is conceited, te dull and en
vious think. Columpus had no pusiness to find te New World.
John Brown had no pusiness to cut at this tumor in our society. I
haf been accused in our Tunker body of te conceit that I could
preach, pecause I haf been elected. Only te greatest kind of man
sees te universal, daily necessity , what eferypody else ought to have

2g2 KATY OF CATOCTIN,

seen, but nefer did see — steam to save toil, lightning to save time,
liberty to save sorrow. I wonder at John Brown, but te great con
ceit was his. These mountains will not hold his name ! "

" Soon-down — Bi'm-by ! " Jake Bosler spoke, rising and kissing
Katy welcome home.

" Wait ! " said Mr. Booth ; " let me give you a recitation, Luther,
before you leave us."

As Booth arose, the doves beyond the windows rose also, from
the crotches in the apple-tree, and took their migration to the South.

Mr. Booth repeated Hood's " Bridge of Sighs," standing at his
place in the plain low room, with its cheap paint-grained cupboards
and white plaster ; and first he explained that it was the story of a
poor girl abandoned by her lover, and found self-drowned in the
muddy river.

Bending over the table, as over the drowned one, with his man
ful manner and serious white face, the actor delivered this, his favor
ite recitation, with a fervor and pathos that drew tears and sobs
from Katy ; and, between the stanzas, Jake Bosler could be heard
to whinny, and to say, with reference either to temporal or everlast
ing things, and perhaps both :

" Temmerlich ! " (pitiful). " Bi'm-by ! — Bi'm-by ! "

Luther Bosler listened with a drop of dew in his eyes, like cloudy
amethyst, and still kept his judgment upon the words ; and Nelly
Harbaugh came around and leaned on him, watching Booth with
colder emotion :

" Fashioned so slenderly, young and so fair ! " the victim of love
and trust betrayed was raised in dumb show by the actor, and all
her mutiny and disobedience, her dripping clothes like cerements,
and water-oozing lips, her past dishonor and her residue of what
was " pure womanly," he revealed with delicate and tender respect.

Then, bending over his plate, Mr. Booth asked in intelligent
wonderment, solicitously :

" Where was her home ?
Who was her father ?
Who was her mother ?
Had she a sister ?
Had she a brother ?
Or was there a dearer one
Still, and a nearer one
Yet, than all other ? "

NEW FACES IN THE VALLEY. 283

Nobly modulated, punctuated by his black-eyed glances, every
pain of meaning opened wide like a wound held open till it could
bleed, the poetry stuck in every throat but Booth's, who next de
scended into speculations not less pathetic, because analyzing to the
very nerves and household chords the causes of the outcast's sui
cide. Her

" Feelings had changed —

Love, by harsh evidence,

Thrown from its eminence ;

Even God's providence

Seeming estranged.

She stood with amazement,
Houseless by night —

Swift to be hurled—
Anywhere, anywhere
Out of the world ! "

Here, rising to a wail, with eyes of simulated despair and arms de
scribing the fateful leap from the bridge's parapet, Booth saw Nelly
Harbaugh, without a tear in her eyes, gazing at him in rapture. He
knew that there was no art of betraying woman like reciting with
sympathy woman's betrayal, but this fine peasant-girl's eyes showed
none but intellectual sympathy with his effort, and the passion to
enact like him.

He changed his tactics and assumed the more heroic form of
recitation, giving his robust voice and chest their volume and power ;
but the sense in her warm, blue eyes soon reproved this exuber
ance, and with astonishment, amid his corrected cadences, Booth
discerned in this cool auditor a capable and unexcited critic, not to
be affected by his sentiment, but only through her own ambition.
She rose in his respect the more, though now he saw the route to
her weakness.

" Yaw, Katy, take her sinds to her Saviour, hera Heilond! —
Bi'm-by ! " Jake Bosler sobbed at the conclusion, drawing his little
daughter to his breast.

" Fader, she was dead in te water-brook ! " Katy cried, kissing
him.

" Yaw, my child. Proke her old daudy's heart for some young
city man's," Jake sighed, " and couldn't look her fader in te face.

284 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

Dat's te way with some girls up dis-a-way. Te leeb, te courtin,' is
everyting, till — Bi'm-by."

" This is a gift of God, right used," Luther Bosler said to Mr.
Booth, as he took his whip in hand and the team came to the door ;
" but te tears we pring by eloquence must not pe idle tears ; for
tears should come from deep, pure places, Mr. Booth. As I go
around among te Tunkers to pray at pedsides, where te old ones
die and te pabes are born, I feel what loads of sorrow make one
tear. — Nelly, you shall see it for yourself when we are both be
lievers ! "

He kissed his affianced devoutly ; but Booth saw that something
had broken Luther's spell over her, and she said :

" Luther, may I have your buggy ? Mr. Booth has a foolish de
sire to see my home."

" Oh, surely," Luther answered, hospitably ; " anything here,
friends, is yours. Pe welcome ! "

As Luther Bosler drove southward that afternoon, he crossed
the great blue mountain at the old Sharpsburg hauling-road, at
which the backbone was depressed, and left Turner's Gap above a
mile to his right, where the National road found an almost hidden
clove to go through. In the wild brush and pine-grown gullies of
the former deserted way he suddenly came upon two women riding
easy-racking mares.

" Whoa ! " cried Luther, pulling his four horses in. " I think I
know you, madam. What have you done with my sister Katy's en
gagement-ring ? "

His unerring country eye had seen, through her Dunker hood
and smock-frock, the stature of Hannah Ritner.

" Ah, Luther ! " she spoke, with frank and strong articulation.
— " Come here, Light, and see my young Dunker pastor ! Is he not
a handsome bachelor? "

" A Dunker pastor ! And so fine-looking, too ! Perpetual ro
mance, Hannah, your beautiful mountains hold ! "

Luther looked up into a beautiful, sincere, attractive child-wom
an's face. He did not remove his hat, but wondered what such a
lady, in plain, long riding-dress, was riding through these lonely
ways for.

" You had no right to take my sister's gift," he said to Hannah
Ritner. " Its loss has caused her innocent credulity tears.''

" Luther, it was Lloyd Quantrell's mother's ring. He had no

NEW FACES IN THE VALLEY. 285

right to use it to trifle with a child. I took it to his father. Let
Katy seek it there, and ask for Abel Quantrell's consent."

" Will he give it back, Hannah ? "

" I keep the ring," spoke Hannah Ritner, with unconscious au
sterity ; " I did not ask it, but it has become mine. When Abel
Quantrell refuses his son to her, let Katy come to me at the nun
nery of Snow Hill."

" Very well, Hannah. It is better that all shall pe understood,
and there pe no deceit."

"The old German spirit is in these hills," Light Pittson cried;
" the ring of betrothal, the enchanted maids, the bearded men, like
Odin, doing justice ! Hannah, tell this gentleman's fortune before
we go to Frederick, and you send me back to papa ! "

The weird elder woman gazed earnestly in Luther's face, and,
obedient to Hannah Ritner's command, he removed his wool hat,
and looked with mild pleasure in Light Pittson 's ardent eyes.

Hannah Ritner's dark orbs roved over Luther's countenance
carefully ; and then, with eyes closed under her long black lashes,
she muttered like one with wits scattered and evasive, till finally
she cried :

" Bosler, do not see ! Be blind till I am done."

He closed his eyes, in gallantry more than interest, and soon the
low sounds pierced his ear of the improvisatrice's poetry, sighed
forth with passion :

" The yellow star will fade some morn —
Yellow tassels leave good corn !
Then attend the bugle-horn,

And all thy merit see !
Though in the church they censure some,
Pain and duty keep thee dumb :
To hollow heart the hollow drum
Beats peace and victory ! "

Luther kept his eyes closed, waiting for Hannah Ritner to speak
again. ,

When he opened them, he was alone on the mountain with his
wagon and horses, and the two female apparitions were nowhere in
sight.

" Amen ! " sighed Luther, shaking his horses up ; " if Hannah
raised that spirit by her side, it was a lovely one ! "

286 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE ACTOR.

MR. BOOTH asked Nelly Harbaugh if she would not prefer horse
back-riding to Luther Bosler's buggy ; and there being only one
saddle, though horses to spare, Nelly, with country character,
mounted herself on a folded blanket and forced Booth to take the
saddle and stirrups. Leaving Hugh Fenwick to keep Katy com
pany, the other two started off in the middle of the afternoon for a
ride of several miles, toward the upper portion of the Catoctin Valley.

They passed through one small town, and then crossed between
the two branches of Catoctin Creek, which drained the opposite
parallel mountains that gradually converged and pushed the hillocks
between them higher and higher, until, at \Volfsville, a clean and
tidy village, they forded the clear green mountain-run and began to
ascend a steep and rugged road, nearly on the mountain-plane.

" There is no Maryland place north of us now," said Nelly Har
baugh, " but one little store and old tavern at the edge of the wil
derness, in the stone-heaps of Hunting Creeks. There the waters
run off to the Monacacy River and the Antietam through the gorges
of the mountains, and the people are woodsmen and berry-pickers.
I have never been in those wilds."

Booth seemed to enjoy the increasing loneliness of the way. He
chose parts of the road to charge his horse and gallop up and down
the steeps ; and, although Nelly rode firmly and fearlessly, she was
no match for her companion's dashing horsemanship, and soon he
drew from his hip-pocket a revolving pistol, and began to terrify his
steed by shooting it at trees and stones while riding at full speed.

The unsophisticated horse, finding so wild a rider on his back,
attempted to run away ; but Booth was still his master, and, by
mingled skill and strength, would throw the animal's head out of its
purpose and relation, or force him to stumble and collect himself at
the sacrifice of his fury. Then, with the rough, honest steed all cov
ered with foam and trembling, Booth would awaken him to terror
anew by firing the pistol right between his ears, and let him run into
exhaustion again and check him as before.

The horse was conquered at last, but not composed nor quieted
to his fitful rider's way.

THE ACTOR. 287

"Please do not misuse Luther's horse," Nelly Harbaugh said,
catching up. " His horses are steady as himself, and some of the
neighbors may see and report us to him. Don't fire that pistol
again ! It will alarm this quiet valley."

" I was merely chasing John Brown and his men, experiment
ally," answered Booth, laughing. " I dare say, too, that such con
duct as mine would not reflect credit on the Dunker preacher's affi
anced ? "

" I am watched as never before. So is Luther. His learning is
not to his credit in his sect, which regards eloquence and fame as
evil vanities, and his intention to marry me is already the subject of
their muttered talk."

" Perhaps they will turn him out of the church ? "

" Oh, if they only would, and he consent to it ! But it would
ruin his peace, and that I could not see. His interest in that church
is stronger than ever now, and the Dunkers, I fear, will never trust
me."

"Why, Nelly?"

" Because I am ambitious. - The vanities they hate are life and
religion to me. My love for that man is greater than everything,
but I shall marry him like a girl entering the nunnery on account of
her love."

" O Nelly ! " cried Booth, " he never could shine in any other
world. You can ! "

" But to shine and have no heart left : that is just as bad !
Luther Bosler is a great man. He sees everything for himself. He
loved me with slow, steady strength till the quiet time came to de
clare it, and, ever since, I have been a child before him, yielding up
everything. I am to be baptized, to put away my bright clothes,
and become the example of people who will not have a musical in
strument in their houses, nor even hear Katy Bosler's accordion
without dislike."

" Oh, shame ! It would be ingratitude to God. The best fami
lies in this valley are not your superiors. Look at that profile — that
upturned eye like Medea's accusing the Fates, the eagle curve of the
nose, and the strong, placid mouth that could speak one's doom as
quietly as the Empress Catharine on the Russian throne ! No
wonder, my great girl, you have some aspirations beyond a Dunker
aneeting-house ! "

He saw her countenance flush to this praise, and, riding by her

288 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

side, had put his hand upon her chin, to give her profile the proper
lines.

" I love praise," said Nelly Harbaugh, hardly repulsing his hand.
" I believe all you say, though I don't know who the people are you
compare me to. If my Luther would only speak to me like that, I
could fall off this horse in the dust and worship him."

" Oh, cutting compliment, Nelly ! To be compared to a fanatic
like that ! Are you an abolitionist, too ? "

" No. I have no politics. Negroes I look upon like all us poor
whites — with dislike. Luther's views on this and many subjects I
do not understand. Please take your hand down from my neck,
sir ! But if Luther Bosler was to compliment me I should feel that
love and justice had crowned me, like religion itself. He is so much
a man ! "

Booth drew his hand away from Nelly somewhat testily, but
interested in this girl with all the zest of a hunter of fierce animals.

" You don't think me of a man's growth, then ? "

" You interest me very much. You are a handsome man. I
never saw a more agreeable and distinguished young gentleman.
Once in my life I went to the theatre, and never since have I for
gotten anything in the performance. To have an actor for a friend
seems wonderful to me — so wonderful that I can't find composure
to flatter you. You are not settled, like Luther. He never would
ride a horse furiously for no purpose at all. Therefore, when he
says, ' Love me,' it is like the command in the Scriptures — the voice
of his natural, undivided heart."

" How do you know my heart has ever been occupied before ? "

" It may never be fully occupied hereafter," Nelly answered ;
" the heart adapted for love has the sound of love before love enters
in it, Many a voice has uttered love to me, and I know all the
tones. Lloyd Quantrell is in love : he talks to Katy in love's trem
ble. You make me like you by the self-love you start in me ; Luther
draws me to him by his full-grown character."

" What has he got to recommend him in any worldly view ? "

" Substantial property — farms, horses, standing in his county,
a whole sect at his back, a gentle, steady nature, relatives over a
wide country — all that a poor girl here wants, and more than
enough."

Booth listened with an affable countenance whose very politeness
exasperated the woman engaged to share these benefits.

THE ACTOR. 289

" Are you rich ? " she demanded.

He started, as if not quite prepared for the question.

" How much land have j0# got, sir? "

" Not an acre."

" Have you any city houses, or bonds, or stocks, or insurance, or
even furniture ? "

" Not yet, Nelly."

" Your friend Lloyd says that actors spend everything upon their
own vanity and appetites. I hope you don't. And yet you rode
Luther's horse like a man who never owned his own horse."

" I possess no horse," admitted Booth ; " I am only beginning."

" There's Katy Hosier ; her daddy will give her a farm and stock.
And here, sir, is my farm. I am not ashamed of it, because it is
everything I have got, and every weed in it seems dear to me."

A capacity she had for rapid fluctuations of feeling was instanced
in this turn from challenge to sensibility, and her throat filled up
with emotion as she pulled her horse toward him at her own gate,
and pleaded :

" You won't despise my little home, John ? "

" With you, Nelly, it would be fair Rosamond's bower."

She leaned forward in gratitude and apprehension, as if she
knew no other way, and kissed him welcome.

Nelly's place was a patch of ground a few acres in extent on the
foreland of a high, sliding knoll, with a queer, low, rough-plastered
house set at a spot where she could look off into the far distance at
the diverging mountain-walls of the Catoctin Valley ; and the spire
of Wolfsville Lutheran church was just visible over the nearer hills,
while underneath her wild perch the ravines yawned full of rocks ;
and beyond them the Catoctin Mountain was piled up in lonesome
walls of woods just feeling the teeth of autumn. Some great rocks
still stood like shepherd-dogs above the well-picked fields ; a cow
bell tinkled in the unknown bottoms ; a dog ran out, half civil, and
watched Booth fiercely.

" Who lives here besides you, Nelly ? "

" Not one. My mother died a year ago, and is buried by that
church-steeple."

" Your father ? "

"He is dead, or gone. I may as well tell you, so that you can
ask no further : He was a sergeant in the regular army, who came
to Frederick recruiting before the Mexican War, and married my

2QO KATY CF CATOCTIN.

mother. He said one day, when I was a little thing, that he must
go see his kin in the North, and he never came back. Mother took
her old family name again, and I built her this home. Come in it !"

The structure was simple, of refuse lumber, but made neat by
vines, pots of flowers, an arbor, rude fences, and stone walls.

" I plastered this house myself," Nelly said. " A beau of mine
lent me the tools. I hauled the lime in a borrowed wagon. The
cow-hair a love-sick butcher gave me. Luther Bosler brought me
the lath. I sifted the sand from a gully ; and so I kept out the cold."

There were pictures on the wall, taken generally from labels of
cotton prints or from illustrated newspapers.

•' There," cried Nelly, " is evidence to you, John "—she had fallen
easily at her own home into this familiar address — " that I always
loved the actors ! "

It was a show-poster in colors, representing a fine blonde female,
and entitled " Laura' Keene, in • The American Cousin.' "

" This seems to be good land, Nelly ? "

" It was a stone-heap when I came here. While others picked
berries I and mother picked stones, from week to week and from
year to year. Sometimes I would pet a susceptible farmer to come
with his team and chain of an evening and pull out a few big rocks.
I live here all alone ; do you winder that Luther Bosler is a rich
man to me ? "

He flattered her less, because he began to feel that she had self-
reliance as he had seldom heard of it in a worldly woman.

" Do you not require help for some things ? " he asked ; ''some
things disagreeable to women ? "

" I had to do without it. Winter was before me, and I made
ready to butcher myself, for bacon and ham do not grow ; but a
neighbor relieved me of the killing. I have tended my cow, and
been its only doctor at calving ; and have run the plow in my field
rather than incur the obligation of a lover. In this exposed place
one has to be careful about multiplying equals. Dangerous men
might get access here through my indiscretion — "

" If they did— ? " said Booth.

" I should then shoot off my pistol, too ; but powder and shot are
dear."

She drew down an old single-barrel gun from above the door,
and raised it to her shoulder with a flash of the eye that took sight
at the lock like yellow fire.

THE ACTOR.

29I

"This was all my father left my mother," Nelly said. "More
than once I have taken it clown to kill an insolent man, and marched
him past my gate ! "

" Great God ! " exclaimed Booth, watching her thoughtfully ;
" the women of Daniel Boone were no greater. Nelly, I came here
with you for pleasure only. I know that I can not deceive you.
You are a revelation to me of wonder and of wealth, and you have
reason to love old John Brown that he invaded your country and
brought me to your side — yes, Miss Nelly Harbaugh, to your feet ! "

He had taken her hands in his, and he knelt before her, doing
homage, with an actor's cleverness, to a playing queen. She watched
his manner, or actor's "business," with serious rapture.

" Not one point am I richer than you in," continued Booth, softly
and soothingly. " This little land you possess is more than I have
saved — more shame to me that it is so, for I have been better sala
ried than my superiors these two years ! With strong body and
willful tastes I have followed pleasure and been a spendthrift, know
ing no woman of kindred ambition to lead me forward by love and
emulation in my profession. I have found that woman. I can give
you, Miss Nelly Harbaugh. the one chance of a hundred years on
the stage my father's name is still our passport to ! "

She looked at him severely, sadly, but with a longing, and her
eyes roved through her lowly window to the sun retiring over the
South Mountain and flooding the haze of the valley with golden
cloud.

" Get up," she said. " and let me set you some supper. I am not.
to be taken by surprise."

He saw her take down her father's fowling-piece, and for a mo
ment he was frightened, as he considered her positive and hardening
face, all strong in nervous reflection.

" Perhaps," thought Booth, " she is going to spurn the tempta
tion, and march me to the gate with that gun ! "

She set before him an earthen jug of Bosler's whisky and clear
water from her spring, and lighted her fire at the oven. He fol
lowed her out and began to cut some wood for the oven, and he
soon heard her gun discharged in her buckwheat patch, and she re
appeared with a partridge.

"Why, Nelly," he cried, assisting her at the fire, "these seem to
be brook-trout frying ! "

" They are. An old lover of mine has been fishing to-day in

2Q2

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

Little Hunting Creek, and his devotion comes in time for you. Since
Brown's raid nobody much in Catoctin Valley has worked."

She observed that a single glass of the liquor changed his tem
perament, and made him less considerate and less gently negative.

" You are not ignorant of farm-life, I see," Nelly remarked, as
Booth ate heartily of the trout and baked bird.

" I should think not. Every child of my father was born on a
Maryland farm, and he had a morbid dread for years of our going
to the cities or the theatres. It was thirty-seven years ago, when
he had been only a year in America, and was hardly older than I
am now — for he had gone upon the stage at eighteen — that he
bought a wild patch of ground like yours, and put my patient mother
upon it. For company for her he brought out his penniless old
father, a graduate of the radical spout-shops of London. What a
place for two people who had lived abreast of Napoleon and Wel
lington in the greatest city of the world ! The rank woods grew
around us, full of wild animals and poisonous snakes. The nearest
to\vn was a rude court-house place, and there we went to school
three miles and back of a day, while father roved all over the country
acting till he would be discharged, or wander away disgusted ; and
then he came home to turn the satyr side of his nature upon us. He
had a dread of final poverty, and if we wanted money we had to
work for it. So I have planted corn for three levies a day, and
picked stone off the neighbors' fields for a quarter of a dollar."

" I am glad of that, my friend. Then you know what humil
ity is ? "

She reached out her hand to shake his with sympathy.

" No, Nelly. Humility only our mother knew. We had derived
a terrible ambition from that seedy old ruined grandfather, who
claimed relationship with a Lord Mayor of London, for whom I am
namesake — John Wilkes ! One by one we departed, all for the same
assertive vocation. I was the last."

He had retained her hand, and, holding it warmly, concluded :

" I can feel for you, my girl ! and the bright spirit of art has sent
me to break the spell that walls your beauty in with these dragon
mountains. Think of these fair, long hands, whose silver sinews
Apollo might have driven the stallions of yonder setting sun with,
growing misshapen and warty at the plow and the hoe, when
Heaven intended them for rings of precious stones, and to be kissed
by merchant princes kneeling for your regard I "

THE ACTOR.

293

He kissed her hand, but she asked with a still, steady voice, amid
her flushing :

" What were you paid when you became an actor first ? "

" My father wandered off and died seven years ago upon a West
ern river. I was the only son at home, in Baltimore, and tired of
school and dependence ; so my brother-in-law, a manager, gave me
eight dollars a week to act small parts in Philadelphia. I despised
such employment, and a Virginia manager next offered me three
times that salary, and in Richmond I have become a great favorite.
This volunteering I have done, to defend Virginia, has made me a
hero in the South. Look, Nelly, at these newspaper clippings ! "

With a nervous avarice of praise he read to her, in an accentuated,
professional style, the unqualified fulsomeness of Southern writing in
the provincial days of State rights : " The gallant Booth,"/' The suc
cessor of Brutus in name and deed," " The South's defender," " Vir
ginia's champion," etc.

Soldiering had not been required for so long in America that
Brown's raid had obtained all the importance of a war, and every
private in it received the notoriety of a general, while a Marylander
volunteering in aid of invaded Virginia, seemed in the strained State
" sovereignty " distinctions of those times like Lafayette assisting
another country.

" Mark me, Nelly ! " declaimed Booth, feeding his excitement at
the whisky-glass — " this coming of mine to Charlestown, with the
devotion of a patriot, makes my fortune as an actor ! "

" You mean in the South ? "

" In the South and the West, too, for half the West is Southern.
We are three brothers, and we are to divide our father's raiment by
taking his name in three great sections separately — Junius on the
Pacific, Edwin in the North, and I am to have the cotton States and
the Mississippi Valley. It makes no difference whether I act good
or bad, since I have joined the forces against John Brown, and am
become a Virginian. I shall be a ' star ' next year, traveling with
my own manager and company. Now I am only ' Mr. John Wilkes '
on the bills, but then I shall be ' Mr. Booth, the tragedian,' and half
the receipts will be my share. I shall make twenty thousand dollars
in three months ! "

" My Lord ! " exclaimed Nelly Harbaugh, " what can you do with
the money ? "

" Give it," replied Booth, " to the woman I love, and whom I

2£4 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

will make my leading lady — to pay her a salary worthy of her
beauty, and to encourage her talent by noble dressing and cultiva
tion."

" To me ? " she cried. " I won't believe you ! "

" No, the surprise is too great, my honest girl. You have set
your mind no higher than keeping a Dunker farmer's milk-cans, and
can not grasp the sum of your value to me."

The girl's eyes sought her father's gun above the door with weak
temper, and she started from her seat at the table and retreated from
Booth.

" I was prepared to be flattered by you," she exclaimed, trem
bling. " I thought I was armed against you everywhere. Why
can you tempt me like that ? If I am strong and alone, I am only
a woman."

A flood of actual tears came out upon the bursting of a sob. He
endeavored to break this instant of weakness upon his compassion
ate breast, but her arms were thrown outward, instinctive as her
cry, to ward him off.

" Where is my man ? " she moaned, laying her golden-tinted
neck and unbound wave of hair upon the clay chimney-place ; " the
man I am promised to, and who should be my shepherd now when
I am asked to stray from the fold ? Gone, and I am left with a
beautiful devil and this temptation ! "

"Pardon me!" said Booth, also rising. "Your ingratitude
wounds me, too. I thought I interpreted your wishes, or I would
not have expressed my own. Your sensibility, Nelly, convinces me
the more that you can reform the evil in me, and make me a man.
Young as I am, a woman's influence is already my necessity. If not
as an artist, help me as a wife ! "

He took the old gun from the place above the door, and walked
out into the fields noiselessly, but she knew that he was gone.

Her dog was growling suspiciously to see her cry, when she
looked up, and she walked to her cheap, gilt looking-glass, and took
it from its peg and sat with it, under her arbor, looking alternately
at her great, reddened, expressive blue eyes and at the falling of
sunset upon the receding billows of the Catoctin Valley.

She had lost the joy of this home, the humble monument of her
hands, and lost, also, the solace of her marriage engagement, so
dearly invited and full of sacred whisperings — mutuality, trust, chil
dren, worship, and widening good name • the opportunity of charity,

THE ACTOR.

295

the manna of improvement, the self-respect the world can not take
away. A superficial man, full of strong will, hardly her senior in
years, and unscrupulous in friendship, had crossed the gentle vista
of her domestic settlement like the shadow of a croaking crow she
saw go across her white buckwheat-blossoms — a winged appetite.
With superstitious memory she recalled the fortune-teller's lines :

" Something dark and white I mark,
It shall mark thee with the dark ! "

She heard the gun of Booth go off, and the crow dropped out of his
driving career, limp and nondescript.

Deeper helplessness settled upon her as she thought how her
very thoughts were countered by this stranger's casualty.

Glancing at her looking glass, something of her mother's piteous
expression there, whom she had seen so often cry at Nelly's way
wardness, brought real tears again ; this time she let them come
like steam from the scalding kettle, grateful with relief.

That mother, the flower of the valley, culled by a bold, effusive
stranger, and briefly worn with a devotion above constancy, had
died with one faith and prayer alone — the preservation of her child's
pure soul in wifely custody to some native, unranging man. Her
prayers were now answered, for Luther Bosler had been that moth
er's choice, though she might never knew his and Heaven's conde
scension in this world.

" Oh, speak, mother ! " the soldier's orphan sighed ; " let Nature
somewhere break this chain that drags me down like the hewed tree
to the mill in the valley ! I feel the high wheels take me down ; I
hear the saw scream for me in the long coffin of the saw-mill ; my
body is on the trundle, and I am going forward in the grooves. Oh,
pray-pray— pray ! "

Booth heard these words, and they made him superstitious.
Thrice in that way had his father spoken when he died, a poor, old,
lonely man in the state-room of a Western steamboat, saying with
strangling breath, " Pray — pray — pray ! "

The son felt the admonition of conscience, and he answered
Nelly's prayer :

" I withdraw my offer, Nelly. You are too good a girl."

" What ? " She had arisen from her struggle, like one made the
subject of a miracle.

" This independence you live in, is better than the dependence

296 KATY OF CA70CTIN.

and uncertainty of the stage. The man you have promised is better
for you than I could be. Come, be my friend, and God bless you ! "

His better nature had prevailed ; the game had vexed him, and
he abandoned it.

" O John ! I will always be your friend, for now I see the white
ness and the darkness fall apart in your nature."

With friendship made up of gratitude and relief, she took him
in her arms like a brother long wished for, and on her ardent kiss
the gypsy in his blood flamed in an instant again. He reached for
the jug of whisky, but she interposed :

" Oh, do not drink again ! It changes your nature so."

"You know me already," spoke Booth. "What an angel you
can be, throwing worldly ambition away! It was not made for
woman."

" I confess that sin, John. Am I cured of it ? "

" I never would have robbed you of this independence, Nelly.
It is the dream of my own life to stand above and away from vulgar
contact. If I had made you my pupil, I would not have advanced
you beyond your growth. First I would have put you in the chorus,
and let you find your own level. Your courage and perseverance
would have brought you out."

Again her imagination hearkened to the revelations of that glit
tering mimic world, but he had assuaged her fears. She listened
to him now without suspicion, since he had redeemed himself. He
talked long and sensibly, with most instructive minutice of informa
tion about the chances and rewards of actress-life.

"Why, Nelly," he cried at last, "it is past eight o'clock. You
must not be compromised by staying alone with me in this house.
To horse, my Dunker cavalier ! "

As they stood in her little stable together, making the horses
ready, he murmured, taking her hand :

" Am I trusted ? "

" Always."

"Then you can kiss me."

" This is the last, dear John."

It was late when they reached Bosler's farm, and the great dog
Fritz being absent there, no barking announced them. They put
the horses in the stable quietly, and, guided back to the house by a
candle in a window, paused there to look within.

Katy was asleep, with her accordion still in her hands.

JOHN BROWN EXECUTED. 297

Gazing down at her, with his Catholic breviary in his lap, Hugh
Fenwick looked in more than image-worship.

The spotted pointer, Albion, took in the scene with one eye, as
consonantly mischievous with his own general intentions.

" My gracious ! " cried Katy. as the door opened and the dog
snapped ; " is it you, Nelly ? Why, I dreamed you had pecome an
actor at te teatre."

Jake Bosler, too, had been aroused, and his shaggy hair and
beard were seen at the stairway-door, and he remarked :

" Soun-up. Bi'm-by ! "

CHAPTER XXX.

JOHN BROWN EXECUTED.

A WARM Friday within the brink of December — like the climate
of the better world let down to temper an old man's winter — saw
the lean, long body of John Brown turning, with the breezes from
the Shenandoah, at the end of a cord.

There hung the unprefaced one, amid two thousand soldiers, the
captain of the greatest episode in time.

The gallows-tree was framed about with lines of chivalry ; but
something odd, and moral, and pitiful, hung there on a hempen
string, which made the imposing military display seem moderate,
and no volunteer in it felt the occasion not to be dignified.

Nearest the gallows was the company in which stood to his
musket John Wilkes Booth — stern, handsome, and classical. Quan-
trell was a substitute in a more distant command ; John Yates Beall
was also in the gay-vestured field— each of these young men taking
a lot in the old man's bloody raiment, here raffled in the chief gate
way to the slave States.

It was the dress rehearsal of the mightiest war since the courts \
Europe had repressed and imbibed republicanism.

Stuart and Lee, Wise and Vallandigham, had rehearsed at the
old man's capture. Stonewall Jackson at the head of his school of
cadets, Turner Ashby commanding the pickets, Israel Green, the
marine-officer who had cut John Brown down, and Jeff Thomp
son from far-off Missouri, were some of the pawns at the scaffold.

298

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

The gray uniforms from Richmond, the light blue from Alexandria,
the buff and yellow from Winchester, and the crimson from Appo-
mattox, stood in the great hollow square of troops, to which the
militia from Petersburg had guarded this one old man from jail, as
he rode upon his coffin. ^The guidon-flags to designate the posi
tions these and others were to take, prophesied the name, also, on
each, of some unborn battle.

( No gambler ever paid the odds of life which these neighborhoods
< paid John Brown — a thousand, at least, to one. No Valkyria of Odin \
, and the Northern gods ever marked more surely the sites of devas- /
/ tation : Gettysburg, Chambersburg, Hagerstown, Winchester, Rich- V
/ mond, Knoxville, and Chattanooga, had all been spied out for the
^ strategy that John Brown appeared at this moment to have brought^
Sto such a small and personal conclusion.

Short had been his shrift — tried in seven days, sentenced in six

days more, executed in another month — not seven weeks in all ; but

in that time he rounded life with the accuracy and completeness of

- a comet predicted and fulfilled. His foolishness ended at his taking,

S and his greatness began in his failure. The letters he answered,

' the speech he made in court, his consistency and simplicity, had a

moral influence feebly prefigured by the reckless Samson pulling the

heathen temple down. Of Samson had remained only strength ; of

Brown, no strength — only testimony.

The abolitionist — that unseen terror — had at last been captured
and displayed in the slave States, and probably the only perfect
specimen. Nearly every one of the same genus who had been privy
to his plans retreated from the responsibility, and left him on the
enemy's side, a deadly hostage, subtle as wisdom itself.

Quantrell, Booth, and Beall, the youthful trio we are to carry
through our narrative, all heard John Brown when he rose in court
to answer why sentence should not be passed upon him.

His head still ringing with sword-strokes, and his side and kid
neys wounded, he was able, by long absorption of his theme, to
preach upon it without preparation, and to the most modest and won
drous effect.

He rose from his blanket and cot, like Lazarus from the dead,
all bandaged and feeble, and said that he had come to Virginia to
set free slaves :

" Had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the in-
(^ telligent, the so-called great," said John Brown, " and suffered and (

JOHN BROWN EXECUTED. 299

/' sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been all j
{ right, and every man in this court would have deemed it an act /
(^worthy of reward rather than punishment."

His tones were almost hesitating, and therefore the quiet mean
ing felt its way along the heart-strings as art could never do. Glanc
ing, in need of an idea, at the little Bible by the judge, the old man,
touching sixty years of age and looking seventy, raised his mighty
plaint again :

r "I see a book kissed in this court which I suppose to be the
j New Testament, which teaches me that all things whatsoever I
[would that men should do to me I should do even so to them. It \
j teaches me further to remember them that are in bonds as bound <j
jwith them. I endeavored to act up to that instruction; forjjmi ^
( X.e-lto° YPU12& to understand that God is any respecter of persons.
) I believe that to have interfered, as I have done, in behalf of his
' despised poor, is no wrong, but right."

Those high words had been a felony spoken anywhere in Vir-
(ginia except in court, and for the first time in thirty years they were
now legally proclaimed. The judge was presiding at an abolition
meeting, and was powerless to arrest an orator who came shod in
the supernal light of martyrdom. Poor men without slaves heard the
gospel where no misinterpretation could distort the preacher's na
ture, and the great slaveholders would feign have cried out in chagrin,
as in a noble poem, contemporary with John Brown, " Hadst thou
sought the whole State over, there was no one place so secret — no
high place nor lowly place where thou couldst have escaped me —
save on this very scaffold." *

He continued, and they felt it was a gentleman who now spoke,
whatever he may have been before :

, " Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for;
/ the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further
\ with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions, in this
j slave country, whose rights are disregarded by the wicked, cruel,
(_and unjust enactments, I say, let it be done !•"

Ouantrell's eyes filled with tears at the recollection of Brown's
dying sons, who had gone in bloody testimony before him. He
heard other sobs, also, in that long, deep court-room, writh people
standing in window-sills, and oil-lamps feebly lighting the packed

* " The Scarlet Letter."

300

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

inclosure ; but the voice of Booth rebuked those symptoms, audibly
saying :

" The damned, black-hearted villain ! "

" Heart black as a stove-pipe ! " muttered the tight-shut skull of
young Mr. Beall.

The old man now thanked the court, the neighboring society,
and the jury courteously, and those who had prematurely muttered
against him grew small in their own esteem. He disclaimed any
design of treason or general insurrection, merely desiring to take
people out to liberty. Nor had he misled any, many of his volun
teers having been strangers to him, and most of them had paid their
own expenses to death.

Thus he disposed of the impression sought to be made by some
Northern lawyers, afraid to defend freedom from freedom's side,
and destroyed the stigma that he, an old, wise man, had decoyed
some boys to danger. The little army of fanaticism was made to
stand equal everywhere upon the high ground of principle.

Only one man applauded when he was sentenced, and him the
judge severely rebuked, so that in after-years he was afraid to shout
at all, and grew timid of his own natural emotions.

Little Ned Coppock had been tried, as John Brown came up for
sentence, and when they sentenced him, who was almost a favorite
with the populace, so fair and young he was, Ned also spoke :

" I never committed murder. When I escaped to the engine-
house and found the captain and his prisoners surrounded there, I
saw no way of deliverance but by fighting a little. If anybody was
killed on that occasion, it was in a fair fight."

Coppock had been a poor orphan boy, but the Quaker who raised
him found somewhere in him the spirit of the wild copack, or Rus
sian lanceman, whence may have come his name ; and when John
Brown discovered him in Iowa he entered the crusade cordially, and
it was not to his disparagement in Virginia that he had fought
bravely. He stood up to be sentenced with his arms behind him,
abreast of John Cook/whose arms were folded; and between them
stood two negroes, Green, the South Carolinian, and Copeland from
Oberlin — a college which educated blacks with whites.

Green was from Charleston — the city which was to begin the war
— a runaway slave, and he had fought revengefully. Copeland had
been raised of Virginia seed in Ohio. These two, the least culpable
in motive there, were the most friendless ; but Virginia took distino

JOHN BROWN EXECUTED. 301

tion that day that she, alone of the slave States, probably, would do
no more than punish them equally like the white invaders. Farther
south they would have died by torture.

John E. Cook, the most befriended of any by relatives and power,
and he alone dressed newly and well, was the most unhappy person
in the band. The rest had put life behind them, and were resigned
to die, while he had been tempted to confess upon his comrades, as
he had also been the Hebrew spy upon Virginia, and therefore his
intelligence did him no credit, being unaccompanied with constancy.
A thread of self-love and glorifying went through his natural cour
age and left him unsupported in despondency, but, as his life was
taken at last, he died manfully, and might have left a noble figure
with his delicate outlines and better mental organization than the
rest. It would seem from John Brown's final rebuke of him that
Cook had proceeded to Harper's Ferry in advance, upon his own
motion chiefly, liking the adventure even better than the cause.

Stevens was tried reclining on the court-room floor, with his back
against a mattressed chair, old slippers on his feet, and his head in
a kerchief. He accepted no favors, looked with contempt on court
and foe, regarded John Brown as less of a military genius than he
had supposed, and for the rest cared nothing; since he joyously
believed in spirit -people, and meant his death to be a visita
tion.

Hazlett, who had also been recaptured, was a plain, dull Penn-
sylvanian ; for the little roster of Brown's daring lads covered many
States — Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Ohio, Indi
ana, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina ; and Kansas
had been their military academy.

In spite of their injury to Jefferson County, Virginia, its people
were seldom harsh with these strangers. The Teutonic wave rip
pling through that region was mild and laving, and in many a farm
house lay Kercheval's old " History of the Valley," saying : " Twenty-
four hours never pass during which my imagination does not present
me with the afflicting view of the slave ; and my consolation was that
the master would receive the punishment due to his cruelty, while
the slave should find rest from his toils and sufferings in the king
dom of heaven ! "

This conscience ran through all grades in Virginia, from the
Governor of the State, at Richmond, to the jailer at Charlestown.
" I am in charge of a jailer," the old man wrote to his family, "like

302

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

the one who took charge of Paul and Silas, and kind hearts and
kind faces are more or less about me, while thousands are thirsting
for my blood ! "

He was a multiform study indeed, with prismatic lights and
sides. Now he was Cromwell, and now John Bunyan ; now Pres
byterian, and now Independent, but no preacher would John Brown
have, since all who came to pray with him justified slavery. He had
skeptical or infidel sons, some of whom had died with Christian de
votion fighting for his political cause, but he averred that his expe
dition and defeat had been predestined in the eternal decrees of God.
He disclaimed having ever had the spirit of retaliation, yet admitted
advising acts of deadly reprisal, such as friendship, to this day, feeb
bashful to defend ; and, indeed, he was an Old Testament pupil,
possessed with the complacency of Heaven's headsman and hewer-
down. Discerning people said he was partly insane, but he remarked
acutely : " I must be very insane, if insane at all ; but if that be so,
insanity is like a very pleasant dream to me." There seemed an un
feeling side to him, as when he advised his wife not to come to him,
and to have all the bodies of her slain sons and sons-in-law burned ;
yet his letters home were tender as a daughter's, and from Maryland
came proof that he would never kill a pig nor cut open a watermelon
without dividing with the poor people around him there.

Death seemed to John Brown a mere incident in justice, and
wrong-doers or wrong systems to be under the sentence of Moses
and Joshua. That terrible book which waked the Calvinist and
Baptist to civil war and cut off the English king's head, John Brown
had balanced over the Anglo-Saxon republic, and made terrible
again by his willful reading of it. The democracy of the saints
seemed still his religion, and he wrote to a merchant : " I go joyfully
in behalf of millions that have no rights, and I look forward to other
changes to take place, believing that ' the fashion of this world pass-
eth away.' " " Let me be spared," he said to another Joseph of
Arimathea, " any weak or hypocritical prayers made over me when
I am publicly murdered, and let my only religious attendants be
poor, little, dirty, ragged, bareheaded and barefooted slave-boys and
slave-girls, led by some old, gray-headed slave-mother ! "

Quantrell took Katy in to see him one day when Lloyd was on
guard and Katy in the town. The tears came to Katy's eyes to hear
his chains rattle.

" Tears for me ? " the spiky-haired old borderer said ; " I will

JOHN BROWN EXECUTED, 303

turn them, my children, into songs. At my little farm in Maryland,
twelve miles from here, was a nest of wrens under the rude porch,
and one day the old birds flew right into the room where my daughter
Anne was sewing, and I reading my Bible. ' What can be the mat
ter, father ? ' Anne said to me. The wrens were flying and trem
bling, and twittering, as they had never done before. I took up a
pike that one of my black volunteers had brought in, and went out
on the porch. Nothing seemed to be there. The brooks and copses,
and wild hills were glad with sound and silence, and shadow and
light. 'Nothing is here, Anne,' said I; 'the young birds are in
their nests. It is a false alarm.' 'O father,' she answered, 'look
at that snake ! ' I then saw twined round the post, below the nest
in the eaves, a black snake, all ready to devour the young, so help
less and unknowing in the nest. My child " (to Katy), " I killed
the snake, and such a song as those old birds gave me, sitting on
the rail of the porch, never will be sung till the chains fall off and
the young birds are free ! " He rattled his chains. " You may be
lovers, children, and your young will be some day in the cradle, and
slavery, if twined around the pillar of our system, will choke their
life and chance away. Sing to the old man's pike when slavery is
no more ! for you are all my children, Southern as well as Northern,
though the snake will strangle me, and leave my young wrens to
starve ! "

Katy had not blushed, pity starting in her maiden's milk ; and,
while she strained her eyes in earnest woe, Lloyd tapped his foot
and they sang, and John Brown knew the piece and joined in :

" Carol, brothers, carol ; carol joyfully !
Carol the good tidings ; carol merrily !
And pray a gladsome Christmas
For all good Christian men.
Carol, brothers, carol —
Christmas-day again !

" Hearing angel-music,
Discord sure must cease :
Who dare hate his brother
On this day of peace ?
While the heavens are telling
To mankind good-will,
Only love and kindness
Every bosom fill !

304

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

" Carol, brothers, carol ;
Carol joyfully ! " etc.*

The unwonted singing raised a great commotion. The general,
Taliaferro — whom usage degraded to Tolliver, and whom some
dubbed Tolable — had been at the guard-house across the way, tak
ing his nap on the veranda, heavy with epaulets and juleps, and
ridden by the nightmare of responsibility. He heard this singing,
and took it superstitiously. Some abolition angels might have
rolled the stone away from John Brown's tomb, and celebrated his
escape with Yankee hosannas.

He came tearing up the jail-porch, his mighty sword raising
echoes down the silent afternoon street, and his spurs catching in
his trousers' stripes.

" Campbell — Avis, what's to pay ? " roared the general. " Who's
a-doin' this breakdown ? Is this a time faw levity ? "

The sheriff and the jailer, thus addressed, entered the condemned
man's cell, and the general followed, cunningly, lest some black art
might be at work.

" Cappen Brown," asked the doughty general, " am I to under
stand that you, sah, desire, sah, of this saranadin', sah? It's not in
military usage, cappen, but we consult yo' wishes, sah."

" I do, general. The young people sing at my request."

" Cappen Brown," exclaimed the general of militia, saluting for
the third time, " yo' desiah shall be complied with, sah, in spite of
regulations."

Hereupon the general turned, at such a military right angle that
he ran into six of his staff, who had come to rescue him, and an in
extricable confusion of sabers, chapeaux, epaulets, spurs, salutes,
oaths, and apologies ensued, ending by a strewing of the place with
fallen magnanimity. Some one ran to the cannon under the court
house portico to fire it off, and the negroes at the two hotels rang
the big dinner-bells in the trees, and fell down their respective cel
lars, to anticipate a bombardment.

Keenly alive to the humors of the siege of Charlestown by a
phantom abolition army, Ouantrell and Booth put up tricks on the
Virginia militia, including John Beall, who regarded everything with
a lowering and serious temperament. But the culmination of bur
lesque and pathos was in the reception of John Brown's wife.

* By Rev. W. A. Muhlenberg, of the family of General Muhlenberg, the
Lutheran pastor in the Valley, whose gown covered his Continental uniform.

JOHN BROWN EXECUTED. 305

The subject of her visit had been made a diplomatic matter, and
was the occasion of more telegraphing between the old pagan Capi
tol at Richmond and the seat of war in the Valley than all the Vir
ginia press required for news.

Would she bring, concealed about her person, the plot for his
rescue or escape ? Did the art of war show an instance of a woman
entering the picket-lines ? Could the reception of Mrs. Brown give
a pretext for the Federal courts to interfere ?

Chivalry prevailed at last, and word was passed to bring Mrs.
Brown from Harper's Ferry to Charlestown, not by rail, but by pri
vate conveyance and military escort.

The carriage-cushions were carefully taken out to see if they
concealed any Northern newspaper correspondents, and an escort
of cavalry formed around the ancient vehicle, that had apparently
been used in the Shakespearean age by Captain John Smith, and
was at least as old and as decrepit as the American Constitution,
which was soon to furnish old lumber and leather enough for two
governments.

A file of Virginia dragoons in the uniform of Marlborough's age
surrounded this crazy State vehicle ; the poor lady's friends were not
allowed to ride with her ; but the Virginia militia officers, instead,
inflicted their preposterous eighteenth-century sympathy and com
pliment upon a woman simple and native in her life and ways as
Pocahontas.

Up the long, dry turnpike stretches, like causeways to the top
and bottom of the world, dragoons and coach came rattling, pistols
and sabers ready ; and negroes peeped from knot-holes in toll-house
and barn, and white families turned out at lanes and blacksmiths'
corners, to see this ogress, who had been the bandit's bride and ma
ternal font of bandit sons.

Alas ! She had hunted for twenty-four hours at Harper's Ferry
to get a wandering bone or shoe of her lost babes killed there in the
foray ; and one had been the sport of a dissecting-table, and the
other clapped into a dead negro's arms and buried indistinguish-
ably.

So she reached the hill-top of Charlestown, marked by the
stumpy-towered Episcopal church and the prosecuting attorney's
mansion, and there the great review was taking place to prepare for
the execution on the morrow. The poor lady, worn out with the
silly chatter she had been subjected to, took little note of the glitter-
20

306 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

ing bayonets and loud comments — each yelled with special reference
to " Madame " Brown ; or of the churchyard filled with rabble and
the church itself a barrack ; of the absence of black people from the
streets, and the curiosity of women. She heard the sharp echoes on
the stones, felt the sharp pain in her heart, and realized where glory
and philanthropy left the blasted home.

The street at the jail corners was so crowded that the military
had to clear a way and form a square ; but all their ostentation was
wasted on the plain, large woman who had learned patience in
Northern winters and unintermittent child-births, and who had dealt
above a quarter of a century with a husband impracticable and per
severing as the wild steer.

They gazed on her with hardly recognition, thinking she had not
yet come when she was gone ; for they expected they knew not
what, but something dazzling, like Taliaferro's aides, some of whom
had their hair plaited double behind and brought around to the front
and tied in a bow-knot between their eyes !

The general himself was an entire review, as he stood in the
upholstery of militia regalia, with a staff never afterward equaled in
numbers and pomatum in the New World.

Leather thighings, prodigious boots, loops of dyed horse-hair,
epaulets which seemed to clank, and sabers which seemed to titter,
spurs pointing upward, swords pointing forward, scabbards getting
awry, mustaches twisted, beards like breastplates, dignity and vanity
mixed, like the quid of tobacco under the martial jaw, and the solem
nity of an historical occasion attempted to be preserved coincident
with the gallantry due a lady.

" General Tollivaw " (the scene seemed to give it the sound of
Bolivaw), " pawmit me, general, saw, to present Madame Brown,
saw, of the State, saw, of New Yawk — ah ! saw."

Solemn silence, punctuated by an officer letting fly his tobacco-
expectoration over his helmet-chain without moving his countenance
from its austerity.

" Welcome, welcome to Vahgeenia, madame," spoke the general,
vast hat in hand, and describing the radius of a great circle on the
floor. " Pawmit me to shake yo' hand. Pawmit me to wish yo'
health is faw. Pawmit me to intojuce the offisaws of my staff."

Severally, to this unabashed, unrelaxing, stalwart mother and
pioneer, the well-meaning but inconsiderate sons of Mars were intro
duced, each in sentiment surrendering his personality to " Virginia,"

JOHN BROWN EXECUTED. 307

while, in fact, with a whetted self-consciousness provincial patriotism
alone could so deform. Some assured her of " true Virginia hospi
tality " if she should ever visit their respective counties— she who
was to know upon the morrow the pang of widowhood and want,
and in whose life, for years past, the acquisition of a calico dress was
an historical period !

But of that fantastic staff how many were to fall and clutch the
turf, crying on God and mother, and forgetting that Virginia ever
was!

It seemed a comfort to her, after a quarter of an hour of ill-timed
smirks and inanities, to be taken aside by Mrs. Avis, the jailer's
wife, and searched for implements of suicide ; but Mrs. Avis knew
John Brown would never take his own life, and her hands had the
tenderness of caresses. There was the real and memorable hospi
tality of Virginia, in that shoemaker-jailer's family, facing the roar
of merciless millions, who called for severity to Brown's men, but
saying back, " These are my captives and my guests." Such jailers,
a little later, might have made prison-pens also pitiful.

The jailer alone remained in the little parlor with the condemned
man and his wife, although Taliaferro broke in once, to say that they
could only have two hours, and then gave them four, for he was a
kinder man than his wind.

The resolute woman of forest stature and manual labor's mold
went up to John Brown and called him " Father." He was the only
father she knew ; for, marrying him at half his age, when she was
of only sixteen years, she paid the penalty childhood, like Ruth, pays
to old Boaz and his prospects and intellect.

He was then postmaster, surveyor, tanner, and town-maker, with
the dogmatic will of one predestined to be restless all his days. He
led her continually into the deserts, and left her there, and went off
on some inspired freak of ruin, leaving little babes around her, and
even a babe to come; and when she gave him her destiny and
tenderness in charge, he already had been the father of seven chil
dren, five of them alive.

He gave her the life of a poor white, aggravated by the splendid
illusions of a schemer and a dreamer, and the end of the dream had
come.

He had levied upon her sons, the support of her mountain-patch
of land, and taken them to death, with their widows to be left upon
her care. Thirteen children had she borne this old man, the sire of

308

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

twenty ; and to-morrow he was to die, and bequeath her only his
body.

He took her in his arms, and in his white beard lay her face, as
often she had thrown it into the fleece she spun for his clothing in
his absence, wondering if he could be dead. The spasm of her
broad shoulders showed that she was weeping, and the gurgle of
the spirit within, breaking over this last flinty barrier, sobbed forth
a few times ; but he stood like a rock used to the flood and full of
its moss and lichens ; the tears that wet his face were the splashings
of hers. He was pitying her and Nature, but not himself.

She looked up, and saw him so natural and strong, and dried her
tears, still leaning on his mouth ; for she looked like his buxom
daughter, and only his shaft-like head made him higher than hers.

" Father," she said, " they let me come to see you at last."

He kissed her, and asked for the widows he had made and the
children he was never to see.

" Mary," said he, " is grandfather's old granite tombstone set up
by the big rock at North Elby ? "

" Yes, father, with son Freddy's name under your grandfather's,
who fit in the Revolution."

" I value it highly," said John Brown, " for I am the first of my
family ever put in jail ; and, Mar}-, I want my name to go by Grand
father John Brown's. A revolutionary soldier, too, I hope I was."

" Papa, we don't accuse you. You thought it was right. We
think so, too."

" Three of my sons, killed in this war for liberty, I want remem
bered by an inscription on that stone. Grandfather and me will
make two more. I have loved this life, wife, so much, I want to
leave a line upon a stone."

His ambition was greater than the expectations of religion, for
he had found that tombstone the day he ordered his deadly pikes
from the blacksmith, by his grandfather's grave.

The tombstone being discharged from his mind, Captain Brown
settled into a contented mood, and sat down to the meal the good
jailer furnished, eating sparingly, and with business references to
small matters of property ; for he adhered to the idea, and his wife
also, that he was a great master of affairs, and had always failed
through the incompetence of the times, seasons, and agents. He
asked if his wife could not remain with him that night and depart
with his mold next day, instead of retiring, as if she were a whole

JOHN BROWN EXECUTED. 309

army, to Harper's Ferry, eight miles away, and there await his
dumb remains. The request was denied ; for the rabble clamored
about the jail, and the moral pulse of the State was in a high fever.

So Brown settled down to read his will, which the jailer wit
nessed.

It was a will of souvenirs, and not property : the tombstone, his
surveyor's compass, a silver watch, a glass, a lost gun, Bibles, and
debts. He wanted all his little debts paid, even to people whose
names he had forgotten. When this was ended, the old man looked
quite comfortable and commercial ; for his ideas never had failed to
impress his family, and the departure he was to take on the morrow
seemed only a larger journey and with no traveling expenses to
provide. Strange that he had read the Bible every day of his life,
and forgot it now ! We all think we shall die anticipating, but we
die retrospecting, and preparing for this world. It was, probably,
with an insight into his high, ambitious, Puritan nature, that Mary
Anne Brown inquired :

-" Father, wasn't you disappointed at being took so soon ? "

" My dear," the old man said, \vith a nervous twitch, his hairy
forehead wrinkled speculatively, and his gray eyes preoccupied,
" the errors of my plan were decreed before the world was made,
and I had no more to do with the course I pursued than the shot
leaving a cannon has to do with the spot where it shall fall."

" Pappy," she said, the last word being a cry that struck the
jailer's heart, " didn't you suffer when Oily died, and our oldest boy,
Watty ? "

" No pain is like our offspring's death," the old man said, with
his right shoulder pushed forward as if to lean upon some spirit
unseen ; " I loved my children, Mary ; you have seen me nurse them
weeks at a time. But I saw them die without tears, they were so
brave."

All trembling, the large child-woman rose and meant to say
something proudly, but it would not articulate.

" I have no boy left," she meant to say, " and you will be taken,
too."

" Courage, wife ! We have made our mark on this world by
our failure. Death is the incident of a great purpose. There is a
bright morning and a glorious day. Moderate circumstances, Mary,
is the best blessing of this life. By poverty and failure I have been
preserved to do this work. It is done ; and I shall see our sons

310 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

and daughters who have gone before — the three babes who were
buried in one grave, the three grown ones who died for liberty.
The blessing of our offered blood will follow you for all the re
mainder of your days.* See this, Mary ! "

He took up a newspaper and read a message from the Governor
of South Carolina, which had just come to hand, threatening seces
sion in the event of a " Black Republican " being elected President,
and also a legislative act, as follows :

" Resolved, That the State of South Carolina is ready to enter,
together with the other slaveholding States, or such as desire pres
ent action, into the formation of a Southern Confederacy."

She did not understand it, or was in grief too profound to try ;
but he explained to her that he had forced slavery to become revo
lutionary, and made the Union of the American States the national
cause, and involved it with the fall of slavery.

She listened with interest at last, and so he absorbed the time
till she was commanded to go, and his failure took the light in her
loyal nature of a postponed success.

Proudly she repulsed the insinuations of the smirker who assured
her, returning to Harper's Ferry, that slavery was a gentle boon to
white and black.

" Every child of John Brown believes he died for the greatest
cause in this world," she retorted, " and so do I."

Having had his way and will to the last, John Brown went forth
to die next day, taking no pains with his toilet, and wearing the
same clothes in which he had fought, and an old slouched hat. He
gave what silver change he possessed to his fellow-prisoners, and
admonished them to die like men, and never spoke to Hazlett, lest
the identification might be testimony against him.

Stepping forth in the public street of Charlestown with cords
upon his arms, the old man was indifferent to his coffin in the little
wagon and to the movements of the military ; but when the young
wheat in the winter fields met his gaze, and the fodder-rows of rus
set maize, and the winding mountains in the near east, he felt the
farmer in his blood again, and not the radical.

" This is a beautiful country. It is the first time I have seen it
just here."

* She survived John Brown twenty-five years, and lived to see a statue of
him voted by Kansas to the national capital, and his scaffold sold in pieces
valuable as their weight in silver.

DISINTEGRA TION. 3 I T

Life swelled in his nostrils, and the sense of beauty that is the
joy forever. He looked on those blue and mellow mountains to the
last, thinking of nothing else, except that the boys and citizens ought
not to have been kept from the execution-field.

It was a privilege to see him die, beyond the death of any man
yet known in America who had chosen the gallows for his death
bed. Some who had looked into his genealogy thought they saw in
his face and works signs of all the races that were united in him :
English Puritan, Holland Dutchman, Welsh — the stocks of Hamp-
den, De Ruyter, and Jefferson.

He climbed the scaffold first, shook off his hat, thanked all for
favors, and over his kindly smile the death-cap was drawn.

" I can't see, gentlemen. You must lead me," the muffled voice
petitioned — to be led to the death-trap.

He did not desire to publicly speak, though it had been forbid
den. The only inhumanity he suffered was the delay of the militia,
who were made to march, countermarch, face outward and inward,
and repel an invisible attack. There was one side of the hollow
square left open, where the sun was shining overhead.

" I am ready at any time," was extorted from his lips at last;
"do not keep me \vaiting ! "

The scaffold-trap then opened beneath his feet, like the wicket
of heaven on golden hinges turning, and all that was erratic in the
old man's life straightened on the silver cord that let him down into
the bosom of the Valley.

In after-years the armies there faced every way, to repel insidious
Liberty seeking to come in, but it was let down from a side they had
not thought to guard.

CHAPTER XXXI.

DISINTEGRATION.

LUTHER BOSLER had learned, by the John Brown raid, a lesson
nearly forgotten among the Maryland Germans, with their other
Pennsylvania Dutch antecedents — of which was their dialect, fast
turning into unadorned English— namely, the ready money of going
to market.

He and his father would now rise by the moon and get the

3I2

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

wagon ready, and when all strangers were shut out of Virginia, in
the season of the executions there, Luther bethought him of the
market at Baltimore, and he took Nelly and Katy along.

It was at least forty miles, but the way seemed grand, over the
old National road, with its remaining wagoners' taverns, the hollow
tavern-yards of Frederick City, the turbid Monocacy River, Sugar-
Loaf Mountain in the south, the Patapsco winding in its wooded
hills among mills and convents, and Ellicott's Town, so stately with
factories.

They stopped part of the night at a tavern near St. Charles Col
lege, fifteen miles out of Baltimore, and Father Hugh Fenwick,
teaching there, showed them by moonlight the park and mansion of
Doughoragan Manor, right opposite the college ; and there, where
he had lived, the last survivor of the signers of the Declaration of
Independence, Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, lay buried in his family
chapel.

The long, yellow-coated mansion, trimmed with white, its archi
tectural balustrades and projecting wings, great servants' quarters
and many slave-cabins, its terraces of flowers and winding walks
and mighty trees, formed a real palace amid an estate that would
have been belittled by calling it baronial.

Katy walked with Hugh Fenwick, and a young pupil at the col
lege opposite, named Surratt — a tall, slender, modest person — ac
companied them. The manor-house was perhaps an eighth of a
mile in circuit, and a friendly gardener led them close enough to the
windows to see the portraits within, and hear the various company
there engaged with music, dance, or conversation. They started at
one place to hear Lloyd Ouantrell's name mentioned.

" Hush ! listen ! " Nelly Harbaugh whispered.

" Isn't he dissipated ? " asked a woman's voice within.

" A little, but his father says marriage will end all that," another
lady was replying ; " and he is remarkably fine-looking, shy of ladies,
and has a fair property in Charles County. Abel Quantrell told
cousin that she was the only maid in Maryland beautiful enough to
marry his son, who was a Lloyd, you know ! "

" When is the marriage to take place ? "

" He is with the soldiers in Virginia now, but both families are
agreeable. Cousin fell in love with Mr. Lloyd at first sight, and he
is so affectionate toward his father that no opposition is expected."

Katy Bosler's eyes shone so wildly in her suddenly paled face

DISINTEGRA TION.

313

that Hugh Femvick reached out to support her, but her brother al
ready held her in his arms, murmuring :

" Katy, it may not pe true. Tere are other men, Katy, petter for <
my peautiful sister ! "

The girl straightened up, and spirit flashed from her eyes.

" I am going to see Lloyd's father in Paltimore," she said, "and
get back my wedding-ring ! "

She listened a little to the consolations of Hugh Fenwick as he
took them all through the old Sulpician College, which Mr. Carroll
had founded in his ninety-fifth year of life. Katy thought only of
her lover, who had attended this school ; and, standing in the chapel
before the great crucifix, she saw her priestly friend cross himself
and mutter.

" Tell me what to say ! " spoke Katy, in trembling, nervous
energy. " I want to pray like Lloyd ! "

" Say after me," Hugh Fenwick answered ; and Katy re
peated :

" ' O all ye saints of paradise, men and women ! obtain for me
these graces — These graces ? " Katy hesitated. " My gracious !
what is graces? Is 'graces' what I must get to get Llo>d's
love ? "

"'To love God alone/" Hugh Fenwick quoted from the ser
vice,

" I can't say it now ! " Katy burst out. " It would be a sin. I
love Lloyd alone, this wicked minute ! "

" Love me!" Hugh Fenwick whispered, with trembling passion
on his tongue ; " I am to be the priest of God, and will teach you
the way of his will."

" And all tern graces, too ? " Katy entreated. " Oh, I am igno
rant, and te fine people in te palace won't have me amongst tern ! "

She reached her hands up to her learned friend in helplessness
and great solicitation, and hardly knew that he was kissing her in
the very moment of his own invocation to love the highest One
alone.

" I do not understand all tese names, Mr. Priest," Luther Bos-
ler observed, as they looked over the great stone building, and heard
the owls call. " What is Sulpician and what is Jesuit ? And which
are you ? "

" I am not yet ordained," Fenwick replied. " I admire the Jesuits
for their worldly learning, and the Sulpicians for their theological

314 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

learning. Washington city, or rather Georgetown, is the university
and headquarters of the Jesuits ; by a miracle it was directed that
. the American capital should be located at its gates, for the college
preceded the capital."

" So, if us Luterans and Reformed people had got tere first, it
wouldn't pe a miracle ? " suggested Luther, controversially.

"The Jesuits and Sulpicians always assisted each other, and the
Sulpicians had the first theological seminary. They put it in Balti
more, and put their college near Gettysburg, in Pennsylvania ; but
it did not flourish among those old Germans, and, after the Irish be
gan to emigrate in 1849 strongly to America, the Sulpicians removed
to this, their only college now. I am Irish and German, Mr. Bosler,
and my choice is not yet fully made."

" Do not waver," Luther spoke ; " pe not of two opinions ! Love
and religion pegin in single-mindedness."

He looked at Nelly Harbaugh tenderly, and added :

" Like our love, Nelly ! "

"Oh, always believe I loved you," Nelly answered, as, she put
her hand in Luther's. " Two ways there may be to walk in, dear,
but two loves never ! "

If Katy Bosler really meant to go and see Abel Ouantrell, she
was spared a journey. As she stood with her brother in the market-
square, in Baltimore — Nelly Harbaugh reading theatre-bills on the
bill- boards — she heard a voice say :

" Sho ! Light. Cube all your romance and it is four walls — the
same as a prison ! "

" ' Stone walls can not a dungeon be,
Nor prison-bars a cage,'

where love and romance live within them," Light Pittson replied.
" See this beautiful group of Germans, sir. What rosy girls ! What
a bison-like, great-eyed young man ! "

"Young squabs, Mister Quantrell ! Winter spring - chickens !
Egg-plants never frosted ! New-laid eggs ! Putter ! Putter-peans !
And a Frederick County capon as pig as a goose ! "

" No scrapel, Bosler ? Sho ! You Dutch forget your Pennsyl
vania fare. No Moravian case ? No Crefeldt sausage ? What's
the price of pepper-hash ? — Light, will you like some of their mount
ain honey ? "

He looked down from his wig, with his mouth turned down at

DISINTEGRA TION.

315

the corners, and his sardonic smile, like the last red coals in ashes,
fell upon the two girls. — " Ho ! " he spoke ; " here are peaches and
cream ! How much for such marketing as this ? "

" 111 sell out," cried Katy, leaning against the wagon-tail, "for
te ring you took from Hannah Ritner. It's mine. You sha'n't cheat
me out of it ! "

" Sho ! Rings were superfluous for love-matches when I was a
boy in York and Adams Counties. They put a ring on the bull and
a lawsuit on the bridegroom. They had the herd first, and the
herd-book afterward. I wish I was a boy again ! "

" You can pe a petter poy than I guess you ever was," replied
Katy, " py letting your son pe honest, as he wants to pe, and
marry me ! "

" What ! " spoke Light Pittson ; " Lloyd in love with this child ?
He said he had a mountain beauty; and isn't it romantic, father,
that I should find her here, and exclaim that she was beautiful ! "

" It is a compliment for Katy," Luther Bosler bluntly said ; " pe-
cause you are right lovely yourself, if you may pe a little wild ! "

" Hallo ! " exclaimed Abel Quantrell, putting his hand into his
shirt-bosom, his market-basket at his feet, and his black boy attend
ing him — " we are cubing compliments, and I'll complete the square
by saying that yonder is Miss Amazon herself !"

He gazed on Nelly Harbaugh, who was nettled at Luther's un
conscious compliment to another woman, and she replied :

" When you got to be a right old man, I reckon there was one
rogue the less."

"WThy, this is Hannah Ritner's friend, the Dunker pastor!"
Light Pittson said. " She told his fortune, Mr. Quantrell. Can't
you see Philip Melanchthon in his soft eyes ? And Zwinglius in his
soldier-port ? Oh, how the East is embellished ! "

" Ho ! sho ! " said Abel Quantrell, " I see we shall buy nothing
here. I'll cube the matter. — Bosler, send all you have to sell, to my
house ; my boy will show you the way. And bring your girls along,
and dine with us. Sho ! never mind the expense. I want some in
formation from you."

As these mountain people went through the street of Old Town.
Baltimore, they saw against the great shot-tower there the theatre
bill of Edwin Booth, brilliant young son of the historic tragedian,
announcing that he was to play that night.

" O Katy ! " Nelly whispered, "make Luther take us there."

3l6 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

" No," said Katy ; " Luther is a preacher; I'm a preacher's sis
ter, and my heart's too full for te theatre, Nelly."

"I'll ask Luther!" Nelly said, impulsively. "If he loves me
he'll give me one chance. If he won't — I'm not afraid of men ! "

When they were all seated in Abel Quantrell's library, among
the law-books and card-tables there, after a wonderful day, Nelly
asked to be taken to the theatre. Her spirit was feverish, and she
felt out of place in a rich man's home before that Miss Pittson, whom
Luther had complimented ; and she observed that Katy Bosler, with
less intelligence, absorbed the surroundings without fear.

" Nelly," Luther answered, " I think you do not know what te
theatre is. It is a place where they play life, and do not work it
out. I have come from te Plue Mountain to make a little money,
and take it home. We are in te house of a great man, who has
achieved education, justice, and real things ; so let us look around
and grow wise, and save our money te theatre would get from
us."

" Mr. Booth said I had talent for the stage. I want to see a
real city play. It is the call of my nature, and, if you love me, you
will take me."

" Yes, Luther, take her," Light Pittson interposed ; " if it is the
call of her inspiration, you must respect it."

" It is not te call of love, I know," said Luther ; " it is not te in
spiration of your mountain home and poor, deserted mother, but of
te sergeant who deserted both te army and te wife. It is te spirit
of restlessness and change."

" It is no worse, Luther, than your restlessness for money, that
sends you all over the country before the chickens can crow."

Luther replied, gently : " If I seek a little money too sinfully I
shall be punished for it ; but te life we are to enter on, my dear, has
all te joys of both te worlds to me — of heaven and love besides. It
has a mystery te theatre tale can not have : two hearts united in te
family, two dispositions to be yoked together, one pelief to cultivate,
and a grave also mutual at te end of days."

" That is not all," the girl exclaimed ; " if some of my father's
spirit is in me, I came by it naturally. You have refused the most
earnest request of my life."

" Nelly, darling, I must be consistent. I am our preacher."

" Yes, Luther. You obey the call of your inspiration, but if I
have one it must be smothered in my heart."

DISIN TEGRA TION. 3 \ j

" Nelly," the large, bearded young man spoke, tenderly, " we
have only one inspiration, and that is love."

She accepted his hand, but her soul was wayward, and she said
to Light Pittson when they walked aside :

" I have asked him, and been refused. Now I can go by my
self."

Abel Quantrell asked Luther Rosier all about the effect of John
Brown's raid in mountain Maryland, and what vote the Republican
candidate would draw there the next autumn, saying that Hannah
Ritner, a trusted friend of liberty, had recommended Luther as a
firm and just man. Luther heard, thoughtfully, until the fierce
spirit of the old man suggested war as a possibility, and sought to
incite Luther to resistance.

"Abel Quantrell," Luther spoke at last, " there you go too far,
like te disciple of our Lord, who drew his sword and cut off te high-
priest's ear ; and ever since St. Peter's spirit has been in te Christian
church, till Christ is everywhere in sound and symbol, and nowhere
in te soul. We Baptists had our St. Peter, too, in John of Leyden,
who took a city like John Brown, and prought upon his brethren
generations of persecution. But Menno Simons, a former priest of
Rome, died peaceful in his cabbage-garden with thousands thirsting
for his plood, pecause he would not meet evil with evil. He is te
father of all te non-resistants, Quakers and Baptists, and te first of
all rebukers of man-holding was us."

" Sho, sho ! Old Brown has cut off the high-priest's ear this
time, and the priest must needs hear everything. Go preach to
your people that Christ is for liberty."

Katy came in at this place, and Abel Quantrell looked at her
with steady curiosity, ending with something like approval.

x " No wonder Lloyd fell captive to your eyes, young plover ; I
could have taken them once to my dreams, too. Are you a Dunker,
like Brother Luther here ? "

" I promised to be, mister."

" You do not believe in rebellion, then, but obey the laws and
seek the spirit of peace and submission ? "

" I want to pe happy," said Katy, " and to have God bless me
and —

" And Lloyd. You are a child yet. There is time enough for
affection to try itself. Your brother will tell you that what I am to
say is right."

318 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

He came to her and sat by her side, and put his bleached hand
upon her head, and, turning back the small forehead, her radiant
eyes, that would be his daughter's, looked at him with the dew of
prayer in them.

" Are you afraid of me, Kate? "

" No. But you are going to preak my heart."

" Kiss me forgiveness before I do."

She raised her chin and kissed him, and suddenly a thought, like
coincidence, rushed through her ardent brain :

"God gif me this soul," she cried aloud, "and let it feed with
me of thy supper ! "

" Amen, shwsshter ! " from Luther Bosler.

Her arms were around Abel Quantrell with all the strength and
affection she showed his son that love - feast Sunday, and tender
kisses thawed his frosty lips. The magnetism of life and childhood
entered the cold portals where once was the throne-room of a con
queror's mind. He could not arrest her attack ; it came like Indian
summer and its thunderstorm upon the fading head of winter.
Luther Bosler looked on with the sensibility of brother and of priest.

"Gif back that ring where it pelongs," sighed Katy. "Then
God will bless you, old man, and, till you love somepody, he never
will."

" ' All hearts in all places under the blessed light of youth say it,
each in its own language/ " * the old man repeated and explained.

" Had I the merry devil's trick to be young Faust again, my son
would wonder at my gallantry ! You can not kiss, my child, the
warm blood back where it has flowed, nor by a ring revive the
golden passion of my prime. What justice is a wasted frame, pre
sented at the altar, and love's signet, falsified by a ceremony no nup
tials will attend ! Sho, sho ! how few there be who work for the
bettering of this world ! how many work to people it ! "

" Nothing," said Luther, "can be more acceptable to our Creator
than te sight of a well-replenished earth. If he preferred Abel's
sacrifice of a lamb's life more than te insensible fruits of Cain, will
he not approve te offering of a human life prought forth in all te
piety of love and te sacrifice of pain ? "

" That has been my lamb upon the altar. I have rendered it,"
urged Abel Quantrell. " I will not be a hollow hypocrite, and raise
another altar to the world."

* Goethe.

DISINTEGRA TION.

319

"Mister," said Katy, " you seem to pe fighting love away. I
know you love something, pecause it troubles you. Te ring is not
love, I know, but it is comfortable to have, and to look at it and say,
' It's mine.' What made you gif my ring of love, that made me so
happy, to Hannah Ritner ? She told me I must git a ring and nefer
lose it, and, when I lost it, always hunt it back."

" You can lie, I see," the old man said, austerely. " She never
was so weak — to hunger for what she never was refused."

" I won't let you hate me," Katy cried ; " you know I don't tell
lies, mister. Look at me ! And this minute I would rather die and
pe took home to my old fader dead than to lie apout my love and
Lloyd. He loved me pefore we efer thought of any ring. Te Lord
put te ring upon his jacket, and he found it there, and it was his
mother's. When he gif it to me- he didn't love me more than we
both loved a'ready, but it made me happier."

" Dunce ! " said Abel Quantrell. " Why ? "

" Pecause — pecause — "

" Cube it ! Because what ? "

Katy blushed, and then looked up again, all beaming :

" Pecause, mister, his love respected me, and wasn't going to
hurt me. "

" How could you know that ? He meant to cheat you."

" Not with his mother's ring — that was too holy. If his mother
had nefer had a wedding-ring, he might not haf cared."

Abel Quantrell was now excited, and the blood that would not
start to beauty's caresses, ran to his temples at the stern alarum of
his intellectual indignations. He rose and placed his wrinkled hand
in the scarce whiter folds of his bosom, and paced the room in the
spirited tread of that pagan who defied the lightnings ; yet Luther
Bosler saw that his face was not now spiritually refined, and that
the cane on which his lame foot relieved its burden nearly trembled
in his grasp.

" I will witness before every God," he said, " how false that im
putation is — that a child of love is lawless to his mother's sex, and
only to be humanized by form and hypocrisy ! The mighty races
of the bond and poor are thus to be tainted by the public opinion
which refused them marriage, and the wedding-ring is to be a higher
test of love and interest than the fond homage of separated hearts
and offspring noble as the stag ! "

As he stopped and stood, with erect head and trembling nostrils,

320 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

a magnetism as of some old, gallant husband to his young bride,
flowed toward the Bunker girl. Katy went up to him with her na
ture aroused by his words :

" Yes," she said, " I think I know what you mean — that if people
lose te wedding-ring, God will still let love make tern happy. I love
your Lloyd. I can try to forget him, but God will teach me."

" Abel," Luther Bosler said, reflectively, falling into the simple
speech of his sect, " nobody blames te slave-people that can not
marry and own their children, any more than them who lived with
out te knowledge of the law of Christ had to pe judged by it. But
all them who knew the law by the law were judged. Te slaves seek
decently to pe married. After tey are free, some day te licentious
ness got from living without marriage will pe their accusation. Mar
riage is te sign of a man's respect over te world, and te due of
woman, who is judged by her relations with man. It is te tyrant,
in his self-love, who refuses te woman te ring, and pleads te tyranny
of marriage for refusing it."

The old man looked at Luther's mild brown eyes and shaggy
beard. The rage of intellect, still uncurbed, was about to break
forth, when he was arrested by the calm yet clerical look of his plain
guest, firm as priestly authority :

"I am a pastor of te Tunkers," Luther said; "I speak God's
will and not man's. So much in you is good, so much is fierce and
troubled like te storm, that I claim te privilege of a guest and of te
Holy Spirit, to pray with you, my brother ! "

Katy reached up to Abel Quantrell and kissed him fervently,
saying :

" Come. It is te priest."

He hardly knew how to yield, yet he was yielding. He had but
little experience in kneeling, yet he was kneeling. To the melting
word of " brother " from Luther Bosler had been added the whis
per of " father " from the Dunker girl.

It was a Dunker girl, perchance, the old man once had loved ; a
Dunker priest he might have been married by. Who knew but Abel
Quantrell ?

The prayer flowed over him like a waft from the hemlocks in
the Green Mountains with scents of childhood ; like the purl of
Pennsylvania brooks, bearing away a hidden scene of love and ten
derness. The words he hardly heard ; but the chastening spirit in
them was balm in his nostrils and well-springs in his heart.

DISIXTEGRA TION.

321

As they arose, others were in the library silently— Edgar Pittson
and his daughter, and Nelly Harbaugh, and Lloyd Quantrell.

Katy looked at her lover but did not move, feeling that judgment
was suspended over them and the parental law.

Luther Bosler stood among the statesman's books and prints, in
his wool coat and rough boots, and long hair and beard ; he drew
his sister to his heart and looked around upon them all — senator and
reformer, son and heir.

"Friends," he proceeded, "we are poor Germans who try to
make no trouble. We have as little ampition as we can. Lloyd
came a-gunning and stopped with us a bit. We didn't enfy him
anything he had — his watch, nor gun, nor fine clothes, nor money —
but he and sister fell a-loving. It's not te rule of our church ; but
love is a sheep that jumps etery fence. Lloyd has a manly, loving
nature, and Katy couldn't help hearing what he said, down in her
pig child's heart. Her heart-strings are tender yet ; and I must
take her away pefore tey get sore for life. I am her pastor and her
brother. She will do what Lloyd's father temands. — Abel, tell
her ! "

Lloyd looked worn and wretched. His eyes were turned on
Katy, and she looked at him with wo and submission and pity
greater than for herself.

" Sho, sho ! young sparrows," Abel Quantrell spoke, looking at
both like the judge who is to divorce the mismated, " take out the
square root of small figures and the surgery is safe. Sixteen and
Twenty-two are not fit for life's responsibilities. I have laid on my
son the injunction, and he has given me the promise Miss Katy will
respect, I know — to wait one year from spring. In that time you are
not to communicate with each other ! Lloyd has given no attention
to ladies, and must look around him and cultivate the sex. You can
not cube life blindly."

There was a pause. The sentence had been less severe than
Katy expected. The promise was only for a year, and not forever;
but Nelly Harbaugh, alert to the subject of woman's equality, spoke
out :

" I suppose Katy is to look around, too. She doesn't go a-beg
ging up our way."

Lloyd grew pale to hear this ; but Katy, never taking her eyes
from him, cried :

" I wasn't a-begging when Lloyd come first, neither ; but I guess
21

322

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

he didn't have much trouble finding me a-ready. I'm only goin' on
seventeen."

" Father," Lloyd Ouantrell spoke, " I have waited years for your
commands. The first one cuts me deep, but I obey you, sir. I will
spend the time trying to find some career ; and if my heart is
changeable, some one may take Katy's place. I will not be stub
born ; but the past two months have been the first 1 ever knew of
love, and they may never be effaced from my life."

He stopped with a long, inhaled breath, on which there rolled a
groan toward his heart.

" Lloyd ! " sobbed Katy, answering the painful sound with its
echo and a flood of tears.

Nelly Harbaugh took Katy's head into her embrace, and wiping
Katy's eyes, muttered :

" Heartless old man ! "

Luther Bosler did not move ; but his eyes were filmed with sym
pathy, and Light Pittson went to his side impulsively.

Lloyd Quantrell was too strong-natured to express his pain more
than an instant, and, rallying with some pride, he addressed his
father, while Senator Edgar Pittson held his hand :

" Father, to complete my obedience to my parents, I must re
member my mother's pride of family, that you have already reminded
me of, as her only sin. There is a spot, I hear — an old one, some
generations back — upon the family where you have picked me a
wife."

" Beware, Lloyd ! " said Abel Quantrell, instantly moved.

" I recognize your right, my dear father, to say where I shall not
marry. I would die, sir, rather than put a stigma upon your noble
name. Not a word you have ever spoken of your early trials, pov
erty, and humble family, but has been cherished in my brain as
testimony of the pure fountain that flows down to me. I am so
jealous of that, sir, I can not permit even you to say where I shall
marry, if it mixes my mother's blood with the remotest suspicion of
illegitimacy."

" Be silent, ruffian ! " the father commanded, in terrible excite
ment. Lloyd hesitated, not knowing where he had offended.

" Let him explain," Senator Pittson quietly said.

" Yes ; he shall express the chivalry that is in him, and that I
feel all through me, also, papa ! " Light Pittson cried.

" Surely I can tell what my mother would have turned her face

DISINTEGRA TION.

323

against," Lloyd continued. — " Dear Light, here, will forgive the
story, if Katy's pure heart does. It is related in Maryland that in
one generation the father and the mother did not marry till their son,
more sensitive to their situation than themselves, refused to return
to his country and accept their boundless wealth, until they would
give him, also, the marriage rite. It was very long ago. Proud
generations have intervened, with earls, and dukes, and kings for
sons and sons-in-law ; but I am so proud to be the son of Abel
Quantrell and his honest wife that I refuse, father, to take that
blemish into our house, though the best blood in the world may have
washed it out ! "

H« finished, all flushed and stalwart, the powerful moral an
tithesis and physical reminder of that Faulconbridge in Shakespeare
who rejoiced in the blemish of his birth. Republican self-respect,
which is the greatest aristocracy in the world, frowned now from
his small gladiator's brow, and his strong jaws were shut, and his
gray-green eyes looked as bold and greedy as some rude Bayard or
other unlettered knight in the days of setting-to.

" I glory in his principles ! " Light Pittson cried.

" You, too ? " old Abel Quantrell spoke, turning on Light Pittson.
" You know not what you say ! "

"Sir," Light answered, spiritedly, "you have not your son's
sensibility. Surely I can understand the pride of pure descent and
unstained pedigree ! My father is a gentleman, too."

They were all attracted and alarmed now, by the exceeding pal
lor and lifelessness of countenance on old Abel Quantrell. He stood
beneath his dead-black wig, like the fabled pillar of salt, looking
back and stricken into stone. He seemed to seek to articulate, but
could not. Pride faded in his face, while yet most obdurate and
firm-set.

" Go, friends ! — Go, Lloyd, also ! " Edgar Pittson spoke. " He
has nothing more to say."

They left the room wondering, and Edgar Pittson closed the
door.

The old man still stood there, as if he had died upon his feet,
his under lip folded hard upon the square lip above, his hand in his
bosom, his long, straight nose like the stem of a galley in the storm
of fate.

" Sit down," said Edgar Pittson, kindly. " There — be composed !
We can not afford to lose you yet."

324

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

The old man breathed, and all his countenance broke in its fixed
lines like the shivering' of glass. There remained a panting, failing,
broken-spirited man.

" You have a fine son there," Edgar Pittson said, soothingly. " I
fear you did wrong not to let Nature do her work in that young
couple. What is it, after all, but the replenishing instinct of life,
which gives color and romance to everything, and takes a thousand
aberrations ? "

" Edgar, I can not hear you say that word to me. Do you ac
cuse me ? "

" I ? Why, never ! God has blessed us, and will bless us more.
Thou strong fountain of my life and parent of all my best em6tions !
take wine and oil from my unworthy youth, and feel I love and honor
you forever, O my Father ! "

CHAPTER XXXII.

STRAY ENDS.

LUTHER BOSLER was very tired, and, having to drive the girls
home all the next day, he went early to bed.

Nelly Harbaugh had been comforting Katy, and Luther had
given Light Pittson an account of the romantic Bunkers, who never
went to law, and were the detestation of lawyers and constables.
Nelly was no more appeased by her betrothed taking notice of this
stranger, than by his making no further reference to her curiosity
about the theatre.

She was piqued in her own nature that this established city so
ciety did not interest her, nor yet put her at ease. Wild and rebell
ious promptings came to her, and received instigation from the set-
tied fact that Lloyd Ouantrell and his friends were not to come to
Catoctin Valley any more. She had bantered Lloyd upon the hol-
lowness of his pledge to his father, and his indignant loyalty to that
pledge, satisfied her that the city people were to leave Catoctin Val
ley to its quietude and routine, its corn-planting and wood-hauling,
manuring and liming, cattle-fattening and distilling, hoeing and har
vesting.

She shrank from the recollection of her lonely patch of ground,

STRAY ENDS. 325

the consciousness that all her meaner, worldlier suitors had been
dismissed, and from the shadow of that Dunker life closing in upon
her, with regular attendance on church, responsibility in the " fami
ly," or Dunker congregation, and loss of all admiration, coquetry,
and adventure.

" Oh," she thought, " if I had the temptation here in Baltimore
that pressed me so hard in my little cottage but a few nights past,,
what might I not do — where might I not go ? "

Yet what oppressed her most was love. That plain, deep-slum
bering man in the next room, had power over her self-reliant nature.
If he would only break away from his dull, unambitious, progress-
stunting sect, and lead her to the theatre now, and to-morrow to
the great capital city, hardly two hours' journey away, and bathe
his strong sense in the dyes of illusion and cultivation, what stuffs
and scarlets might the shuttle of their union not weave in a busy
future, where wealth, activity, and following would be traced across
their children's prospects, like the marvelous checkered quilt at Bos-
ler's farm, that was to be the regalia of her wedding-bed !

These thoughts, and the growing darkness of evening, frightened
her. Maidenhood, independence, admiration, self-love, temptations,
were all to end within another fortnight ; and they had already pur
chased, that day, the preparations for their housekeeping.

She started up and looked in Luther's door. He had lain down
in his clothes, to be the earlier ready for the long-aching ride of the
morrow.

She went down stairs. In one room Senator Pittson and Abel
Ouantrell were playing cards, and took no notice of her ; in an
other, Katy Bosler was enjoying the last night before their separa
tion, with Lloyd Ouantrell — strengthening him, who was the weaker
one.

Nelly found in the library Light Pittson, reading a book called
" Shakespeare."

" Medicine ? " asked Nelly, concerning the subject of the book,
" or what Luther calls The Holler Gee ? "

" No," Light Pittson laughed again and again. " This, Miss Har-
baugh, is neither the holler gee nor the holler whoa, but the plays
of a Mr. William Shakespeare."

The country girl looked resentment at this reminder of her ig
norance.

" Oh ! " said she, " now I remember my dear friend, John Wilkes

->26 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

•*./

Booth — the great actor, you know — did mention a name like Shake
speare."

" I am just reading ' The Merchant of Venice/ that Mr. Edwin
Booth is to play here to-night," Light said. " I have never seen
Shakespeare well acted, and they say this young man is the greatest
genius of his time."

" Read some to me," Nelly Harbaugh asked, her curiosity tri
umphing over a certain hostility to the younger woman, who had
the promise of stature like Nelly's own, with a roundness and ma
ternal endowment the mountain-girl had not.

"With delight," Miss Pittson replied; "the stage is a favorite
pleasure I anticipate in Washington, and I should like so much to
know a great actor."

Miss Light read, with school-girl eloquence and gusto, the inter
esting text, where she selected it, at Jessica's flight from her father.
The style of elocution Nelly critically noted, reflecting how much
better she could do than the senator's daughter, as Light recited :

" In such a ni^ht

Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew ;
And with an unthrift love did run from Venice."

" Give me that book," Nelly called, overbearingly. " I can read
it better."

She glanced over the lines which succeeded, and, standing up,
recited, with strong energy :

" In such a night

Did young Lorenzo swear he loved her well ;
Stealing her soul with many vows of faith,
And ne'er a true one."

" Why, that is wonderful ! " cried Light. " I think you might
make an actress. Where did you learn to read ? "

"In the plow-field," replied Nelly, bitterly, "hollering at a bor
rowed horse that would r\otgee."

Light burst out laughing, and laughed against her will.

" Won't you excuse me ? " she pleaded. " I was thinking of some
thing."

" What ? "

" Oh, never mind it."

" You was thinking of The Holler Gee, I reckon, miss ? " Nelly
questioned, grimly. " Well, that theolergy is all I am to read, if I

STRA Y ENDS.

327

marry the preacher up-stairs. He won't read plays. Come, let us
go to the theatre alone, and see this piece ! "

" Alone ! why, it is dangerous. Surely, you dare not do that ! "

" You will see," Nelly Harbaugh replied ; and left the room, all
flushed with Light Pittson's praise of her reading.

In a few minutes she came down in her manifestly country dress,
almost absurdly and cheaply flounced ; her gay bonnet trimmed with
bright berries and " loud " common flowers, her blanket shawl and a
peddler's mixing of winter and summer, that would have made a cari
cature of less than her fine height, bright skin, and her expression
of reserve and decision.

" I can pay my admission," the girl said ; " I won't pay yours,
but you can come along."

" You are dreadful, Miss Nelly ! Surely, you have some acquaint
ance there."

" You can keep my secret, if you want to ! " the girl said, defi
antly. " I may come back."

She had never been to other than a strolling company's perform
ance, or that of amateurs, at Harper's Ferry or Frederick, and was
innocent of the bold act she was to do, at that demoralized date, of
taking a cheap seat in the highest tier of a city theatre. She stopped
to look at the Booth dwelling in Exeter Street, turned the corner,
and followed the tide of people up a parallel street to a great, lighted
building, with its back against a dark sluice or sewer running
through the city. Her money was gripped tightly in her hand, and
she was confused by the number of entrances and the files of people
going to the ticket-boxes.

•' Where is the cheap place ? " she asked a policeman, who was
eying her at the curbstone.

" The Third tier. You don't mean that ? "

"Yes, the cheapest place."

He took her along the side of the building toward the smelling
sewer or creek, where only one lamp split the almost solid mist with
its rays.

" I haven't seen you before," the officer said, still looking at her
closely. "When did you turn out ? "

" I just came this morning," Nelly answered ; " I wanted to see
Mr. Booth play. I'm acquainted with his brother."

"Johnny? Ah ! now I see."

She paid the quarter of a dollar for a ticket, and began to climb

328 A'ATY OF C A TO C TIN,

dimly lighted stairs, where troops of wild boys went past her halloo
ing, and she wondered if she would ever reach the top. Her heart
failed a little, but she persevered, saying to herself that she could at
least look a little while, and slip back to Luther and the snug com
fort of her bedroom, and never be found out.

When she reached the top she looked down upon a great depth
of seats in tiers — thousands in number as it seemed to her — and at
gilded galleries and carved side-boxes in faded gold, and at the
green curtain hanging there like the window-blind of another land
and world, so suggestive in its blankness, so large to be so una
dorned, all faces directed toward it like an oracle of the antique na
tions, and silent in its green eye as the stagnant lake that harbors
the crocodile.

So was it, and so it was to be : that mimic world between this
world and both the worlds to come, so seductive and so deadly : joy
of the senses, rest of the inquests of toil and intellect, framework of
folly and of grandeur, home of genius and of deceit. It lifted the
mind to heaven, and sunk the habits to the shadows of hell. It
made shame and ignorance look angelic, like peddler's jewels in
pinchbeck gold, and gave subtlety and witchcraft their inspiration and
reward ; raining on the gypsy plaudits from the purest, and tingeing
with some gloss of scholarship and chivalry the mere bully and Al
satian.

There, behind the mystic baize, the school-boy conspirators were
conning their little tasks and painting their faces now, trying on
their greasy wigs, lacing their paper bodices, making ready their
fickle furniture and wooden fruit and food, and shifting their coarse
scenery to where the lamps and reflectors would make it cheat like
nature's sheen of dew and sunshine.

And there, in a not distant morrow, in this same theatre where
Nelly looked, the ruling conspiracy of government, the great Demo
cratic party, was to play its last scene, and divide like Caesar's assas
sins ; and, in four years more, the actors of the opposite and suc
ceeding party were, in this theatre in Baltimore, to give the sword
of war and peace a second time to the ruler as yet unknown, who
was to be and to be not, walking like Enoch with the ideal, and by
this ideal treacherously taken.*

* In Front Street Theatre, Baltimore, 1860, met the Democratic National
Convention ; in the same theatre, 1864, Abraham Lincoln was renominated by
the Republican National Convention.

STRA Y ENDS.

329

Nelly looked around her, and she was astonished and alarmed.
The bare, steep-pitched, low-roofed tier she sat in, was a dense mass
of boys and men, huddled together, peering over, exchanging oaths
and nicknames, some intoxicated, some already asleep, some full of
street wit, others ravenous as if they could gnaw the wooden
benches, so spasmodic and fierce were they in everything. Some
were without coats, many had not been combed ; police of some
kind, also common and fierce, disciplined the most disorderly; and
Nelly looked for some place where a woman might have privacy in
vain.

There were also women there, the strangest people in the tier.
For a brief moment Nelly thought they were extravagantly dressed
ladies. Their " loud " feathers and velvet trains, powder and rouge,
and freedom of manners and of charms, appeared to the mountain
orphan the very splendor of society ; but a second look, a burst of
laughter, and a word that seemed from women's public lips to in
vite God's lightnings down, froze Nelly's blood !

Where was she ? What were these ? Dare she stay one mo
ment longer here ?

" Hush ! " a loud whispered command came ; " get down, all of
you ! The curtain is up."

She found a place to crouch down at the top of the tier. The
next person to her was an old Eastern Shoreman, with a chin which
seemed to run down his collar, and be a mere wrinkle of his loose
neck ; and he was asleep, and said occasionally : " Luff off ! luff !
P'int on the beam ! " In course of time this melancholy man would
droop his head on Nelly's shoulder, but she felt protected by his
honest obliviousness, and all her soul was in the play.

The first words met her sensibility like tones of sympathy :

" In sooth, I know not why I am so sad :
It wearies me ; you say it wearies you."

So spoke the merchant Antonio, soon joined by his noble friends,
all dressed in rich attires with comely hose.

" Your mind is tossing on the ocean,"

one of them says, and so was Nelly's. Then Bassanio, the lover,
borrows the merchant's money to wed Portia, and Nelly felt the de
scription to be her complement :

" Her sunny locks
Hang on her temples like a golden fleece."

330

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

Portia and her maid, and the caskets of gold, silver, and lead,
Nelly saw like wondrous apparitions ; and then came in the piercing
eyes and pointed face, like jewels set in flesh, of Edwin Booth, as
the Jew usurer, at only twenty-six years of age, his youth revealed
in his fine limbs and crafty ankles, his head alert and manly every
where, life set in him on silken nerves, and character inlaid with
strange translucencies like gold and tortoise-shell.

He had decision like the wasp's in rage, and grace like the young
cock at morning striding the poultry world. Something subtle was
woven in his manliness like guile in the pagan gods.

Beauty and terror seized the country girl as this disguised
Apollo spun his deadly mesh around Antonio, and bound him in a
pound of tiesh to repay the loan of friendship.

" P'int on the beam ! Luff hard ! " the oysterman at her side
muttered, looking at Nelly idiotically, and asking :

" Whair we dropped anchor ? P'inted whair ? "

He gazed at her awhile, and was again asleep, nodding, and now
the curtain rose once more upon the Jew's abode and most unfilial
daughter Jessica.

Nelly's sensitive excitement, seeking everywhere for her excuse
and rebellion, made Jessica in her mind the likeness of herself, and
Shylock's avarice her lover's disposition. She heard the Jew's serv
ant say :

" ' Launcelot, budge not ! ' ' Budge ' ! says the fiend ; ' budge
not,' says my conscience. . . . To run away from the Jew, I should
be ruled by the fiend."

Who was Nelly thinking of as "the fiend " ? She stared at the
play as if it were another work of Hannah Ritner, the conjurer.

Now came " the fiend " of Jessica in — beautiful Lorenzo ; and at
first Nelly thought it was Mr. John Booth, so much alike, to unprac-
ticed eyes, do actors look in their mecliasval clothes and dazzling
powdered and penciled faces, and she was not soon convinced of
tne contrary, as Lorenzo took Jessica's secret letter, saying she
would rob her father and fly with the actor, who thus excused her :

" And never dare misfortune cross her foot,
Unless she do it under this excuse —
That she is issue to a faithless Jew."

Why did Nelly recall her recreant father, and accuse herself of
his wayward blood ? Alas ! the well-deserving never stigmatize

STRA Y ENDS. 331

their ancestors, but in the crimes of these the willful seek incen
tive !

Then Shylock's penurious soul and habits in his household
seemed to comfort the country girl :

" What, Jessica ! thou shalt not gormandize,
And sleep and snore and rend apparel out,
Nor thrust your head into the public street.
Let not the sound of shallow foppery enter
My sober house ! By Jacob's staff, I swear, . . .
' Fast bind ! fast find ! ' "

All this seemed Luther Bosler's early rising, rebuke of morning
sleep and worldly apparel and of holiday joys, while " By Jacob "
seemed to mean Jake Bosler, with his everlasting " Bi'm-by." Yet
Nelly's rage had the heart-burn in it, and she wondered why Jessica
could sing :

" Let me, then, in wanton play
Sigh and gaze my soul away?

The daughter of Shylock slipped down from the casement with her
father's plunder and fell into Lorenzo's arms, who protested for her
the compliment so soothing to Nelly :

" For she is wise,
And fair she is,
And true she is ;

And therefore, like herself, wise, fair, and true,
Shall she be placed in my constant soul."

"Why," Nelly thought, as the curtain rolled down upon this
praise of deceit, " the people applaud that girl's ingratitude, though
she dishonors her old father ! And so do I ! So does her lover re
ward her with his constancy ! "

" Luff ! " the Eastern Shoreman muttered, awakened by the ap
plause. " What ! not slipped anchor yit ? " He stared at her in a
melancholy way a while, and then began to pucker and to cry.

" What's the matter, sir? " Nelly asked.

" I got a darter big as you," the man replied. " If she was hyar,
I'd cry. I'll cry fur you. I'll give you her quarter. Take it, pooty,
an' luff off."

He had a quarter of a dollar in his hand. She was about to repel
it, when she saw men and women looking on, and, to stop his snivel
ing, she took the silver and put it in her pocket. Avarice rose up

332 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

at that moment, and she thought, " I have seen the show for noth
ing."

The rising curtain showed young Edwin Booth, all fired to his
mettle, cursing his daughter's flight till Nelly's blood ran cold, and
thanking God for Antonio's losses and shipwrecks ; yet in the crude
girl's ear the glory of the actor's art put down the human interest,
and started the wild passion, -too often impelled on slippery virtue,
to be an actress like Portia, who next took the scene as custodian
of her dead father's casket, in which her husband and her fortune
lay for her suitors to choose. " Of course," thought Nelly, " Bas-
sanio will choose the gold casket, as it is worth the most." He
chose the leaden one, and made Nelly reflect, " Is that my dull lover,
with the leaden eyes and sure instinct of right ? " But Portia's
speech again inspired Nelly's ambition, and seemed to reason with
her country fears, as Portia declaimed :

" I, an unlessoned girl, unschooled, unpracticed,
Happy in this, she is not yet so old
But she may learn."

The ring which Portia gives her engaged lover awoke the coun
try girl's superstitions as resembling Katy Bosler's lost pledge ; and
next she saw the chaste Portia, too, take secret flight, fresh from
her marriage vows, and treacherous Jessica installed in Portia's pal
ace. The play-maker in his sectarian uncharity was rewarding evil-
doing, and confirming a worldly course in at least one of his audi
tors.

" What time is it, sir ? " asked Nelly, as the curtain fell on act
the third.

" Ten ; but I sha'n't go. Luff away from me now. I'm o' fam
ily ! "

He raised his voice, and half the people of the tier looked where
they sat.

" I must go if it's ten o'clock. Don't cry out so ! " Nelly said.

" She won't luff," loudly whined the tipsy oysterman. " She'll
run me down, and I've sot my lanterns by the law. I've got my
own family, but she'll run me down ! "

Nelly gazed at the man in wonder and alarm. Her intuitions
were quick as her necessity; for people were running over the
benches and crowding down the steep, narrow aisles to see the oc
casion for an altercation, and she saw among these overwilling wit-

STRA Y ENDS, 333

nesses some women unescorted, and giggling childishly. It thus
occurred to Nelly that this poor man had mistaken her for such as
those female frequenters of the place, and was under the temptation
of her beauty, which his conscience was resisting in the shouting
Methodist way, general to his peninsula.

" Let me pass ! The man is crazy ! " Nelly called in the tem
pered boldness of her fear and indignation.

" She took my money," piped the man's high, quavering voice,
" but she won't luff off ! "

A terrible word began to sound through that high, steaming,
whispering loft :

" Thief ! " " She's a thief ! " " He says she took his money ! "

A thousand eyes seemed to stare at the girl ; she could discern
the people below turning their backs to the curtain and throwing
their faces upward to look for the commotion, and opera-glasses
from the boxes and front stalls were pointed toward her.

Despair was fast freezing her tongue to her throat. She saw
herself the subject of a police item in the morning, the inhabitant
all night of a police-station, rejected of her lover and his family, and
flung back into the mountains like a crippled bird, never to fly nor
renew its plumage again.

In this appalling instant a person, about whom something seemed
familiar, though Nelly in her excitement took no heed of him, pushed
right through the motley people to Nelly's side, and seized the East
ern shoreman and hurled him up the aisle, and sat down by Nelly,
exclaiming loudly :

" It's nothin' but a drunken man with the delirium tremens."

The fickle crowd set on the Eastern Shoreman, and chased him
down the stairs into the street.

" Silence, there, all of you ! The curtain's rung up," an officer
cried, looking down on Nelly and her deliverer.

She determined to go the moment she was unobserved, and
breathed a kind of prayer to God and her mother that, if they would
only let her depart in safety, she would join the Dunker fold, and
grudge the world its snares and excitements no more ; but some
thing in the splendid act below held her spell-bound : the Jew with
scales and knife confronted the merchant to cut his heart's flesh
out at the award of the duke of the country. Young Edwin Booth
was now in the nervous exaltation of his art, and spoke this unin
tended picture of the slave system of America :

334 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

" You have among you many a purchased slave
Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules,
You use in abject and in slavish parts
Because you bought them ; shall I say to you,
' Let them be free, marry them to your heirs ;
Why sweat they under their burdens ? '
You will answer,

' The slaves are ours ' ; so do I answer you :
' The pound of flesh is mine ! ' "

Thus Shakespeare, universal as the sun, had thrown his prophetic
glance upon the Dred-Scott decision, made in young Booth's genera
tion by a Marylander as chief justice of the whole republic, that
slaves " had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."
Emphatic applause shook the great theatre, for Shylock had been
confirmed by nearly a full American bench.

How Nelly's heart bounded in ecstasy and envy to hear Portia,
the woman, in the disguise of a lawyer, plead for the stay of such
insensate law :

" Mercy is above the sceptered sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings."

So was it, for the audience loudly approved this sentiment, also,
and most eminently where the poorest people sat; and they, being
the majority, were the " enthroned." Nelly forgot her prayer, the
time, her fears, and everything but that most vivid scene of one
law-authorized usurer whetting his knife to cut the bankrupt's
heart out, and nothing but woman's wit and skill to stay the mur
derer.

The woman-lawyer triumphed. The butcher departed, foiled
and beaten and broken-hearted, and his wealth confiscated to his
false child.

The gallant actor wrung from every condition in that theatre a
meed of approbation subtile as his own art, some approving of Shy-
lock's fate and some of the artist's skill to make him hateful yet
imposing. The act closed with the surrendering of Portia's ring to
the lawyer, in whose part her husband had not known her :

" You swore to me, when I did give it you,
That you would wear it till the hour of death,
And that it should lie with you in the grave ;
Even so void is your false heart of truth."

STRAY ENDS. 335

No ring had Nelly Harbaugh of Luther Bosler but the ring of
loving arms and his rugged kiss. She thought on Katy's lost ring,
and on her own mutiny and loss of honorable faith, and started,
pale-faced, to retrieve her husband.

It was too late.

The new person who had taken the seat by her side whispered
to her. What he said was so low and familiar that it drove from
her mind every safeguard of forethought or prudence, and awakened
the spirit which was wont to draw down the old gun in her cabin
and march insulters to her gate.

She looked at the man.

It was one of the Logans, the slave-hunters of the mount
ains.

He repeated his insinuation, having, no doubt, recognized her as
from his own neighborhood, where she enjoyed more than a local
fame for beauty.

The spirit of the poor white race, that always disdained the slave-
buyer, sprang to Nelly's temples.

" You think you're talking to a nigger, I reckon," she exclaimed,
in uncontrollable rage. " Take your change ! "

She slapped his mouth with all that strength manual labor some
times gives to women. The blow resounded like a pistol-shot.

The coward, smarting with the pain, struck her with his fist.

The gallery-gods raised the cry of " fight," and the officer present
arrested both Nelly and her degraded neighbor, and passed them
over to the same policeman who had shown Nelly to the gallery-
door.

They were marched to a station-house, followed by a motley
crowd.

Indifference and despair now seized upon the orphan girl — the
transitional emotion from her combativeness. She gave up the fu
ture and the past, cunning and repentance, love and hope, and stood
before the committing clerk or sergeant, pale, beautiful, and cold.

They took from a cell the poor old melancholy Eastern Shore
man, now sobered by mortification, and he testified that she had
neither robbed him nor addressed him, and he wished to pay her
fine, with tears in his eyes.

Nelly refused his kindness with contempt.

" I don't want to keep you here all night," the committing offi
cial said, " nor do I want to turn you out, lest you might do worse.

336 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

This seems to have been your first appearance in that part of the
theatre. Give your name ! "

"Never," replied Nelly Harbaugh. "I have only gone to the
theatre and protected myself. This exposure is ruin enough. I will
answer nothing."

The police people began to feel interested ; but the girl saw that
their pity was not for one they supposed to be respectable. Her
motive to go alone to the theatre was above their understanding,
she perceived ; and thus the purest motive which could inspire so
bold and ignorant a step — the motive of pure intellect — had brought
her to the inexplicable depths of a false position.

The brilliant scene at the theatre an instant before, the splendid
adventure of woman in Portia, to take a lawyer's part, the late ela
tion of spirits and of ambition in Nelly, had been like the lightning
at the precipice, hurling woman deeper down.

A sense of universal injustice swept over the poor stranger.
Her lover had refused to consider her intellectual nature ; her father
had abandoned her ; her very name was not her own, but her poor
mother's maiden legacy.

" If you will not tell your name you must stand committed for
disorderly conduct. I do not insist what name you shall give," the
kindly official said.

The rough, real interest in his tones, and other compassionate
eyes looking on, swayed her fierce feelings, and she could neither
advance nor recede.

" Oh ! cowards, men everywhere ! " she cried, in a gush of tears
and passion, and throwing her head upon the rail that barred her
from the clerk, her hair fell to the floor like Jupiter's insidious shower
of gold.

Strong, firm steps came up the bare floor.

A voice spoke to the magistrate : " Here is a mistake, or an out
rage ! What charge is against this lady ? "

" I have offered to release her if she will give her name. She
will not give even a false name."

" I will answer for her. It is a respectable girl from the country,
unacquainted with the city's spoiled places, and desiring nothing
worse than to see a play at my invitation. Take down the name of
Miss Nelly Starr, of Belair, Harford county."

She turned and saw the fine, intrepid face, and graceful, genteel
figure of John Booth.

STRA Y ENDS. 337

" My deliverer ! My only friend ! " cried Nelly, held in his mus
cular arms and respectfully drawn to his breast, like Jessica to
Lorenzo, and kissed once in manly compassion with the barest
tremor of affection.

" Enter Miss Starr's name. Discharged on Mr. John Wilkes
Booth's recognizance ! Take this man Logan's fine, and throw him
out of the building ! "

As Logan passed Nelly and Mr. Booth on the street, his chagrin of
animal and social expectations vented itself in one unfortunate remark :

" Run away with a fancy actor, heigh ? "

Booth had knocked him into the street before his sentence was
well finished.

" Kill him ! kill him ! " commanded the girl, her intense feel
ings breaking in the fierce shout for blood and reparation.

The slave-catcher was followed up by the actor's cool, enjoying,
and skilled pugilism, tumbled over every time he arose, headed off
at every point of escape, and finally he ran back into the station-
house for protection.

" Do you know that he has bruised your face — the coward ! "
Booth said, panting, as he walked along. "Your friends can't see
you for a week with that scar. The officer at the theatre had sent
for me, suspecting that you had made a mistake in going into that
vile gallery, Nelly, and he said you mentioned my name to him.
How natural that you should think of me ; for you have been in my
mind all day ! Come in ! "

He led the way into an oyster-house, and to a private room up
the stairs. She thanked him with gratitude and pride.

" You, John — to think of me with all your prospects and acquaint
ances ? Oh, is it true, or made believe ? "

" I love you," replied the actor, in tones low and firm, articulated
like chimes of steel, and his dark eyes shining the eloquence of
passion. " I feel my fate in your untrained and strong maturity. You
can nbt evade me, Nelly. I demand that you feel my will and love
me, now."

He took her hands in his, and held her off, and looked his
strength and gentleness together, and slowly drew her to him.

" I have earned a kiss of real affection. I must have it."

He clasped her to his athletic frame, still in the manly tingling
of the conflict with her enemy, and ardent with victory and invincible
masculine resolution.
22

338

KATY OF CA70CTIN.

The old gun of her father was not above the door ; her strength
of citadel and rural independence was gone. He kissed her in her
betrothed one's place and with a betrothed one's confidence.

" Your name is Nelly Starr hereafter ; for you are to be my star,
and play such parts as Portia to me. I am going to Belair to
study, and you shall be my pupil there ; and so I gave your residence
to the police as at that haunt of my childhood where our family
grew up. All arrangements are made. I am to be the only Booth
in the Southern States, and make my fortune there. — Waiter, some
wine and terrapin ! "

" You do admire me, John ? Can you even love me ? "

" I swear, Nelly, to be devoted to you alone — to lay my youth
before your beauty, and to cherish and worship you ! All that you
can learn shall be taught you. All the career I can reach, you shall
share and conquer in , but my admiration is not equal to my love.
Your stalwart beauty has been walking in my dreams like the long
shadow you cast upon the valley as you walk at sunrise on your
mountains. Begin the world anew, with people worthy of your
queenly endowments and a gentleman for your lord and knight ; and
that the disgraceful past may be forever behind you, come to my
arms and heart at once, with faith and perfect love ! "

It was not yet day at Abel Quantrell's residence when Luther
Bosler came down the stairs with Katy, his to-be-banished sister,
and wondering where Nelly could be.

Light Pittson came out of the library to meet them.

" Has she not returned ? " Light queried. " I have waited all
night to let her in. There is some one knocking now."

She opened the door, and a boy appeared with a letter for Miss
Kate Bosler.

" Oh, gracious ! read it, Miss Light," spoke Katy ; " I can't read
writing fery well. It must be from Lloyd."

Light turned up the lamp, and Katy read these blurred, mis
spelled lines :

" Darling, good-by ! I expect some day to be your sister, when
Luther loves me more than money and his Dunker dunces. Tell
him he can not become so ambitious, but I will try to rise worthy
of him in mind ; for God knows I shall love him forever, whether I
be good or evil. NELLY."

LOVE'S FIERCE PROBATION. 339

Luther stood with his whip in hand and robe across his arm,
staggering and pale against the door.

" She has gone," he said ; " I am punished for loving money too
sinfully. Hannah Ritner predicted te yellow star would fade at
morn. It is just morning, Katy. I feel my heart is proken ! "

He was comforted in the arms of Katy and of Light Pittson.

" I will kiss you a better morning, dear friend," Light Pittson
said, " and a wife more worthy of your sincere nature."

With that kiss upon his brow, Luther drove out of Baltimore,
silent and resigned, yet with a great emptiness in his breast.

He did not know that from an upper window, as he went by,
Nelly Harbaugh was gazing down, at hollow dawn, with streaming
eyes and misery unrelieved by resignation.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

LOVE'S FIERCE PROBATION.

THE executions at Charlestown ended in the middle of March,
1860, with Stevens and Hazlett going manfully to death. Three
months before this, four of Brown's men were executed in one day
— the two negroes, Green and Copeland, an hour earlier than Cook
and Ned Coppock. These latter, the night before death, made an
attempt to escape, which might have been successful but for the
accident of Ouantrell, Booth, and Atzerodt being in an office across
the way, amusing some friends.

Ouantrell had Katy Bosler's accordion, playing airs, and Booth
recited ballads and scraps from plays, while Atzerodt was the cup
bearer, and ran errands to the tavern. He came up-stairs, crying :

" Py Jing ! I saw a man's head git on te jail-wall ! "

Booth, who had made the punishment of these men a fierce if
gratuitous duty, at once ran down and notified the guard. A watch
was set, and this time two heads instead of one appeared, and a
man, identified by all as Cook, leaped on the wall, and was menaced
by the guard below with his bayonet.

" Jump on him, John, and bear him to the ground ! " the whisper
of Coppock came up from the jail-yard.

340 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

Cook hesitated, and the guard also seemed dazed.

" Let them escape, boys," Ouantrell whispered, where he and his
companions crouched together; "think how young they are, like
ourselves ! That guard may have been tampered with."

" No, sir," Booth retorted, " no mercy to them ! " but, before he
could raise the alarm, Atzerodt, with the avarice for a reward,
sprang up and shouted :

" You tarn guard, why don't you fire ? "

" Murder ! Escape ! Treason ! " cried Booth.

The guard now threatened the prisoners, and they dropped be
hind the wall, while Charlestown streets filled with excited soldiery
and civilians.

It was reported that these two lads had used their knives and
forks to dig through the jail-wall ; but Quantrell suspected other
wise, from an incident which took place after the execution.

Certain women from the North, in spite of all precautions, by
patience and refined address, had obtained communication with the
prisoners. Among these had been Hannah Ritner, and Quantrell
met her the night after the executions, when vigilance was relaxed
and conviviality had succeeded the panic. She was at one of the
hotels in Harper's Ferry, and had assisted to reclaim the forfeited
bodies. Her name was a fictitious one upon the register ; but Lloyd,
who had endeavored to understand her in vain, took Booth to call
on her after a horseback- ride past Mr. Beall's.

She was sad and troubled. The errand she had come upon was
not these poor, staring dead, but their living forms, and malice had
intervened. She heard the tale — how Cook and Coppock had reached
on the gallows for each other's hands, and said good-by affection
ately on the brink of the dark unknown ; and she heard, trembling,
how Booth and Atzerodt had discovered their attempt to escape,
while Ouantrell " weakened," and desired not to intercept them.

At this moment Atzerodt, who had become an intolerable para
site of the two young men, made his way to the room, and stood
confounded to see, in the full dress of a Quaker lady, the prophetess
of the mountains.

" Py Jing ! " he muttered — " te witch of Shmoketown ! "

" You have asked me more than once to tell your fortune, An
drew Atzerodt," the dark and passion-possessed woman exclaimed,
rising. " I never supposed, till cruelty took possession of your frail
and prating nature, that Fate had the least concern in you. Hold

LOVE'S FIERCE PROBATION. 341

out your hand, sir ! — And you two gentlemen as well ! The oppor
tunity is condign."

She meant Booth, Beall, and Ouantrell.

They extended their hands. She looked the palms over, and the
faces as well, and labored within herself like a Pythoness in pain.
Then, beginning with Ouantrell, she spoke these lines, at the outset
tenderly, but, in the sequel, to Lloyd's companions, with a haughty
power above all plays and players :

" He whose heart to pity swells,
In his fever shall spring wells !
Who their tears ungenerous stop,
Shall feel, burning, but one drop !
' Water ! water ! ' cry they, ' Lord ! ' — •
In the fire and on the cord !"

She ended with her dark hair raveling through her distraught
fingers, and her arms spread wide, as if she implored the vision she
described in rhyme.

" Come away ! " muttered Atzerodt, in terror ; " she has fits, and
pites beople ! "

" Truly a nice, comforting hostess," added Booth, undisturbed ;
" but I never did like above a drop of water, and, as for the cord,
we'll ring it for a bottle of whisky."

Edgar Pittson had been almost as true a prophet as Hannah
Ritner. Scarcely had the last man been hanged in Virginia, when
the Democratic party convention of ail the Union was held at
Charleston in South Carolina, and the slave States withdrew, be
cause they could not make a President to force slavery into Kansas,
whence John Brown and his sons had expelled it. This convention
adjourned to Baltimore, but, before it reconvened, Abraham Lincoln
had been nominated by the young Republican party in the nearly
as obscure city of Chicago.

Another world had grown up beyond the termination of the old
Maryland National Road, and all the presidential candidates, four in
number — of whom three received their nominations in Baltimore —
were from this West — Lincoln, Douglas, Breckenridge, Bell. The
loins of free labor made such increase, that counting slaves as votes
had ceased to be a counterpoise.

Ever since Presidents of the United States had been nominated
by delegate or popular conventions, Baltimore city had been the

342 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

party focus of the Union, and the seat of nearly all such conventions.
The day of its prestige was over when, at the theatre where Nelly
lost her content, the slave States again seceded from the convention
there, by whose verdict they had agreed honorably to abide, and
there the majority set up a Western man.

Maryland cast her electoral vote for the extension of slavery into
the free public domain, the great remainder of her votes going to
the candidate of parleying and powwowing on the subject, and only
twenty-two hundred arid ninety-four votes, out of above ninety-two
thousand, being cast in Maryland for Lincoln, the victor.

Maryland, indeed, had always lacked a coherent public character,
and was a fortuitous settlement rather than a moral undertaking,
and no general fact had disturbed her monotony in two centuries,
but Baltimore.

This powerful new city, lying across the gateway to the Federal
capital, had consulted its momentary interests and decided against
drawing the line of freedom down a little way, so as to stand upon
it ; and only one great and passionate citizen of Baltimore, educated
at a college of the far West, saw where his native State should take
her place.

Mr. Henry Winter Davis, who has already appeared in this story,
advocated the union of his party with Mr. Lincoln's party, and
sneered at the decision of the Maryland chief justice, who had argued
out the pro-slavery tenet of the Supreme Court, as " a ridiculous
farrago of bad history, worse law, and low partisanship."

If there was the equal of Henry Winter Davis on the other side,
he is not to be found among Maryland's public men. The nearest
approach to him in self-contained purpose, deep and silent passion,
mental courage, and haughty ambition, was John Wilkes Booth.

As Mr. Davis had learned in the West the forgotten realities of
freedom, Mr. Booth had learned in the South the spirit that stood
ready to reopen the African slave-trade, as Henry Winter Davis had
declared, months before the raid of John Brown, saying : " The
preparation of men's minds for the grand end has already begun,
either consciously or unconsciously. The great English experiment
of emancipation is loudly proclaimed a failure. The party of the
South is ready to make the issue : repeal of the laws against the
slave-trade, or Rebellion ! "

Booth had no training nor regular profession, was a very young
man, and his intellectual nature was narrow ; but he possessed more

LOVE'S FIERCE PROBATION. 343

than the average maturity of persons of his traditions, and, to use
the expression of one who knew him from childhood, " he was all
man from the child, and the feet, up." *

If his knowledge of the world and of civilized principles was no
greater than the constraints and illusions of an actor and an actor's
son, they were as real as the understanding of any of those who
expected to return America to Asiatic conditions, and then bully
Europe out of her attitude toward slavery. Booth's habits were as
good as the young men's around him, his manners were generally
better, his loyalty to friendship and to locality unquestioned, indeed,
reputed ; and he had those powers valued by savage and statesman
—still confidence, and " the still hunt."

He had not only kept Nelly Harbaugh's confidence, but Lloyd
Quantrell was convinced that he did not know where she had gone,
and no imputing of the girl's principle or virtue would extract from
Booth a retort.

" He can not be her lover," Lloyd reasoned, " and not resent
things said against her, at least by his looks."

In like silence and still-craft, Booth took Lloyd during that spring
to the village of Belair, half a day's ride by horse to the north,
where Booth essayed to study his father's old parts — in order to
" star " them in the South — at a long, quaint tavern with a swinging
sign in a retired corner of the court-house square. Nelly Starr, as
she is henceforth to be known, was looking down on Lloyd Quan
trell from her play-book, and he never suspected her to be near.

Precocious in his coolness and in his trespasses, Booth listened
more than he spoke ; yet, when he was gone, his friend always felt
lonesome.

His moral standard was purely traditional : to hate "meanness,"
to defend women, to resent insult, to stand by all his own family ;
and yet, he was not open in his nature as he appeared, coveted the
pearl of woman's honor, seldom elevated any companion's nature,
in his appetites was predatory, and often low in his affiliations. He
seldom tolerated his equals from the stage, but would take mere
vagrants up and use them for his willful rides and strolls. He had
joined a volunteer company, of anti-national bias, at Belair, and was
%full of warlike thoughts and feats of prowess.

He took Quantrell to his birthplace, on the road to the Susque-
hanna — a clearing in a dry forest, with a ditch for scenery, and no
* John E. Owen, comedian.

344 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

other improvements than a small Gothic cottage, itself erected by a
filial-minded son, and not by Booth's erratic father ; yet John Booth
was deeply attached to this spot, and he carried Quantrell to the
Priest's Ford of Deer Creek, to look at the massive-walled ancient
priest's house on a hill-top, and to the Bald Friar's view of the great
Susquehanna River falling in miles of rocks and foam to the pale
lagoon of the Chesapeake. The bandit haunt, as it seemed, of the
rock Pass of Deer Creek, the young men visited ; and in their com
pany were the two Baltimore friends of Booth, Sam Arnold and
Mike O'Laughlin, impecunious, commonplace followers, quite below
Booth's fine appearance, emulousness, and reserve.

Lloyd asked his father to account for some of the contrarieties
in his friend. Abel Quantrell said :

"I have known three generations of these Booths — old Richard,
the grandfather; Junius Brutus, the immigrant ; and the present boys.
You can see, my son, from the swelling name of the second Booth,
that the vagary was in old Dick, his father. He was full of brood
ing self-esteem, and seldom spoke to anybody here, but left a bom
bastic diary behind him. He claimed to be kin of John Wilkes, of
London ; and so the young fellow whom you affect is named for that
first of modern blackguards, who created a political reputation by the
worst vices of the press. The square root of his endeavor was self-
indulgence and the love of notoriety. The cube of the personalities
he invented in Anglo-Saxon politics is the discouragement and deg
radation of public life."

" Why, father, Johnny says he was a great patriot and friend of
America."

" Sho ! We are not so weak that we must be grateful to every
foreign vaporer. I will tell you, Lloyd, how John Wilkes became
our friend. Aspiring to aristocratic place and society, his domestic
cruelty and licentiousness disqualified him. He was a pan'enu
distiller's son, and he set up a press, subsidized by the discharged
ministers of a young king, to attack their successor. How did he
do it ? Let the outraged republic of human nature answer ! He
accused the king's widowed mother of being the minister's mistress ;
and the minister being a Scotchman, he harangued the vulgar in
tolerance of the English against the Scotch. From that hour dis
gusting personality has been the favorite dagger of the political as
sassin."

Abel Quantrell arose and put his hand in his bosom, and leaned

LOVE'S FIERCE PROBATION.

345

with the other whitened hand upon his stick, while resentment
against oppression made the line of his firm-shut mouth against the
straight lines of his nose and chin the skyey cross of chivalry.

*' Lloyd," he said, " beware how you impute evil to the domestic
misunderstandings of your fellow-man ! It is deadly homicide, and
God will punish it. The eagle flies in heaven unchallenged and
admired ; the war-horse bears his rider in the good fight, and no
inquisition is ever made into the secrets of his stall ; but man in full
career, nobly serving his species, finds his nest invaded in his ab
sence by the weasel and the crow. A crime is contrived out of
some aberration of love or nuptial confidence, and the scandal-sub
sisting world rejoices until its own turn comes, when Heaven's great
Drummond-light will prove, at last, the widest tyranny to be hy
pocrisy."

* " Father," said the son, " you believe that love should be pure ? "
" Pure as this earth can yield it. It comes like the seed from the

ground — in the act of life distilling its corruption. But Jesus could
not preach without some imputation on his birth, nor Mohammed
marry Zeinab without the reflections of his guests. There is no
boundary to prurient and idle curiosity. It spins into its daily web
the heart-strings of the wounded, and the wickedest of its torture-
chambers is the modern scandal-press, founded by John Wilkes and
his fellow-debauchees. Mixing in his quarrel the cause of America,
I fear his bad example is in our types and presses. From Britain
came the vituperative Jacobin writers who made public life unen
durable to Washington himself— the Paines and Callenders, who
could not worship liberty without private hate and mercenary defa
mation."

" But, father, was this Richard Booth a brilliant writer, too ? "
" Sho ! No. He allowed his son to support him, and his only
talent was his reticence. The theatrical life is no help to an un
balanced intellect, as old Booth, the actor, proved. He was an
imitator of Kean, who was, like many on the English stage, the
progeny of the lawless nobleman and the actress. The pride of the
aristocrat and the assumption of his favorite is in many an earlier
Booth and Wilkes, whose records run back to the triumphs of Nell
Gwynn.* The actor, Junius Brutus Booth, aspired to rival the

* It is not known that Robert Wilkes and Barton Booth were of the stock
of John Wilkes and Richard Booth. The former actor, grandson of a Cavalier
judge, flourished about 1700, in London ; and Barton Booth claimed to be of

346 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

gypsy genius of Edmund Kean in England, and came to America to
forestall him. They arrived nearly at the same time — both little men,
greedy of fame, both wrecked by appetites, and each left one son
to distinguish the name and walk highly. Young Ned, our neigh
bor, has seen his father's errors of life and art, and imitated neither ;
but, by study and hardship, has made a bright and original name.
John Wilkes, your chum, expects to out-Herod his father, and vault
to celebrity as he vaults the bars at his gymnasium."

" Father, you are too harsh. John Booth has an affectionate
heart."

" That he drew from a martyr mother, one of the best of neigh
bors ; but the son's affection is in the sequel, and we shall see what
his precocious obduracy and indulgence will leave her in the residue
of days. The cube of a child-like nature is manhood ; the cube of
the premature man must be either angel or fiend."

The old man hesitated.

"Speak, father; it is pleasant to obey you."

A tear ran down Lloyd's face.

" I know the price you are paying, my son," Abel Ouantrell said,
" and I will lay no further commands upon you ; not even " — his
voice broke and his eye glazed a moment — "to hear the call of your
country, when mere locality and reaction beat the drum in your na
tive streets ! But, Lloyd, you have sinister companions, who will in
vite you to conduct irregular and partisan warfare. Never do it !
Go join the open enemy, if you will, but never lurk within the lines,
in Maryland, and be a spy and a villain."

" Father, do you approve of John Brown's methods ? "

" No. Senator Pittson was right. I antagonized him because I
took a woman's part."

" Father, who is Hannah Ritner ? "

" My son, she is a woman in politics. But she is also a woman
in mercy."

Had Abel Quantrell permitted his son to love, he would have
let politics alone in that critical year of 1 860 ; but, kept from Katy,

the Earl of Warrington's stock, and was the hero in Addison's " Cato," about
1713. His first wife was a baronet's daughter, and his second a dancer. Ed
mund Kean, if not a duke's son by an actress, was the illegitimate descendant
of another nobleman. Richard Booth applied to Arthur Lee for a commis
sion in the American army, at the age of twenty ; and his father, John Booth,
called John Wilkes " the sacred protector of freedom."

LOVE'S FIERCE PROBATION.

347

and sent into influential society, he imbibed the violent feelings of
social Maryland, where free speech was confined to the mountain
counties, and a convention of the Republican party could not be
held.

Two such local conventions, four years apart, were mobbed — the
last of them assembled by the subsequent Maryland member of Mr.
Lincoln's Cabinet; and when Mr. Lincoln's wife and young children
came through Baltimore, " an immense crowd with groans and hoot-
ings " * received the Chief Magistrate-elect of their country, as they
supposed, but he, advised by wisdom, had passed through Baltimore
at night, a matter of infinite jest to the ignorant scribblers there ; but
the murderous spirit that followed him to \Vashington and used the
hospitality of a Baltimorean's theatre to destroy him, was in that
same hooting crowd he had avoided.

It was the murder of free speech and the slavery of opinion
which took Maryland into the vortex of loss and folly; for had
meetings and debate been free during the few years of inquiry, the
paltry two thousand slaves held in Baltimore would never have been
the masters of the city.

Negro-traders, like Abel Quantrell's brother, dictated the rea
soning of jurists and the consciences of theologians. All heaven,
in that most gentle atmosphere, displayed of eve the Star-spangled
Banner in the skies of the Chesapeake, but the sons of them for
whom the national anthem had been made, tolerated in their streets
the paroquet colors of South Carolina, and received her " embas-
sador" when the heir of Washington had not where to lay his
head.

The Eastern Shore, more loyal to its plain ancestry, had fur
nished the Governor of Maryland in that perilous time, and he,
guided by Henry Winter Davis, refused to convene the State Legis
lature — the conspirators' method of capturing unwilling States —
first to draw Joseph away from home, and next to sell him to
Egypt, and last, to show his bloody and ravished garment of bright
colors at the desolate door of his fathers.

In this way Virginia was betrayed by beleaguering her Legisla
ture and convention around with murderers, like those who had
gone to Islamize Kansas ; and when Virginia surrendered, the war
passed on to her soil, and left Maryland a sullen or frightened host-

* A rebel history of Maryland, 1879.

348 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

age in the Union, with brave soldiers here and there, but many a
chronic Thersites or Caliban.

Lloyd Quantrell's year of banishment from Katy expired as Vir
ginia gave up the ghost. With a hungry and troubled hea^t he took
the railway for the Catoctin country, hearing, as he left Baltimore,
the insensate salutes on the Federal Hill for the secession of Vir
ginia, and the capture of Fort Sumter by South Carolina.

Uncertain where to find a conveyance among the little towns
along the Potomac, Lloyd continued on to Harper's Ferry, and
found everything there in confusion ; the people were for the Gov
ernment which employed them, but -the Government superintendent
had gone off to Richmond and assisted to vote for secession, and
rival sentinels were patrolling the place.

At midnight the State troops were entering Harper's Ferry from
Charlestovvn, when the small guard of the armories crossed the
bridge to Maryland, and an explosion echoed along the hollow
mountains and lighted their gloomy countenances with the glow
of the resurrection-day ; the splendid workshops were riven to
pieces, and, as the flames climbed the Rifle-works, the bell in the
falling tower was heard to ring as it went down into the ruins.

" There, there ! Do you hear it ? " a voice said at Quantrell's
elbow. " It's a-waiting for me. It's a-ringing for me. I can't git
to it. Oh, I'm gone clar off of my Americanus ! "

Leaving this old " suck " of a ruin on foot, Quantrell walked to
Middletown. Excitement over the destruction of the country, and
the probable invasion of their border realm, stopped all the usnal
facilities and conveyances, and it was evening before Lloyd reached
Bosler's farm.

The spotted setter he had given to Katy came out and attacked
him vehemently at the gate, but Katy appeared herself, and was
lifted and carried in his mighty arms.

How splendid she looked ! How more grown and child-wom
anly !

" Did you expect me, darling ? "

" Of course I did. Luter and fader have gone away and left
the house to us. Nopody is here but Fader Fenwick."

A sudden thrill ran through Lloyd at this information.

" Katy," he whispered, drawing the yielding form deeply inwardP
" he shall marry us. Now, darling— or it may be never ! "

A scream from Katy was hushed in a kiss of man's decision.

LOVE'S FIERCE PROBATION. 349

" Lloyd, he won't marry us."

" Katy, he shall ! When I demand it, you must insist. I know
he is fond of you."

" And of you, too, Lloyd. Oh, what shall I do ? "

" Get us refreshment, darling, and listen, and obey. To-day we
are free to marry. To-morrow, another promise may send us apart
through the tumultuous years that have come."

" O Lloyd, my fader ! — and Luter, who is my pastor ! What will
tey say ? "

" Katy, we are past everybody's saying. It is love alone with
us — the desire of our hearts, the trembling heaven above ; or cruel
pain and cowardice attending upon that world's consent which does
not know love's desperation. Take the step with me ! All our
parents have taken it, and the world is still happy ; birds singing,
and children everywhere. The priest is here. God may have sent
him. We are here — "

" Te ring ! " whispered Katy, with superstitious awe. " We
have not got one."

" We shall find one, if I must make it out of the clasp of your
mother's old Dutch Bible with the fire-tongs ! "

He took her in. Hugh Fenwick was reading his Directortum
Sacerdotale, and Lloyd took it up and read of the "vain cleric,"
who " gives way to thoughts of self-complacency," etc. The sugges
tion was not lost on Quantrell's alert thought, resolving to take this
man unawares.

" Hugh," he said, as they sat at the table, and some of the
Dunker still's liquor had warmed their blood, " you must be a full
priest now — no make-believe ? And I know you will be a smart
one ! "

" Oh ! " replied Fenwick, maturely, " I am hardly a seminarist
now. The fathers consult me on the rubrics and grave matters of
that kind."

" Have you got an outfit, Father Hugh ? I mean the gown, and
stole, and all that ? "

"Oh, yes; I've brought a surplice with me and a stole. One
never knows when he may be called on for unction, or bap
tism — "

" Or marriage, too, I guess ! " cried Katy, deadly pale.

" Pshaw ! " said Lloyd. " He can't marry people. That's above
Hugh ! "

350 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

"Oh, yes; I'm qualified," said Fenwick, blushing; "that's the
easiest of our duties."

" Great Heaven ! You ? Can you be what that noble old Friar
Laurence was to Romeo and Juliet when secretly he married them
at his cell, as they pleaded —

' Both our remedies
Within thy help and holy physic lies.
I'll tell thee as we pass ; but this I pray,
That thou consent to marry us this day ' ? ''

The complacent Hugh allowed Quantrell to praise his robes
when they were put on, and heard, with gratified vanity, compli
ments upon his pulpit impressiveness.

" Hugh, our dear, proved friend, I am enrolled, and sworn to
go to the war. Our company leaves for Virginia, probably this
week. Give me that silver ring I see on your finger as a keepsake
of you ! "

Katy was listening, with her great eyes on the rim of her pallid
face.

" Friend Lloyd, it is a poor little thing; take it ! "

" Hugh, it is the greatest friendship you can do in this world but
one — and that you are to do now. This ring must unite Katy and
me this hour ! "

" Sir," remarked the seminarist, with indignation, " this is an im
pertinence — a trick ! "

" No, our friend and tried young father, it is anything but that.
It is what churches and marriages were made for — to sanctify the
love that is so universal. I have but a night to tarry here. — The
time has come, Katy, when I, too, am a pilgrim and a stranger.
Will this man prove himself our friend, or forsake us when we need
him first ? "

" Fader Hugh," Katy cried, with the impulsiveness of despair,
" you said if it efer was your duty, you would pe te minister to us.
Lloyd asks you ! "

" And you, child ! Dare you take this step ? "

" Yes," cried the girl, in a burst of tears; " if Lloyd's going away,
I want him to pe happy. He is te man, and I guess he knows if
I'm doing right." ...

The dog Albion, observing some commotion, barked vigorously,
and gamboled in hysterical delight.

LOVE'S FIERCE PROBATION. 351

" I fear," faltered Fen wick, " that to marry you is beyond my
powers."

" No more of that ! " Lloyd Ouantrell cried ; " you have boasted
of your authority to marry. Marry us ; or be a false priest and a
false friend ! Love's heavy necessities are above all your churches,
and this is our moment of anguish. I shall leave my wife in your
charge. If to marry us embarrasses you now, we can all keep the
secret till better times."

" It is absolutely necessary to do that," Hugh Fenwick said.
" Promise, both of you, never to reveal this ceremony till we all
agree to do so !"

Katy seemed to protest. Her lover kissed her to peace.

In deep embarrassment the priest performed his office ; and Al
bion howling thereat, Lloyd fastened around his neck the horseshoe
on the tree.

" Katy," said he, coming in, " the doves have come back from
the South, and have got the old nest in the tree."

Dawn had not come on the dark Catoctin hills that had gamboled
the night away, and rested now in outlines of slumber, when Luther
Bosler, going to the barn, was met by Lloyd Quantrell.

" Brother," said Lloyd, " I must have a horse to take me to
the railroad. My character is at stake unless I reach Baltimore to
day."

When Lloyd had gone, and Luther and his father were hauling
wood from the distant mountains, Hugh Fenwick came down the
stairs like a ghost.

" What ails you, Father Hugh ? " sighed Katy.

" Sister, I am anathema. Tempted by pride and praise, I claimed
to have the right to marry people. It was a wicked assumption, for
I am not yet in holy orders."

The dog howled at the threshold.

Katy fell by the fireplace, with her head in the ashes.

" Ah-coo-roo ! coo-roo ! " spoke the doves in the tree, which
had quit the South just in time.

Quantrell reached Baltimore in season to be taken to a meeting
called for the purpose of resisting the passage of more troops through

352

KATY OF CATOCTIN,

the city ; some United States artillery and some German companies
from Pennsylvania having marched through that afternoon, despite
threats, insults, and ruffianism, to protect the national capital. The
nature of that meeting was black and insurrectionary, and Quantrell
joined his military friends right afterward ; and the bottle was the
presiding genius there as everywhere.

He could not find his father ; but Light Pittson was in the house,
and. Lloyd told her he. was committed to leave for Virginia at call.
The girl, unacquainted with more than the spirit of the hour, com
mended his resolution.

Next day Lloyd arose late, and heard a wild din in the
streets.

" The Yankees ! The myrmidons ! More of them are com
ing."

He drew on his clothes, and fell in with the mongrel swarm of
tatterdemalions and bravoes— the unthinking, the pale, and the fierce
— and they swept him toward the harbor of the city, where the flood-
tide bore the bowsprits of ships nearly across that street where the
one track of a railroad alone connected the capital of the Union
with the great States of the North, just risen from the swoon of the
news of disunion.

The rioters were marching on that track thousands strong, as if
Jones's Falls and its pollution had burst, and were deluging the
quays.

Quantrell learned that a portion of a Northern " army " had
just been hauled through the town in cars by horses ; but that some
fragments had remained behind, and that these were now to be
murdered. People were already tearing up the track and piling
stones and ship-anchors in the streets.

In a few minutes a moving coherence of some kind was seen at
a place in the broad street, where a bridge crossed the great open
sewer of the city. It seemed like a stone wall moving yet crum
bling, and at the head of it waved a sort of color or flag, torn and
gay and dirty. The air was mottled with things that seemed to be
tossed out of a machine, or revolving like bats or butterflies in the
wind.

As the moving disaster drew nearer, there was seen enveloped
a little band of men staggering under arms, beaten and bloody, the
air and the street spouting stones at them, and at their head a mis
creant of destruction was carrying, to insult them, the new piece of

LOVE'S FIERCE PROBATION. 353

finery conceived in the Southern barracoons — the insurgent, separat
ing, or confederated flag.

Quantrell picked up a stone.

He saw at the head of that little, tired soldiery, the mayor of the
city, walking by their officer, pale and dusty, but doing his duty at
the risk of his life.

The troops came so close that Lloyd could hear them panting.
Their tongues were dry, like those of sheep driven without water.
Here and there one would be tripped up by some coward and fall
beneath his heavy and unwonted accoutrements. Yet the eyes of
all were shining at something farther on, and seeing this alone.

" What was it they saw ? " Quantrell often asked, afterward, but
could never tell. It might have been the unprotected capital of their
country, or the presence of death, or the worship of a faithful pos
terity which could feel for their agony that day.

They numbered less than two hundred ; they spoke no more
than the ox going to slaughter. The Christian martyrs in the Ro
man arena were not beset by as many thousands nor by more
ravening beasts. Yet all that these men were doing was obeying a
proclamation of law and using a peaceable post-road of the coun
try to go to their capital.

Quantrell was fascinated with the scene of duty and of dread.
The stone he was holding in his hand was wrested from him, and
the villain who seized it hurled it against an old man limping at the
soldiery's side, with a face like the dust of battle on the skins of the
dead.

" That is my father ! " Quantrell gasped, and rushed where the
old man fell.

" Go back, sir ! This is my place," a woman spoke, rising, with
Abel Quantrell in her arms.

Lloyd gazed, and saw the face of Hannah Ritner, stained with
his father's blood.

The butchers of the mob had now presumed too far ; it had be
come a question of resistance or death. Hemmed in and blocked
fast, stoned and spit upon, prodded with staves and stuck with awls,
deserted by police and outlawed in that place of public commerce,
the soldiery from near the ancient battle-field of Lexington waited
for one word, and it came, at last, with nasal curtness and mean-
ing:

"Ready!— Fire!"
23

354

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

Then rolled through Baltimore the echoes of Fort Sumter, and
the streets, all strewed with flying scavengers, ended the war on that
spot forever.

The flight of the rioters gave the police room to form in, and the
volunteers of Massachusetts were molested no more, save by that
local chatter which ever follows in the wake of the brave.

Lloyd's father was dangerously hurt, but the son demanded per
mission to see him that night.

" Father," said he, " I am going — you must know where. I lit
tle thought the first bloodshed would be upon your aged face.
Wide as we differ, father, there ought to be love between us. Can
you not forget the cause I go to fight for, and bless your son ? "

" You will never see me again ! " Abel Quantrell spoke, his face
with lines of blood upon it, but the mouth firm as the dead Cid's
brought from his tomb to fight the Moors. " I can not bless by
my finite power. My heart has been warmed of late toward you,
and if you could stay here, where Heaven should make you see your
duty, affection might grow strong between us. How can I say ' God
bless you,' sir, when, blessing you, I dare not ask liberty for your
slaves, against whose sorrows you go to war? "

" I have anticipated that, father," Lloyd replied. " You can bless
me, sir. Here is a bill of sale of every slave I own, prepared to
meet this hour and your consistency. Take it and set them free,
and say, ' God bless you, Lloyd ! "

He laid the paper upon the bed.

Abel Quantrell drew his son to his face and kissed him with
emotion.

" The blessing of your State go with you, when Maryland is free :
my son, take my farewell from her shield, ' Crescite et multiplied-
mini! " *

Light Pittson kissed him all her approbation.

Hannah Ritner whispered in his ear :

"When tbou killest everything,
Still the turtle-dove will sing."

" Grow and multiply," the motto of Maryland. ;

THE OLD SLAVE COUNTIES. 355

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE OLD SLAVE COUNTIES.

QUANTRELL left Baltimore, with other recruits, for the seceding
or insurgent government — the two lads Arnold and O'Laughlin, al
ready referred to as Booth's dependents, and the liquor-dealer Mar
tin, who had business in the peninsulas below the city of Washing
ton, where, also, were situated Ouantrell's lands and slaves.

These peninsulas stretch eighty miles south of Baltimore city,
and are comprised between two broad sheets of tidal water — the
Chesapeake Bay coming up to Baltimore, and the great river Poto
mac, ceasing its tides at the city of Washington. The general
peninsula is divided lengthwise by the river Patuxent, flowing half
way between the two large cities, and further compressing the land
for traversable purposes to the breadth of only twenty miles east
from Washington. It was forty miles by the railroad from Balti
more to Washington, and Quantrell then had forty miles to go by
private conveyance before he should be able to cross into Virginia
at Pope's Creek, near the old court-house town of Port Tobacco.

This Pope's Creek suggested to our traveler that the parent
country of the Roman Catholic religion in the English colonies was
in this old isolated district of Maryland.

While Raleigh was seeking to plant Virginia, a young Tory poli
tician at court cut out from Raleigh's colony the province of Mary
land, and introduced the old religion there in its decaying and perse
cuted times, after the Catholic conspiracy of Guy Fawkes. After a
course of fifty years a Protestant revolution arose in Maryland, and
for nearly a century the Romish worship was suppressed, or till the
American War of Independence released all worships. In that in
terval the old faith of Queen Mary smoldered and the Lords Balti
more had professed Protestantism ; but John Carroll, a priest of
Rome and educated on the Continent, gathered his folds together, and
brought over refugee priests from the French Revolution ; and thus,
in eighty years, Maryland had again become the proselytizing prov
ince of American Romanism, with its springs in Baltimore and its
antiquities in the old Potomac peninsula.

Upon the edge, indeed, within the rim, of this old English Ca
tholicism stood the American capital, and much of its population

356 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

was of the faith of Calvert and Catesby, while a Jesuit college and
the oldest convent in the land overhung the city from the steeps of
Georgetown. Hardly fifty thousand people remained in Washing
ton, but soldiers were quartered in the halls of Congress, and all the
railroads to the north had been destroyed the night following the
riots in Baltimore.

The city of Washington stood, the melancholy monument of
slavery incorporated with a democratic system, and extending
through that white democracy, to the lowest man, the prejudices
not of the democracy, but of the slavery. It had resisted all the
efforts of Congress to make it a free district, yet slavery had spoiled
its proportions, and, originally a square, it was now only the Mary
land side of the square, and gave some force to Abel Quantrell's re
mark, every time he saw the map of the District of Columbia :

" Cube it ! "

There stood a long Grecian Capitol on a nearly naked hill, with
the splintered drum of an iron dome, like a broken bundle of fasces,
unfinished in the middle. A broad, unsightly avenue stretched from
its base, between stunted rows of generally mean-looking houses, to
a Treasury Department in borrowed architecture, and some other
ministerial buildings, surrounding the sorrowful new President's
abode, out of whose official window he could look upon a neglected
obelisk of Washington, halting like the pillar of Lot's wife till Sodom
and Gomorrah should burn in chastising fire.

The same glance which showed Abraham Lincoln the deciviliz-
ing impotence of slavery showed him the new rebel flag hoisted on
the Virginia hills — that Virginia whence his forefathers emigrated to
the West. Lloyd had the privilege of seeing this man for the only
time in his life, when the President walked, the day of Lloyd's ar
rival, from his white official mansion to the war building.

Lloyd and his three companions encountered a tall man, a small
one, and one neither small nor tall, but wearing spectacles.

" I'll swaw," whispered Martin, " if yer ain't the devil himself ! "

The other lads looked up and gave room.

The tall man glanced down from a long and peculiar face, and
said, with a look of most fatherly tenderness, where sorrow and
sweetness seemed mixed in the cup of dignity :

" Good-morning, friends ! "

The two others would not have spoken at all but for the tall
man's condescension, and he with the spectacles barely noticed our

THE OLD SLAVE COUNTIES, 357

loiterers; while the little man. with hardly any color about him,
smiled at them out of a boyish, old face.

." Who is it ? " asked Lloyd, seeing only one face of the three,
and that had seemed to shine down into him and through him, like
the light of foliage tremulous in water-wells.

" The little fellow is See-ward, their Secretary of State. He un
in specticles is the great lawyer in Washington— Stanton."

" But the other man, with that noble voice : who was it ? Where
have Iseen him ? "

" Why, on every picture and newspaper for the last year, Lloyd.
That's the Yankee President, Abe Lincoln."

Quantrell drew his breath in a woe he might have borrowed from
that magistrate's gentle forlornness.

" Oh, boys," said he, " I hoped he was an uglier and a more
wicked or degraded man. That is a gentleman, and the truth has
not been told us."

A hired carriage took our adventurers to heights of clay and for
est overlooking a broad arm of the Potomac, called the Eastern
Branch, where were a navy-yard and a bridge, guarded by hastily
improvised militia. As they looked down from these hills at the
squalid city of the government, basking in blue haze and in the cleft
of broad, deserted rivers, Martin, the liquor-dealer, said :

" Boys, we might have give old Abe Lincoln and that abolition
ist See-ward a couple of shots, and got out of town easy."

" I was thinking of that," Mike O'Laughlin added. " If Johnny
Booth had seen him, I b'leeve he would have clipped him. Booth's
bitter as death."

" I never could have fired on that face," Lloyd Quantrell spoke.
" I told father I would do nothing between the lines."

" Harkee ! " Martin interposed ; " I want you all to j'ine me, boys,
and we'll cut out this steamboat that runs from Balt'mer to P'int
Lookout. I'm down yer now to spot her. We'll hide a crew aboard
of her, and drive her own crew overboard and take her as a present
to Jefferson Davis."

The other two watched Quantrell, .to form their opinions from
his.

"Martin," said Lloyd, " I'll do no such Indian ambushing. If
our cause is right, it wants to be supported by soldiers, and not by
robbers and assassins. I shall enlist in the Virginia line."

As subsequent events proved, Mr. Martin did lurk within the

358

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

government lines, and he and others seized this steamer ; but the
military punished the chief offenders, and Mr. Martin ran away to
Canada, where he lived a scheming life during the remainder. of
his days. And yet this man had a certain influence upon the great
est personal crime of that long civil war.

They had loitered away the whole Saturday morning in Wash
ington, and the long, steep hills of clay, still in the pools and ruts of
winter, delayed the carriage, so that it was near supper-time when
they reached Surratt's tavern, ten miles from the capital.

It was a respectable, white wooden house, with green shutters
and two chimneys, and a paling was around its pretty flower-yard
and vine-clad porch on the broad-eaved side, while a shed along the
northern gable shaded a bar-room and post-office ; and here were
assembled some negro overseers, woods farmers, and young men,
with their horses tied around the fences and in a grassy space.

A locust-tree grew in this open area, a small peach-orchard was
behind the house, and some bird-cages adorned the road-side. Near
and far the melancholy woods of oak and chinquapin and small wild
pine enveloped the clearings, and the brown fox-grass blew with a
whistling sound, and the tender green of spring made cover and
fringes in the forests.

They saw within Surratt, the tavern-keeper, and the lad of the
same name who had been at St. Charles College with Hugh Fen-
wick, distinguished by his long nose, lean chin, and sunken eyes.
The elder Surratt was ill, and not long to live ; the son grave and
uninteresting ; and therefore Quantrell was rejoiced to find the ladies
of the family in the dwelling part — Mrs. Surratt, a wife of round
form and soft complexion, and of hospitable ways, and her young
daughter, pretty and chirrupy.

Quantrell had brought Katy's accordion along, and he played
and sang to the females in the snug rooms and wide hall-way, while
Arnold and O'Laup;hlin, habitually impecunious, spent Quantrell's
money at the bar, and retired to bed tipsy.

Young Herold, whom they had met in Charlestown, came in and
sat with the family. He had .some married sisters in the peninsula,
and was full of talk about " patridges." His little bashful face was
a mirror of dimples and blushes, and no subject found him talkative
but that of gunning ; on snipe and wild ducks, and especially on
"patridges," he was eloquent.

Lloyd had the reputation of wealth in this region; and the

THE OLD SLAVE COUNTIES. 359

young-looking mother and pleasing daughter paid him attention —
the more, that he was about to volunteer in the armies of secession.

He thought of his child-wife passing her honeymoon in those
walled mountains, of the brief bliss of their union and violent sun
dering, and he was in no mood to indulge in political acerbities.

" Dear Mrs. Surratt," he said, when his ears had been too long
harassed by epithets of " Yankee," " despot," " nigger-worshiper,"
" black republican," "vile abolitionist," and so on, "don't let the
women, also, go to the war ! Some day we shall cease fighting, I
hope, and home will be so grateful without politics. Then the ladies
can make peace speedy and easy with their soft ministrations, in
stead of blowing the coals of war to flame again."

" Never will I live under Abe Lincoln, that vile and nasty aboli
tion President ! " said the hostess, with all her dainty temper.

They kissed the young man good-night, with mingled confidence
and coquetry ; and their boy, who would be a priest, lighted the way
for him.

" It must make you feel proud, sir, to go to war for your coun
try ! " young Surratt exclaimed, with timid admiration.

" My country," repeated Lloyd, " where is it ? Go back to school,
my friend, and stay there, and don't loiter here between the lines."

It was long before Quantrell could fall asleep, thinking of the
unnatural compulsions which now were driving himself and millions
more away from love, home, and law — the despotisms of pride, per
versity, and moral cowardice.

He would not be ruled because he had said he would not, and he
had said so because others did the same ; yet not one grievance
had he received except the expression of the lawful majority against
the weedy and gypsy instincts of slavery, to go everywhere and spoil
good land, and sow arrogance, brutality, and dissension.

That gentle, fatherly face he had seen in Washington, so differ
ent from the hard- and cold-faced President just retired, had spoken
to him and his fellow-truants the word "friends," with a sensibility
inherent, and a smile that was the God's upon the cross.

" Could he," thought Quantrell, "rise in to-morrow's sun with
that same countenance and be beheld by all who are breaking up
the country, and say ' friends,' as he did to us, would they not
submit to his rule ? Alas, no ! for I can not myself hear the cry of
my father nor of my wife. A haughty and cowardly fear to turn
back and be right, drives me and all of us to a silly insurrection."

360

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

A feeling of indignation possessed him against the original se
cessionists ; but he could not think of the name of a single one. All
secessionists had been secondary ones. If there was one original
secessionist, it was not an individual, but a system ; and John Brown
had tried to kill it with his pikes. Slavery was the only original
secessionist.

The nearest Lloyd could come to an evil influence over himself
was Booth. Here seemed a man of insurrectionary incentive — head
long as the thunderbolt, yet the child of the cloud — gathering young
men together to make them drink and swear ; governing them by
his dark -eyed will, and lending them his affections to incite their re
venges.

That oath by Harper's Ferry, illegal and unbinding as secession
ordinances themselves, still lay in Ouantrell's mind like a coiled and
hissing snake ! " If trouble ever comes, to revenge the South ; if in
vasion comes, to invade her invaders — ' Sic semper tyrannts ! ' '

Lloyd wished he had never seen John Wilkes Booth.

Ah ! if some woman had only entered where they took that
oath and dashed their glasses down — some gentle woman, like her
who had kissed Quantrell to bed !

But she, too, was full of political bitterness, and could not stay
her tongue from wagging when the deep-mouthed guns were full of
shot, and Law and Treason stood on the instant of war.

Quantrell fell asleep, with the spirit of his child-bride in his arms ;
but he dreamed a horrid dream.

It was the dream identical with Atzerodt's in the night when
Lloyd first knew Katy Bosler, and when love came between them
on the tremor of superstition.

There was a man of pale and black complexion, like Booth, rid
ing a horse in a wood, and Quantrell had overtaken him there,
and drunk with him ; and out of the bottle seemed to come other
men every time they drank ; and " the last man," as Atzerodt had
expressed it, "was a woman." That woman wras the exact copy of
her by whom Quantrell had been kissed, motherly, to his bed !

The man they encountered, as they rode along under that dark
and white influence, was the tall President who had called his ene
mies " friends " but yesterday, and the same deep, feeling tones
came from his face in the dream : " Good-evening, friends ; we're
'most home." " The devil you are ! " answered the voice of Booth.

So the vision proceeded, till the black-and-white rider fomented

THE OLD SLAVE COUNTIES. 361

hate against the tall, unsuspecting gentleman, and called for a show
of hands ; and when the men were at a tie, the woman in this same
tavern gave the casting vote, by calling " Charge ! " — and over the
precipice went she and all of them, trampling the " long man in
black clothes " to the earth in his blood.

Ouantrell awoke, all throbbing with excitement. He looked out
in the night on woods and pallid moon, and heard the whip-poor-
will cry down the cross-roads from Surrattsville.

Back to bed he went, and dreamed the same dream, with varia
tions, over and over, till he fell into a better sleep at dawn, and,
when he came down to eat, the ladies were starting for the Catholic
church at Piscataway. Ouantrell bade them good-by, saying :

" Dear Mrs. Surratt, I had a bad dream last night. You had
become a politician, and felt an evil influence. Pray against it, to
day and ever : ' Ab insidiis diaboli, liber a nos, Je3u! '"*

That first Sabbath of the war in April time carried Ouantrell
and his trio, Martin driving, through the woods just tingling with
the rising sap, to a little stage station called Tee Bee, and through
the deep-washing creeks and their aguish swamps of Piscataway
and Mattawoman, till at the ruined hamlet of Beantown they
turned to the east and saw the congregation dismissing at a road
side Catholic church, whose graveyard adjacent was filled with
little tombstones invoking "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph." Here Mar
tin went on with some communicants bound for St. Mary's County,
and the other two walked to Bryantown, five miles to the south,
while Quantrell went to dine with a country physician, Samuel
Mudd, who had a farm and numerous slaves. In this vicinity was
Lloyd Quantrell's property, and the country toward Bryantown was
the best improved of all in this old tobacco region.

Dr. Sam Mudd lived far back from the road on a wheaty plateau,
and, as he preceded Quantrell from church on his horse, he wore a
troubled look, asking about the fight in Baltimore, rejoicing at the
attack upon the soldiery, and wondering whether his slaves would
run away.

An enterprising father had both educated him and left him slave
property. In this old region had once existed a high degree of pro
fessional cultivation, and two of the physicians hereabout had been
cited to the death-bed of General Washington, who lived hardly ten

* From the Roman litany : " From the snares of the devil, Jesus deliver
us!"

362 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

miles from Mrs. Surratt's tavern, but on the opposite side of the
Potomac. These old Scotch-graduated surgeons had kept medical
students in their houses, and in a land of slaves and few proprietors
the doctor continued to be more necessary than the lawyer. So
Dr. Mudd had a proprietary and a practitionary interest in slavery.

He was a lean man, of a rather hungry and nervous tempera
ment, with light-red hair, and his complexion easily betrayed his
feelings, which were quick to brood and seldom buoyant long. He
was married and agreeably surrounded. His white dwelling, with
long blank roof, stood high above the surrounding wide swamps,
and from its summits the Patuxent might almost be seen, where he
shipped his wheat, corn, and tobacco. A peach-orchard showed its
warm tints in the front, high trees flanked the gable, and servants'
quarters were near by, with the convenient cool spring that Mary-
landers covet, and a house-yard and garden, making home neat and
independent.

He led Quantrell into a hall and office-parlor taking up the front
of the dwelling, and there they talked about property matters over
a social glass.

" People are going crazy," said Dr. Mudd ; "we had to send off
one of our leading citizens to a lunatic asylum a month ago. He
had manumitted all his niggers, and wanted to rob his family. I
gave the certificate to send him to the asylum."

" On that act only, Sam ? "

" That was the main thing ; yes."

" Then I am a lunatic, Sam ; for I have set all mine free."

" You ? what's the matter with you ? "

" As far as it can be done, with the embarrassments of our laws
against manumitting, I have done it. My father is against slavery,
and I sold my negroes to him, giving a blank receipt, and they are
as good as free. I shall tell them so to-day."

Dr. Mudd lost his temper, and looked at Lloyd with incredulity
and suspicion.

" What in God's name are you going into the Confederate army
for, then ? "

" Freedom," answered Quantrell.

" Freedom ? You're talking like an Abe Lincoln abolitionist !
Don't you know that slavery is the only cause for separation ? "

" Why, Sam, your blacks will all run away. They are only a
night's walk from Washington city, and every one of them knows

THE OLD SLAVE COUNTIES. 363

that secession was on account of slavery. So I shall help the South
to resist invasion ; but nobody shall tell me that I have quit my
father, my country, and my girl, for no nobler end than to keep my
negroes as slaves."

Quantrell's face shone with something higher than pride — the
dawning principle which comes after disinterested sacrifice. Dr.
Mudd leaped up and flashed his spiteful blue eyes on his guest.

" Damn you ! " he said, " they won't have you in the Confederate
army. No man is wanted there who is not a thick-and-thin pro-
slavery man. Do you think I would leave the Union to fight for a
part of it, if I had to give my niggers away ? No, sir ! I shall send
them to Virginia and sell them to go South, if I can't hold them
safe here."

" Don't get mad, Sam. You can't get me mad, because the
rotten old interest is off my mind, and I feel, in that quarter, a
relief that makes death in battle only half terrible. Perhaps the
Federal Government will offer to pay for all the slaves in Mary
land."

" I wouldn't accept it, sir ! " shrieked Dr. Mudd. " I've got my
constitutional rights, and I won't be bought up."

" Sam, you'll drive the Government to emancipation if you don't
give them some kind of chance."

Dr. Mudd broke into curses furious and irrational ; the negroes,
slipping by, heard the welcome sounds which proved their freedom
to be the white man's apprehension.

"Doctor," Lloyd spoke, at last, "are you quite sure the other
man should not have given you the certificate for the asylum ? Be
respectable, at least. Holy Easter was but three weeks ago, when
Christ arose ; you have just come from church, and I am your
guest : here are three reasons not to swear."

" You are welcome to go ! " snapped Dr. Mudd ; " I never enter
tain abolitionists."

" Good-by, then," said Lloyd, rising. "Take care you don't
entertain, some time, a man less candid than I am, and with hands
less clean ! The devil is abroad, watching for people in a passion
in such times as these. He was in my dreams last night at Mrs.
Surratt's. He may come into this room if a humble spirit does not
guard it for you."

The wretched man, cut in his sense of hospitable duty, lay all
that day in self-accusation, while Lloyd Quantrell went to his own

364 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

negro estate not far away, and dined with the slaves he meant to
rejoice.

They were always glad to see him come, and they were all there ;
and responsibly above them was Ashby, the hostage of John Brown's
invasion. When Lloyd had eaten of the toothsome negro fare he
loved so well from childhood's time, he called them close around
him, the aged and the babes, the supple girls who had loved him,
and the hardy young laborers he had romped and wrestled with.

" My dear old friends," spoke Lloyd, "some of whom knew my
dear mother, and combed her long, bright hair — "

The healing springs of Charlotte Hall, near by, flowed not
quicker than their tears, to see Lloyd catch his rising sob, and stop
and tremble. The little mulatto children came to his knees, the
dusky grandmothers groaned and rocked their heads ; if Lloyd had
never been loved before, there were gentle-hearted women there,
and pure as slavery could permit, to nurse his suffering now upon
their bosoms, and wipe his eyes with their hairs.

He felt himself as on that day when he wept in Katy's rapt
embrace going to the love-feast, and she fought with the angels for
his soul !

The angels had yielded then, and now the archangel, with the
trump of jubilee, was to let poor Ouantrell wind an unpremeditated
strain :

" Oh ! " he cried, putting down his emotions with a noble con
fession, " I wish I was the owner of every slave, instead of only this
family, that I might set all free as I do you, this Sabbath after Holy
Week ! I wish I was the President, not of the United States, for
he has not the opportunity, but the President of the Confederate
States, to call Freedom loud, and ask God's blessing and alliance ! "

" Amen ! " rolled round the circle. The aged women, with not
long to live, shouted for their few days of freedom like the trembling
virgins and the honest wives. All faces glowed as if the stone had
been rolled a little way from the tomb, and the bright supernal light
shone forth of the everlasting Redeemer.

" Hallelujah ! Bless God, he's come ! God bless young moss-
ter everywhere ! "

" I feel so good," cried Lloyd, " I could shout ! for to-day I
make you free. Father has the papers ; I gave them to him. He
can not disappoint you. The sacrifice has not cost me a pang, and
my heart is full of more than happiness — of glory ! "

REBELLION 365

•

" Glory ! glory ! "

The slave people sprang to their feet ; the old forgot their rheu
matisms; Methodist and Catholic negro danced together; Lloyd
danced and leaped like a negro of the tribe. No church in Mary
land felt the frenzy of excitement at revival-time like these who had
seen their rights, so long denied, come in upon the generous breath
of kindness, ungrudging as the blossoms of the spring.

When weary nature ceased to shout, and all lay panting around
the porches and on the earth, some lute-stringed throats of women
started melodious tunes, and at the end the patriarch of the family
prayed.

Lloyd's time was out. He kissed them all — the children ten
derly, the fair ones with pure and brotherly lips ; the men, too, in
the Dunker fashion, not a bit afraid or dainty.

" Mosster," spoke Ashby, " these yer — all but me — has got
friends in Merrylin. I ain't got none but you. Take me, and
let me be your servant."

" Not into the slave States, where you have no rights ! Not into
battle, Ashby ! "

" Mosster, I got only one right left — de rest is dead ; dat is de
right to love and die with you ! "

"Come, then," spoke Quantrell ; "it is sixteen miles farther to
Pope's Creek."

CHAPTER XXXV.

REBELLION.

ASHBY was not the only Union volunteer for Lloyd that day ;
the great dog Fritz, long left at his estate, and now old but valiant,
followed the two exiles.

They skirted the rapid running waters of Zekiah Swamp, and
crossing a branch, entered Bryantown, three or four miles from
Mudd's, a small cross-roads village of later date than most of the
peninsular hamlets, with several respectable houses and more wooden
cabins, some mechanics' shops, and a double-porched tavern, with
dark bar below ; from its upper veranda could be seen, on the hills
toward the south, a prominent Catholic church.

3 66 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

When they reached the church, Ashby driving, they saw a sin
gular scene on the cedar- and fir-crowned lawn before the airy
church-yard.

A large buzzard, or vulture, was settling down in the road, his
sable wings scurrying the dust where lay a fine riding horse— such
as is native to that country — fallen dead. The stolid black scaven
ger, undeterred by Lloyd's advancing, had already run its beak into
the charger, when Fritz, the dog, darted upon it.

Too gluttonous or too sluggish to know alarm, the carrion-bird
held its ground, and stared with dull and drunken eyes upon the
dog, as i[ expressing a willingness to divide the prey. At this the
dog drew back, glared at the horrible bird, and ran from it in avoid
ance worse than fear.

Six miles toward the south, then westward through Zekiah
Swamp and six miles westward more, brought Lloyd at nightfall to
old Port Tobacco Town, in the miasmas of a deep inlet from the
Potomac. It contained a venerable Episcopal church, a court-house
which once taxed bachelors to support that church, some law-offices,
and two taverns ; and around it, on the hills, showed mansions of a
once opulent time. Lying in a bowl of the hills, neglect, night-
poison, and slavery had come like three witches to grin upon it.

" Don't sleep heah, mosster," the negro said ; " it's death to stran
gers after sundown ! "

Quantrell gazed around on jail and crumbling wall, on public
pump and butcher-stall, on gravestones uninclosed, and hollow ruin.

" Think of it," he reflected ; " thirty-four miles from the city of
Washington ! — only an evening's drive ! "

The time came when this reflection put into another head an en
terprise of desperation. Port Tobacco was on the direct line, as the
crow flies, from the city of Baltimore to the city of Richmond, and
as directly south from Washington as the plummet could hang.
Did the government at Washington forget this when, the very day
Lloyd Quantrell arrived in Port Tobacco, he saw a " Home-Guard "
to recruit for slavery established in the town ? Atzerodt did not for
get it, whose home was in Port Tobacco.

He came out to Lloyd's carriage from a large brick edifice with
massive forking chimneys built against it, and a long porch on
squalid piers — a house of a tenement character, degraded from old
stability and pretension to be the offices or lodgings of various peo
ple, the office-holder, the lawyer, the doctor ; and in the once orna-

REBELLION.

367

mental garden stood an old stable or shop, where Atzerodt worked
at his trade of coach-maker.

" Here is where you wanted to bring Nelly, Andrew. It was
good for her she didn't come."

" Py Jing ! she proke dat Bunker's heart, Lloyd. She'll preak
te next feller's, too. Who is he ? Ain't it Pooth ? "

•' No, no. Nelly loves nobody, Atzerodt. She wants money and
admiration."

" Den she'll cry her eyes out for not taking me. Lloyd, py Jing !
I'm going to rake money in now easy as rakin' oysters. Nigger-
catchin' is done. Te tarn apolitionists has stopped kidnappin' and
remantin' of slaves. Te Logans is all proke up. But right here,
at Port Tobacco Inlet, te plockade-runners will pe comin', and I've
got a boat an' crew to run te river to Fergeenia."

" There's a rope spun for you, Andrew ! You go to Canada, or
this war will catch you ; for it's going to be a big one, and you're a
poor, chattering coward that I wish no harm to. Where is Father
Fen wick ? "

" He's down to St. Thomas's Manor, waitin' for you. Put stay
here to-night. Vender's Captain Sam Cox on te porch', te ring
leader of Charles County. He's goin' up to-morry or next day, and
capture Washington, py Jing! and cut ole Abe Lincoln's head
off!"

Ouantrell saw Captain Cox, a fierce, consumptive-eyed man,
standing at the old tavern.

" Here, Andrew, take my dog, and keep him till you hear from
me! "

As Lloyd drove away, Atzerodt put up the dog for drinks at the
tavern-bar, and one of the few government or Union men in the
county got him and led him home.

Ouantreil continued along the high banks of the Port Tobacco
River, nearly a mile broad, and lighted by the moon, till at its month
there stretched below the landing and warehouses of Chapel Point,
and, on the heights above, the venerable chapel, mansion, and school
of St. Thomas's Manor.

This was the most elegant establishment the Jesuits possessed
in Maryland, in those years when they strained the provincial laws
to give a private estate ecclesiastical scope and opulence. A church
was connected with a refectory and study, in handsome design, of
dark-red brick, with Roman arches and heavy chimneys, spire, wide

368 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

hall, and cool gallery within the hall, and slave quarters ; for slavery
became more influential than the Jesuits, and it broke their discipline
down, till the brethren of him who penetrated through the wilderness
to discover the Mississippi yielded by the Potomac to the soft bland-
ishments of master and slave.* Behind the large yet gloomy con
struction the graves of the Jesuit brothers lay in myrtle-beds ; and
terraced slopes and garden-walks dropped away to the shores of the
mighty Potomac, here contracted to a width of three miles ; and in
the soft procession of the moon upon the waters the Virginia woods
at Mathias Point crept onward, like an ambush of the gunner for the
wild duck.

Hugh Fenwick came out and put away Lloyd's horses. He
seemed half guest, half assistant there. They talked of Katy before
they went to bed.

" Hugh," said Quantrell, " I shall send to you at this place all
my letters. In the morning I shall write to Katy, recommending
her to your care. My father is too ill to bear the news of my mar
riage yet."

How deeply was the young priest in religious enthusiasm that
night ! He would not let Quantrell sleep, without saying over him
the prayer of St. Thomas Aquinas — to keep love's torments down.

" Get out, Hugh ! " Quantrell said, at last ; " don't paw over me
so ! You seem to be in what they call ' ecstasy ' of some kind ! "

If he could have peeped into Fenwick's chamber, Quantrell might
have known the cause of that ecstasy, as the student upon his knees
sighed out :

" Lord, if it pleases thee to continue this war sufficiently long,
be bountifully gracious to forgive my sin in marrying this man and
woman." And he might have added, " Incline her heart to me ! "

Quantrell crossed Pope's Creek and the Potomac next morning,
and, riding across the Northern Neck, reached old Port Royal on
the Rappahannock. The third night he was in Richmond, and,
falling in with many volunteers he had met at John Brown's scaffold,
they took him to a concert-saloon to see a remarkable beauty who
had recently turned out.

The place was coarse and without female patrons. Men smoked
cigars, and waiters peddled liquors up and down the aisles. After
minstrelsy, dancing, and other variety entertainment, a loud howl

* See a curious book on a residence in Maryland before the American
Revolution, by J. F. D. Smyth, loyalist officer. Dublin, 1784.

REBELLION.

369

arose from the motley audience for the fresh favorite that is ever
requested and devoured, like fresh babes by the sacred crocodile.
The present slave of the mob was announced as " the dazzling Pro
tean Empress in her reigning parts and dresses, Miss Nelly Starr."

The curtain rose, and Nelly Harbaugh was before Lloyd, in even
ing dress of black silk — superior to the place she stood in, as modesty
with beauty well might be. Instead of seeming coarser, she seemed
better in every way, more pale, more cold, more superb. She re
cited in hoarse, crude, deep tones, and with too little good tuition,
a ballad Quantrell had heard from John Wilkes Booth.

Quantrell could hardly believe his eyes, as the curtain fell, that
this was the mountain weed which had stood by his side in the loft
of the Dunker church.

The first piece had been above the taste of the audience, but the
second was cried for by whistling and yelling — the yell that often
resounded afterward on the field of battle like the Indian war-
whoop.

Nelly now appeared in knee-breeches of velvet and a steel corset,
with alight sword in her hand. Her long, mountain-exercised limbs
and trunk stood nearly of man's height and sinew, and her hair was
gathered up. After juggling with the sword awhile to the sound of
music, she was confronted by a " professor ' of fencing, and, amid
the continued yelling of the audience, she crossed rapiers with him,
more in main strength and rude pluck than in skill. Her prowess
was greeted by expletives low and familiar, and, at the disarming of
the professor by the " Empress," Lloyd saw her bosom heave when
she bowed her thanks.

" Poor girl ! " thought he, " this audience is a sore exchange for
an honest husband."

The curtain soon rang up upon Nelly as " Virginia " — the Virginia
not of Knowles, but of Jefferson, as depicted on the seal of the State.
There stood this fine and powdered woman, in the dress, or want of
dress, of an Amazon, with a short tunic, bodice, and sleeves of span
gles, and with sandals and helmet, and bare limbs and breast— a
wonder in flesh and yellow hair, stalwart and palpitating. Her left
hand upheld a spear ; from her right hand fell a falchion ; and her
foot was upon a nondescript figure which lay prostrate and held a
broken chain and a slave-whip.

"Sic semper tyrannis ! '— ever thus, tyrants!" exclaimed the
girl, in hollow, untrained tones, quoting the motto of the State.
24

370

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

Her strong Roman nose well became the study, and her fine
chin and throat and arching eyebrows.

As she drooped her eyes, that had been raised in dramatic apos
trophe while the curtain was coming down, they fell upon Lloyd
Quantrell, and she started ; her foot shook the effigy, her bare knee
trembled, and her lips parted.

This impersonation had to be several times made to gratify the
Virginians, but every time the actress turned a meaning glance on
Lloyd, whose companions finally noticed it, saying:

"Lloyd, the Empress is 'gone' on you. You're lucky, for she
has been cold as ice to every devotee of pleasure in the city."

A waiter soon came to Lloyd with a piece of paper on which
was written :

"Do wait for me at the door ! I want to hear from home."

She came out among officious and insinuating men, spurning all
their attentions, and saw Lloyd's tall figure, and took his arm.

" Come," she said, •' to my lodgings."

They crossed the shady square under the Roman-French portico
of the old barn-like Capitol, soon to be the insurgent government's,
and saw the great brass statue of Washington and horse ride the
moonlight like a wave of electrified cloud. Nelly boarded with a
German family from the Valley, and in the little parlor she sat by
Lloyd's knee and whispered nervously :

" Luther — is he sick ? "

"No."

" Thank God ! But does he accuse me ? "

" He has never spoken of you since, I hear."

" O Lloyd, I could never have filled the place he would have
put me in. Once I might have done so. I had struggled and
prayed to be made humble to do my duty as a Christian minis
ter's wife. Just as I thought I had triumphed, the devil appeared
to me and made me as treacherous as himself."

" It was not John Booth ? "

" Who else ? I will not give you any lies. He set his traps for
my ambition, and I fell to hell with him ! Did he never tell you ? "

" Not a word. I was sure it was some other man — or none."

" Ah ! Lloyd, he can keep a secret well, especially if it is a dark
and tangled one. That he calls honor — to betray and not scandal
ize his victim — as if a woman would be content to find him false in
everything but that ! "

REBELLION. 3/1

" Nelly, you hate him."

" I fear him more. There is not one man in him, but many.
Three devils possess him at different times, or all together — pride,
drink, and lust. The first and last of these are steadfast ; the sec
ond is never far off. When he was drunk, I let him strike me.
When he was proud and bullying, I flattered him. When he was
false to me, I knew him, then, as I shall always know him, like a
treacherous mountain stream, shallow' but with dark pools until
there is a flood, and then it is a terror."

" Are you sure he was untrue ? "

" Pah ! Everybody knew it. He expected me to nurse him after
the fatigues of villainy. At Montgomery, in Alabama, one woman
stabbed him, and then he came to me for sympathy, having the
cool selfishness to suppose that where he really loved no offense
could be taken ; for, Lloyd, if that gypsy can love anybody, he loves
me."

" God help him, then ! " exclaimed Lloyd, ungallantly. " Why do
you call him a gypsy ? "

" He looks like one. He acts like one. I have seen real gypsies
in our mountain country, some of them English gypsies camping
there. I think the boast of John Booth, that he was partly Jew,
was to conceal the gypsy in his stock He loves a wandering life,
has no social feelings, finds things out to profit by them like gypsy
fortune-tellers, and can be still and cunning as a cat."

" You mean he is like Hannah Ritner ? "

"No. She is no gypsy, but a wonderful woman. Part of all
our fortunes has come true as she told us that peaceful Sunday
when I was well beloved — "

The girl stopped and choked down a sob, and walked the room
rapidly, till Ouantrell said :

" Yes, indeed ; all ' the game beneath the sun has risen before
me ' since — raiders, rioters, soldiers, tumult, and war ; Katy has lost
her ring ; and ' something dark and white has marked you, Nelly,
with the dark'; but, blessed be my dear little dove! I have the
promise that she shall yet sing for me."

"Go back to her!" Nelly turned and addressed Lloyd with a
vigor which made him see that the natural actress was there; "go
back out of this South, with its fierce, torrid passions and hopeless
and audacious task of destruction ! I love you and Katy both,
cheated and fallen as I am, and I speak out of the arisen knowl-

3J72 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

edge of good and evil that woman has who has eaten of the for
bidden fruit. There is nothing whatever in this Confederacy that
is substantial, except courage and ferocity. Forethought, humility,
or lawfulness, is left out of its constitution, and it will fight and
fail."

" Nelly, that won't do here. I am a soldier of Virginia."
" And I am going back to the Union lines ! Haven't we followed
this disunion programme with our company — I mean Booth's com
pany — wherever it has made a crowd? We saw South Carolina
secede and forbid the payment of Northern debts, and steal the
government forts. We saw Alabama go next, and refuse to let her
people vote on the ordinance of treason. Mississippi, without any
public credit in the world, next resolved to fight the United States,
which pays rich and poor. They made the Union orator in Georgia
drunk at dinner, so that his eloquence, which had been dangerous
in the morning, would be silly enough in the afternoon to pass their
silly scheme. The first act of Louisiana, after separating, was to
steal the money in the mint, and of Texas to depose her President
and hero, General Houston. These are the States which expect to
raise cotton in the rear and let the border, like Virginia and Mary
land, be overrun with their savages. Don't I know it? Haven't
I heard them talk it in my presence? This rebel government is
nothing but officeholders out of power and slaveholders out of
hope, meaning to keep by force the offices the Black Republicans
have been elected to ; and they will conscript their poor whites to
fight for their negroes, until the hollow bubble breaks to a drop of
lye, and then everybody, except the fools, will be glad."

" How could you have seen the gentlemen of the South? "
" Oh, an actor is a good deal more, South than North. That is
why John Booth is such a Southern patriot. Think of that man
being invited into respectable families, with his forked tongue and
luring eyes ! He cheated me of my promised place in the bills and
the casts ! " — here Nelly seemed to show a double fury — " but I had
my callers and admirers, too — generals, governors, coxcombs, and
simperers — and none without a title. The poor old officers of the
army and navy they have compelled to resign, told me their real re
morse and apprehension, at being made the waiting beggars of an
experiment ; for in this confederacy all must join the dance of death
— all but the niggers, who are the princes of the country, and white
men's sons go fight for them ! "

REBELLION.

373

" How did you get this fluency of words, Nelly ? "

" By the great teachers of unhappy women, Lloyd — Sin and Ne
cessity. I have studied hard, in order not to be dependent on that
man Booth. He has made thousands of dollars in this unsettled,
feverish time, when towns fill up with crowds, and men grumble,
and women lose their souls. By the sharpened wits of the castaway
I see my needs, and earn money as I can ; for I am going to work
hard to be a successful woman, and to marry- the man I love. He
will fall, somehow, too ; we shall both have much to forgive. But
when I can earn my thousands in the eminent walks of the drama I
shall be worthy of his notice again, and I know — oh, I know ! — he
loves me dearly ! "

Falling upon her knees, the girl grasped Lloyd's hands, and cried
again and again :

" Oh, tell me so ! Oh, tell me so ! I am so lonesone for my
love ! "

" Nelly, it is a mercy to Luther that you roved away before you
married him ! He did love you, and he may love you yet, but he
sees you now too well to marry you, and he was slow and reluctant
to ask you ; for I was there, and you said you could obey him with
joy, and do your part in toil and saving for his sake."

" I did ! I did ! If I could be forgiven now, I would leave this
life of tinsel and jealousy, where we are homeless, persecuted, and
tempted, and fed on hollow praise, to be Luther Bosler's Bunker
wife, and ride with him through our native hills and valleys, visiting
the sick, praying with the dying, seeking out the poor, and seeing
my applause in the softly beaming stars, or feeling it in my peaceful
soul and on his tender kiss. Will it ever come, Lloyd ? "

" Nelly, I can't see it, but many things are possible to the perse
vering, and God forbid that I discourage you ! for my father says
that love can distill its own corruptions and be pure, and that I must
not harshly judge love's aberrations."

" God bless his old age for that ! " Nelly cried. " There was but
one man kind enough to say so before your father, and he was the
Lord of heaven and earth."

" My poor girl, it was said by that man, ' Go" and sin no more ! '
Can you obey him ? "

She rocked her head, intimating contrition and obedience.

" In my father's spirit," spoke Lloyd, "and not to judge love's
many willfulnesses and wandering paths, and because, Nelly, I see

374

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

in you now a sensibility that interests me in your disposition for the
first time, I offer you my friendship and confidence."

He reached out his hand. She drew back and looked at him,
saying :

" You tempting, too ? "

" No, my own dear love forbids ! Katy is mourning for me —
perhaps, also, as one without hope."

" O brother among sinners ! Gentlest of proud and over
bearing men ! May you, who can see anything good in me, find
good in everything ! "

She took his hand, and he kissed her as he would have kissed
Light Pittson, in tender pity and respect.

Often, while she remained in Virginia, Lloyd consoled this
woman, generally taking her home from the variety hall, and all
may have misconceived his motive ; for it is the despair of an
•erring woman that none can think of her except in her false rela
tion, and they who treat her otherwise suffer in the same uncharity.

Quantrell had other occasions to refer his conduct to his father's
principles.

He was not only tempted to enter independent, partisan, or
guerrilla organizations, and assume that Maryland had left the
Union, and that he was entitled to carry her flag lawlessly ; but the
Virginia authorities, to whom he transferred his allegiance, desired
him to do a semi-spy business for them on the lower Potomac.

"Not a. step will I make," answered Quantrell, "except as a
soldier in line ! You can have my life in fair war, but my father's
last command was, ' Never lurk within the lines in Maryland, and
be a spy and a villain.' "

In spite of all attempts to carry Maryland into the great rebel
lion, the city of Baltimore v/as occupied by the government, and
gave no further trouble except in the way Abel Quantrell feared, of
being of an uncertain mind — trying to save the whole of slavery
with one hand, a silly consistency with the other, and some of the
Union if that Union, could take care of itself. Virginia was cut in
twain by her western citizens, never to be repatched, and the
western volunteers chased the secession troops across the Allegha-
nies.

The insurgent President and Congress moved to Richmond, as
Nelly Harbaugh had predicted, two months after they commenced
the war, and Lloyd heard the former person describe the President

REBELLION.

375

at Washington in the polite terms of "an ignorant usurper," and
speak of Virginia as "the theatre of a great central camp." The
theatre, indeed, seemed to have become the society. This " Presi
dent," from one of the Gulf States, closed by saying, "To the
enemy we leave the base acts of the assassin and incendiary."

Yet, the next day, Quantrell was sent for and told to go over into
Maryland and arrange for a secret mail post, to give the new gov
ernment the correspondence of its opponents. He refused to go
farther than the borders of Virginia, and became a signal-officer
opposite Pope's Creek.

There lived on the opposite high mortar bluffs of Maryland a
simple farmer, who had been raised in the family of the most ener
getic rebel in that region — namely, the Captain Cox who was
pointed out to Lloyd in Port Tobacco. This Captain Sam Cox
lived about six miles north from his humbler neighbor, Jones, in an
agreeable residence near the edge of the great Zekiah Swamp,
which flowed from springs near Dr. Sam Mudd's retired farm.

The insurgent mail passed to Jones's Bluff in a row-boat every
sunset, was sent on to Cox's by wood-paths, and went thence to
Bryantown or Sam Mudd's, according to the urgency; and so a
secret post-road was made all the way to Canada ; the government
mails, intended to benefit the humble Marylanders, thus remote
from railways, being unscrupulously loaded with treasonable intelli
gence, and the cabal of plotters in Montreal and Halifax receiving
by this route commands for material to run the blockade, and for
incendiaries and pirates to annoy the free States from the rear.

Surratt's tavern and post-office often received this surreptitious
mail for Washington, and soon after the war opened Mrs. Surratt
was left a widow, young, fond, and passing fair, and the young
clerical of a son became the head of the family.

None can tell how much a foreign interest, like the great Rebel
lion, poisons an enterprising society through which may flow one of
its secret drains. The liquor-dealer, Martin, who had accompanied
Lloyd Quantrell to the lower Potomac, following out the clew of
this secret thread to its termination in Canada, soon became a fitter-
out of ships there, to run the blockade of the Southern ports ; for
now the government and people were aroused, and a coil was
being slowly drawn around the ambitious slave empire ; but the
processes of law are ever more scrupulous and gentle than the
spasms of insurrection, and it often seemed to Quantrell as if the

376 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

Federal state meant, like the founder of its era, to be offered up to
martyrdom rather than to exert its hea.venly powers and overwhelm
its enemy.

The character of people, and their errands, who crossed the
river in the boats of Jones and others between Port Tobacco and
Pope's Creek, tended to confirm Lloyd's appreciation of his father's
acumen and advice. Mischief and avarice were their ruling motives,
with some incidental devotion or necessity, and frequently nothing
more profitable than restless curiosity or assurance.

Some were trimmers and parasites, who desired to make their
compliments to the insurgent side in case it finally prevailed, and
slip back again and court the other government with timid counsel
or interference. Others were speculators — a class just graduated
from the lobbies of legislatures, corporations, and exchange, in time
to practice their craft in the fluctuations and surprises of a civil war,
as wide as the continent, and paid for in notes and currencies issued
for the hour.

The contractor, the arms-manufacturer, the peddler, the gold-
broker, the insurer, the schemer and hare-brained notoriety-seeker ;
the Jew, traveling toward gold with the instinct of iron for the load
stone ; the broken Northern politician, out of a job, and willing to
serve any cause that would let him repay his salary in lip-service or
gasconade ; the sinister lawyer, seeking to snatch some interest from
danger or confiscation ; the huckster for cotton or treasonable loans ;
the military beggar, of ruined habits, hunting a new commission ;
the foreign mercenary, yesterday in jail, going to demand a gener-
alcy ; the newspaper spy, intent on the highest sensation ; the ad
venturess, who had heard that her intimate had become a cabinet
minister; the seduced one, braving battle and insult to save her
good name, and obtain the marriage-cloak in which to plague so
ciety more; the loud-throated woman, who expected to beat the
government forces by bellows-power and innuendo ; the popinjay,
sneaking over to enlist and run away, or not to enlist and take credit
for " patriotism " ; the aged crank, switching up some vagary on
which he had ridden for years and been a bore to his species ; the
clergyman whose congregation had refused to let him preach dis
union and be paid for it — all these swelled the motley tide of re
bellion, and made even dull men think how their English ancestors
had put treason highest of crimes, because it would supplant the
system and order of the million with the wild anarchy of the impa-

REBELLION.

3/7

tient and ungovernable. A frequent errand of the go-between was
to sell slaves on which he had a lien or heritage-right, and then run
away from the war, and be sleek and compromising.

The citizens of Maryland soon lost many of their slaves, although
the Union army would return these and get no thanks ; while some
of the slaves remained in nominal bondage in order to enjoy the
profits and vices of the contraband trade.

Along the Virginia shore batteries were thrown up to annoy
shipping bound for Washington and the army; light gunboats
cruised the river, and finally destroyed most of the yawls and skiffs
on the Maryland side ; but there were women to do the work of
spies after the men had been intimidated, and who trusted to the
faith of men in women and men's untoward mercy for their safety.

In the residences, standing high on the bluffs below Pope's Creek,
a shawl or a dress would appear at a garret-window and be read by
Quantrell's telescope to mean — " Danger ! Beware ! " A woman's
hand had stretched it, and perjury had been willful in her soul ; for
the government administered oaths of allegiance to all who pre
ferred its protection, or sent them within the insurgent lines.

When this signal appeared, no boat would leave Virginia ; when
it was withdrawn, the rebellion mail-boat darted out in the neutral
light between sunset and the hour of setting the night-patrol, and
came unobserved to the foot of the bluffs of shell and clay, left the
mail in a hollow tree, took the return mail previously put there, and
so glided back to Virginia like a water-snake.

The United States never exerted its repressive hand like the
fierce enemy ; and so the wages of avarice or mischief outbid the
mild, occasional punishment of the spy, until one day, when it was
too late, and the world was in woe, a single woman paid the penalty
of her sex ; and the gallows, which should have met Lloyd Ouan-
trell's telescope when he peered out at Maryland, became the solemn
conclusion of the war.

Atzerodt went into the trade of running the lines, and became
more wretched and blustering than ever ; he would also drive spies
and strangers toward Washington, stopping at Surratt's tavern.

Nelly Starr and Booth passed the Potomac one day northward'
apparently reconciled, and Booth had a new piece of poetry he re
peated with admiration, which had been written in Louisiana, to
seduce Maryland to take the leap from treason's Tarpeian rock. It
was set to the German air of " Tannenbaum," and said :

378 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

" Hark to a. wandering son's appeal,

Maryland !
My mother State ! to thee I kneel,

Maryland !

For life or death, for woe or weal,
Thy peerless chivalry reveal,
And gird thy beauteous limbs with steel,

Maryland ! my Maryland ! *

" Dear mother ! burst the tyrant's chain,

Maryland !
Virginia should not call in vain —

' Maryland ! '

She meets her sisters on the plain ;
4 Sic semper] 'tis the proud refrain
That baffles minions back again —

Maryland !
Arise in majesty again,

Maryland ! my Maryland ! "

Booth had a mind up to the instinctive grade of this poetry, and
no higher. He had been in the military lines a very little while, and
found discipline too tame for his nature, and so he was leaving the
South to fly from its sacrifices, but gorged with the consideration he
had received there.

" What are you going to do, John ? "

" Lloyd, I'll try the stage in the Yankee States awhile, but they
never warmed to my style up there. If I fail, I shall go into some
of their speculations and make a stake out of them, and then —

" John, are you going to take all that money you drew from the
Southern people, out of their country ? If you are really a brave
man, send it to your mother, and come into the ranks ! "

Booth bent his face to Quantrell's ear as he stepped into the ca
noe, and whispered :

" My boy, you'll hear from me before this war is over ! "

Lloyd did hear from John Beall, before the war had well begun.

That young man of twenty-six, tortured with apprehensions and

by furies, had nearly departed for the Western States to be out of

* " O Tannenbaum ! O Tannenbaum !
Wie grim sind deine Blatter ! "

REBELLION, 379

the reach of the war ; but, sucked into its Maelstrom, he stood, on
the second anniversary of Captain John Brown's invasion, in the
vicinity of his home, looking through the Lurlei's gap of Harper's
Ferry, where ever sat the siren above the " Suck," and he saw the
Union flag advancing, and the wide valley full of bayonets.

" John Brown's re-enforcements have come at last, friend," spoke
Quantrell, riding by. Lloyd had been given the congenial place of
signal-man to General Joe Johnston, who was now trying to prove
to his employers that Harper's Ferry was a hole and not a rampart
— but neither government could believe it.

In five minutes more, Mr. Beall, who had been shooting at the
" enemy " with the cheerless rage of a Covenanter on Magus Moor,
was lying on the ground, with three ribs broken and an air-crack in
his right lung. The district attorney, who had prosecuted John
Brown to the gallows, picked the young man up and carried him to
Charlestown, which was already familiar with another ballad of the
war, sung in its streets by advancing and retreating thousands :

" John Brown's knapsack is packed upon his back.
And his soul's marching on.

Glory, glory, hallelujah !
For his soul's marching on."

The general to watch Harper's Ferry and prevent that hole from
deserting somewhere, let the insurgent army behind it slip away
through the Blue Ridge and swell the army on Manassas plateau ;
and a battle took place, where three thousand fellow-countrymen
gasped or sighed in pain and dissolution.

" John Brown's army has failed once more," thought Quantrell ;
" but what a scare he gave us, as before ! "

The behavior of Lloyd in this battle was so fearless and cool,
that he would have been promoted, except for three things— the uni
versal desire for office and commissions ; the utility of Lloyd to affect
his native State in its peace and seclusion ; and a whisper that he
was unsound on Slavery as the particular lamb of Christ and main
purpose of salvation.

So he was sent back to the lower Potomac, to superintend the chief
sally-port of the blockaded hydra, and there he waited to hear from
his wife, in love's great thirst and hunger ; while Hugh Fenwick, on
the opposite shore, sent him reports of her spiritual condition — re
minding him of Luther Bosler's hostility to rebels, and Jake Bos-

380 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

ler's hatred of all warriors and peace-breakers ; and poor Lloyd had
promised his father never to enter Maryland, and could verify noth
ing for himself. At last he did receive a letter in Katy's hand, and
with Hugh Fenwick's addendum :

" LLOYD : I haf been faithful. Haf you, Lloyd ? Sir, I am a poor
girl, and I haf no wedding- ring. People and eyes up in heafen, too,
looks at me, Lloyd. You haf deceived me ; but I bless you, if I
must die ! KATY."

Quantrell had been playing Katy's accordion, and he took it up
and drew a shriek of anguish from it to stifle his own.

Queer pains had been in his head and back all that day, and his
ears were buzzing; and as he read what Hugh Fenwick added,
his eyes swam and he could not see :

" LLOYD : Your wife has run away from home and can not be
found. They say in the Catoctin Valley that you are the cause of
it. She knows that in Richmond your heart and honor were trans
ferred to Nelly Harbaugh, the actress, and it broke her heart. I
pray for you and for the cause. Pray for me, who married you in
error ! You are free from Katy, and she is as your widow. Christie
Eleison! t HUGH."

" O Abel ! my father ! " cried Quantrell ; " come to me in my
desolation ! Nothing is left but you — no mother, no country, no
wife ! "

They said it was the bilious fever of the old Potomac country,
which laid him for months on the bed of fire and ice, and raised him
to be the shadow of himself.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

CRESCITE ET MULTIPLICAMINI.

KATY had grown close to her brother in her desertion, and he,
deserted by Nelly, made his sister his idol, and filled her pure soul
with spiritual food. Suspecting that the flight of Lloyd had given
her pain, Luther, never dreaming of his sister's matronhood, kept her

CRESCITE ET MULTIPLICAMIXI. 381

tenderly at his side, and every Dunker congregation along the South
and North Mountains, from Virginia to the Susquehanna, knew this
constant couple.

Long before day they would be up and away, to attend market
at remote old towns like York, Carlisle, and Winchester ; or auc
tion-sales, to which the country people loved to repair ; or Dunker
love-feasts and celebrations. In those still, starlight times, in the
hush of mountains and of woods, Luther told Katy of creeds, and
heard her prattle of everything but that which made her soul cold
with fear.

Little did he know that the miracle was repeated of which he
often preached, in that tiny form at his side, or that quickened
spirits rode with him, and that they, twain, were not alone together.

She, filled with the agony of a double secret, looked upon her
brother as her priest and judge ; but she dared not make him her
confessor. That place Hugh Fenwick filled, and his consideration
for Katy was equal to her brother's.

She inspired love more now than ever, as she bloomed out of
the scrawny stem of girlhood to life's accomplishment; and poor
Jake Bosler, who had feared her nervous energy and premature pas
sion of love were breaking her down, saw with joy that his child
rounded and grew more beautiful, until she almost made him fear.

" Katy leave fader — Bi'm-by," said Jake, thinking of marriage for
his girl.

" Fader," said Katy, '" I must wait for Lloyd. Will te war last
long, fader ? "

" Te city mans, Katy, fooled your little heart. Tere's Nelly down
in Washington, gone from Luter to pe wicked. My little girl, if you
would leave fader like dat, my heart would preak on my olty's
grave."

As Jake Bosler kissed her, he did not know the pain he had
made. Katy prayed and prayed, and lay awake hearing the ram
upon the roof, and walked to the window in the night and saw the
valley, in ghostly sheets of fog, fall like a deluge around a nearly sub
merged world ; or saw some red planet burn on the mountain's
crest, like shame with leveled eye seeking her out.

She lost her brother, too, when his rising indignation at the se
cession intrigues, and at repeated raids upon the Dunker valleys,
recalled to his warm brain the soldierly prophecy of that singular
woman who did not merely tell fortunes, but told, and instigated,

382 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

character also — Hannah Ritner ; and as Luther stood in the Bunker
meeting-houses to pray, there would roll through his mind like a
drum :

" Attend the bugle-horn,
And all thy merit see ! "

The influence of Abel Ouantrell, that strange, suggestive man,
like the prophet Samuel, carrying among the sons of Jesse his
anointing horn, was also felt by Luther, and his admonition, " Go, tell
your people everywhere that Christ is for liberty," had never ceased
to plague the Dunker preacher's conscience.

At last he raised his voice, like Balaam of old, and blessed the
Union camps, almost against his will.

The old Dunker conservatives heard him, and muttered together
that, since that worldly Nelly had cast him off, his talents and mental
disorder had made him a lunatic. In vain did he demonstrate that
the German Baptists were the oldest anti-slavery men in the world,
saying in Antietam church :

" Te German brethren was te first apolitionists. In German's
town, py Philadelphey, when te earliest slaveholding Quakers had
only peen six year in tis country, te protest against slavery was
writ py Hendricks, Op den Graeff, and Pastorius, saying : ' We are
against te traffic in mens-body. Those who steal men, and those
who buy or purchase them, are they not all alike ? As here is lib
erty of conscience, which is right and reasonable, here ought to pe
likewise liberty of pody, except of evil-doers. This makes an ill
report in all those countries of Europe where they hear that " ye
Quakers doe here handel men like they there handel ye cattle " ;
and for that reason some have no mind or inclination to come hither.
Have tese negers not as much right to fight for teir freedom as you
have to keep tern slaves ? ' " *

The English secessionists fanned the Dunker hostility to Luther
favoring war and resistance, and he realized the marvelous foresight
of the prophetess who had counseled :

" Though in the church they censure some,
Pain and duty keep thee dumb ! "

The slaughter of Senator Baker's command at Ball's Bluff— he
who had been President Lincoln's neighbor and Broderick's funeral
eulogist — aroused the German military nature, as the musketry re-

* Pennypacker's " Settlement of Germantown, Pennsylvania."

CRESCITE ET MULTIPLICAMINI. 383

verberated on the Maryland hills ; and from the town where Booth
was born, another Union Governor was selected. The insidious
Legislature, which had slipped away to Frederick, was dispersed by
the government before it could assume to vote Maryland out of the
Union, and the two Maryland regiments drew each other's blood
in the Valley of Virginia, fighting under the old and the opposite
flags.

Before all this had happened, Luther enacted the part of Muh-
lenberg of old.

He preached one peaceful autumn Sunday ; drew tears by his
emotion and eloquence ; solemnly suspended himself from the Dunker
sect, and rode to old Sandy Hook, where General Banks was col
lecting an army, and enlisted as a private soldier in the cavalry.

While he was at Charlestown, encamped on the site of John
Brown's gallows, his colonel sent for him and gave him a letter. He
opened it and found a commission as captain in the quartermaster's
department by order of Abraham Lincoln, at the request of Abel
Quantrell and Henry Winter Davis. Luther trembled, as he re
membered the lines :

" To hollow heart the hollow drum
Beats peace and victory."

Luther was ordered to repair to the city of Washington, where
Mr. Davis — the only Marylander who had voted in either branch of
Congress for compensated emancipation, in both the Federal city
and his own State — took him by the hand, and led him to the new
Secretary of War, saying :

" Mr. Stanton, you wanted an honest man to supervise your
quartermasters and buy horses and forage for your armies. Here he
is — a Dunker preacher, enlisted in the lines."

" The hour," said Mr. Stanton, looking at Luther with consider
ate brown eyes through his glasses, " is the test of every true con
science ; and that you broke the traditions of your life, to lay that
life down for your country, as a humble soldier, recommends you to
me, who am of Quaker and of peaceful instincts, too. Go about
your duties ! Come freely to me, and be my friend, amid all this
falsehood and deception. If ever your scruples against war return,
tell me so, and you shall be honorably discharged ! "

The manly, nervous diction and delicate feeling, smote the young
man dumb, but it was the dumbness of worship. In the next min-

384 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

lite he heard the same Secretary order a brigadier-general, in tones
of thunder, to quit his office and the city, or have his shoulder-straps
torn from him in the streets.

From that moment Luther never doubted the success of the
government armies, nor that the nation would emerge from the
conflict with every false sentiment and sham stamped under the
Quakerly Stanton's feet.

The reoccupation of Virginia awakened young Mr. Beall to the
truth of John Brown's prediction, made to Lloyd Quantrell on the
mountain, that the Great Valley would be the inevitable line of war,
and would be the Man king route, to alarm the Government at Wash
ington by marching to its rear. Yet both sides continued to regard
Harper's Ferry as the key of every campaign, and, like the Irish
man's recipe to make a cannon, they took that round hole and
wrapped it about with brass.

John Beall, who had recovered from his wounds, marched down
the Valley with Stonewall Jackson, and saw the handwriting of war
upon his farm and county, and heard the stave of John Brown's
hymn roared in the church where he was vestryman. He resolved
to leave Virginia, and settle among his kinsmen in the West.

In that interval of grief and chagrin, of Highland Scotch and
Indian rage, there appeared to him one day a lovely vision, as he
strolled by the old tan-yard at Charlestown — it was the remembrance
of Katy Bosler's great, soft eyes.

" This war has leveled all distinctions," said Beall, who was a
self-communer, and had no intimates among men. " I will marry
that girl, and take her to Iowa."

He had an impetuous brain, and that evening found him inquir
ing the way to Bosler's farm. Katy saw him come with joy, hoping
he had news of Lloyd.

" Are you engaged to Mr. Quantrell, Kate?" Beall asked.

" Oh no, sir — not engaged."

Katy remembered her secret, and told the truth.

" I thought not ; for Quantrell is an honorable young fellow, and
he was very attentive, in Richmond, to Miss Nelly Starr, the actress,
who is quite a different person. Katy, your home and mine are in
the lines of war, and the war will be long, and battle and blood will
finally drink our souls in. My blood has been shed already, and I
have killed my enemies. I want to go away and live out my days,

CRESCITE ET MULTIPLICAMINI. 385

and escape the dark temptations hanging over me. Will you go,
too ? "

Katy's soul was full of woe, and she had not heard one sentence
between the first and the last. Nelly Starr, with her fervent beauty,
had cast her arts upon Lloyd and made him false to his wife as to
his country, and the gentleman at her side had asked, " Will you
go, too ? "

" I must go," cried Katy ; " I can not stay ! Oh, fader loves me
so, it preaks my heart ! Te little lame man comes efery night to my
bed, and says, ' I want your soul, Katy ! ' Last night he had his
hands on my head and feet, at te spring-house, and told me to say,
' All between tese hands pelongs to de divel ! ' I tried not to say it,
but I couldn't help it, and it had 'most come, when Hannah Ritner
come riding down to te spring and shouted, ' God ! God ! she pe
longs to God ! ' "

Katy had thrown herself upon her friend's shoulder in terror and
confidence ; and he caressed her kindly, his distant and reticent face
growing studious of her weakness.

" You do belong to God, my dear child, and can draw me to His
will. The day is at hand when every white man must labor, and
will need a wife with the spirit of frugality and toil. I will take a
mill and a farm in Iowa, and lead you there from the dangers of
your native valley, and you will be my wife."

" Oh, no ! " cried Katy, shaking herself loose ; " I did not unter-
stant you, John Beall. Pefore you can marry a Union girl, git a
Union heart ! Then all te troubles you make in your mind will fade
away, love will come easy, and friends will pe efery where."

" WThere is Quantrell ? " the young man asked, in Virginia hot-
ness that his condescension had been so sincerely rejected. " Why
can't you make him one of your Union men ? "

" He is in te rebel army, waiting to be winnowed with te good
wheat, I pray ! If -we nefer meet, heaven is all union, and no seces
sion there."

Beall looked at her a moment with pale rage and wonder, her
rounder figure swelling with emotions of piety, and her eyes bright
with the enthusiasm of the martyr. He resumed his hopeless,
pinched expression, saying :

" The women, too, have joined John Brown's gang ! "
"Why don't you go py Lloyd in te rebel army?" asked Katy.
" It is safer for you, and out of bad temptations."
25

386 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

" Because I have not the spirit of discipline. Because my mind
is infested with brooding and impatient purposes. I want revenge ;
I want to retaliate. The example of old Brown has never left me,
and it will make me a hero or a fiend ! "

" Say ' Te Words ! ' cried Katy. " Lloyd said ' Te Words/ and
was saved. I'll say tern to you, John Beall, and wickedness will fly
away ! "

She whispered in his ear the names in the Trinity.

He trembled a moment, and then tossed his head with contempt.

" Poor Dutch superstition ! " he exclaimed. " Farewell, Katy of
Catoctin ! "

" He's drived te Holy Spirit away ! " sighed Katy, looking after
him with gentle tears. " He's lost ! "

With Luther's sound head and strong hand gone from the farm,
Jake Bosler was like one without his wits. Luther in soldier-clothes !
Luther in the government ! Luther a great man of the world ! All
Dunkerdom was full of visions and backsliding !

Old fellows in short coats would come out of meeting, on the
green, to talk about it, and forget the subject in its mightiness, till
they would disperse, merely saying, "Well, luss mohl sae"

The blooming Bunker girls, all suffering for Luther's absence,
would huddle together before meeting and ask, " Him ? How ? "
and then all would laugh with little sallies and alarms, " He, he,
he!"

Katy would come up to these, and some would stare at her and
some would say, " How's Lloyd ? Is Lloyd a rebel ? " Some would
also whisper and have decided looks, and follow her to the very
horizon with their eyes.

Katy was the sincerest of Dunker devotees. Her tears might
have washed her feet ; her Lord's supper was eaten every Sabbath ;
she read the holy book to find her wedding-ring, but nothing could
she see there but women's sins, sufferings, and tears.

" Oh, where is te brook I must wade down to find it ? " her
frightened soul cried. " I'll take off my shoes in this cold, icy
weather, and go down te bed of efery brook — only tell me where ? "

Did Katy ever think the brook she waded was made by her
tears ?

As Jake Bosler was drawn by Luther into the government busi-

CRESCITE ET MULTIPLICAMINI. eg

ress—buying and fattening steers, selecting mules at Baltimore arty
searching the mountain counties for horses — his monetary instincts
aroused again, and Katy was left much alone, for which she was
veiy grateful, although Gilmore's men and Mosby's spies, and long
lines of white deserters and fugitive slaves, traveled northward on
the mountains, and replaced the wild beasts of old. She did not
fear the face of man, but only the face of woman. When woman
goes astray, with men alone she finds equality and refuge— though
woman should be kindest.

Hugh Fenwick came sometimes to see Katy from Washington,
where he was at present a government clerk, having his quarrels now
and then with the priests and conventual people ; and, as for his
politics, nobody could tell what it wras from day to day. He boarded
with secessionists and never rebuked them, and he took the govern
ment oath. Katy could no more understand him than she could her
dog Albion, which was often left alone with her days and nights,
and seemed to have a human soul, though a disagreeable one.

When she or any other person was happy, as after a Union vic
tory, or election, or at baptism, or old neighbors' reconciliations, this
dog grew surly and unsympathetic, and would dart out and snap at
the cat or bite a chicken ; but when musketry sometimes sounded in
the distant hills, or forests were afire upon the long spines of the
mountains, or a quarrel of any kind arose, Albion was like a gym
nastic smile, leaping and pointing, unctuous and sinister, possessed
of the devil, some said, and yet at such times affectionately insinu
ating.

When Katy sat in the great mystery and gloom of one aban
doned by love and confronting heaven and death, with health superb
if only sympathy and honor were by her side, but ignorance and
secrecy wrapping her around as thick darkness, and in her house
and heart, even in sleep, the knockings and movings of a spirit
abroad — this dog would softly creep to her feet, climb upon her lap,
and lay his spotted muzzle against her cheek, and his hazel-yellow
eyes would burn in the darkness like lamps in mines, seeming to
say, "You are lost, and I fill the bridegroom's place."

He never let her disappear, but followed her everywhere. At
midnight he was astir if she was looking in the dark. His kid-brown
nose would come cold against her hand in the sighs of prayer before
dawn. When he heard John Beall say that Lloyd loved Nelly Har-
baugh, he fawned upon the relator like an heir-at-law. He hated

388

KATY OF CATOCT1N.

the doves in the apple-tree, and often pulled Katy's gown to go and
look at them, and see him strive to leap to their nest and put them
in distress.

Katy loved these doves, though they reminded her of Lloyd's
killing the dove upon the mountain, and receiving the great old ban
dit's rebuke. She sang over Job Snowberger's coo-roo song to them,
and the old doves knew her well, and left her in the fall with many
soft adieus, taking their young away. When they were gone, Katy
had nothing left her but Albion, and the mystic guests that came
unseen like the wind in the pigeon-cote and the weasel in the nest.

It was nearly Christmas when Hugh Fenwick paid his last visit
to Hosier's farm. He brought sunshine with him generally, for he
was only clerical in his affectations, but in realities was healthy,
blooming, genial, and sympathetic. The church was his fastidious
conceit and passport to a rarer society of virtue and respect, and
Katy had tested him well to see if a coarser earth was covered by
his piety, but found only abiding reverence for herself, with certain
peculiarities of the moral weakling and the ecclesiastical prig.

He prevaricated, and was less sincere about essentials than
forms ; had a conscience which he could quiet by formulas and pen
ance, believed in mild acts of deceit if they pointed to good conclu
sions, and approached nothing by the bold right line, but had humor
and even gayety, and often just and humane impulses.

The mountain girl felt that his affection for her was stronger
than friendship, and based upon something like fear of her repro
bation ; pity, also, controlled her feelings, in that this man had been
so weak before her ardent and compelling lover as to open to her
the door of happiness and anguish, by marrying her with anticipated
authority because caught in the meshes of his own boasting.

Improbable as this act still seemed to Katy, like a dream that
must yet pass away, it was no more than Cardinal Wolsey's pre
varication—old as America's discovery — by which, against his will,
he divorced a wife and remarried a king, and entrapped himself by
moral weakness into deeds his conscience shrank from.

In Fenwick were two races seldom mixed — the impulsive, uncer
tain Irishman, and the colder, formulating German ; and these hot
and cold currents gave him two natures — the social and the ideal,
the effervescent and the mystical. Not quite legible to himself, the
estimate Katy Bosler made of him was shrewd up to the limits of
her inexperience ; no other man was so comforting to her, though

CRESCITE ET MULTIPLICAMINI. 389

she feared he might be her lover, while she desired the better nature
in his friendship.

The dog Albion was also extravagant in his friendship, for Fen-
wick always brought him a present, like a ribbon or decoration of
some kind, with which the aristocratic animal performed — taking on
a sudden frigidity, being consciously indifferent to the remaining live
creation, stalking in the front of the house to bark at all strangers ;
and the more he was decorated the more he was inhospitable. He
licked the priest's hand, while rejecting the bounteous nature in Katy.

" O Father Hugh," the girl said, at last, with will and woe, " am
I not married ? Is te law so bad I can not get te wedding-ring ?
Maype Lloyd deceived me, too. I hear he was making love to Nelly
in Richmond. Oh, why haf I not had letters from him ? Where can
I go ? You must save me ! "

" Katy, he took advantage of me, too, poor fellow ! I had boasted
a little, for then I expected to be soon a priest ; but Lloyd bullied
me, and I took pity on you both, knowing how great was your in
fatuation. Oh, the penance I have done ! And the worst is that
Lloyd has not been faithful."

" Perhaps you are a false friend ! " cried Katy, her eyes fierce
with the wisdom in despair. " Where has your friendship left me,
sir, while Christmas is pefor° me ? I am a good woman, put no
wife. And now you accuse Lloyd ! If you are te devil, I will hit
you with Luter's inkstand, like Friar Luter, in te Wartburg ! "

She took the ink-bottle up from the eating-table, and the semi
narist failed to cross himself, as he had started to do ; for he was
afraid of. this woman — physically afraid !

The dog barked at Katy, snarling all about her feet, vicious as if
she had ever been his enemy instead of his only friend on the globe.

The impulse was too mighty in Katy not to give her misery
vent, and she turned upon the lesser spirit of evil :

" You ? " she cried to the clog. " Ah ! it was you who p'inted
me, like te mountain dove, te night Lloyd Ouantrell come."

She threw the ink-bottle at Albion and beat him with the broom,
till, splotched with black and sore of ribs, the creature howled and
ran, and Fenwick let him out at the door.

Pale and exhausted with the spasm, and repenting of her treat
ment of a guest, Katy relapsed to a helpless woman when silence
had given Fenwick courage to speak.

" You are sorry you are Mr. Ouantrell's wife ? "

390 KATY OF CATOCmV.

"No," exclaimed Katy, on her remaining breath of spirit. "I
won't say that, if he deceifed me. If he has gone away and forgot
me, I won't say that. Te priest and te people, te church and te
world, may p'int at me like that p'inter-dog, but I am God's child —
and, above tern all, I call on God to come, and come quickly ! "

" Katy — sister — I have not been your confessor in vain. I am
here to assist and save you, and your severity is not of yourself.
Come away ! You shall see Lloyd ; you shall have the protection
of the Church's sheltering arms and walls in Washington. There
are conventual places under our control open to the wounded —
yes, to the betrayed."

" I am not petrayed," cried Katy ; " I don't believe it. This
war te slaveholders haf got up against te Union of our country
has petrayed many a poor man out of home and life, and me out
of a wife's name. I will not hide ; I will stay here and die ! "

She sank into a chair and felt faint and swooning. Fenwick's
impulses broke down his timidity, and he came and knelt at her
feet and bathed her eyes with cool water.

" I must be firm, my child. You shall be made happy, and I
must take you away. Your father worships you ; your brother is in
Washington. I will send for Lloyd to come."

The dog whined softly at the door ; the wind blew, and snow
came down the chimney upon the failing wood-fire.

" Lloyd ? " sighed Katy. " How can he get through te
lines? "

" Easily. I can have him brought across the Potomac, passed
into Washington as one of our priestly refugees from the South, and
made your fellow-prisoner in walls of the faith no government can
enter."

Katy raised her head. The picture of Lloyd with her so soon,
so close, so long, came like the phantom of the arisen Lord to
Mary Magdalen, when the angel said : " There shall ye see him ; lo,
I have told you ! "

" I have a carriage here ; the night will be cold, but our robes
are buffalo and lamb's wool."

The feet of his horses she heard on the frozen ground.

" Decide, Katy ! Your father is overdue. Time is precious as
your fame in this valley and the peace of this honest house. You
can say that you went to find your brother in Washington, that
Lloyd is there, and that I came at his request for you."

CRESCITE ET MULTIPLICAMINT.

391

She stood up and said to herself in simple prayer, " Let me
think of eferypody but me ! "

The nature of the prayer contains the answer, and this was in
stant as the glance of love :

" Hugh Fenwick ! Lloyd's fader said he would pe a villain to pe
coming through te lines, like a spy. I won't tempt Lloyd to come.
If God takes his life, let it pe where my brother Luter's life is en-,
listed — in te honest lines of battle ! "

As the neophyte shrank before these words, the chivalric sense of
which the true woman perceived as if she had been a military law
giver, Katy also felt admonitions beyond the help of sentiment.

She fell to the floor, and knew no more.

" I must exercise my discretion," Hugh Fenwick spoke, bending
nervously over her. " Old Jake, her father, will find her here and
go crazy, and she will lose the brightness of her soul, that is to me
the only saint I worship. I will carry her to the carriage and start
away."

He had lifted her tenderly in his strong arms and reached the
door.

The dog outside was fighting desperately with some one, and,
as Hugh Fenwick opened the door, this person darted in, kicking
Albion off, and exclaiming :

" Katy, unshuldtch ! Unshtcklich ! I'm come, on one of
Shwester Marcellus's errands, and te dog won't let me persewere ! "

The breath of the evening revived Katy's senses. She slipped
from the grasp of her uncertain friend, and spied a package in Job
Snowberger's hand, which she seized with a kiss of joy upon that
bashful monk's least obdurate cheek.

A letter in the old German patozs said :

" DEAR CHILD : I, have kept you in mind, but the public enemy
in Richmond put me in jail for my attention to our prisoners, and I
am just home, at dear old Snow Hill in Pennsylvania. I send you
my roan riding-horse to come instantly to me ; he is very gentle and
sure-footed. If you do not miss the road, it will be only twenty-five
miles to ride to Snow Hill. I have often done it in an afternoon
on Charlie. Brother Philodulus will come with you, buj; he is a
poor guide and often loses the roads. Come over the mountain,
and not around it ! I wTill show you where to wade down the brook
and find your wedding-ring. HANNAH RITNER."

392 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

" God ! God ! " shouted Katy ; " I pelong to God ! "

She sat in ecstasy and wrote the letter to Lloyd Quantrell we
have seen him receive, and bade her father, in writing, also be of
good cheer, and gave the first letter to Hugh Fenwick, to forward.

" Where are you going, insane child ?" Fenwick demanded.

" To te one woman in te world, I guess, who is not ashamed of
me."

" Coin' to persewere," explained Job Snowberger, as he put Katy
on one of the horses and climbed on the other himself, and they
dashed northward and away.

Hugh Fenwick stopped superstitiously in the road and muttered
a prayer beside his carriage.

" Is it a devil who has carried her from me ? " he concluded.
" I will recover Saint Kate for the salvation of my soul, or be a
monk and leave the world ! "

CHAPTER XXXVII.

" TICK-A-TOCK-A ! "

IT was very late in the afternoon, and Job Snowberger explained
that he had once lost his way in the tangled mountains, and they must
ride hard to get anywhere before midnight. Katy felt the incentive of
desperation to be clear of her own neighborhood and escape meeting
her father, and she gave free rein to the beautiful horse, whose feet
on the frozen road went " tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a,"
in that carefully taught gait easier than the pacer's, where the hind
feet seem to shuffle and the front feet go on, like the shuttle and. the
eye of the weaver at the loom. It was the single-footed rack —

" Tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a ! "

The gentle gelding, compactly built, and his back steady as the
seat of a rocking-chair, felt the double instinct of a lady's necessity
and his dear mistress awaiting him ; and the gallantry of a " gentle
man of the old school " rose to his black mane and free head. Beals-
ville was passed, and, leaving on her left the dear road over which
she and Lloyd had ridden to church, she skirried up the creek's side
to the north —

" Tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock a, tick-a-tock-a ! "

TICK- A- TOCK-A ! "

393

Ah ! thought Katy, should she ever again have Lloyd's head
upon her breast and see his tears of contrition flow, and his face
among the disciples eating the Lord's feast?

" Tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a ! "

" The Lord sent this horse," Katy thought ; " I wish I had my
old dog, Fritz, too, so steaty and strong."

The strawberry roan shied and lost his rack, as something
growled at his heels and flashed on before like a spotted and bleached
will-o'-the-wisp ; and then, as Katy recognized Albion in the place
she had hoped for Fritz, the racker's black-striped back settled
easily down again, and his black tail streamed, and his black feet
slid over the ground —

" Tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a ! "

The snow came down finer and faster as the shades of evening
deepened, and over the twinkling lights of Wolfsville Katy looked
toward the Black Rock on the mountain-top, where she had been the
queen at picnic-parties before the coming of Lloyd Quantrell for his
doves. How happy and wistful of love then ! How unhappy and
thornful of love's fruition and poverty now ! How uncertain that she
would return and have that simple happiness again if to throw away
love's power and dread knowledge !

" Tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a ! "

The evergreen cedars kept their fresh tints in the snow, but na
ture in general seemed dead. The woods upon South Mountain
seemed bare and open, save where the firs and pines stood to
gether in bunches, like the last of old men. Some crows, hastening
home to their rock nests, cawed, up among the snow-flakes, like the
poor mountain people going home from work to hungry children.
A rabbit ran once or twice, leaving his leap-marks in the snow-
sheet, and snow birds came abroad as if the Lord's white table-cloth
were spread over the world, and only the very tiny and very cold
ones were bid to his feast. Job Snowberger suggested that they
could stop all night in Wolfsville ; but Katy cried " No ! " and dashed
across the creek, and on the steep ascent the strawberry roan made
bleak music —

" Tick-a-tock a, tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a ! "

Katy had barely made her decision, when she felt the lonely dis
tance and wild region it implied, with night and winter upon the
untraveled mountains where they were wildest, and twelve miles
of their fastness, at least, before her, and the snow growing deep.

394

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

She saw the parallel ridges pinching the valley and lifting it up,
and gnarled and naked apple-trees marked the few homes and mea
ger farms. Job Snowberger at her side, riding a rougher animal,
sighed, and tried to keep up with Katy, and his many groans all
took the articulated sound of " persewerin' ! " The night came
down black, with snow-flakes making the blackness visible, and they
saw a light in a field near by.

" I must ask te way," said Job, " or we may freeze to death on
te mountain."

She followed him into a kind of lane, and soon there arose above
their eyelids an old tumbling house.

" Why, Job," whispered Katy, " tis is Nelly Harbaugh's teserted
home ; and who can pe in it ? "

She rode up to the window and looked within, while Job dis
mounted and tried the door.

Katy saw a number of men feeding a fire upon the floor. Some
she recognized by their blue and gray capes and coats to be de
serters from both rebel and Union armies. They were vagrant,
thievish men ; and some were sleeping, some quarreling, some gam
bling, while other persons she knew as dealers in contraband things
and mountain parasites of the times of war — the man who sold
civilian suits of clothes to deserters and bounty-jumpers, the un
licensed whisky-peddler, the army horse-thief, the ruined slave-
catcher. Above them all, the firelight showed Nelly Harbaugh's
pastings of actors and actresses from the newspapers, with Laura
Keene, in " The American Cousin," largest of them all.

Suddenly Katy saw Job Snowberger enter this cabin, unaware of
its contents, and ask a question.

Before his mouth was well open, he was surrounded and forced
to the floor, and his pockets searched. He shook himself loose, and
Katy saw him glance furtively around the bare walls as if for some
window or weapon.

" Unfershamed (barefaced) ! Unshicklich (improper) ! " Job
shouted.

The pointer-dog at Katy's feet barked loudly in the night.
Hearing the sound, the tatterdemalions within turned their heads
from Job Snowberger, and rushed out to see what else had come.

Katy had just an instant to observe the action of Job Snow
berger before they were upon her : he had leaped on a table dis
ordered by refuse food, whisky, and cards, and he brought from

TICK-A-TGCK-A /"

395

over the door, where he knew its place of concealment, the old gun
of the sergeant, deserter of the army and of his child.

The thievish gang had seized Job's horse, and, guided by the
dog's loud information, had nearly distinguished Katy in the dark,
when she, with self-resources never tried before, cried loudly :

" Fire on tern, Union men ! "

To Katy's astonishment a gun responded, and a blaze of light,
and the agonizing yelp of a dog.

" We're surrounded ! " cried the cowards, and vanished in the
snow-storm down the mountain gulleys.

"I'm a-persewerin'," sighed Job Snowberger, recovering his
horse and carrying the old gun along, " but I'm backshlided, too."

" How, clear Job? " cried Katy, riding after him.

" I've made war — and I reckon my soul's lost," observed the
man of peace, very inconsistently adding, " Hooray ! Seech-retch ! "

" Tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a ! " went Charlie's feet
in the snow, and Albion limped after them, still howling fearfully,

"Job," said the girl, unable to see him in the dark, though he
was at her side, " I guess you're not very wicked, for you've fired
that load all into our dog."

" Hooray ! " cried Job again, intoxicated with his personal prow
ess ; "can't you love me some, Katy, for savin' of you ? "

"Yes, Job— only keep your hands to yourself and don't pe a fool
this awful night ! Pray for me — I'm a-growin' blind, and can't set
my horse much longer."

" Tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a ! " — in the bare places
of the snow-drift and on the broken stones.

Albion, really wounded by the old flint-lock of earlier wars, de
faced by writing-ink, and receiving no pity, must needs go on or
perish now, and it was hard traveling for him.

" Poor dog ! " called Katy, out of her own misery, to the snarl
ing, squeaking brute.

He snapped at Charlie's heels, and received a side-tip from the
shuttle hoof which laid him fairly on his back, howling to all the
nations for benignant intervention.

" Coom on ! " cried Philodulus, chattering with the cold ; " te
more we mind dat beast, te less he cares for us ! "

" Tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock a ! "

The wind now blew on the high staircase of the valley, and the
highest rills of Catoctin Creek gurgled away behind them. As the

396 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

snow ceased to fall, black and wind-bellied clouds moved overhead,
giving just light enough to note solitary peaks or knobs in the
gullet of the valley, and the ear was smitten by the crash of super
numerary trees resisting not the death-chill of old age. The South
Mountain seemed also to have died and to be laid in the valley, that
had risen to its stature ; for it had disappeared in the west, and all
around them was a sort of spongy and stony glade, in which the
good gelding, wet with sweat, still made a sound with his feet, like
the last American slave picking on his old banjo :

" Tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a ! "

" We're 'most come to Foxville and te hickle-te-picklety roads,"
Job Snowberger said, through his great coat-collar; "I don't know
which is which, but I'm persewerin'."

A charcoal pit of ignited logs set upright in a circle and covered
with earth appeared now in the roadway, giving a little warmth and
light, but no person could be seen, although Job hallooed loud ;
and he noted that there were forks of the road, both going to the
north.

" fck cons hardly du!" groaned Job ; " how can one persewere
when he comes to two roads, and both p'int right ? "

"Go ofer te mountain and not around it, Job, te letter said."

" Te right-hand road seems straightest," Philodulus sighed.
" Te left-hand road may take us back agin, on down te mountain, to
Cavetown and Beaver Creek."

"O my friend, decide! I am not able to ride much furder ; if
I git off my horse, I nefer can get up agin."

" Katy, stay here py te fire ! Te war I was in to-night has
turned my wits. I've shipwracked te faith, and with all my perse
werin' — unshuldtck! — I love you."

His voice trembled, and his bachelor blush was felt in the
dark.

"Job," cried Katy, "if I was aple, I'd git off tis horse and slap
you ! Holt that gun away from your chin, and don't pe leanin' on
it ; it might haf loaded itself."

" Katy, stay py te warm fire ; I'll guard you all night with this
wicked musket, and gif you my coat to lay in. We don't know te
way."

" Sir," Katy cried, between modesty and despair, " I dare not
wait one night, one hour ! Go on, some way, any way — or I shall
fall in te snow and perish ! "

TICK- A- TOCK-A ! "

397

" Let te dog decide, then," Job Snowberger cried, shouting to
the clog to go forward.

The dog chose to go to the right.

" Tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a ! "

They soon heard water trickling, and found themselves following
a rill, and the wind began to lull, and the sky parted, letting some
moonlight through. The wood-paths divided again near a mountain
clearing like a hermit's farm, which lay as in a triangle of gaunt
ridges, and showed a ruin but no habitation, and the dog again
went to the right, following the stream, perhaps, to bathe his burns
and bruises ; and this stream was so near the track that in its over
flows it had covered the latter with stones, like a road-mender, or
rather road-destroyer, showing, by the widening light, a dreary
stretch of uncrushed rock, hard sandstone, and other primal stones
which would not roll round in the washing of centuries, but re
mained hard and unshapen like a savage race. Over these infinite
stones the good horse picked his way and stumbled, and his knees
trembled.

" We must surely pe comin' over te mountain now," Katy
thought.

Of this broken stone there seemed miles, and yet the cold brook
just beside it had a talk to itself, as if it were gliding comfortably
onward among the stunted oaks.

" If Charlie could only wade in there," Katy thought, " he
wouldn't bruise me so. Oh, I am sore as if I was full of stones,
and every step shook tern ! Maype tis is te brook I am to find te
book and te wedding-ring in."

There stood a cabin of logs near the road, and Job shouted for
people, but only brought out some lean fox-hounds, which chased
Albion along the broken stone, and their yelp filled the night. Katy
lost the stream awhile ; but it returned soon with the power of other
affluents, and began to enter the impressive walls of unseen mount
ains, making themselves felt like dungeon-walls in darkness. There
were easier declivities in the road, and again the single-footed racker
made a sound like the living spirit of some former water-mill —

" Tick -a tock-a, tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a ! "

" O Shwester Kate ! " Job Snowberger exclaimed, " dis love tey
talk apout, is te worst of all te Christian's life. Bruder Martin Luter
was so persecuted py it that he tried to drown it in te Rhenish
wine, and te drunker he got te more he was peteviled, till he had to

398

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

marry a nun. Maype, if you was to marry me, I could write music
like Conrad Beissel and Friar Luter."

Job raised his voice and sang, in high, piping notes, the Christ
mas-eve hymn of Luther :

" Give heed, my heart, lift up thine eyes !
Who is it in yon manger lies ?
Who is this child so young and fair?
The blessed Christ-child lieth there.

" O Lord, who hast created all,
How hast thou made thee weak and small,
That thou must choose thy infant bed
Where ass and ox but lately fed ?

" O dearest Jesus — Holy Child !
Make thee a bed, soft, undefiled,
WTithin my heart, that it may be
A quiet chamber kept for thee." *

Thus the legend of Asia replaced with its songs the owls and
katydids of the American forest. Katy listened with awe and con
solation.

"Happy could I pe to lie down in a manger, too, Job, and rest
my bones ; but here is neither ped nor stable ; and if it is midnight,
we are in Christmas-eve ! "

" Tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a ! "

They could see the inclosing mountains now raise their heads
like the Wartburg Castle, where Luther composed and burned, be
tween the dual poles of the human and the divine passion. Pulpits,
lofty and cold as Calvin's, on the steep streets of Geneva, those
rock-shapes seemed ; or, like the papal tiara, they towered above
the little stream, or bishops' caps in the narrow alleys of Rome.
So runs the rill of human nature through the ramparts of creeds ; and
travelers, down the brook, want an inn more than heaven ; and if
the inn is full, a bed in the stable.

Shelter, shelter ! how much is it of joy ; and what word of pain is
like that one of " shelterless " ! Katy wondered if the infinite millions
spent in temples and churches to provide homes for people in heaven,
might not afford this world a bare shelter, and straw on every road,
like the birth-bed of Mary's untimely-born son in the tavern-stall.

* Catherine Winkworth's translation.

TICK-A-TOCK-A ! "

399

" Tick a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a ! "

With snowy luster, rocks and bare woods shone, and mountain
sides upheld the hemlocks, and in the damper places grew long,
open groves of beech-trees, as on the bowlder-strewed slopes of the
German mountains of Harz. Cedars dung to stones, and spread
their roots around them like a hand from the grave, pulling the
tombstone in. The little pines leaned against the precipices, starving
rather than leap down ; the little oaks roved up the desolate ravines,
and moonlight shone on a wood-chopper's chips and gleaming axe ;
the only signs of animal existence. Nothing moved — no rabbit, nor
squirrel, nor bird ; and the only sound they heard was of the foaming
brook, now grown to a fierce torrent, and defying the frost to fasten
it more with silver chains. Piled in that torrent, like maledictions
from the overtopping cliffs, were mighty rocks flung down and stay
ing the water in cascades — which roared, or boomed, or tingled,
according to the resistance ; and beneath them were hollow basins
in the stones or pools, suspiciously silent after so much conflict.
Signs of coal were to be seen in the ledges where the road had
delved its way ; and down the slopes the horse, with yielding knees,
bore Katy, sometimes giving her a shock that seemed to bring an
echo, and to make her cry aloud, till poor Job Snowberger, himself
nearly dead with charing and jolting, would cry, pipingly, " O Katy,
perse were ! "

" Tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a ! "

The brook was so long, so wild, the road so steep and unknown,
that Katy was sure it was the brook she was to wade down to find
her wedding-ring, and at every circle of the moonlight on the path
she was thrilled with the thought that the magic hoop of gold had
been reached.

The dog had become confidential, and trotted at her side, and
sometimes the shaggy woods and precipices made a deep, impene
trable shade, beyond which a seeming path would open on the
torrent. At one such place the road seemed to end, and a fallen
tree appeared to have been felled to notify the travelers. Job called
to the dog to go ahead. The animal was soon heard yelping in
the bottoms to their left, and there Job Snowberger, in opaque
darkness, forced his faltering horse, and Katy followed. The limbs
of trees struck them, and thick brush galled their limbs, but still
the pointer-dog barked seductively, as if to say, " Hasten and find
security ! "

4oo

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

They followed along, and there soon appeared light, as from
above, upon a smooth place like a trodden way, and in the light the
dog was seen at a stand, tail out and muzzle toward them, and fore
leg raised.

Job Snowberger pushecf along, and the dog bounded before him,
and was next seen on a stone amid the deep roar of unseen water —
a stone with lichens spotting it, and clay upon its smooth, large
face. Albion barked again, and again he came to a " point," as
Katy had seen him do so often when congenial mischief was
afoot.

" Stop, Job ! Te dog never p'ints fair."

Job pulled up suddenly — and he was on the edge of a chasm that
would have swallowed him up, at another impulse forward of his
horse.

Below him the creek had made its way beneath the bank, leav
ing the old bed dry and rock-strewed, and its abyss was ragged
with sharp stones whetted by the freshets and cataracts which had
laid them bare.

" O treacherous hound ! " cried Job ; " and, Katy, he's perse-
werin' yet."

As the dog stood on the stone beyond the chasm, revealed in
the streaming light through the tree-tops, and still insidiously
tempting the travelers on, something seemed hurled at it out of a
bow or catapult, and this thing skipped right up the opposite bank
like a flying mass of rock with eyes and muscles in it.

Both horses trembled, and seemed to swoon down upon their
bellies, and to blow terror through their nostrils.

The opposite steeps and thickets cracked and shook for a few
instants, as if with convulsive life.

Then, on a high rock, above the torrent a hundred feet, a beast
emerged like a great cat, with ears turned outward and lashing tail,
and stripes upon its sides. It bore a parcel in its teeth, and, stand
ing upon that, ripped the object with a jerk of its black-shadowed
and shining neck.

The horses turned and rushed back into the woods, and re
gained the road over the trunk of the fallen tree, and bounded away
regardless cf descent or obstacle till, under Katy, the good racker
found his cultivated gait again of —

" Tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a ! "

" Gracious ! what is it, Job ? "

' ' TICK- A- TO CK-A .'" 40 1

" O Shwester Kate ! I ain't seen one on te South Mountain
for years. It was a catamount, a painter, and he's killed and eat te
dog ! I reckon he had prowled te bare mountain for food till he
was tesperate."

"He's killed te dog that p'inted me," spoke Katy, shuddering;
"but it was Lloyd's dog, and I pity him."

Yes, Albion might have become a favorite on the sea-coast, and,
as an exotic, have lived several years of luxury; but he fell a victim
of the American interior, whence a few7 animals of the provincial
habit and spring still issue forth.

" Tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a ! "

The single-footed racker soon entered a region with signs of life
and improvement ; some remains of mills and mill-races were seen,
and finally open fields and barns, and at last a town stood huddled
in the sheen of moon and frost. Their horses stopped at an old
stone tavern on a corner.

" Is dis town Vaynesporo ? " piped Job Snowberger, to a man
who was shutting up the tavern windows.

" Waynesboro ? No ; this is Mechanicstown."

" Oh, unsktcklich ! Unshuldich ! — Katy, we've come around te
mountain, and te kloster is on te furder side."

"I reckon," said the landlord, "you've come down Big Hunting
Creek. It's a wonder you tidn't lose your lives. If you'd took the
same road the other way, you'd come out at Smithsburg, or Cave-
town, and been in the Cumberland Valley ; but now you've got the
mountains to cross again, and you're fourteen miles, the shortest
way, to Waynesboro."

" I couldn't help it. Te dog did it. I was a-persewerin', Katy,"
Job piped in tears.

A feeling of despair, followed by a resolution of the highest
energy, seized upon Katy Bosler. Sending Job peremptorily to bed,
Katy took the landlord aside and minutely inquired the way to the
Dunker Nunnery of Snow Hill.

"The easiest way is to go to Emmittsburg, eight mile from here,
and take the pike. But there you're no nearer Waynesboro than
from here. The shortest way is to go up Owen's Creek to Har-
baugh's Valley, and turn over the South Mountain and over the
short mountain beyond it, and from that view you can see Waynes
boro standing out in the plain. Snow Hill is three miles north of
that."

402

KATY OF CATOCT1N.

"I want my horse fed pefore daylight," whispered Katy — "te
strawperry roan, that racks. Please let that man sleep, and wake me
without noise. I'll pay you now."

After a night of strange, deep, yet haunted sleep, Katy was
awakened and started on her journey. Another creek flowing out
of the mountain's mane, gave access to pierce the mountain's head,
and by abyss and overhanging height, rock and cascade, narrow
pass and cave, the fainting child went on, crossed the South Mount
ain, and looked back on nature wildly broken and uptilted, and she
scaled the next mountain's notch among frozen cascades which she
felt to be tributaries of the Antietam.

" Tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a ! "

From the fissure she descended there suddenly stretched under
and away, like a golden scarf, the zone of a prodigious valley in
snow and field, stack and large barn, pike and town, miles on
miles ; soft to the hollow palm of heaven as the young head of
David, in its silken curls and rosy blushes to the transparent hand
of the prophet, full of shining oil.

The sun was sinking in the west, and as it basked upon the faint
gray line of the North Mountain, thirty miles away, it seemed to Katy,
this eve of Christmas-day, to be the star of Bethlehem the wise
men had followed, and the abundant plain to be the gifts they had
brought the new-born baby in the stall — gold, frankincense, and
myrrh.

She was delirious now, and only knew the town in the fore
ground of the great valley to be Waynesboro, and down the mount
ain tripped her gallant roan —

" Tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a ! "

Waynesboro has been passed ; she knows the old Dunker meet
ing-house on the Little Antietam, with its ten doors and windows in
the low story of stone ; she is in the noble woods above the lower road
in the valley, and sees the old white Dunker mill ; and she has fallen
from her horse to the earth at the monastery door and read the
notice posted there :

" By order of the trustees of the Snow Hill Society, the under
signed do hereby notify the loafer or vagrant not to call for lodg
ing or otherwise annoy the people, as the law will be used." *

The fainting soul applied the warning to herself: she passed
through the long, narrow house by an open hall, passed to the rear

* The author copied this from the door of Snow Hill Dunker Nunnery.

• ' TICK- A- TOCK-A ! " 403

and saw no one, and entered the little dairy among the shining- pans
and tins.

In the water seemed a circle of silver or gold mystically rip
pled.

" Te ring ! " sighed Katy, and sank upon the cold floor.

When she could see, or recollect, she was in bed and very weak,
yet somehow happy. She heard singing of a queer, shrill kind, and
looked upon something that shone upon her finger. What could it
be that had slid, as if from heaven, upon her slender hand ?

" Dear," spoke a voice heavy with music and tenderness, like the
bass of Lloyd Quantrell singing, " you have found your wedding-
ring-"

Hannah Ritner was standing by the bed, as well as Abel Ouan-
trell, both looking at her with interest gracious and mutual.

Katy looked again at the dear-bought ring, and saw that Han
nah had nothing like it upon her hand.

" Won't you give her one? " Katy whispered to Abel Quantrell.
" It is so comforting! It makes me feel that Lloyd is mine."

" Hannah," said Abel Quantrell, " we always were in love : cube
it ! Love, multiplied by offspring, and once again by opportunity,
make the three times the base. Take the child's ring, and I will
put it on your hand and call you ' wife.' "

" No, master. The sacrifice shall be complete : your younger son
by this marriage would suffer in his careful sense of honor. Our
son has become nature's own, and does not need that we should
wear a ring."

" Sho ! this child is not married. — Are you, Kate ? "

Katy flushed even in her weakness, but, remembering the prom
ise of secrecy made to her lover, she took the ring from her hand
and gave it to Hannah Ritner.

" I come a good ways to git it, teacher," she said, "but maype
it pelongs to you. Oh, I feel so happy. What is it ? "

"This," said Hannah Ritner, holding up a little sleeping babe
which she drew from Katy's bed. " Here is Saint Christmas, born
in the dairy of them who never marry.— Take the child, master, and
look at it awhile—your second grandchild— while I ride for the doc
tor ! "

As the old man looked at himself in the third generation, and

404 KATY OF C A TO C TIN'.

Katy wondered what it all could mean, they heard the single-footed
racker go out the lane :

" Tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a ! "

4,
CHAPTER XXXVIII.

PURITAN, JESUIT, AND GERMAN.

SNOW HILL was a remnant ; once a wilderness cloister, or so
ciety, which had possessed bright - eyed converts and intellectual
piety ; but with beauty and youth intellect had also died here, and
the old printing - apparatus and printed books, the natural "music
and mechanical craft, traces of which still continued, only empha
sized the dullness and strained devotions of a fragment, which had
property enough to make internal contentions, and where Job Snow-
berger had till now been the beau and baby.

Katy's baby was the first convert Snow Hill had made in many
a year, and Job's " nose was out of joint," as the saying goes.

He came half-way in the door to see the baby, got a glimpse of
its palpitating head, and went off into the mill to cry and to blush.
Had Job been the sole witness of baby's advent into this world, he
must needs have left Katy at the road-side and run away. The old
belles of the nunnery looked into the mill and made faces at him,
saying, " Dummkup" or dunce, and executing little waltzes and
jigs quite novel to the holy life.

Some of these silly virgins peeped through the crack of Katy's
door, to see the young mother and babe on Christmas-day, and one
walked in, looked at the bed a moment, and said "l&ntt" meaning
" brat," and turned up her nose and seemed to blow disgust through
her nostrils with her eyes ; but all that afternoon this woman scoured
the tins in the dairy till they were bright enough to look into, and
show her reflected, unexpressive face, the wick of whose experience
had never been trimmed and lighted, so that, in the darkness from
it, the bridegroom had gone past.

And that night, when all were gone to bed, this queer, round-
faced, sour-looking woman of forty or fifty years, crawled up the
stairs and into Katy's room, and reached beneath the quilts to where
the baby lay, and, taking it tenderly forth, put it against her breast,

PURITAN, JESUIT, AND GERMAN. 405

and saying, " Bubbelly, bubbelly, labe goot," or "baby, by-by" burst
into tears.

Katy looked up in wonder, and reached for her child. The
woman turned from her in a kind of quarrelsome pout, sniffed
again, and stole away.

" Hannah," said Katy, after she had rested some days and grown
strong, " why is love so natural and tangerous ? "

" My child, there came into this world a stranger to its nature
called Pride, and began to whisper to people till they elected two
evil spirits to watch them, called Scandal and Appearances. Since
then, no baby has been like the young of other animal life around
it, where song and gamboling, innocent delight and no evil-think
ing, make nature unceasing Christmas, and every opening bud, or
egg, or infant eyelid, a redeeming spirit. Man only, looks beyond
life both ways, before and hereafter, for the portion all things, be
sides, find in living. ' How came you into the world ? Where will
you go after the world ? ' These are the questions which man
asks alone. The rest of nature sings and loves, and holds to the life
that is."

" No, Mootter Hannah ; else why is baby-life ? "

" Life aspires to life. Death itself, left alone, rejoices in the
seed that is dropped into its decay, that it may sprout and bloom.
To Nature, the triumphs of intellect and society are nothing, my
child. What are all the vanished empires, the social systems, the
ology, science, literature, and conquest, to the subtle mechanism of
your little babe, which eats and sleeps and dreams, which blesses
you and drives down the dark stream of time the mirror and spirit
of ourselves ? The toil of Shakespeare's head is to Nature lost, but
a babe, even of Hagar, the desert animals will protect. Seed is the
only end of Nature, and the earth is still its garden. God said to
Pride, ' 1 will put enmity between thy seed and woman's seed.' "

"O teacher, how can I tell people that this is my baby and I
haf no wedding-ring ? Must I pe wicked ? "

" To Pride you may be, my child, but not to Nature. Our sins
were forgiven by the blessed and unfathered Master, in the great
court of the Pharisees, when he wrote upon the ground with his
finger in the dust and said, ' Go ; sin no more.' "

" Our sins. Have you sinned, too, fortune-teller? "

Hannah Ritner looked up and saw Katy's dark eyes shine upon
her pale, white face.

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

" I have had a lover and a son," said the seer.

" Was Lloyd's father your lover ? "

"Yes."

As the dark woman faintly blushed, Katy leaned over and kissed
her and said :

" Then, Hannah, you're my mother. "

" I can be your step-mother, my dear child, and I have tried to
be. From the day Lloyd brought you to my cabin I have taken a
mother's care of you both. But my son is older than Lloyd ;
Lloyd's mother wore the wedding-ring, and this babe has society's
protection, while mine — "

" Why," cried Katy, " Senator Pittson must pe your son ? "

" My son," spoke Hannah Ritner, proudly, "has the protection
of the angel which said, ' Thy son will be a wild man, and he shall
dwell in the presence of all his brethren.' * He is in the councils
of his country ; Nature has never marked him with his Egyptian
mother's shame, but in the bright blood of the passover, and he does
not fear ! "

Katy listened with astonishment at the secrets of a society she
had esteemed far above her.

" I told you, my child, that you should find your ring by the
book. Let me open a page of the beautiful book of human nature
that is printed in the rose-leaves of my heart ! I was a child like
you, a woman when scarce in my teens, and inspiring love in the
master at whose feet I was his pupil. He was strong and weak as
Samson of old. I pulled his justice and resistance down, but never
sheared his strength away. I sent him on his course, and let him
marry and increase, lest the humble life he would lead with me
might rob his country of his services."

" Would he marry you, Mootter Hannah ? "

" I would not let him make the sacrifice. I was poor, of influ
ential connections, but romantic and independent like my grand
child, Light. When Abel Quantrell loved me, as I knew, by the
intuition which makes me read people's fortunes, I saw his solitude
and hunger of heart for my sympathy and companionship, and I
knew his poor mother and her large brood were living on his pit
tance in their distant and rocky New England State. While our
Pennsylvania lawyers persecuted him as a stranger, I felt the daring
compass of his mind, and saw his infirmities — lame, penniless, ten-

* Genesis xvi, 12.

PURITAN, JESUIT, AND GERMAN. 407

der, and ambitious ! I gave his heart rest, and would not add my
burden to his back, nor let the fatherhood of his boy rest on his
reputation. Men have often been unselfish enough to refuse a
woman's hand lest she might be dragged to a lower sphere by them.
I found the compensation of my sacrifice in an older friend — one I
had refused — who took my son to the West, gave him his name,
protected his secret, and gave him education. That true republic,
where neither ancestral merits nor sins affect a man's deserts, sent
Edgar to the Senate at Washington."

" Mootter Hannah, are you happy? "

" My child, who is ? I have my cares ; for woman is still a social
animal, and sensitive to the criticisms of her own sex. My master
was not as true as I have been— he married."

Katy kissed her friend upon her great, rich, upturned eyes.

" Forgive him even for that ! " the young mother said. " That is
why Lloyd lived to come to me."

" My simple dove, I saw in your lover's face the lineaments of his
father, and toid your fate as it has come — we are both deserted ! "

" Oh," cried Katy, " it is te war, not Lloyd ! "

" Is the cause Lloyd fights for, against his strong father's will,
holy enough to justify the son's selfish anticipation of pleasure in
your young life and soul ? He could not wait, but let you wait and
suffer. His father yielded, too, when the temptations of material life
came to him — a lady of beauty, gentleness, and wealth, and family
influence in politics. I do not murmur that he forgot me, for I had
exacted no terms in the almost maternal passion I felt for his dis
tress ; but he forgot his son, and his son has a daughter, who looks
into my eyes and rejoices in her noble paternity, while my step-son
strikes his own father to the heart as he reflects upon my child ! "

Katy could not understand all this refinement of confusions, but
she listened on :

" Ah ! " cried Hannah Ritner, " there is a taint of self and gain-
seeking in these Yankees, with all their philanthropy and idealism :
Franklin himself was voluptuous and politic, though he loved knowl
edge and abstract justice. Look at the brother of Abel Ouantrell,
following him to Maryland, and setting up a slave-pen to earn
money ! Does Abel wonder that his son, Lloyd, grows up without
domestic reverence, is predatory in love and violence, and strikes
his country in the face ? Give me, after all, our sweet, unselfish,
and commonplace life and motive of the Middle States : we profess

408

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

less, we are slower in public spirit, the outward deifying of morality
we are not skillful at doing ; we do not hate systems and people
from far off, like the Jews of old, sparing neither Philistine nor
Amalekite ; here persecution never went beyond gossip and back
biting, while yonder it banished, hanged, and whipped."

" Hannah, ain't you an apolitionist ? "

" Yes : I gave my enthusiasm when I gave my all, to the proud,
obdurate man whose self-love never has conquered his indignations.
I recognize his righteous leadership as Miriam, the sister of Moses,
prophesied and danced to his law. The great contest with slavery
I helped to bring about : John Brown received from me shelter and
direction where to strike the vital spot — so close to the free States
that Virginia and her slaveholding posterity in the West must
needs fall within the seam of war, and slavery everywhere meet a
common doom. I must now cherish the soldiery of our cause, and
keep watch over the new captain of our hosts, the President at
Washington. He hesitates between mercy and the old statutory
gods. He must come to the nature of John Brown, and strike the
dragon at the vital point : slavery — it must fall ! "

Carried away by impulses powerful as those may have been
which gave her love's reckless impulsion, Hannah Ritner arose,
seeing not Katy nor anything except the lightning-play in her
stormy soul, and she planted her feet as upon remembered heights,
and looked away, yet inward, as if down at chasms where her life
had been banished, and still remained in lonely entanglement with
the lines of imperial movement. Her nose was long and hollow,
like a bow which shot impressions from without into her brain.

" I believe slavery will fall in these mountains ; that its grave is
by the Potomac, and that the echoes of its death will die along the
South Mountain side. The soul of my friend awaits the reverbera
tion. Yes, he awaits companionship, and I hear the sound of its
feet ! Who comes, so joyfully, with the whistle of victory, and
careless as the happy schoolboy's mind on Friday afternoon ?
Who comes at holiday's brink and bears the sheaves of harvest and
does not see the hunter's trap ? Oh, linger, linger, gentle friend,
for the tyrant hides in wait, his expiring mortality concentered in
one blow ! It has fallen : I see him reel across the open grave, and
the Emancipator is caught up by the Pioneer — Death ! Death ! but
Victory ! "

As Hannah Ritner sank down by Katy's bed, a gun went off

PURITAN, JESUIT, AND GERMAN. 409

directly beneath the window of the room, and was followed by a
piping cry of —

" Persewerin' ! Wictory and te heilich life ! "

It was soon reported that Job Snowberger had been fooling
with the old gun he found in Harbaugh's cabin, and had shot him
self, painfully, but probably not fatally.

All sorts of tales were told about Job's accident. Some said
that he had become vainglorious since he had fired on the rene
gades at Harbaugh's, and brought Katy safely across the mount
ains, and that he had taken to drilling and marching, and had
finally shot himself to experience the feelings of the wounded.

Others said he had lost his wits trying to understand the mys
tery of Katy's baby, and had some way conceived himself to be the
undiscovered guilty party.

Others told a queer story about Job being desperately in love
with Katy, and tortured between his affections and his vow of
monkish celibacy, and that he had resolved to persevere in the holy
life if he had to commit suicide.

Whatever the mystery of his act, Job was a changed man when
Katy came down from her room after some days, and offered to at
tend his bed and return his kindness to her.

Fie was now completely indifferent to her charms and coquetries,
and read the great book called " Der blutige Schau-Platz," or " The
Baptist Martyr's Looking-Glass," which his father had set up in type
at Ephrata, and he composed bits of music under the pages of Con
rad Beissel's hymns in the " Turtle-Doves' " collection ; and toward
spring got about, and remained silent, pious, and a -little sour till the
end of his life.

Some of the bad boys used to call names at Job over the fence,
such as " maz'dle," and " gowl," and " asle " ; but he was deaf to
their tantalizations, and still the warrior spirit revived sometimes in
him, as in Narses and other generals of the past ; and the next fall,
at the love-feast of Snow Hill, when the Seventh-day Baptists were
imposed upon by the thousands of disorderly spectators, Job, to use
the neighborhood saying, " whipped his weight in wild cats," to the
battle-cries of " persewerin'," and " te heilich life."

Relieved of Job's attention, Katy had no other male friend than
Hugh Fenwick, who came across from Gettysburg to find her, and
a council was held as to the attitude Katy should assume. The
novitiate did all the advising. Katy was to await a time when her

410 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

lover could see her and explain himself, and meantime was to apply
her mind to The Book, or, as Hannah Ritner said :

" My darling, the brook you are to wade down to find your wed
ding-ring is your tears of penance and passion ; the book you are to
use for direction may be the Holy Scriptures, or it may be educa
tion. Seek which of these — and both may be needed to satisfy
you — will fill up the uncertain and contending years till the prodigal
lover finds his way back to his father's door."

" Hugh," asked Katy, " maype you had te right to marry
me? "

" Katy, I have looked it carefully over. By the law of 1777 no
person can perform the marriage rite but established or dissenting
ministers, or Romish priests ' appointed or ordained,' and only after
three times publishing the names in a meeting-house of the bride's
own county. The recent law of marriage is more rigorous yet :
' No persons in Maryland shall marry without a license and triple
publication, nor except by some minister of the gospel ordained ac
cording to the rites and ceremonies of his or her church.' None
of these conditions are answered in your case, and clandestine mar
riage is forbidden by Rome itself."

Hannah Ritner brushed back her long locks of black and silver,
and looked the speaker through and through.

" I am baffled in your character," she said. " Do you understand
it yourself ? "

" No."

" It may be like the kitten's marks in the snow, gone over and
over in her puerile play, till they are without clew or even form. Yet
you have had some purpose with this girl. Why did you marry
her to Mr. Quantrell ? Why do you discourage her now, and see
your duty as you disobeyed it? Why are you here again, after your
act has driven her from home and made her a mother ? "

Fenwick could not withdraw his eyes from her, though his soul
was seeking to slide away, like a man from his own deepening
shadow.

" Answer ! " said Hannah Ritner. " Was it because you loved
her?"

" Yes. I saw her suffering. Rather than see her suffer, I mar
ried her to another. Everything at that moment seemed excusable
to me, and the reparation easy. I thought my superiors would give
me indulgence and confirm my presumption. They dare not do it ;

PURITAN, JESUIT, AND GERMAN. 4II

and I am now in secular occupation, fearing the legal and eternal
consequences of my sacrilege."

" Ah ! " said Hannah Ritner, " how many a man mistakes his
cowardice for religion and evidence of his fitness to be a priest ! —
Katy, can your simple soul understand why I will not solicit a cere
mony to make love and constancy more exalted, when it must come
from a frail creature like this man ? Yet I think he is no villain.
His avowal that he loved you had the touch of nature. Do you love
her yet, Fenwick ? "

" I do," sighed the neophyte, with downcast eyes.

" Go ; trust him ! " spoke the seer to Katy. " Love with respect
never harmed any woman, and his will not harm you. He is a part
of the book you must master. Your husband has deserted you :
prepare yourself for life, even if it brings you the wedding-ring from
a second husband."

As they turned to go, the babe in Fenwick's arms, Hannah Rit
ner called him back.

" Do not think, sir, to prevail over Lloyd Ouantrell by any trick
of deceit ! There is a man that Rome itself will stoop to, for the
poor privilege of closing his eyes at death, and numbering him
among its distinguished converts. He shall compel Rome to do
this child justice, if Rome must make you a priest and antedate your
ordination to effect it. That man is Abel Ouantrell, to whom I am
a higher power than Rome to you."

As Katy and Fenwick stepped out upon the lawn, the fruit-trees
in blossom, and the blue flowers and water-rill stirring in the May,
they sat upon a bench at the thick-walled church, and looked back
at the nunnery in silence.

" That woman could be a pope," the young man said. " Nature
is the widest church. In time it will absorb them all, and God be
everywhere."

For months Katy applied herself to The Book. She read much
of the fifty books issued from the Ephrata press, wept over the
Scriptures, and joined in the devotions of the household. She was
of natural piety ; but her mind leaped along and over the barriers of
this perishing monastery and its dull existence. Hannah Ritner's
influence kept her a welcome guest, and her beauty the sour old
women deferred to. Her name was changed to " Sister Azuba,"
or " The Deserted."

Sometimes Hannah Ritner took her away awhile, among the

412 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

hospitals and on the steamers of the Sanitary Commission, and she
saw the bleeding edges of the mighty war that at one baptism im
mersed the wide continent ; but her child called her back, and she
learned to love the cove among the Bunker hills, and to hunger for
the books of human knowledge.

"Lloyd must not find me ignorant," she said. "And first I
must learn the English language ! "

So Katy set to work to destroy the old German sounds upon her
tongue that had almost grown physiologically into the brain.

The Pennsylvania Dutch speech had no written language nor
grammar nor fixed forms of orthography, and was a colloquial lan
guage with hardly any literature ; * but it was spoken by nearly a
million of the American people, less from preference than from one
unvaried race intercouse of above a hundred years.

The long e where the short one should be used, the use of oo for
u and of aw for the short o, the mixing of / and d and of p and b,
of/ for ch and of g for tsh, the confusing of the two sounds of s
and of th, and saying/" for v and w for v, and the leaving out the h
sound after w, were the true labors of the German Augean stable,
which required a river of English to purify it ; for, under a decay
ing language, ignorance hides like dust and mice on unused books.
Katy was a little of a poet, and she set these defects in verse :

" Eggs are not aiks, tunes are not toons,
Dogs are not tawks, spoons are not sboons ;
A gill you drink, a chill you sweat,
At jests you laugh, in chests you get ;
A gem you wear on a chemise,
But play no ' zell ' on the polize ;
The vine you grow, the wine you bottle,
The which you whistle, the witch you throttle ;
It iz a job to chop Jane's chain,
Not, iss a chop do job Chane's jane."

During all such exercise, in which Hugh Fenwick was a teacher
to Katy, he received Quantrell's letters by the secret mail and sup
pressed their tender messages and contents, appeasing his con
science by the arguments that Quantrell was not worthy of his wife,
and not entitled to communicate with loyal people. Many a prayer
did Hugh Fenwick make as penance for this deceit, promising to

* Rev. A. R. Home, Kutztown, Pennsylvania. "German Manual."

PURITAN, JESUIT, AND GERMAN.

present Katy's soul in conversion at the altar as a brand plucked
from heresy and sin ; and he also sublimated his patriotism, declin
ing outwardly to speak to a secessionist in Washington, while he
was also the guest at Surratt's tavern in the country— until it had
been rented to a dissipated Washington policeman — and, after that,
a guest at the widow's Washington boarding-house, where occa
sionally harbored some lodger between Canada and Richmond with
a rebel commission in one pocket and the government's oath of
allegiance in the other.

Fenwick saw these things while he was in the public service, and
cautioned the hostess mildly, but never expressed his indignant sen
timents, if, indeed, he had any.

The part he loved to solace himself with, was that of a disinter
ested mystic, supervising, for authority, and without any earthly
prejudice or consideration, the higher relations of the soul.

He had the self-love of a religious amateur who denied to him
self the real purposes of his double-dealing, which were to mold
Katy to his social likeness, marry her, and in some church or other,
it mattered not which, become a comfortable and somewhat sensa
tional ornament.

The mystery of such a being was, that he had a nearly devout
respect and love for his friend's wife.

Hugh met both Abel Ouantrell and Luther Bosler sometimes, as
well as Nelly Harbaugh.

The senior Quantrell and Henry Winter Davis had both antago
nized the President, as had the great body of professional abolition
ists, partly because the latter were on record against him and their
dear intellectual self-love, strengthened by the delights of having
been right when only a few, resented the rule of a man who meant
to obey the laws first, and, if possible, make the law and not lawless
ness destroy slavery. With every personal ambition to emancipate
these blacks, the President had even a higher duty — to preserve the
republic, for which every aristocracy and court were lying in wait.
Emancipation without America, which was nothing but the United
States, would be like the voice of Rachel, in Rama, weeping for all
her children.

" Cube it ! " sternly demanded Abel Ouantrell.

" I shall," said President Lincoln ; "and, if I understand a cube,
it is a solid, and not a sound. We want our country back. You,

414 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

Uncle Abel, are like a friend I had in Illinois, who had a home
made cherry bounce, bottled up since his childhood, and powerfully
heady, of which he used to drink too early in the morning, and it
made him see everything in pairs. He was about your age, Uncle
Abel — say seventy — when he celebrated his birthday by falling down
stairs. He saw two balusters — one was there, and one wasn't there,
and he took hold of the one that wasn't there, and fell all the way
down."

The tall President had dropped into his chair while speaking,
and rested his long feet on his heels, turning up an old pair of carpet
slippers ; and he now leaned his long arms on his knees, and almost
shouted with laughter.

" Cube it, Mr. President ! " again said Abel Ouantrell, almost
pityingly, at such levity.

"Abel," replied the President, "that reminds me of the saying,
' Which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit to his stature ? '
It is not ideas now which can win the day, but armies. I want a
victory in the field, and after. that I may, as a war measure, set a
date for the legal termination of slavery. Even then it will be a
sound and not a solid, my friend, till our soldier-boys cube it with
victory on all four sides of the rebellion at once."

The laugh was on Abel Quantrell, and reformers can not bear to
be laughed at.

Mr. Davis considered that the President had not enough per
sonal resentment in his nature. Surrounded by unscrupulous and
malignant personal and political enemies, that Congressman wanted
aid to -smite them in Maryland, but the President was too noble to
hate anybody.

The most complete and many-sided man of his day, President
Lincoln was too original to have any petty intensity, and his way of
meeting intense and narrow people with light jokes and laughter
seemed to them the marks of a low mind.

The East was still worshiping appearances and studying Euro
pean military history, while the West, with an every-day look on
its face, was driving the great lines of the rebellion in, and only on
the line of the Valley, indicated by John Brown, was the border still
vulnerable to the enemy ; and he wras now to cross it, and invade
Maryland.

Hannah Ritner arrived at Snow Hill one day in a hired buggy.

" Katy," said she, " the insurgents have beaten McClellan an'd

LLOYD'S HUNTING-PARK.

415

Pope, and crossed the Potomac ! They are in Frederick City to
night. I was robbed of my single-footed racker on my way to ap
prise your father, and I came too late — his herd was driven off, and
the old farm is a desolation ! Catoctin Valley is held by the enemy,
and they are investing Harper's Ferry."

" Hurrah ! " piped Job Snowberger, coming in with the old Ser
geant's gun ; " I've persewered as fur as te heilich life, and now I'm
backshlided and goin' to te heilich war ! "

CHAPTER XXXIX.

LLOYD'S HUNTING-PARK.

IT was natural enough that the guide of the insurgent army into
Maryland and Pennsylvania should have been one of the Logans —
the mountain slave-catchers. They knew all the by-roads, and, if
the invasion had succeeded, the blood-hound would have been the
next guide, chasing up fugitive slaves.

The issues to be settled under the South Mountain, and by the
Antietam mill-stream, were the same determined by Charles Martel,
on the plains of Europe — whether women should have souls, and
Christians liberty !

The defeat of the Army of the Potomac there, 'might have made
slavery the dictator of all future American law and policy ; it would
next have compelled Canada and Mexico to remand fugitive slaves,
and the slave-trade would have been opened with Africa and Poly
nesia, and Europe forced to consent or fight ; for men who would
attack the United States in the proportion of one to three, would
not hesitate to attack any state in Europe ; and, in fact, the educa
tion of slavery had made the fiercest white race on the globe since
Mohammed and his caliphs — a democracy practicing slave-driving
had all the energy of a popular society with all the bigotry of Orient
alism. The fatalist Presbyterian, to whom was consigned the capt
ure of Harper's Ferry, as the principal result of the invasion of Mary
land, would have been no unwelcome general to Abderrahman or
Kara Mustapha.

There, under the fatuity of belief that the old mountain hole
was important, the government kept a garrison of twelve thousand

41 6 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

men, \vhile the insurgents also felt annoyed to leave this hollow
post in their rear ; and, turning to take it, they lost the great battle
of Antietam, and also learned that their remaining sympathizers in
Maryland did not enlist for open war.

Lloyd Quantrell, like many a one returned to his native State,
kissed the ground, and heard the bands play " Maryland," and read
the proclamation of the heir-at-law of Washington, that " freedom
of the press has been supressed " ; and next, Lloyd saw the Union
newspaper office at Frederick destroyed. The more honest procla
mation was that of the Maryland rebel brigadier : " Come, all who
wish to strike for their liberties, and each man provide himself with
a pair of shoes, a good blanket, and a tin cup."

The mountain counties had too few slaves to be interested in an
otherwise causeless rebellion.* The false prophet lost nearly as
many by desertion as he took at Harper's Ferry.

There an officer with great consideration for slavery was in com
mand, and at the head of the government army was another who
had rather instruct his President on the enormity of freedom, than
go and strike the invader and follow him home.

Stonewall Jackson was the John Brown of his cause, and, like
Brown, sat down in Harper's Ferry and paroled his prisoners ; and
the war was to continue till every influential officer and civil ruler
of the two sides became fashioned to their likeness — a Union man
had to hate slavery, and a disunionist to fear freedom. Stanton
was the one great Unionist with the intensity of the secessionists
themselves ; they saw him and hated their own likeness.

Quantrell served as the staff-officer of a great slaveholder from
Georgia, who had seen his political party break up and the Republi
can party prevail, rather than let his rival, the opponent of President
Lincoln, receive the Democratic party's leadership. Jealousy, com
mencing in the party, had been the widening avenue to treason.
This able man, who had handled the finances of his whole country,
now found himself defending Crampton's Gap, one of two depres
sions in the long South Mountain wall ; and as the government
troops stretched across the Catoctin Valley to carry the pass, some-

* ' ' The section occupied by the Confederate army was inhabited by people
who had, for the most part, very different views and feelings from those of the
more southern counties. In the latter, and in Baltimore, thousands would have
flocked to the standard of Lee," but if, and so forth. — Scharf's rebel and official
" History of Maryland."

LLOYD'S HUiVTING-PARK.

thing in their numbers and deliberation awed his heart. Quantrell
was sent along the mountain-crest to solicit re-enforcements from
the greater insurgent wing which held the pass of the old National
road, some miles northward.

Suddenly he heard the strains of a band of music swell up from
the plain behind him, to the air of a Maryland poet of other days :

" Oh, thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation !
Blest with victory and peace, may the Heaven-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation !
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto — ' In God is our trust.'
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave."

Lloyd's eyes filled with tears as he heard this tender music —
plaintive, hopeful, and trustful ; like a Te Deum, threatening none-
execrating none— resting upon the spirit of Heaven in the hearts of
the young and devoted.

" Why can not we play that piece ? " said he. " I know it is
never played in our camps; but why not? Have we lost our
State, our flag, our music, too ? What have we got in return ? "

As he dried his eyes, and looked at his shoes, half unsoled, and
his garments and skin dirty, and himself come back, like a gypsy
tramp, to the mountains of his childhood, he heard the fifes and
drums in Crampton's Gap playing the old, monotonous, drunken-
student tune, like a Roundhead drawl sung through the nose to in
sidious suggestions, to the words —

" Better the fire upon thee roll,
Better the blade, the shot, the bowl,
Than crucifixion of the soul,

Maryland ! my Maryland ! "

" Nice present for Maryland from her friends," Lloyd reflected—
" the torch, the dirk-knife, the assassin's shot, and a bowl, either of
poison or turpentine-whisky ! "

He drank of the good rye he had purloined at one of the distil
leries in Catoctin Valley, the capture of which had appeared yester
day to be the political motive of the whole war.

Suddenly he thought of the Sunday evening when he had left
27

41 8 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

Katy, near Crampton's Gap, and the mysterious music of fife and
drum had followed her retreating wheels.

" O prophecy of this desolation ! " Quantrell cried ; "was it I who
brought this war upon my country ? Did my coming to these mount
ains bring ruin to a single heart or shame to any hearth ? God help
me ! What will to-morrow bring them, when every fife screams
hate, and every drum beats ' kill ' ? "

He had stumbled along the mountain- table, when he found him
self at the edge of a rock parapet, and identified the spot as that
where he had met Isaac Smith and sons under their assumed names,
the day^he shot the dove.

Looking out upon the rival valleys, Lloyd recognized his hunt
ing-park, somewhat as he had desired it that day, when he said : " I
would clean out the whole region like a Norman king ; all the wild
beasts should return again — none but native American beasts, you
bet ! "

Every beast was here ; every hamlet had become its lair ; and
from the North Mountain, more than twenty miles away, to Hagers-
town and the Pennsylvania vales, stretched the uncoiled insurrec
tion, with one fold only around Harper's Ferry, and the flat head,
like the sluggish copperhead snake's, hissing at Baltimore, where
lay the government fleet to raze that city if it sought to rise and
destroy itself.

The mild, wistful eyes of Abraham Lincoln, whose life would
pay the price of his devotion if his army failed, looked out from
Washington city — his enemy far in his rear, and hardly a day's
inarch from his person — and he knelt in the agony of his responsi
bility to the God he had sometimes doubted, and promised, if the
battle were favorable, to proclaim slavery the nation's outlaw.

As if Heaven had taken the President at his word, the army
charged the South Mountain with a spirit it had never shown. Be
hind Quantrell, the old statesman's command was torn to pieces,
and among the killed were some of his own family ; and, in the
Gap ahead, the soldiery of the West fought far into the night, and
hurled their enemy down the mountain, though he had massed thirty
thousand men to keep this rampart. Three thousand fellow-men
lay on the mountain-side, crying for water and death.

Quantrell was caught up in the tide of flying men and carried
on to Sharpsburg — that same little town where he had volunteered
to carry the letter to Isaac Smith nearly three years before.

LLOYD'S HUNTING-PARK.

Here, in the dawn, stretched thousands of men upon the bare
ground ; hundreds more were contending for water at the stone-
arched spring.

" The blessings of our Confederacy have been, up to this time,"
Lloyd thought, " hardly to leavs Maryland water to drink."

He went to the commanding general's and asked for a place in
the coming battle, and they sent him to the Dunker church near
by, where he had plighted troth with Katy ; and that night, as Fate
would have it, he slept beneath the September stars, in the Dunker
grave-yard, where, at the grave of Katy's mother, he had put his
own mother's ring upon Katy's hand, and heard a mystic music in
the fields.

Now, from the small mountainous ridges, from the fields ribbed
with limestone, and the drooping woods of hickory and oak, came
the pipes and bands of vast and organized war— not like the handful
of John Brown's followers caught in the mountain's jaws, but land
scapes of men embroidered between the great quilting-frames of the
North and the South Mountains ; and the Antietam brook, like a
ball of blue yarn, lying on the floor below.

At dawn, next day, the bright needles began their task, and the
red and white patches spangled the rich groundwork ; like scis
sors cutting, the shell and shrapnel clipped the air ; while smoke of
burning rags and flesh went up to God in human sacrifice. It was
the domestic quilting-party over domestic slavery.

During that night, thinking of where he might lie the night to
follow, Lloyd Ouantrell imagined he saw on the South Mountain
summit the gaunt form of John Brown demonstrating with a pike
upon the great blackboard of the battle-field, and saying, " This,
gentlemen, is the inevitable line of war ! "

The battle of Antietam may be likened to two leopards lying in
a brook, and fighting all day with their heads and teeth, and not
till near night remembering the terrible claws upon their hinder
feet, when these, also, do ferocious work.

At light of Wednesday morning, the flexile animals began the
roar of war, contending for the Dunker church through corn-fields
and lanes ; and that little temple of the peaceful Dippers, standing
on a white turnpike in the edge of beautiful woods, was the only
Christian sign to twenty-five thousand dead or bleeding men, who

420

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

lay that night beneath the breeze that carried the symphony of their
wails to the old mill-wheels in the creek, which turned as innocently
to blood as to water. These mills had ground out flour for Wash
ington's army, and for the French wars a hundred years before.

The three arched bridges of the creek typified to many a burning
man the three heads on Calvary with the hyssop at their lips.

In little villages, like Nazareth or Bethlehem of old, the taxed
people crowded to pay Pilate the currency of blood, and many a
pale virgin heard Joseph the carpenter's saw all the night working
in human bones.

Artillery had been busy as the talk of crows in the standing
corn, for a full day's farm-hands' work ; the volleys of musketry
seemed to rend the intervening mountains, and account for their
present partitioning ; the old sycamores above the sluggish wind
ings of the creek calmly slept in the tornado of iron, like the Bunkers
in their graves.

How many a barn of stone, such as were scattered over that
rolling battle plateau, seemed to its fugitives of both armies, who
crowded there fraternally, to be the palace of God's abundance, un
til the missile of Christian chemistry made it burst to flame, and be
old Torquemada's sacrifice to the faith !

In grassy cross-lanes, where the sighs of pastoral love had
passed in the innocent sight of nibbling sheep, there lay at morn
the specters of entangled bodies, swelling to quick decay, like the
hewed trees upon the mountains and the corded wood.

By night, the lamps of good Samaritan and robber moved
among the sufferers, hearing the cry of " water," and answering it
with rapine ; or the cry for " death," and answering it with water
and with wine.

The whole world contributed to that last supper to slavery ; the
multitudinous tribes that had swelled by their mutiny and emigra
tion the, as yet, unwelded American race, dipped in the sop of An-
tietam, and sighed in all the tongues before the Pentecostal day.

The public enemy, with the Potomac at his back— looped up to
his flanks and cinctured by his pontoons — held the*horizon line above
the creek, and watched the three stone bridges of the Antietam ;
but only at the far left was battle given for the Union willingly, and
it seemed in the moral laws of the world ordained that the com
mander, who would qualify freedom in his heart, could receive only
qualified obedience. The nearest bridge to Sharpsburg was not

LLOYD'S HUNTING-PARK. 42 I

attacked till afternoon, though ordered to be carried at dawn ; and
when that town was almost taken, the returning victors from Har
per's Ferry appeared and saved it.

Thus one hundred and fifty thousand men had tried a whole day
to destroy each other, upon the issue of two nations or one — no other
moral point was then at issue.

But the President at Washington had recorded his vow. The
day but two after the battle he read to his cabinet the proclamation
of emancipation, and the Monday after the battle — washing-day in
the State — it was published to mankind.

Before it serfdom went down everywhere. The Russian and
Brazilian followed the spirit of old King Frederick, and the Ameri
can followed the example of Frederick's sword-wearer, Captain John
Brown.

These were the words of mercy, born out of the autumn harvest
of the Bunker's vale :

" On the first ' day of January, in the year of our Lord 1863,
all persons held as slaves by the people in rebellion against the
United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever, free."

The stream of Dutch immigration moving down the Cumberland
valley from the Delaware, had prepared the battle-field of emancipa
tion, and verified the proclamation of Mennonites and Dunkers a
century and three quarters before : " We shall doe to all men licke
as we will be done ourselves, making no difference in what genera
tion, descent, or colour they are." *

In the night the enemy had abandoned Maryland and crossed
the river. ^

Not long afterward, President Lincoln rode from Frederick City
across the mountains, in the month of October, to see these battle
fields — the nearest to his fame — and they took him to the mountain-
farm of John Brown, whence that outlaw had descended upon Vir
ginia with his Gideonites, nearly three years before, in the same
russet month.

The President got down from his carriage in the lane by the old
log-hut, and asked the privilege of entering the spot alone.

He looked within the humble stone basement at the bare floor,
and peeped into the small, contracted loft.

He sat in John Brown's own room ; and the memory of his child-

* Mennonite protest against slavery to the Pennsylvania Quaker slavehold
ers, April 18, 1688.

422

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

hood, in such a hut as this, brought back the recollection of his
mother and her barefoot brood.

He thought of his tanned and hazel-eyed mother, crossing the
Ohio to a home as bare as this, among the wild pines, and a little
clearing of Indian corn, in the bottoms of Indiana. He thought of
her dying when he was only nine years old, and the digging of her
lonely grave, without a preacher near to see her dear mold go down
beneath the October sycamore ; and of his desolate father, looking
his last upon her with a sound of inarticulate woe and wringing
hands. The trees without made the same sound now in the same
October weather, saying Indian things in the afternoon light.

" Dear mothers of poor boys ! " the President said, " look down
in pity on the orphans who have made their way to public life in
honor of your characters, and never find the unselfish joy you gave
them, even in the solace of such opportunities for good as poor
John Brown's and mine ! Oh, could you tell me, mother, that I am
right, and give me the luxury of that great grief I felt when you
were suffering, I would gladly lie down here and surrender to the
silence of a grave like yours, the honors and the troubles I am so
much envied for ! "

Tears bade the President go down to the old spring-house and
bathe his eyes. As he reached it, a large, black-haired woman sat
there beneath the hooded roof, and looked up at him like one ex
pected, and with compassion like the mother of his youth.

" My son," she said, in deep, indwelling tones, "have you come,
also, to the martyr's farm ? Shall I see you go out of this lane never
to return, however victorious ? "

" I know your face," the President said, in pleasant recognition.
" You are one of the hospital nurses and Sisters of Dorcas who come
sometimes to my office. Did you know John Brown ? "

" He was another son of mine," the dark woman said ; " I
brought him to this barren shrine, near the hut where I had minis
tered to many escaping slaves. I saw his destiny, and I see yours,
President. Let old Hannah Ritner, the witch of Smoketown, look
into your hand ! "

The President hesitated, still looking at her kindly, and he
touched his moist eyes with his hands.

" Be careful, friend," he spoke ; " my sensibilities have been a lit
tle moved by thinking of some things of childhood, and I derive
from my old Dutch ancestry, which lived at both ends of this same

LLOYD'S HUNTING-PARK. 433

valley, a vein of superstition. I hope you will not press me too
hard."

" Your fortune has already been told, my gifted son."

" Yes ; once it was. When I was a young man I went to New
Orleans, and saw a beautiful yellow girl sold on the block, and I
wished I might live to see slavery end. That very day a fortune
teller—an old Voudoo — solemnly told me that I would be President,
and all the negroes would be free." *

" It has come to pass, my noble son ! I will soon be laid away,
obscurely as the patient mother you were just invoking by those
tears, and, like the Scripture witch of old, I would connect my in
tuitions with your fate ; for you look down on me like Jonathan, the
son of Saul's own stature. Give a poor mourner for the hero who
died on the gailows, that hand which executed his unsuccessful pur
pose with the more merciful pen ! "

The President held out his hand. She took it and drew him to
ward her, and, gathering up her sheet of black and silver hair which
had fallen in the spring, she wiped his eyes and scoured his palm
with her hairs.

With face bent over his hand, and accents which were low, but
made her bosom throb, Hannah Ritner spoke these words :

" The fierce are threatened oft,

And live life out ;
The wolf assails the soft —

Have thou no doubt !
He whose remaining gun

At thee takes aim,
Shall save the tenderest one

All of his fame ! "

When the President heard these words, he saw the woman sink
to her place upon the stone, by the log spring-house, under the rot
ting roof.

" Thank you," said he, " for the kindness of your augury. When
my time comes, may God find me with no cares upon my face ! "

During the battle for the Bunker church, Lloyd Ouantrell, at the
head of a detachment from everywhere : conscripts, filibusters, lads

* This prediction is recorded in Arnold's " Life of Lincoln," p. 31.

424

KATY OF C A TO C TIAT.

taken from school to stop bullets, and lads never meant for school
at all, but to be " sand-hillers " and "crackers," like all their genera
tions ; bright Virginia yeomen and ardent young Carolinians, Irish
men from the wharves of cities, Creoles from the levees, with Span
ish and St. Uorningo blood ; fat, chicken-fed Georgians and Alaba
mans, lean duelists and card-players from Mississippi, men without
origin from the spontaneous grass of Texas, and freckled skeletons
from Tennessee — fought the ever-recurring advance of the Union
army with the business coolness and rallying power he showed in
Baltimore in firemen's times. Though Lloyd had reasoned upon
the errors and follies of the secession cause, he gave it his full phys
ical loyalty, and on his native soil would surpass his best endeavors,
in the sight of all these wild levies.

His gun in hand at times, his pistols at others, his sword at closer
quarters, and at times with nothing at all, he made the trembling
stand, cheered the young tyro at man-killing, pointed the place of
latest danger, and hurried to make it good ; and, gigantic in stature,
free in humor, forgetful of everything but the pleasure and hotness
of the fight, he stood more distinct than a general, with clothes
ripped by bullets and hat already ragged, one arm in a sling and his
pair of new boots taken from a Federal corpse, his face black with
powder and his food an ear of corn, and the dead around and before
him unobserved as the limestone ledges which stood also in battle-
lines under the beautiful woods.

His negro, Ashby, brought him water at times, constant but au
tomatic, and once in the lull of battle, when far away the artillery
roared like lightning in the mountains, Lloyd raised a laugh among
his desperate but discouraged men by saying :

" Ashby, how did you get on this side ? The Yankees will hang
you ! "

" I's cornscripted," replied the negro, "like most of dese yer pa
triots — cornscripted by my 'fections ! "

The blue line of battle came on again through the shot-mowed
Indian maize, announced by the skirmishers falling back with reports
like pop-corn in the pan.

" Now, boys," cried Ouantrell, " we'll blow them out like a can
dle ! We've had a little rest. Lie down behind the stone copings
and take aim, and fire low — only when I give the word."

The emaciated, awed, but energized battalion fell down, and
awaited the shock of war.

LLOYD'S H UN TING-PA RK.

425

" Great Patapsco ! " laughed Ouantrell, " how many more Yan
kees can there be ? We've killed a million, and here they come
again. This war will last till the Yankees learn to fire low, and then
it won't last six months."

He was a great comfort to his men — candid, saucy, satirical, as
apt to sing as to swear — and now he, alone, stood up, gnawing a half
dry ear of corn, and shaking the cob at the enemy — otherwise un
armed — and daring them to cqme nearer :

" Come on ! Right here, to meeting ! Come to love-feast ! Come
get your feet washed ! Come get your hair cut ! Come and get
some lamb-soup ! Come, brethren — come to hell ! "

Stalwart and ragged as a pirate, Lloyd's sense of humor even in
this moment of intensity rose supreme ; for the Federal leader was,
like the Dunkers he had described, with straggling beard and shaved
lip and long hair.

A blast of flame and lead blew from the Northern rifles, and the
old Dunker church cracked like a white slave under the rawhide.

" Hold fast ! I'll make him who fires before I speak, eat all this
corn-cob ! Low, now, and— fire ! "

The ground burst with smoke, and in the smoke rose the feeble
rebel yell, and on before was another yell like women screaming.

" Snuffed out ! " exclaimed Quantrell, grimly ; " all are dead that
have got legs. Give me a fresh ear, somebody ! "

His men had hardly congratulated themselves, when the blue
line reappeared, decimated, shorter, but steady yet — reformed be
hind the knoll and the corn — and the bearded figure leading it on,
wore his arm also in a sling now, like Lloyd Quantrell.

"That Yankee's almost as saucy as I am," chuckled Lloyd to
his men. " Now, down again, and finish them ! Not a trigger
goes till I call out ! — What are you doing here, Ashby ? Go to the
rear ! "

" Don't you want your sword, mosster ? "

"No. Give me a drink! — That is a cool chap yonder, sure!
Now, low — fire ! "

As the smoke and dust arose from the fields, the same mourn
ful wail and the same rejoicing rebel yell echoed to each other.

" The graveyard's full ! " said Lloyd ; " I don't see a man ! "

As the volleys of musketry went round the circuit of the battle
field, and the hushed and wondering soldiery gazed forth from the
Dunker woods, they saw the same man, in beard and long hair, ap-

426 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

pear at the edge of the corn-field, at the head of a poor and un
certain handful of men in blue. He waved a sword and shook his
head, and seemed to be saying, "Forward ! "

It was in vain. The waft of death, twice blown from those
mysterious woods, had broken the hearts of his followers.

"Come, brother!" shouted Lloyd, "we'll divide the porridge
with you. Bring them along ! — And you, my men, down there
again, and wait for the word ! "

The bearded man seemed now making a speech. He threat
ened his soldiers with a drawn pistol. He stripped his sword-sash
from his body and threw it on the ground and stamped upon it.

"They won't come," said Ouantrell ; "I wouldn't if I was they.
But the bully, yonder, is a lion."

The man they looked at now walked right toward them, head
up, and the heroism of death in his tension and devotion. He
came on, pistol in hand, not to surrender, but to defy, and to set
the example of duty, and to die.

" Why," Quantrell said, " if this was his church, and he the
preacher of it, he couldn't show more confidence walking up to his
pulpit. Don't fire at him. Don't kill that man ! "

To the credit of the worst among them, there was no such in
tention. His personal, unattended valor, and the appreciation of it,
encompassed the whole battalion of his enemies. But it became
apparent that he must die, lest he kill some one or many among
them. His pace never slackened, nor were his features relaxed.
He meant to give his life, but to exact life for it.

The whole stooping body peered up to see him ; guns were
cocked, and his heart seemed to beat visibly in the air where he
walked, like the perforated cardboard it was in a moment to be.

" Don't shoot so game a fellow-man ! " called Lloyd ; " I'll trip
him up and take him alive."

As he and they all stared at this effigy, whose breathing they
could almost hear as it came at full momentum, like a bull to the
Indian ambush, their flank, which they had neglected for this
spectacle, flamed and thundered, and Lloyd Quantrell turned his
head to see the woods full of blue blouses and charging men, and
to hear a wail of anguish at his very feet, and see his battalion rise
and rush from his side in the panic of demoralization.

At the same moment a pistol went off at his own ear, and he
grappled with a strong man.

LLO YD 'S HUNTING-PARK. 427

Another human body rushed between, and the pistol was again
discharged.

Lloyd seemed to be in a burning house, and suffocated.

He awoke in the night, clasped in some one's arms, helpless,
athirst, and everywhere in pain. The air smelled of the tons of
sulphur shot into it a whole day long, and spasmodic cries or dying
wails, the lonely trumps of camps, or random picket guns, ascended
to the stars.

" Help ! countrymen ! Help ! Oh, help ! "

His wail also had arisen among the rest, for he felt like a sick
babe.

The person in his arms relaxed his grasp, and said :

" Mosster ? "

" O Asnby ! Take me up, my poor old friend ! "

The negro's throat seemed to rattle, and he also sighed.

"God's took me up, Lloyd ! I took de las' shot Luther Bosler
fired at you. De first hit you and fetched you down. He's lyin'
yer, too, wounded wid your sword : I had to run it in him — he was
so brave."

The negro's form seemed to stretch, and his lips to give forth
bubbles. Lloyd shouted for help again, and this time not for him
self.

" Ashby ! Servant ! O my friend ! "

" Lloyd, good-by ! I'm a pore black man, but I love you. Oh,
don't oppress my people. Let whisky alone : it's ruinin' of you. —
Daddy — I'm comin' ! "

A long suction, a gap, and silence.

Lloyd put out his hand with pain, and the black face was cold
with a night dew that awaits no morning sun.

" Help ! help ! Some water ! Oh ! "

Voices and a lantern came near, and people were heard speak
ing in old German. Soon there was a cry of affection, and the
words, " Sohn ! Bubbelly ! O Luter — Bi'm-by."

" Father, attend to te people first here at my right. They're
suffering te most. Give them a drink of your water and whisky :
it's good, now."

A man raised Lloyd's head and pressed cold spirits to his lips,
and said :

428 KATY OF CATOC7^IN.

" Drinksht ! You was Yasus' man, too."

" Jake, don't you know me ? "

The man wiped Lloyd's face and held the lantern to his eyes,
and fell back, as in horror or hate.

" You ? " he cried. " You robbed me of my heilich dovvb, my
Katy ! We fed you, and you bit us. — Luter, te feind, te difel is py
your side ! Don't speak mit him. He dies in hell — Bi'm-by ! "

Luther did not hear ; he had fainted.

When morning came upon the battle-field, Ashby lay stark upon
his back, testifying to the spheres, with eyeballs white as the fading
moon.

All day Lloyd lay there in delirium, shouting unconsciously, and
at night it seemed that millions of lamps were moving over the bat
tle-plain seeking out the dead. He lost all sense of time or place, or
everything but torment, and only heard repeated the old man's bit
ter words ; " He dies in hell bi'm-by ! "

He felt a breath of cooler air, and heard a voice say :

" Lloyd ! "

He was in a boat upon a sort of bier, crossing a river, and Hugh
Fenwick looked down at him, saying :

" Dominus vobzscum ! Poor friend, I have sent you to your own
side of the river ! "

" Virginia ? Oh, let me stay in Maryland ! I want my wife, my
father ! "

The boat grounded on the pebbles at Shepherdstown, and Quan-
trell was abandoned to his political environment.

In the long hospital, at Washington, Luther Bosler lay, with his
sister and Hannah Ritner by his cot.

Hugh Fenwick came in to these, and took Katy's hand.
" Benedictus, my pupil. Lloyd Quantrell is dead ! "

INSTIGA TION. 429

CHAPTER XL.

INSTIGATION.

JOHN BEALL settled down to milling in Iowa for a few weeks,
and saw nothing to his liking. The people were earnest for their
country's support and union, and suspected himself and his friends —
who came from Missouri and Kentucky, and lived between the lines
— to have some incendiary project on foot. The lowans were not
the undecided people who lived in the Eastern provinces, and when
they set their fierce regard upon Beall he fled to Canada.*

There sullen imaginings he had indulged in Iowa were re-enforced
by the society of escaped prisoners and cowardly fugitives from
military duty, who had taken into their confidence certain predatory
Canadian Scotch, ready with mechanical suggestions or bloody foray.

Beall had once thought of starting an insurrection among the
Confederate prisoners at Chicago, but now was persuaded that John
son's Island military prison was the place to raid from neutral soil,
as it was out in Lake Erie, defended on the water by a small armed
boat, and in the line of Canadian steamships going up the lakes.

In Montreal the liquor-dealer, Martin, from Baltimore, had estab
lished himself in a small note-shaving and war-supply business.
He was a man of Irish stock apparently, bitter against the flag of
Irish refuge, and desperately intent on making money.

In a retired room of his lodgings a meeting of conspirators was
held around a singular piece of mechanism, called " The Hozological
Torpedo" — an instrument to run by weights for a long given time,
when it would explode a chemical preparation. A red-haired Scotch
merchant present explained that he owed to a refugee college pro
fessor from Virginia the secret chemical in the apparatus, while the
mechanical work was English, ordered and imported by him. He
wanted to sell the incendiary article to the insurgents, and realize a
fortune. John Beall spoke up to this man, whose name was Keith,
saying :

" I can't approve of that method of warfare yet. You murder
innocent people by it as indifferently as the guilty. It will destroy a

* "Suspicions being aroused as to his real character, through the impru
dence of his friends, he was obliged to flee the country." — Lucas's " Memoir of
John Yates Beall," Montreal, 1865.

430

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

vast ocean-ship of thousands of tons burden, you say ; but are the
innocent passengers — women and babes — to be left out of our
prayers ? The idea is too monstrous ! "

The moral sensibility of the Virginia vestryman divided the sen
timent of the party. They were bitter, white-livered men, against
whom the war was going hard everywhere but in Virginia, and they
burned to carry devastation into the new and intrepid West, which
had so recently dawned upon their consciousness as the land of
Lincoln, Grant, Burnside, Buell, and the Odins and Thors of the
forest.

" You will come to it," said Martin, touching his malt whisky to
his lips, " when the West re-elects Lincoln, and pens your whole
Confederacy up between the Alleghanies and the Potomac. We
considered that one Southerner was equal to three Yankees, but left
the West out of our calculation. We have tried it every way, and
can make no impression upon it. You, Captain Beall, know that all
the Knights of the Golden Circle, Vallandigham movements, and
Kentucky neutrality jobs have jailed. Nigger emancipation will be
accepted, too. The Union mountaineers in Tennessee, the Caro-
linas, and Alabama will swell the Western Yankee army. We must
blow up all the commerce of the Mississippi Valley and the lakes,
set Chicago, Buffalo, Detroit, and Cleveland on fire, and light the
flames of death and damnation in their rear ! "

Keith, the Halifax Scotchman, arose and toasted this sentiment,
exclaiming :

"You think anything's fair, Martin, in war or trade ? So do I."

"What we want," spoke Beall, "is a crew of Confederate-line
picked men, sent out on a blockade-runner, with a cool man in com
mand, to ship here at Montreal for the Canadian mines. Their
light artillery and weapons can be shipped as freight. In Lake Erie
they can seize the steamer, point for Johnson's Island, run down the
Yankee gunboat there and board her, and open with artillery on the
stockade. Eight thousand officers will join us there ; we will seize
the shipping in Sandusky, and attack every city on the lakes."

These words, spoken in fitful, smothered sentences, out of cold
and brooding eyes, filled with gloomy fanaticism, alarmed all the
timid majority in the place. The Falstaff of the band looked at the
door ; the banished statesman breathed quick and rose to go ; the
cackler and Federal spy in the party reached for liquor, and said
" good," in a thin, small voice.

INSTIGA TION.

431

" Where is such a leader to be had ? " the medical Satan of the
band inquired.

" I know a man whom I shall ask to be commissioned for the
work, when I reach Richmond."

The door opened, and Booth, the actor, entered, who had been
moving between the new oil-regions about Buffalo and Montreal.
His unexpected coming alarmed all but Mr. Beall, who greeted him
at first distantly.

" Gentlemen, don't be disturbed," said Booth. — " I want to see
you, Martin, about shipping my theatrical wardrobe on your block
ade-runner to one of the Southern ports. We have a good many
destitute Maryland soldiers in the South, and J have got a* scheme
to go there and play, to raise them funds."

He sat down and talked about his enlisting against John Brown,
and restored the confidence of the band.

" How will you enter the Confederacy, John ? " asked Beall. " I
must get there some way. I am poor, and broke."

" That's just what I came to see friend Martin about. He knows
everybody in the old, lower counties of Maryland, and I want some
letters to them. Oil is played out ; and I'm going out of it and
into land."

Time passed along, and the blockade-running vessel of partners
Keith and Martin went down the St. Lawrence River from Quebec,
well insured, and with the wardrobe of the actor, Booth, on board.
In a few days she was found wrecked in the Canadian gulf, and all
souls lost ; and Mr. Martin, who was a passenger, perished from the
world.

Mr. Keith had taken Mr. Martin at his word, and put a hozo-
logical torpedo on the vessel, wound up to explode at the proper
time and spot, which would prove his loss and recover the insurance.
All had been fair in war and trade.

But Mr. Booth kept the letters of introduction from Mr. Martin
to the old families in Maryland.*

Booth relieved the necessities of Mr. Beall, and they went to
gether from Montreal to the United States.

The American civil war had produced on the Canadian boundary

* Related to the author by Marshal John P. Kane, of Baltimore, to whom
P. C. Martin gave a letter of introduction to Booth. Ten years later, Keith,
under the false name of Thomassen, blew up an ocean-steamship at Bremen in
time of peace, to recover insurance, and died of the wounds he received.

432 KATY OF CA70CTIX.

a similar demoralization to that already described as latent on the
lower Potomac, and Canada was long plagued by raids, and was
altered in political character through her jealousy of the great re
public, and, perhaps, of the sentiment of President Lincoln, that
slavery and the divine right of kings were " the same principle " ; *
and twenty years after the United States came to peace, Canada
was hanging her rebellious Riels and other scions of seventeenth-
century superstition.

Beall and Booth were both individual and secretive men, and
something mutual on their minds caused them to cross the frontier,
without any conference, at another than the usual route. Booth held
the purse, and he directed the travel, guided into the wilderness of
New York by his gypsy love of wandering.

They came one afternoon to a solemn spot in the Adirondack
Mountains, where a cabin on a hill-side looked out upon a mighty
amphitheatre of peaks, and in a neighboring gorge the adjacent
springs ran into the river Hudson and the St. Lawrence lakes —
systems spanning in their flow nearly all America that was free.

Near the cottage-door stood a great rock, and beside it was an
old scarred tombstone, dense with inscriptions, of which one said :

"JOHN BROWN,

BORN MAY 9, 1800,

WAS EXECUTED AT CHARLESTOWN, VA.,
DEC. 2, 1859."

Three slain sons and the father of John Brown lay here beside
him, in the solitude of the oldest mountains on the globe, at the
earliest birth of human life in the forest, and the pioneers of freedom.

Booth said to Beall, as they read the inscriptions, in silence, of
the Revolutionary father, the executed son, and the devoted grand
sons :

" Has this man ever lost his influence over you, John ? "

" Never ! "

" Nor over me. His proclamation of war has become in Lin
coln's act the law of the land. He reached in a campaign of thirty-
three hours a fame that will last forever, if the slave States are to be
beaten."

* " It is the same spirit that says, ' You work, and toil, and earn bread,
and I'll eat it.' "—Lincoln's speech at Alton, 1858.

INS TIG A TION.

433

" All is not lost yet," affirmed Beall, with intensity.

" Lincoln is the tyrant of the South," spoke Booth, returning to
his old dramatic manner. " What is he worth to us ? "

" Nothing, I reckon."

" Not as hostage ? "

" No. I saw in the West hundreds of men just like him."

" I will take you to see him," said Booth.

They reached the city of Washington in a few days — Beall in
the uniform of a Federal lieutenant ; an'd the actor, his friend, ac
quainted with everybody, and vouching for the silent stranger. In
that capital of an enlightening idea, like the new star over Beth
lehem's shamble, malignant suspicions of strangers did not exist ;
and, to further protect his friend, Booth put him under the social
care of Senator Pittson's family.

" Let me tell you a secret, John," said Booth. " Light Pittson is
my affianced wife."

The National Hotel was the center of the new Western society at
the capital, and there Booth and the Pittsons had long been boarders ;
and the fine, impulsive daughter of the senator had attracted the
fatal regard of the dark-eyed and insidious actor.

He sometimes appeared upon the stage in Washington to oblige
a friend at a benefit, and Light saw his almost glittering face and
trim, powerful figure, in classical or melodramatic characters ; but
she saw him oftener in recitations in the private rooms of the hotel,
where he controlled many a wild army blade or family of an absent
officer, and was the poetical character of that crowded house.

He caused it to be understood that he had made a fortune specu
lating in oil lands and wells — a development in American nature
contemporaneous with the loss of cotton and slaves — as if abun
dance and compensation were the returns for doing right.

Booth was universally considered a fortunate and retired man,
no longer subject to the imputation of his profession, social and
handsome ; and if looked upon adversely by prudent mothers, he was
the exciting principle in many a daughter's heart, who could not
separate artificial from real heroism.

Maidens with fathers at the front of war, and foolish or unprin
cipled wives whose husbands were in ships on blockading or cruis
ing service, or upon the military staff, felt the dark wizardry of his
eyes, his confidential, low tone, and the touch of a hand daring in
its mingled respect and familiarity.
28

434 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

He had measured the virtue of the world by the stage, and con
sidered himself of a theatrical and political aristocracy. His father
he supposed to have been the relative of lord mayors and great pub
lic men, and the noblest figure on the British stage. His pride was
greater than his assertion of it ; for, like many people in the weaker
professions of belles-lettres, he had no capacity for facts or affairs,
and applied the scale of superficial art to everything. He could no
longer study even the plays with conscientious devotion. Too early
success in acting, and admiration, flattery, and worldly lusts, had
made him one of the most self-contained idiots in Washington.

There stood the powerful fiber of an athlete, the exterior of a
gentleman, and the apparent descent of genius, without discipline,
humility, or much reality, deceiving himself and everybody.

The fabric was false in everything but headstrong pride, and by
his physical exercise he was dangerous. He could whip almost any
man he met with his fists ; he excelled in arms and the gymnasium ;
yet he had no conception of the regularity and honor of war, and
the brute in his nature did not permit the soldier to enter there.
Thus, in the Rome of the New World, he was a mere gladiator un
der the delusions of a patrician.

He knew nothing of international law and obligations, nor of the
moral tone of mankind, and supposed that a boundary- line stopped
at once pursuit and public opinion.

How much slavery, and how much an intemperate, possibly in
sane descent, aggravated this precocity of self-will, may be inferred.

He had attended school with some of the rising young insur
gent chiefs, and yearned to rank with them in prominence ; and the
idea that liberty included black people was atheism to him. Un
questionably a victim of the slave code, whence came his brutal
part, he was also derived from the more intemperate and reckless
years of a father who had lived upon the consuming fire of an inade
quate and unprincipled genius.*

Republican surroundings had given this scion of the English
actor a high sensibility as to his descent, intensified by the homage
of schoolboys and gossips, and obscurer-born actors, and the only

* "During this tour (1835), the calamity, which seemed to increase in
strength and frequency with maturer years, assumed many singular phases.
When his habits were the most temperate and abstemious (in youth), we occa
sionally find those slight aberrations of mind . . . between genius and mad
ness." — The elder Booth's " Life," by his daughter.

INSTIGA TION.

435

liberty he understood was slaveholders' privileges. His political
faith was that " all abolitionists ought to be hanged," while yet he
howled " liberty " on the stage with such circus feats as cleared the
good seats, and finally satisfied the gallery ; and once he managed
a rude little theatre in Washington, playing his father's most violent
parts to little advantage.

There was mixed with Booth's cool self-appreciation a derived
passion to get along well in the world. He had, therefore, picked
up a smattering of speculative talk, and used about six thousand
dollars of his savings, from Southern acting, in oil lands and ex-
ploitings ; but he wasted in country amours the time he had designed
for that commerce, and was now thinking of something between
acting and speculation to raise money and fame at a sudden bound,
for he was growing poor.

Thus he professed to be rich for social influence, and the social
influence he exerted upon the managers of theatres, while all these
pretenses were fraudulent. He was neither independent, nor an
artist, nor a gentleman, nor intelligent enough to pilot himself
through those false situations without losing some portion of his co
herence.

A treacherous deed of some kind he had in view, and already it
began to draw him into abstraction and dissipation. He did not
know what it might be ; but it was to deceive one population and
become a hero in another — to take a wife, at least, out of the North,
and money out of the South, and be some kind of a Junius Brutus
or Claude Duval.

Senator Pittson took Booth and his friend Beall to the Presi
dent's house ; he liked Booth rather the more, that he seemed to
solicit nothing.

The President, that morning, was expecting some embassador,
foreign general, or prince, and the doors were closed to the public ;
but the President himself came out in the hall, hearing Senator Pitt-
son's voice, and told him to use the time till it should be required,
and to bring his young friends in.

They entered the chamber of emancipation.

"And this is the son of Booth, the actor? My eloquent young
friend, I have seen you act: it was a little robust, but artistic
progress, I have noticed, is from the robust toward the trained ; and
if there is nothing strong in a horse, training him seldom comes to
much. My robust generals, I think, will get the science of the

430 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

thing some day ; but, ah ! — if my scientific generals would only be
a little more robust ! "

As President Lincoln spoke, he looked out of the window upon
the new-made forts encircling his capital, without whose ramparts
the insurgents were even now conscripting to make up the losses of
Antietam. A look of pain crossed his face, which also wore the age
of his responsibility. He was dressed in fine broadcloth, and, stand
ing six feet four, looked dignified in every inch.

" Lieutenant," he said to Beall, "where were you wounded ? In
Kentucky ? Tell me, how does my native State take my proclama
tion of emancipation ? "

" Not favorably, Mr. President."

" So I fear ; but its benefits will set the intellect of the South
free, and I believe that the Southern head is the best natural head
we have. That is the head I carry — one of the poorest specimens,
I suspect — but if I could confer a great blessing on my old kin and
tribes, it would be to give them some of the free air and joy of look
ing back at slavery from the other side. Slowly I have progressed
that way — perhaps God has led me along — and the mind grows con
fident in it, like jealousy dismissed from a husband's spirit, when
a prejudice against the wife of his bosom has been fully dispelled.
The world wants self-restraint ; but restraining others in what
God gave them breaks all habits down. Sweet will be the scene,
some day, of freedom in the cotton as in the corn ; but better yet
when the reign of intolerance is gone from the ruling mind, and
the master's intellect is released to humility, fraternity, and knowl
edge."

Beall looked up at Mr. Lincoln out of pinched eyes, as if at
some social inferior in a pulpit, but Booth remarked :

" Oh ! the States in rebellion must lay down their arms, and the
abolitionists accept your policy, Mr. President ; then we will have
the Constitution and Union again."

The President looked at Booth considerately, and said :

" To me it would not matter long if the Union could be restored
with slavery still milking at its breast ; but you, with many years
before you, would receive the benefits of a more complete revolu
tion, and for your sake, and yours, my gallant young friend " (to
Beall), " I accept, with a sorrow which is not dissatisfaction, the be
lief that the war will be long."

His shoulders somewhat stooped, like one receiving a burden for

INSTIGA TION.

437

a long up-hill walk ; but he looked right onward, with expressive,
dark-gray eyes slightly elevated, and the curious, puckered lines
around his mouth and chin strengthened, and the square-cut beard
of the jaw and chin meeting the square of the temple locks and
crown-mane, formed three inflexible sides of a square; and the
well-cut nose and angle of the cheek-bones receiving the light of his
purpose to go on with the geometry, made Senator Pittson say :

" You will live to square it — yes, to cube it."

The President turned to Mr. Booth and put his hand upon his
arm, with an open, country look of his substantial mouth, while his
stiff, black hair seemed to soften, and his heavily marked eyebrows
to take the light of his smile.

" Booth, give me a little Shakespeare ! Do you believe Shake-
peare wrote his own works ? They say Seward writes all my mes
sages."

This last remark was caused by the Secretary of State entering,
to be ready to present the expected notabilities. He was introduced
to the young men, and joined in the talk with address and merri
ment shining up a somewhat faded face.

Booth had been studying Marc Antony, to make an appearance
soon with his two elder actor brothers in New York — of whom the
only distinguished one was to vote for President Lincoln's re-elec
tion — and John Booth rehearsed :

" I come to bury Csesar, not to praise him.

When that the poor have cried, Coesar hath wept :
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:

But here's a parchment, with the seal of Caesar : . . .
Let but the commons hear his testament, . . .
And they would go and kiss dead Ccesar's wounds,
And dip their napkins in his sacred blood ;
Yea, beg a hair of him for memory.

Oh, what a fall was there, my countrymen !
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,
While bloody treason flourished over us."

Mr. Lincoln clapped his hands, and made Mr. Seward shake
hands with the reciter, and cried :

" Ah ! Billy wrote Shakespeare. Some say he wasn't educated

438

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

enough ; but there's poor white knowledge in Billy, that Lord Bacon
wouldn't have had. Whenever I heard anything original at the Illi-
neis bar, it was from a poor fellow who read his law books under
the shade of a tree where he stopped after he had borrowed them.
He would give us law and anecdotes, and use as bad law and as
good human nature as Portia or Imogen."
The President began from Imogen :

" I see a man's life is a tedious one.

Plenty and peace breed cowards ; hardness ever
Of hardiness is the mother."

The expected guests had been delayed, and the President went
on reciting from Shakespeare at many points, seeming to have a
knowledge of all his works, and inviting Booth to " come on " with
something better.

" Ah, Mr. President," spoke the actor, giving Mr. Lincoln all his
rich, dark, beaming face to enjoy, " if I could only commit my parts
as you can commit everything ! "

" Shakespeare, my eloquent young friend," replied the President,
" is always wise and lovely, but Burns was the poet of the people.
Shakespeare seems to teach you, but Burns to eat with you and sleep
in your bed."

He started Burns with —

" Then let us pray, that come it may,
(As come it will for a' that),
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man to man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that."

" Seward," said the President, " don't you wish a man like Burns
was the foreign minister of England ? But we have friends wher
ever that poetry is believed, and, I think, nowhere else — not even
here."

The President continued to conduct himself like a boy among
boys, showing that he knew Burns " by heart," as he said ; and his
heart and merriment recited together, until it was announced that
the notabilities were coming.

INSTIGA TION. 439

" Before we go, Mr. President," said Senator Pittson, " I want to
ask you for a pass for Mr. Beall — it was always pronounced Bell —
to visit some kin in lower Maryland."

" Oh ! the provost can give him that — however, Pittson, here is
my card."

The President wrote on it, and spelled the name " Bell. " The
pass was without limit as to time.

As they arose to go, they saw the strange princes enter with
their ministers, and the Secretary of State introduce the President,
in the elegant room set for that purpose, and Lincoln wore the
dignity and stature of a natural monarch.

At the portal, going out, Booth and Beall stumbled upon two
men_one bleached, large-eyed, and walking on a crutch ; the other
smaller, and wearing spectacles.

" Mr. Stanton, good-morning," said Booth to the last.

" Good-morning Mr. John Booth, and Mr. John Beall," spoke
the other tall and invalid man. " When did you, Mr. Beall, lay
down your arms ? "

" Oh, some time ago, Major Luther Bosler," replied Booth ; " he's
all right now, and has the President's pass."

"The President's pass," spoke the war minister sternly, "is no
pass at all. What right have you, as a good citizen, to take up our
kind magistrate's time with giving passes against his own safety
and ours ? — Major Bosler, have this man report" at the war office
to-day ! "

He pointed to Beall and passed in.

" We will go to the National Hotel, where we stop, and meet you
there— Luther," spoke Booth.

"There are other things I may want to see you for when I
come," remarked Luther Bosler, slowly, looking them both gravely
over.

He passed into the President's mansion.

Booth stopped a passing cab and bade the driver go hard to his
hotel.

" You are in a tight place, John," he said, " but their police sys
tem is very loose, and I can get you out."

"I should think so," replied Beall; "why, any assassin could
reach Abe Lincoln's side. I believe he could be run out of this
city on his own pass and delivered up in Richmond."

Booth sat back in the carriage pale and silent ; they were both

44O KATY OF CATOCTIN.

excited, for the gallows might be very close to Captain Beall and
the Old Capitol Prison close to Mr. Booth.

They reached the hotel and passed to Booth's room on an upper
floor. He threw out to Beall a suit of countrymen's clothes and a
false whisker.

" Actor's wardrobe," explained Booth, carelessly. " Here is Abe
Lincoln's pass. What did you think of him ? "

" Coarse chuck, but all intellect. That's the way with this North :
it isn't much for stock, or manners, or disinterestedness, but it runs
to brain like the cauliflower to a head."

"John Beall," said the actor, all flushed and with compressed
features, " that man is the most cunning fanatic and hypocrite in
the world. See how he read Shakespeare ! I want you to lift up
your right hand and swear to me that you will never use for your
self, without my knowledge and control, the idea you just now ex
pressed."

"What idea?"

" That old Abe Lincoln can be abducted from Washington and
carried to Richmond."

" Pshaw ! It was a mere reflection. Nobody would attempt it."

"Swear!" hissed Booth; "swear, or you shall not leave this
city ! "

"You're mad, I reckon." Beall finished his toilet,

" That's the idea I had at the grave of John Brown, when I
asked you what Lincoln would be worth as a hostage. Then I had
never seen him in his household as we have to-day. Your reflec
tion has confirmed my idea and observation, and I want to pre
empt it here. Swear that you will acknowledge me the author of
the proposition to abduct Abraham Lincoln ! "

" Why, certainly ; and that you're a fool, too."

Beall held up his hand and removed his old white slouched hat.

Booth clasped him in his arms and whispered :

"My fortune's made! I'll carry the Yankee Washington and
show him all over the South as a feature of my star engagement.
By God ! I'll make him recite Shakespeare, and pay him a salary
or shares. I want you to make the secret proposition for me to the
Confederate President when you reach Richmond. The man I
shall ask for to conduct the enterprise is — "

" Not Lloyd Quantrell ? "

" The very man ! "

GRASS WIDOWS. 441

" Why that's the man I want sent to Canada to command my
expedition."

" Let him choose between us," spoke Booth. " He is under
oath to us, since John Brown's raid, to revenge the South, and we'll
kill him if he shirks his vow ! "

"Come," said Beall, looking with pinched wonder at Booth's
demoniac face, as he stood with a great knife unclasped, and blaz
ing eyes, like Shylock starting to cut Antonio's heart's flesh out.

When they descended the stairs, Major Luther Bosler was seen
by the front door of the hotel.

" Come by the back way," said Booth. " I'll get you out."

He whispered to a hotel clerk, who conducted them through
some kitchen apartments to a large, hollow, stable court, out of
which ran two alleys, but not in line with each other. Taking the
alley to the left, they entered a quiet street in the rear of the hotel,
where two common inns stood among livery-stables.

" This farther tavern," said Booth, " is the stage-office for Port
Tobacco and Leonardtown. Go in there and take a room, and
leave Washington by the next stage. You have the highest pass in
the land. Remember ! "

Booth went around the corner of the National Hotel, and, enter
ing the front door on Pennsylvania Avenue, met Senator Pittson
and Luther Bosler talking in the hotel lobby.

"Mr. Beall has gone to his people in the Valley," Booth said.
" Friend Bosler was not too polite with him."

" Mr. Booth," spoke Edgar Pittson, quietly, " I forbid your
further visits to my daughter."

CHAPTER XLI.

GRASS WIDOWS.

JAKE BOSLER would have been lonely and heart-broken from
Katy's loss, but that his son had become a great man about the
government, and had given him honest employment in such wide
measure that he was growing rich.

Thousands of horses the old man bought among the Dunkers
of the East and West and sold them at the regulation price in Balti-

442 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

more. The mighty war minister gave a few Marylanders his trust
absolutely, and of them was John W. Garrett, the railroad presi
dent, who shifted armies on his road, and Luther Rosier, the Dun-
ker, who had now sealed his convictions with his blood.

He was to Mr. Stanton like both conscience and an orderly
sergeant, a loyal reprover of his errors and the silent dragoon of
his secret errands. He was hated, of course, but ambition in him
was regulated by religion. He, also, honestly thrived in the oppor
tunities of the time, with his natural genius for business and the
clairvoyant power of fair-dealing.

" O Luter, 'tis money is for nopody now," Jake Bosler said.
" Nelly is gone ; you has no child ; I haf no Katy."

The grievous war went on, with the sky in the West always
light, and at last the West sent her simple captain to the East, to
wrestle with the mutilated hydra's head. He brought a friend to
clean up that side-aisle, the Shenandoah Valley, through which
the heir of General Washington had carried the army of slavery a
second time into the German settlements, to meet his defeat on the
sources of the Monocacy among the " nest-hidings " of Hannah
Ritner and Abel Quantrell.

The new general in the Valley burned the barns and mills which
had supplied the devastating insurrection with food ; and in retalia
tion Chambersburg was raided and burned, greatly to the joy of
bandits, who remembered that John Brown had made it his base of
supplies.

As Brown had been the pilot of Freedom through these valleys,
a Logan of the slave-catchers was the pilot of a hundred thousand
insurgents, through his native scenes about Snow Hill, to Gettysburg.

From that great battle-field Hannah Ritner brought an insurgent
prisoner by the name of Powell to Baltimore, and set him to work in
the hospitals. He was the same young Floridian whom Booth had
encountered at Charlestown.

The last campaign of the enemy across the Potomac was by the
slavery candidate for President of the United States ; * his adversary
was dead, and Mr. Lincoln had become the central character of
history. This disappointed man, whose loyal uncle had presided
over the convention to renominate Abraham Lincoln in Baltimore,
fought a battle near Frederick City, burned houses in the outskirts

* Breckenridge.

GRASS WIDOWS.

443

of Washington, and paraded his troops before one of the forts, and
then the rebellion fell back from the Potomac forever, and Rich
mond was beleaguered amid its ghosts and crimes.

The witnesses of John Brown's deed and death were in their
graves : Stuart, killed at Yellow Tavern, Stonewall Jackson at Chan-
cellorsville, General Ashby in the Valley. Booth thought of all
this with a lonely, savage soul, when he received Beall's letter by
the secret mail.

"DEAR SIR: I waited on the Secretary of War at Richmond
with your proposition ; he was disposed to favor it, but our Presi
dent set his foot on it. Lincoln, he said,, might be killed in the at
tempt, and that would inflict a permanent stain upon our reputa
tion in the eyes of the world ; and, besides, he would not know what
to do with Lincoln if he had him, and a worse man would then be
President,* and hang everybody he had hated. The Cabinet is
nervous about reprisals in case they approve a brigand war near
Lincoln's person.

" I asked permission to destroy the enemy's commerce, and it
was given me with reluctance. I asked Quantrell to be ordered to
join me, and discovered him dangerously wounded in a hospital.
Me wanted to pray with me, and denounced our methods of war.

" So I burned a good many vessels on the Eastern Shore of
Maryland and made some booty ; have been captured, and was
threatened with execution as a pirate and a spy ; but our govern
ment put some of the finest Yankee officers on bread and water, and
threatened to execute them all, if I was not exchanged.

" I am not appreciated at my true valuation here in Richmond,
where self-seeking influence and conservatism prevail, as in all gov
ernments, and I am going to desert and return, by the help of Lin
coln's pass, through Maryland to Canada, where I shall try to an
ticipate this government, which, I have reason TO believe, means to
use my idea about capturing Johnson's Island for its own glory. I
will not be robbed of my patent like that ! Secret and extraordi
nary service agrees with my nature, but I can not serve where I am
a cipher.

* The son of Albert Sidney Johnston told the author that a relative of
Zachary Taylor, who had visited Mr. Lincoln surreptitiously, made the propo
sition as above, to the insurgent President, and met with the answer in this
story.

444

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

" Your idea would be popular with our people if you could carry
it to a successful result, which I very much doubt. I shall keep my
oath — to revenge the South and invade her invaders. BEALL."

Booth read this letter off by a cipher-key he possessed — a cylin
der of printed letters from which a pointer, shifted in a frame, se
lected the letters meant for those written. The same cipher was in
the rebel war minister's office. Booth and Beall had obtained mod
els of it in Canada.

The bravo finished the letter with fury. They had not even re
membered him in Richmond, where he was so great a favorite. His
self esteem was wounded, and his funds, which he had designed to
replenish by this feat of abducting the President, were down to a
few hundred dollars.

He must resume acting, much as he hated steady occupation,
and he had no status in the North.

He locked up his effects, took five hundred dollars in his wallet,
and started for Montreal.

As he walked through the ladies' parlor of the National Hotel,
in the twilight of evening, a single person sat there by the window,
and she looked up and saw his white, fierce face.

" O Mr. Booth, what is the matter? "

" Miss Pittson, excuse me ; you can have no interest in me. I
am forbid to speak to you."

" Who could have injured you in papa's estimation, sir ? You
were such a true friend — so generous, with such a sense of romance,
that all acting and loving, too, seem tame since you have become a
stranger."

" Dear Light, I thought you felt for me. My country is beaten,
and here in Maryland, where I am a native, all to whom I am can
did upon my political feelings suspect me. It is the Dutch Hessian,
Bosler, the tool of that devil, Stanton, who has caused your father
to insult me ! "

" Surely not ; he is so mild. Next to you, I esteemed him my
noblest friend."

" Light " — he had taken her hand and drawn her within the
darkness of the window-curtains — " can you love a poor rebel, with
out a country, with no other home than his genius can find, but that
home certain if you will fly to it, and be his friend ? Oh, I am so
much forgotten, so desolate ! "

GRASS WIDOWS. 445

He assumed the tones and hyperbole of the stage, and drew her
large, impetuous frame close to his eyes, which seemed to make
room by their blackness in the dark.

" I feel for your defeat in battle," she said ; " I sympathize with
the brave. I will go with you to the ends of the earth ! "

The sense of romance had raised her, in truth, to his simulated
passion ; he touched the lips nothing less than filial affection had
kissed, with a mouth which had gone wandering like a jackal's appe
tite.

" My darling," he sighed, "we will fly to the land of the bonnie
blue flag. I am going to Canada to send my wardrobe there. My
country will hail you as my Pocahontas, my queen. Oh, there are
ardent and hospitable hearts there ! My family name is greater in
England than in America, and we can cross the ocean and unite
my patriotism and your romance in everlasting poetry and pas
sion ! "

As she promised to keep his secret and await him, a light foot
touched the curtain ; a match flashed upon the gas-bracket at their
side, and the senator's wife looked scorn upon Booth and anger upon
her child.

" Go to your room, miss ! " she said, and once more bent on
Booth a glance of such loathing that he retorted :

" Madam, I am a gentleman ! "

" You are the first that ever said so," answered Mrs. Pittson.

He felt but little rage as he went down the stairs, chuckling to
himself :

" Lucky at cards, unlucky in love — not I ! There is time before
the train for a visit to Nelly."

He took a carnage and was driven toward the Treasury Depart
ment. They were lighting the lamps at the National Theatre as his
carriage turned to the left at Thirteenth Street, and went slowly
over the unpaved roads through the Alsatia of the town, where
blacks and whites feasted by crime and license upon the wandering
habits of war. Dwellings neglected and unpainted stood amid tot
tering rows of tenements ; music and laughter came from low bar
rooms where soldiers treated women ; a sinister and suspicious look
was over everything.

At the farthest margin of this central pest-place, where the city
seemed to stop at a desert of rubbish-fields, upon a desolate avenue
never yet occupied or paved, stood a brick structure at a corner, like

446 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

a wheelwright's shop, with habitations above it. Booth applied a
key and felt his way along a stair to a door in a corridor, at which
he knocked.

There seemed to be whispering within.

He knocked again, with the decision of jealousy.

The door opened, and Nelly Harbaugh appeared with a candle.
Before she could distinguish him, Booth had seized and kissed her,
saying :

" Nell, I am going away, and my heart is full of you ! "

"You are?" the girl answered— leaner, fiercer, commonly at
tired. "Why don't you go jump off the Long Bridge? Nobody
cares what becomes of you ! "

" O Nelly ! I depend on you more than ever, as I grow more
estranged from good fortune. Don't break my heart ! "

" I would if I could, and let the lies and serpents in it loose !
Here am I, making my living by taking little menial parts at the
theatres, standing in the chorus and processions, and tempted by a
thousand men — yet true to the dismal sin you deceived me to com
mit. I learned enough of man when I knew you, John Booth. Go,
quit my door ! the theatre is soon to begin, and I must take my stand
among the supernumeraries. Not a dollar have you sent me in
months ! "

" Nell, I have been in a great scheme, waiting on ungrateful
friends. Here is money ; take what you want."

She put down the candle and took his hand, full of notes, and
threw it against his breast.

" Judas ! " she said. " Not one of your thirty pieces will I ever
take. You have degraded my soul. Nothing but ambition gave
you the victory over me. I never loved you. My heart is true to
the man I still expect to fall to my experience and forgive me ! "

The action and the words raised the brute in him.

" Whispering, were you ? " he hissed. " Let me search a min
ute ! "

" Go out ! " commanded Nelly Harbaugh. " I don't want to
hang you, but every rag in this room is mine, and I will defend my
property against the thief who robbed me of my character."

She had cocked a pistol in his face, and aimed behind it, like
famine full of recklessness.

With a movement of his foot he tripped her, never ceasing to
look into her eyes, and, as she stumbled, he seized the pistol in one

GRA SS WIDOWS.

447

hand and her throat with the other. His arms were like swelling
bands of steel.

The powerful young woman threw ail her weight upon him, but
in the wrestle his gymnasium art enabled him to turn her sidewise
and to fall above.

Before he could conclude what to do, a cord was thrown around
his arms and neck repeatedly, and it entangled his knees. He gasped
and fell.

The cord was drawn tighter. Nelly Harbaugh arose, and stood
before him with the pistol cocked again. He felt death to be in her
eyes, and strangulation from some hidden foe was overtaking him.

" Now, you slave-dog," spoke the fierce woman, " I may as well
end you and save innocent souls ! My father was a soldier ; I am a
mountain-girl. Kneel down and pray ! "

He sank upon his knees. Death was before him and the cord
behind.

" Nelly," exclaimed a deep voice, "don't shoot ! Open the win
dow, and you can call for help if we need it. He is tame now."

The girl threw up the broken casement, and stood beside it with
the candle.

When Booth recovered strength enough to see, a large woman
sat before him, and Nelly Harbaugh was guarding the door with the
pistol.

He looked into the strange woman's face. It was the same
which had read him the fierce, fateful prophecy at Harper's Ferry
with Atzerodt.

" In some such naked place as this," exclaimed Hannah Ritner,
slowly, to Booth, " your pride and cruelty will end unless you can
repent. Did you not come from a lady's side this night, full of
lies and deceit, to glut your unbridled wickedness upon this deserted
temple of my sex ? " •

She pointed to Nelly Harbaugh, in all that actress's unconsciously
awakened powers of beauty and expression.

" Witch," spoke Booth, in a spiritless tone, " if you tell fortunes
right, you know I love this cruel girl alone, and none besides."

His voice gave way in tears ; he was the greater woman now.

" If you love Nelly," asked Hannah Ritner, melting somewhat
herself, " what makes you neglect her, and be the disturber of the
generous heart of Miss Pitt son ? "

" Mischief," said Booth. " Ambition and the devil! "

448 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

" Rise up and go," commanded Hannah Ritner. " We know
you now, and do not fear you. The cord I predicted for you has
already been around your neck. Beware next of the eternal fire ! "

He staggered up and looked around ; they were prepared for
him at every point, both watching him with the courage of confed
erates.

" I know you always carry a pistol, sir," Nelly Harbaugh re
marked. " Touch your hand to your hip, and your little brains will
be spilt upon this bare floor ! "

" Nelly, do you hate me ? "

"I do!"

" Then kill me ! I came here to-night to designate the leading
parts you were to play with me in the West on my return from
Canada. Since you do not care for me, my career is done."

" Go ! " said Nelly Harbaugh ; " you have told lies enough. I am
now prepared to play leading parts, and hire such unreliable actors
as you to support me."

As his footsteps died on the stairs, Nelly Harbaugh fell at Han
nah Ritner's feet.

" Must I forgive him ? " she said. " I do hate him, but I want
to play so much ! "

" Be prepared for what may come, ambitious girl ! You may
save this man from greater crimes ; if he disappoints you, I will see
that you have an opening for your talents, if you will be faithful.
Then, he did see Light Pittson to-night."

" O Hannah ! " exclaimed Nelly Harbaugh, " were you only find
ing out what you professed to know ? "

" Come ! " concluded the fortune-teller, " it is time you were at
the theatre. We all act a little. You say Lloyd Quantrell treated
you like a gentleman and no oppressor ? "

" Hannah,1ie was a brother to me in Richmond. How different
the manly Southern soldier from these low spies between the lines !
If poor Lloyd was alive, Katy Bosler would find him a gallant and
tender man, I know."

Booth walked along the streets of what was called " Murder
Bay," in Washington, with a nature cowed yet treacherous. He
yearned for some occasion to excite his prowess again. It came as
he passed the intervening corner and heard cries from a small frame
cabin where women and men were fighting in a low bar-room. Bend
ing and stealing along like a cat, Booth reached the small box-win-

GRASS WIDOWS.

449

dow, and, peering within, saw the positions of the drunken combat
ants.

In a moment he was among them, fighting cool and manfully,
every blow of his powerful arm felling a man ; and before they
could determine whether he was officer, or policeman, or an appa
rition, he had leaped over the threshold and turned the corner;
and at the theatre, across the avenue, he stopped and drank some
brandy.

•' Are you going up to see the President ? " asked the bar- keeper.
" He's got a box here to-night."

"No," answered Booth, with a rolling curse at Mr. Lincoln;
" I'll go through under the stage, though."

He passed on to an alley and area in the rear of the theatre,
used to get in scenery and horses, and afford escape from the stage in
case of fire.

As he stood there, the " Star-spangled Banner " was played
within, and its high-pitched, swelling strains streamed into the cul-
de-sac of the alley and empty square, to take the resonance of walls
and stables, and echo with a lonely grandeur on the vagabond's soli
tude. The President was entering the theatre. Booth listened with
the hate of convicted insignificance to the loud applause of the grate
ful people.

A woman came out of the theatre back door into the area and
shut the door behind her.

Booth crouched behind a step and heard her say :

" For this painted life I left a good man and despised a church —
God forgive me ! "

Nelly Harbaugh threw back her long, yellow hair, drew in the
balm of the night and the twinkling childhood of little stars, and
re-entered the National Theatre.

A horse, from one of the stables in the alley, made a great
clattering on the stones as he was ridden out of the alley to F
Street. Booth walked after the horse, and came out into this thor
oughfare between blank house-walls. He stopped in the outlet and
looked back,

" I could have killed Abe Lincoln," said he, "and been half-way
to Capitol Hill on that horse. These blind alleys behind the theatres
have no connection with the audience or the street in front, except
by that little postern-door ! "

Something in the idea put nerve into his step, and he walked
29

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

down F Street rapidly three blocks to Tenth. There rose before
him. in the soft night, the pediment, pilasters, and many Roman
doors of Ford's Theatre, with drinking-kennels along its sides. It
had once been a Christian church.

Booth turned down a dark alley from F Street running to a large
court at right angles with the alley. Only one house had a door
upon the alley, and the court contained several stables and no re
spectable habitation ; but, to the right, the great naked gable of the
church-theatre closed the court, and one small door was low to the
ground.

Booth opened this door and stepped into the lighted theatre. A
man called his name — one Spangler, a Baltimorean, half carpenter,
half drudge.

" Hallo, Ned ! " said Booth, and advanced with the man toward
the corner of the stage. " Which box, Ned, does the President gen
erally occupy here ? "

" That upper one, across yonder — they knock them two boxes
into one."

Booth looked up, and a woman in the box raised her handker
chief to her lips and smiled at him.

It was Light Pittson, with her father and old Abel Quantrell
beside her. How much they all looked alike !

Booth raised his finger to his lips and drew back.

" Ned," said he, as he stepped out into the desolate area behind
the theatre, " see how much you can rent me one of these old stables
for. I may want to keep a horse."

He gave the man a quarter of a dollar. Nothing but a home
less dog roamed the old court as he left it by the alley and regained
the street.

He was trembling. To men of his profession, who live by rote
and imitation, an original idea often carries all the vanity of author
ship. He turned into a large brick inn at the corner of Ninth Street
and ordered a cock-tail of brandy.

" Drink with me," he said to the bar-keeper ; " I have got an idea
for a play I wouldn't sell to President Lincoln's Billy Shakespeare."

Yet that night, as Mr. Booth traveled northward, his sobs were
heard from his berth by fellow passengers.

What was it made him weep ?

Not his new idea for a play.

Not his prodigal and precocious life.

GXASS WIDOWS.

451

Not even Light Pittson, in the ripeness of pure womanhood and
the devotion of romance.

It was the loss of Nelly Harbaugh's regard.

Sometimes the deceiver becomes the forsaken ; and that, when
he can no longer appreciate purity.

As Booth reached Canada, he found great excitement there.

John Beall had seized a small American passenger-steamer ply
ing between Canada and the United States, and with it committed
several piratical deeds, but had failed to attack Johnson's Island,
where his spy had been detected, and the tardy Canadians were
now giving up some of Beall's men, and were searching for him.

Booth had barely arrived in Canada when another gang of ban
dits, in the name of the insurgent States, crossed the American line
and robbed a bank and shed blood, regardless of the hospitality they
had solicited or the rights of nations. They returned to Montreal
to show their commissions from Richmond, and to make a series of
illiterate affidavits rejoicing in their shame.

The Americans, now aroused, turned on Canada and crossed
the border. Fear exacted what civilization could not obtain, and
the British line was at last policed by the Canadians, but not until
a band of felons had endeavored to set fire to the city of New York,
one of whom, an escaped prisoner from Johnson's Island, was capt
ured with his combustible in his hand.

Finally, John Beall, the most persistent incendiary the East had
produced, was seized at Suspension Bridge, after having led a party
into the State of New York to throw trains of flying passenger-cars
from the track.

Beall and the other incendiary were condemned to die as pirates
and spies.

These nearly simultaneous outrages were all parts of a general
purpose to defeat the re-election of President Lincoln, and terrify
the free States into selecting the candidates who would let the au
thors of the war resume their political importance, and let slavery
make the terms it had so long rejected.

Inhumanity and treachery never did the best cause any good ; a
bad cause they could not save. The State of Maryland voted for
Abraham Lincoln, and he had half a million majority in the Union.

Luther Bosler's one vote, "sticking all up py itself" at the tail
of two hundred and eighty-one, had become more than forty thou
sand.

452 KATY OF CATOCTIAT.

Mr. Booth kept his own counsel in Canada, had it understood
that he was engaged to be married to the daughter of a Republican
statesman, and he bought a bill of exchange for three hundred dol
lars at a Montreal bank, saying he was going to run the blockade to
the South.

CHAPTER XLIL

LEGITIMATE DRAMA.

KATY BOSLER was the mistress of Abel Quantrell's house in
Baltimore. The old man took a sardonic joy in his grandchild,
which he named Winter, in honor of his Congressman friend, and to
mark its want of fatherly care. He seemed the prouder of this boy
because it was disowned, and the tenderer to Katy because she was
abandoned.

He never mentioned Lloyd's name ; and once, when Hannah Rit-
ner spoke for the absent boy, declaring that he had never disobeyed
his father, but had kept in fact and spirit within the regular lines of
the insurrection, the old man took down the writings of Franklin,
and pointed to the words :

" Nothing has ever hurt me so much as to find myself deserted
in my old age by my only son, and not only deserted, but to find him
taking up arms against me in a cause wherein my good fame, for
tune, and life were all at stake. . . . The part he acted against me
in the war will account for my leaving him no more of an estate
he endeavored to deprive me of.

" ' My son is my son till he gets him a wife,

But my daughter is my daughter all the days of her life.' "

These were the words of Franklin concerning his natural son :
Abel Ouantrell might have forgiven his natural son for a similar
course, but his legitimate son seemed to him in the rights of legiti
macy to possess no rights of pathos ; by the law he judged Lloyd,
like a Jew by his Jewish code, and Edgar Pittson, his natural son,
he judged as Paul judged the Gentile Timothy, " my own son in the
faith."

He divided his property, while yet alive, between Katy Bosler and
Light Pittson.

LEGITIMATE DRAMA. 453

Lloyd's own property in Maryland was now a confiscated waste,
and he possessed nothing but the gun in his hands.

There arose, however, for the absent one a second motherhood.
The fervid abolitionist, Hannah Ritner, adopted Lloyd Quantrell in
her heart, and clothed him in the panoply of her prayers.

She had nurtured the hope that she might yet find it consistent
to marry Abel Quantrell. for the sake of her grandchild Light Pitt-
son, who was innocent of the lapse in her family pride and name ;
but the obduracy of her lover toward his acknowledged son settled
the question in Hannah Ritner's mind.

" Edgar," this strange and homeless woman said, " if I have been
unjust to you already, I must be more unjust still. You are abun
dantly blessed with popularity, public influence, and the right convic
tions ; your brother Lloyd has none of these ; he is poor, obscure,
and wrong. Shall I take from him the pride of his descent, also ?
If you are Abel Quantrell's lawful son, Lloyd Quantrell has not even
the memory of his mother to inherit. One of you must wear the
stain."

" Mother, I am the older. Can you ask how I shall answer ? "
the senator replied. " I know what is in your heart, and its tender
ness is in my veins. No mess of pottage will I cook for my hunter-
brother to defraud him of the precious inheritance of his mother's
fame and our father's repute. My pedigree shall be from immacu
late freedom, working its miracles in you, the purest of loving souls,
and blessing my descent with relationship to every detached and
fatherless child of God."

Quiet as childhood he kissed her brow, and took her worn and
bruised frame into his arms, and sang her the tunes she had never
been blessed to sing to him nor rock him to sleep in the cradle of
domestic happiness. The pilgrim mother, seeking everywhere to
do the penance of duty, sacrifice, and alms in lonely places or on
dangerous tasks, closed her eyes upon her tears of enthusiasm and
sorrow, and slept in the arms of her consoling son.

The penalty of their integrity was still to be paid.

One day in the Senate the new amendment to the American Con
stitution — the thirteenth in number, like the number of the English
colonies in America — was to be debated. It abolished slavery, and
compelled Congress to enforce that emancipation which now ex
isted only in the President's proclamation and as a measure of

454 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

President Lincoln was deeply interested in the passage of this
amendment, and came to the Senate to hear the debate ; and a no
ble audience was there collected of the fashion and public intellect
of the country.

Senator Pittson was the debater of whom the reasoning work
was expected, to persuade other border-State senators to vote for
the bill, like Mr. Reverdy Johnson, who had been sent to the Senate
from Maryland by Henry Winter Davis.* But there were some
bitter opponents of the measure there, and one of these, claiming
some merit of originating justice for his party, was reminded by Ed
gar Pittson of the person who published some poetry as " original,"
and when called to task replied that it was marked " original " in
the newspaper he took it from.

The opposing senator, intemperate of habits and speech, rose
and exclaimed :

" If I were to quote anything from that senator, I should mark
it ' ANONYMOUS.' "

The brutal reference to a mooted illegitimacy or unauthenticity
of Edgar Pittson caused a low ripple of laughter and stamping feet
to emanate from the more degraded spectators in the galleries.

Booth had heard this story, and he watched Light Pittson and
her mother, sitting near him, the latter scarlet and the former laugh
ing with others, unconscious of any imputation.

" Ha !" exclaimed Booth aloud, "he'll feel that, on his daugh
ter's account."

A woman before him turned and said :

" You speak false, sir ! He will not feel it at all."

He recognized the face of the dark woman who had bound his
arms at Nelly Harbaugh's lodgings.

Looking again, Booth saw the President, the senators, the for
eign ministers, and everybody, deeply interested and watching.

A vacant chair on the Senate floor, by Edgar Pittson's side, had
been occupied temporarily by Abel Quantrell, who now slowly rose,
leaned upon his cane, and put his remaining hand into his bosom,
like one standing to be counted in a vote. His face was white as
plaster ; his under lip was folded upon the upper ; he bent his head
and looked at his unavowed son.

Then, without a sign of passion, or any deeper expression than

* Maryland, through Reverdy Johnson, voted for the amendment.

LEGITIMATE DRAMA. 455

contempt for his coarse opponent, the Western senator sketched
the sufficiency of slavery to insult the progeny of its own licentious
ness. Amendments had been offered that no descendants of Afri
cans should be citizens, and that " no person whose mother or grand
mother is or was a negro shall be a citizen, or eligible to any place
of trust or profit."

For the first time, the young senator said, the mothers of the
American people had been arraigned in the Senate. The expiring
throes of slavery, in the pillory rebellion had brought it to, exempli
fied its genius in that all who were helpless — innocent sons or aged
mothers, dark or white — fell beneath the curse of its drunken rage ;
like Noah, exposed in his cups, hurling the stigma of his own shame
at his grandchild. For half a century the proposition had been
maintained that the helplessness of one race of women was the only
security for the virtue of the other ; and wherever this spirit saw a
woman toiling, it insulted her with a suspicion of her honor, making
industry the yoke-fellow of shame, and canonizing sloth among the
vestals of religion.

The American senator laid down the broad proposition that
there was not an untainted pedigree or descent upon the globe. In
every great migration or incursion the women fell to the conqueror,
and slavery spared no refinement, but rejoiced in the high-breeding
of its victims, until the abuses of Christian women at the hands of a
religion which denied all women souls, expelled the Moor and cre
ated at once Isabella and Columbus — Europe and the virgin world
it came to wed. As long as the African slave-trade prevailed by
law, the women of America were subject to capture and degradation
by the Moors ; in the eye of Heaven the sufferings of the one in the
harem and the other in the barracoon were the same. Presuming
upon a few generations of putative descent, caste, dating back to
the Norman Goth and his villein's unconsulted daughter,* found its
nearest imitators in the New World among the \veedlings and
swamp-flowers of yesterday, the very orthography of whose names
was lost, and in whose custody, perhaps, the immemorial princesses
of Africa bore them a posterity whose lineage had been older than

* "Of all princely lines the ducal house of Normandy paid least regard to
the canonical laws of marriage, or to the special claims of legitimate birth.
William the Norman was emphatically William the Bastard. Throughout the
whole of Duke Robert's life she remained in the position of an acknowledged
mistress." — Freeman's "Norman Conquest."

456 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

Moses, till crossed by this alligator, in the serene complacency of his
appetites.

The reference was obvious, and, as the unfortunate senator rose
to apologize, his opponent held him up by the wand of his subtle
finger, and illustrated with him, as Ariel might have lectured upon
Caliban.

All saw the relative quality of the two exemplars : Pittson, the
son of Mercury ; in every globule of light a thought reflected, in
every motion some sign of the spherical harmonies, his words the
unconscious flakes of an agitation as gentle as the snow-fall, his cli
ent the ages of humankind in their loving evolutions from the one
unfailing fountain of every perfect aristocracy — a mother's woes !

Of that rock of origin sure, he had the model of every tribe be
fore him, and the nerve of every noble feeling was in his heart.
Honoring his father and his mother, the whole land became his per
sonal heritage according to the promise of God. If the barbarous
Crusader, knowing no alphabet, could ride to Palestine to redeem
the sepulchre of a lawgiver who was fatherless in the world, the son
of two venerable spectators might be a paladin, indeed, in the lists
where four million souls were this day to come into the genesis of
nations, and be accountable to some parentage.

The other in this bright light — as from the Grail, which admin
istered a holy communion to the nations — felt his rankness and low
presumption sting himself, like a nettle shrinking upon the parterre.
The man he had imputed dishonor to, shone by him like a knight
above a toad.

"Even from that source," said the senator, after a pause, "the
little children, white or yellow, cry, ' Heureuse a vivre /' and thank
Nature for the gift of life. To live : it is all we are sure of. So glad
of life are we that we would live forever and again. In every tree
the birds sing, ' Life ! ' in every swamp the chorus of life is certain as
the night. Give life, my brother ; release from the bondage of your
prejudices and the oppressions of your laws, and we shall start the
world from this hour with every man the Norman conqueror ! "

At the conclusion of the debate the whole Senate crowded about
the senator ; the doors \vere thrown open, and mothers and daugh
ters entered to shake Mr. Pittson 's hand. A generous age, brought
slowly to the incentive of a magnanimous deed, felt the touch of
nature like a tongue of flame, make all see and speak in the glow
of liberty. The great President himself, whose legal authenticity

LEGITIMATE DRAMA.

457

was to be disputed after his fame had" become the light of the
world,* pressed Mr. Pittson's hand, and said :

" Ah ! Eddy, there were great women in Egypt ! "

The other senator, who had nursed the scandal like a nig'gard's
gold, to make the most efficient use of it some day, found that he
had expelled himself from the family of decent mankind.

Booth was too obtuse to get the spirit of Senator Pittson's re
proof. He merely said to himself, as he looked toward Light Pittson
in the happy instant of her father's popularity :

" He didn't deny the fact, and there must be folly in the
blood."

As Edgar Pittson walked through the public grounds with his
parents and family, the birds burst into song, the sun kissed the
glad earth and awoke the seed within it, the browsing animals
sought pasture with their unaccredited young, and the squirrels
skipped wantonly in the poplar-trees. Nothing was melancholy for
having been brought to life.

Suddenly the air quivered with the sound of a cannon. Another
and another took up the reverberation and carried it around the cir
cle of the earthen forts., till the whole land seemed to leap with the
roar of artillery, and the broad rivers to be touched by the skipping
feet of iron aerolites, vaulting from heaven to dance for man.

They looked back, and saw upon the dome of the great white
Capitol the head of the unfinished statue of Freedom let down from
a crane in the sky, as the sculptor had modeled it when it did not
embody a reality. To-day it was a dome of history, complete, and
mother of a pure, uncertified race.

As he gazed up at the saluted statue, a film shot across Abel
Quantrell's eye and his side seemed to leave his body. His son and
his son's wife caught him.

It was a stroke of paralysis.

That evening, Luther Bosler, who knew the reality of Senator
Pittson's paternity, hastened to seek Light Pittson before she could
suspect the occasion of the debate.

" Miss Pittson," said Luther, " I have the consent of your parents
to come to you upon a trembling errand — to tell you that in your

* The marriage certificate of President Lincoln's parents was not discov
ered till some years after his death, and when its non-production, from an
obscure society, had caused inquiries and exclamations from imputative minds.

458 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

family I would make the hearthstone of my own and you the idol
there, and over the purity of your impulses would lay the protection
of my care."

" Luther," said the girl, " if you had come to me, like a fellow-
countryman, instead of courting my parents first, I should have felt
the romance of your attachment. Now I must tell you that the
means you have used to prejudice a poor Southern patriot in papa's
eyes have excited my indignation. My answer is ' No.' "

With a possible idea that she meant Mr. Booth, Luther sought
that gentleman at his own room in the hotel.

Mr. Booth was seated at a table in riding-boots, spurs, gaunt
lets, and slouched, corded hat. A map was beforfe him, kept in its
place by a bowie-knife and a revolving pistol. He leaped up and
confronted Luther with a look of frenzy.

"Sit down, Mr. Booth," said Luther; "we have broken bread
together at my father's table. I am still a man of peace, and my
errand is a cordial one. I want you to go with me to call on Miss
Nelly Harbaugh."

" What business have you with that lady ? "

" Nothing but assistance : to reconcile you to her, Mr. Booth,
and disabuse your mind of any jealousy of me. That is why I
choose to call with you. Do you love the lady ? "

Luther's words had the soft authority of a priest's. Booth glared
at him, and then set out a bottle of brandy.

" I have been poor," said he, " and unable to be just to Nelly.
She has treated me like an enemy. If you can reconcile us, it will
be a friendly act ; she has so much genius and application that if we
were to work together we might make a fortune."

Luther took the bottle and said :

" Mr. Booth, put this away, with your other dangerous weapons.
It is the armorer of them all. You know I have been your friend
ever since you brought the spy, Beall, to the President's chamber :
I was the only witness who recognized him. He is now under sen
tence of death for willful perseverance in acts covered in no land by
military protection."

" You can save him," said Booth. " You are a good fellow, and
will do it."

" No, nothing can save him. The President would pardon every
guilty man if he could, but Beall has aroused military and public
opinion, and civilization is against him. As this government hanged

LEGITIMATE DRAMA.

459

but one slaver in all its history,* it hopes to close the warning by the
death of one pirate. You know him to deserve it ! "

Booth looked down and ground his teeth.

They walked to the purlieu where Nelly lived. Booth said :

" I am not sure of my reception. I will trust you, major, to make
my peace, and will be within call from the window. Do your best
for me ! I love the poor girl with all my soul ! "

Luther entered the old brick tenement and knocked at the desig
nated door. A voice cried, " Come ! " which awoke remembered
echoes in his heart. He lifted the latch, and there stood before him
the goddess of his youth, Nelly, in the white, sleeveless robe of a
Roman girl.

She was standing before an old, cracked mirror, in the act of re
citing. Her splendid hair seemed to be one sheet of golden brown
from the low forehead backward almost to her feet, and her Roman
nose, as strong in character as the lines of her throat were gentle
and womanly, parted eyes of power and of pain. She was thinner
and worn, and the place was bare as a prison.

Giving a scream of agony and joy, she threw herself at Luther's
knees, crying :

" Oh, I knew you would come ! I have seen you passing, and
hid myself in doorways. I have read your name in papers, and
have cried with pride. You love me still ! "

He looked down at her tenderly, but silent ; some tears were in
his eyes. She reached up with her own eyes, almost blind, until she
could touch his face. Its expression made her scream again.

" Not love me ! " she sobbed. " Why do you wear these worldly
clothes ? Why have you left your Dunker cloth ? If not to follow
me down through my sins to seek my side, why have you fallen so ? "

"Nelly, I came to be your friend — to put you on your way, and
say with Him who came to lift up sinners, ' Go, sin no more ! ' "

The girl looked at him, with her long, serpent-flowing arms ex
tended to wipe her eyes of moisture, and to see him well. As she
looked, she shrank away.

" Not stained in thought or act ? " she whispered. " Not changed
at all ? Not worldly, and not even tempted ? O my God ! "

* Gordon, hanged February 21, 1862, for bringing eight hundred and ninety-
two blacks from Africa. President Lincoln's son died the morning Gordon's
mother and wife went to Washington to ask for a pardon, and they could not
therefore see the President.

460

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

She fell upon her knees and next upon her face, and stretched
her white arms wide, and moaned :

" I have lost him ! "

" Nelly," spoke Luther, not rejoicing in this proof of his suprem
acy in his first mistress's soul, " you loved ambition more than me.
You were right to be candid. I have interested myself to give your
genius an opportunity, and, as the last proof of my friendship, before
we part, here is a little bank-book, with a deposit to your name, on
which you can draw these checks."

He raised her up and put the book into her hand, and kissed her
brow respectfully.

She looked at the book and saw written there, opposite her name,
the sum of four thousand dollars.

" Nelly, the President is one of the subscribers to this endow
ment. Now, give Mr. Booth a chance to redeem himself ! He says
he loves you. Let him prove it by the act of honor, and make you
his wife."

He stood at the window, and made a sign. A foot bounded
upon the stairs, and a dark form knelt at Nelly's feet.

The girl stood cold and worldly between them.

" I am rewarded in my own coin," she said; "gold instead of
love, career instead of home. Oh, thank you, sir, for your manly
help, when I betrayed you so falsely at this man's bribe of making
me the mistress of his counterfeit world ! Let him now fulfill the
promise ! "

She exhibited to Booth the deposit in the book. His eyes flashed
between shame and avarice.

" I give you for doing my ruin," said Nelly Harbaugh to Booth,
" a benefit ! I am capable of sustaining you, and will play the lead
ing female part. I will not remember the paltry parts you gave me
to play when you employed the company."

She looked very unlike forgetfulness, however.

" May I hope you can love me, Nelly ? "

" Not unless you can assist my career. My heart is dead. You
broke it through my ambition, and can only win it again when you
have proved yourself an actor."

Booth set to work to study, and with unthinking selfishness he
chose Richard III, his father's old part, where Nelly had nothing
strong to do ; but she had improved the time of his negligence by
diligence and observation. She repulsed his caresses, prepared her-

LEGITIMATE DRAMA.

self with the courage of the castaway, wherein the genius of acting
often lies ; and, the day before the benefit, he began to drink, like
his father of old.

The theatre was not one of the fashionable pair in the city, but
an audience of notables gathered there. Booth was inflamed with
brandy : he ranted and leaped for three acts, exciting more laughter
than admiration ; while the beautiful amateur, announced as his
pupil, played with power and discretion, and became the " rage " of
every gallant in the city.

In the fourth act John Wilkes Booth found he could not articu
late at all. As sometimes had happened to his father, after a fel
low-actor had broken his nose in a drunken bout, the wanton son
was dumb as a pantomimist. The most he could do was to speak
in a whisper.

In the last act he had to fight the Earl of Richmond, who was
represented by an actor out of the Union army.

Desperate from the failure of his voice, and his head full of
crazed illusions, Booth looked upon this man as a proper person to
kill.

The rival actor knew the quality of his opponent in drink, and
was too brave to decline the combat. At the morning's rehearsal
Booth's attack had been observed to be fierce and wicked, and his
superior height and length of arm were plain to his antagonist, who
stood, at night, prepared for the worst. The wings were thronged
to see the broadsword encounter, by carpenters and supers, hot for
a real fight.

The two began with single-hand exercise, and the earl scratched
Booth's cheek. He whispered to Booth to pause and end it
there.

Booth objected, and, in the stage phrase, " led up with two
hands." The manager and ladies now hurried to the entrances to
see a combat of real blood.

Booth rushed forward with both hands grasping his weapon,
and there was a short series of clashings and sparks, when down
came Richmond's temperate and accurate sword, severing Booth's
eyebrow and clipping the cheek.

" My God ! I've killed you ! " said the earl, in an undertone.

Booth staggered, bleeding and stunned, and sought the support
of the tree-bough that, in the tradition of his father, he always nailed
to the wing in " Richard," and there, with sparkling eyes and white,

462 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

glistening teeth, and blood-stained countenance, he sought to renew
the fight.

The manager ordered the curtain to be rung down.

Booth was led, faint and blind, to his dressing-kennel.

" That's all right, old fellow," he said to Richmond's apologies ;
" that was splendid ! " *

John Beall was fighting the last enemy not long thereafter. A
little procession in the morning of a wintry day, with music playing
a dead-march, brought him, with pinioned arms, beneath the same
gallows that the only slaver had been hanged on. He looked out on
the sparkling waters of New York Bay, and the mountains of New
Jersey touched with snow — so like the Blue Ridge by his home,
near Harper's Ferry — and the fate he had labored so hard for, came
with the severing of a cord and the dropping of a weight.

The incendiary,f who was also executed in time, danced a jig
under the gallows and sang a stave.

Irregular warfare, though it long followed the civil war, in the
form of mail robberies and many bloody crimes, was to have but one
other exemplification in America.

Mr. Booth called on Nelly Harbaugh when he was again pre
sentable.

" John," said she, " you are of no service to me. I have passed
you in the profession. It is time I looked out for myself, and there
are several rich men ardent to put up money to establish me. I
love nobody. Money is what I want, and you have not got it. You
will have to drop out of my life."

Cold as what he had made her— an adventuress with the acting
talent — she bowed him formally from her presence.

He turned, all stung and insulted, on Light Pittson, whom he met
at his hotel.

" I have none but you," he spoke, with real tears. " They are
tearing up my country with armies, and have plowed my heart with
a golden plowshare. Will you fly with me ? "

" Yes ! "

" Be ready, then ; for I am desperate."

* Nearly literal transcript from an observer's reminiscence of Booth,
•fr Kennedy.

THE ABDUCTION PLOT. 463

CHAPTER XLIII.

THE ABDUCTION PLOT.

MR. BOOTH had rented a stable in the rear of Ford's theatre,
and Ned Spangler, the scene-shifter, who slept in the theatre,
groomed his horse.

Spangler was a typical product of slavery in its influence on the
poor mechanic whites around it, making them the unacquisitive ad
mirers of those of the social grade above them. He worked for
mere subsistence, had no home, drank as much liquor as he could
get, and his summer holidays were spent in catching crabs off the
wharves and spits about Baltimore. He had a blunted, obeying
face, with thin beard all round its long, heavy chin, and Booth was
his idea of an educated gentleman.

For the first time Mr. Booth ranged the old slave counties be
low Washington upon an October Saturday, and on Sunday morn
ing persons to whom he delivered the letters of introduction from
Canada took him to the Catholic church in sight of Bryantown.

He had probably arranged his visit with reference to the Sab
bath attendance at this church, where the substantial planters of
the deepest slavery prejudices in the peninsulas gathered to hear
the news, and most of these had sons or kinfolk in the insurgent
army.

The church was of brick, in a moldy tint, with low gallery-win
dows above, the taller windows below them, and its end pointed to
the road and upheld a cross, cupola, and bell above the notched
gable. The graveyard spread around, and the priest's house was
close by, and the cedars and firs on the airy church hill were hal-
tering-posts for the small, freckled horses which the soft climate
nurtured all winter in the open air.

The handsome stranger with an historic name, now thrown
upon his own resources, attracted general attention. It was already
said that he had come down from Washington to buy the old lands
for improvement, as he had made money by buying oil-lands in an
other State. He was introduced to everybody of consideration, but
seemed most attracted to Dr. Samuel Mudd, the red-haired per
son whom we have already seen, and who considered his family's
grievances the greatest in the State ; there was, of course, only one

464 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

grievance in the country, namely, the legs upon the " nigger " which
let him walk away from his master, who was shocked that the ob
durate government did not let go of its enemy in the trenches, and
bestow its whole military force upon catching the " nigger."

Here was a man after Booth's own heart, and he distinguished
Dr. Mudd by accepting his invitation to go home to dinner.

Another person at worship that day was David Herold, the little
apothecary's clerk from Washington, whose passion for " patridge "-
shooting obtained his periodical discharge by successive employers ;
and he loved the vicinity of the old academy he had attended at
Charlotte Hall, which was some six miles distant from Bryantown
church. He came up to the distinguished arrival and said :

" Mr. Booth, I met you at Harper's Ferry in the times of ole
John Brown."

" Why, Dave," replied the actor, remembering the little simper
ing face — in which, however, the eyes had become more set and
furtive, from gypsy ways and wandering — " how queer that I should
see you here ! Where's Andrew Atzerodt ? "

" Down yer to Port Tobakker, makin' carriages and runnin' the
blockade."

The two pursuits thus oddly conjoined — carriages and boats —
touched the stranger's seductive dark eyes to emit a little soft
flame.

" Dave," said he, "are you very busy now ? Could you take me
to see Atzerodt ? "

" Oh, yes, Mr. Booth, I can always borrey a horse down yer in
Charles, and I like to hunt and ride. Don't you want to shoot some
patridges ? "

" That's just it," replied Booth ; " don't tell anybody we are go
ing, but meet me to-morrow noon at Bryantown tavern."

The people remarked that there must be something dead in the
vicinity, from the large number of vultures soaring over the church.

Booth entered this church with the others ; in the three galleries
were negro communicants ; four rows of pews, divided by two aisles,
filled the body of the church ; the arching altar at the head, flanked
by banners, already showed the good priest at work with boys and
bell and mystic tapers, amid the humble ornaments of crucifix, im
age, and shining metal.

Booth touched the holy water at the door, but did not make the
pious signs upon his breast, and he took a place in a family pew,

THE ABDUCTION PLOT. 465

half folded his arms, and pulled with one released hand the ends
of his black mustache, watching the ceremony of the dying Son of
man.

He knew the significance of most of the high mass from school
days, and heard again the wailing words of Saint Leonard : " Be
hold, my God, the traitor who has so often rebelled against thee !
. . . The blood of Jesus cries for mercy ; and my sorrowful heart
also implores mercy."

The little bell, to recall the wandering minds of communicants
from their distractions, rang again and again, like an alarm-watch,
set for this hour, on the ear of Booth, but he did not notice it.

The priest put on the vestments of the Saviour's torture — the
amice to blindfold him, the girdle for his cords, the chasuble to
mock him as a king — and bowed to the linen cloths upon the altar
representing the innocent victim's winding-sheet. Booth watched it
all, and stole glances at the more comely women reading their books
of prayer ; but all the while he thought of another victim to blind
fold, to bind, to mock, and to deliver up, and gritted his teeth when
he imagined some disappointment in his plan, and smiled, looking
straight at the altar cerements ; and as the alternative of murder
filled with its necessity the distended caverns of his soul, he put out
his hand mechanically and took from the sacramental bread and
ate.

So had the political forefathers of some in that church eaten the
sacrament twelve generations before with Spanish-made assassins
who meant to blow up Parliament.

A man came up the road from the Potomac while the sermon
was following the mass. He rode an old country horse, and wore
a faded gray suit whose color could hardly be told, but in it were
some signs of a military life and rank. He was of great stature, but
his hair was gray and thin, and his shoulders stooped with troubles,
and he rode mechanically. Who could have guessed that this bro
ken and dissolute-looking man was the former pride of the county
he rode in, Lloyd Quantrell ?

As he came opposite the church, which stood higher up on the
knoll to the east, the traveler saw sitting along the panels of the
crooked fence, so close that he could strike them, at least a hundred
vultures, breathing through their slender bills, balancing with diffi
culty on their weak toes, and emitting a foul odor from their dull,
raw necks. Quantrell looked for some sign of a carcass to attract
30

466 KATY OF CATOCTIi\.

them, but only saw the picked bones of a horse, long bleached by
rain. , ,

Turning his head, he saw the cedars and other trees, in a thicket
between him and the church, black with other scores of these great
turkey-birds, roosting in the branches. Suddenly, while he was in
their midst, these buzzards uttered in concert a loud, hissing noise,
and the fence beneath their weight broke down. The rough, poor
animal Quantrell was riding took flight, and did not stop till it had
passed a running brook that crossed the road.

" Three years and a half ago I saw a saucy buzzard at that spot,"
said Quantrell ; "is it an omen of my capture and execution as a
spy? No ; I wear my uniform, and do not come disguised."

He remembered that a dog, which he recognized as Katy's faith
ful Fritz, had assailed him desperately in the road as he landed on
Port Tobacco River, from Virginia, that morning, and that no kind
recognition or petting could conciliate the animal.

"What a reception," reflected Quantrell, "when I remember
that it was the boast of Charles County to have had only seven Union
men in it ! "

One of these was standing at his gate as Quantrell entered Bry-
antown — a physician of the same surname and family as the other
Dr. Mudd. He looked up and bowed, and, after dropping his eyes,
looked again and cried, " Is not that Lloyd Quantrell ? "

" Yes, doctor."

" Why, come in ! If we differ, we are not personal enemies.
Lloyd, stay this Sunday with me, for your mother's sake ! "

"Thank God," spoke Quantrell, with a tear, "one man remem
bers me ! No, doctor, I am here under orders, as a soldier. Unless
they capture me, I shall be gone this night to my own lines."

" I am for my country," said the unpopular Unionist, " but I wish
you no harm, my boy. A few months will bring you home a will
ing captive ! "

Quantrell entered the hotel, ordered a bottle of whisky, and lay
down in a bedroom opening on the upper porch. He drank, and
opened again two curious letters he had received. The first said :

"WASHINGTON ClTY.

" My dear old friend and sworn avenger of the South, I call
upon you by your sacred oath, made with me and one other, five
years ago, to cross the river and meet me at Bryantown tavern, next

THE ABDUCTION PLOT. 467

Sunday, the . I will surely be there, and the business is im
portant. You are as near Bryantovvn as I am, in Washington. Re
member, ' Sic semper tyr aunts ! ' J. W. BOOTH."

It was not this letter which Quantrell was obeying, but a dearer
one, that he read again with feelings aroused and wondering :

" BALTIMORE.

" CAPTAIN LLOYD QUANTRELL : Your father commands you
to obey the letter you will receive with this. For this time only, he
removes his injunction that you shall not come into our lines. Abel
Quantrell is now a paralytic, and can not use his pen. The person
who is his secretary is your friend and your faithful wife's.

"HANNAH RlTNER."

" What can it be ? " the poor fellow sighed. " My father and
Booth at work together ? Hannah Ritner my father's secretary ?
Poor father ! And O my wife ; what a wreck I shall bring to
her ! "

He looked at the glass, and it told the story : exposure, men's
company alone, and the ravages of drink.

" O that I were in the grave with the poor black fellow who died
for me ! " thought Lloyd, and he lay upon the bed and slept.

It was nearly evening when he was awakened by Booth and Dr.
Mudd entering the room, and the former apologized for having left
him alone so long, saying :

" I had a letter to deliver to the doctor from your old friend Mar
tin, in Canada, and to make with it, Lloyd, a proposition which re
quired tact, and which I am now about to make to you."

He took the candle and went out of the door and examined the
rooms, porch, and stairway. Then he came in and set the candle
down and opened a bottle of brandy. As Lloyd Quantrell drank of
the pure French liquor, with almost religious ecstasy, after the raw
alcohol he had swallowed for years, Booth looked him over with
satisfaction ; he was wrecked enough, demonized enough, fierce
enough by wolfish war and killing, to meet the actor's approval.

" Now, bully," said Quantrell, as the liquor warmed his chilled
system, and he looked at Booth over a great navy revolver he put
upon the table, " I am ready to listen to whatever dream you *are
tempting that fool with."

468 KATY OF C A TO C TIN,

He pointed to Dr. Mudd, and looked at Booth without the least
affection or confidence of old times.

" Lloyd," said the actor, leaning forward and speaking low, " I
have formed a plan to give the Southern cause a great advantage.
Dr. Mudd approves of it, and is my first recruit ; you will be the
second. It is to capture Abe Lincoln alive in Washington and con
vey him by swift relays to the Potomac and immediately send him to
Virginia. I know all his goings and comings, am in the inner circle
of his friends, and have studied all the ground over except this route,
which I have selected through lower Maryland, because of the safe
crossing we have maintained here at the river since our independ
ence."

" Plan large," said Quantrell, unexcited, and taking a drink.
" Now, how? "

" Lincoln is unsuspecting as an idiot ; rides to his Soldiers' Home
retreat and other lonely country places in a large carriage with no
one but a driver, and has neither a guard nor even a weapon. My
proposition is that you and I, with a few confederates, shall waylay
him, shoot the driver, and get on the carriage, and, by threat of
death, make Lincoln, by showing his face and bowing his assent, be
our passport out of the city. All the guards know his countenance,
and the Eastern Branch is the only guarded place we have to pass ;
there are two bridges across this stream, and I have tried them both,
and have been allowed to go and come repeatedly without any pass
whatever."

" I am to drive, I suppose," said Quantrell. " and you are to kill
him if he is not tractable ? Now finish ! "

" Dr. Mudd says that one Surratt, who has a tavern ten miles
out of town and keeps the secret post-office, can be got to establish
the first relay of horses at his tavern, or at Tee Bee, just below.
There we have a choice of three roads to come to Port Tobacco,
and all these roads have gates upon them, dividing the private fields.
For us the gates will all be open; for our pursuers all closed.*
Either at Beantown or near Piscataway we will have a second relay
and, if necessary, another carriage, well greased. If it is more ex
peditious, we will tie Lincoln on a horse, like Mazeppa, and make
him ride. In four hours, by hellish speed, we can make Port To-

f Until about 1876 these private gates were lawful and continuous on all the
roads leading south from Washington city.

THE ABDUCTION PLOT.

469

bacco River, where we will have a boat all ready and men at the
oars, and in a moment they will be out on the dark water, and
Virginia flashing us her signals in the night across the Poto
mac ! "

Dr. Mudd listened, with his blue eyes twinkling on pallid cheeks,
and leaned forward to receive some emboldening from Quantrell.

" What is the recompense for this, provided it can be done ? "

" Why, Lloyd, our fame and fortune are made. We will demand
the release of every Confederate officer as fajr exchange for Lincoln,
and Yankee money to boot for the heroes of the enterprise. They
would give us hundreds of thousands of dollars ! "

" It is plain to be seen," said Quantrell, " that you see everything
with an actor's eyes. What actors call ' effects ' seem to you, John
Booth, common sense. You are looking on Lincoln as some kind
of a king, without whom the state can not go on. Do you suppose
the great Yankee people, whom we expected to lick in six months,
and who are just beginning to fight, care a straw about who is their
President ? We have taken away from our President at Richmond
the control of affairs, and Lincoln, too, has been wise enough to let
Grant have absolute military control ; and all the fierce radicals, like
Winter Davis, think they are smarter than Lincoln. The Yankees
wouldn't give you a dollar nor a prisoner of war to return him.
After the first sensation the rebels wouldn't approve of the feat.
There are kind men as well as brave men in the South, and gentle
men ! Behind Lincoln are ten thousand Presidents among the
Yankee people, and he is probably the superior of the least of them
only in a lawful tenderness and the yearning desire to make emanci
pation pay the cost of the war."

" There ! " said Dr. Mudd, starting up, " I told you he was un
reliable, because he set his niggers free."

" Turn that man out," said Quantrell, taking more brandy, " after
he hears my answer. No! I wear the gray uniform; there is no
stain on it but battle-blood. Some day I shall want to come home
in honor, and be trusted of my fellow-men. The mighty arms of
this Union, in chastising love, are squeezing the life out of our
mutiny, and the end can not be far off. I would not, for all the ap
plause you expect to get for this boyish freak, John Booth, injure
the poor fellows who have fought with me, and make the terms of
submission hard for them ! "

Booth, with twitching lips and looks sweeping the floor, turned

4/0 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

once, to see the door shut behind Dr. Mudd escaping, and next his
eyes seemed to leap upon the table where the pistol had been.

" You don't find it there," observed Quantrell, dryly, raising the
huge weapon from his side and leveling it at Booth. " Hold up
your hands, or I'll kill you where you stand! Turn your back
here ! "

He reached his left hand out and took a Derringer pistol from
the actor's rear pocket, and drew the cartridge from it, and threw
it back to him. He also corked the brandy, and put it in his
pocket.

" This is for the protection of both of us," added Quantrell, with
a more polite inflection. " Brandy always makes you crazy, John,
and you have no business with a pistol unless you want to be an
assassin. I have lived beyond fear, am shot all to pieces, and to kill
a man is hardly an event to me."

The faded, swollen, giant mold of the soldier with his warped
eyes carried an awe to Booth's brain.

" Lloyd," he faltered, "what have I done ? "

" Nothing, because I anticipated you, John. You were going to
remind me of a foolish oath that you, who administered it, have
never kept, while I am a ragged monument of my fidelity. You
meant to threaten me by that oath. Three times I have invaded
the North. You never invaded anything more hostile than my
brother Bosler's confidence and took his girl away."

" Nelly Harbaugh ? Oh, she is a lizard, cold and ungrateful, and
has thrown us both off."

" I met her in Richmond," said Lloyd, " and know all the story.
It has changed my estimate of you. For that reason I had Senator
Pittson advised, by an exchanged Yankee officer, to cut off your in
timacy with his daughter."

" You did that ? " cried Booth, rising ; " I thought it was Bosler
himself. He has proposed to her, and been refused ; while I — "

" Stop ! " said Quantrell ; " I won't hear you, for I might call you
a liar. That girl is pure and free as an Indian maid from her
native lakes and forests in the West. At one glimpse of your pol
luted life she would fly from you. Her father is not a play-actor,
but a statesman, with faculties pure as his daughter's romance."

" Pooh ! It was only lately that he was exposed in the Senate
as somebody's bastard son, and never denied it — but rather gloried
in it."

THE ABDUCTION PLOT.

471

" He is my father's friend : I seek to knew no more. Have you,
John, a descent so unspotted that you rejoice in scandals like
that ? "

" My descent ? " cried Booth, proudly ; " the world knows my
name and pedigree ! "

Quantrell looked at him gravely through his weather-beaten
eyes.

" It is time you respected better-derived men, John Booth. All
your life you have been under the glamour of a delusion, and your
contempt for a lady like Miss Light Pittson — your using, also, Miss
Harbaugh's ambition to destroy her happiness — impress me that
the hour has come to disenchant you."

He drew from his pocket a small gold ring and handed it to
Booth. The actor read :

"/. B. B., to his wife, Christine, 1815."

Quantrell's great hand closed around the ring before Booth
could raise it from near the candle-flame.

" That ring," pursued Quantrell, in stern but respectful tones,
" your father wed his wife with. Your father had a wife, whom he
deserted in London, to fly to America with your mother. She was
a simple Belgian- French child, but was his wife for thirty-six years ;
he lived with her six years, and never was divorced from her until
you were my playmate, ten years before this civil war and all your
brethren born. Then, the day she forced from your father, in the
courts of Baltimore, a confession of these facts, the real marriage of
your parents could be celebrated for the first time. It was so
celebrated, and that poor foreign woman, sent to America for jus
tice by the actors of London, died only the year before we met
again at John Brown's scaffold ! "

" How came you by this discovery and this ring, sir ? "

" Your half-brother, your father's eldest son, came to me, starv
ing, to sell it ! I proved his tale by the records of the courts, and
sent him to Europe, that he might not annoy your father's family
and you, my early friend."

Quantrell arose, and said, in appeasing tones :

"John, don't commit any act to make men hate your name and
bring these buried ghosts to life again ! Go to the tomb of Mary
Christine Adelaide Delannoy, in the old Cathedral Cemetery at Bal
timore — the poor, abandoned woman died at sixty-six — and make

472

KATY OF CATOCTIK.

your vow to live a modest life, and spare your mother and her bet
ter offspring the scandals you but now rejoiced in ! " *

He rose to go. Booth made a constrained effort to detain him,
saying :

" You will eat with me ? "

" Here," replied Quantrell, taking an old haversack from his
side, and showing its contents of corn -bread and bacon, " is the
ration common now to negroes and heroes. Your brandy I will
confiscate ; that's always contraband. But Bob Lee's orders in
Maryland are to take no private property. I'm off for Virginia."

" Very well," said Booth, smarting under the exposure of his
amour propre. " The next time you preach to me, don't forget that
you have abandoned Katy of Catoctin, and that if your own father
don't marry her, that young snipe of a priest, Hugh Fenwick, will
soon carry off your wife ! "

The soldier was already gone, but Booth's words stung his heart
to strange suspicions. He had sent all his letters to Katy in Fen-
wick's care. His father had never sent him a word or a line since
his expatriation. The instinct was fierce in his soul to desert the
Confederacy, and return to Baltimore and meet Fenwick face to
face.

" No," said he ; " they would send me to a military jail. If
Hugh Fenwick has been false, I will have his life ! Something
tells me that I have only one friend — that sorceress, Hannah Rit-
ner. "

Herold and Booth went next day to Port Tobacco, and found
Atzerodt in his retired wheelwright's shed, asleep in an old family
carriage that was tumbling to pieces. His business had been

* Inscription in the Catholic Cemetery, Baltimore :

"Jesus, Mary, Joseph,

Pray for the soul of

Mary Christine Adelaide Delannoy,

Wife of Junius Brutus Booth, Tragedian.

She died in Baltimore, March the gih, 1858," etc.

Colonel Frank A. Burr possesses the marital correspondence between J. B.
Booth, Sr., and his first wife. His cruelty in leaving her and his child in Lon
don, without bread, suggests the heartlessness of the assassin Booth, who
killed an inoffensive man among ladies and by his wife's side. As this matter
has been fully exploited in the daily papers, I make no apology for producing
it h:re, among other preludes to the chief crime upon our continent. Edmund
Kean contributed to send the deserted wife to America.

THE ABDUCTION PLOT.

473

neglected for blockade-running, and his domestic life was concu
binage with a poor widow near by.

" Py Jing ! " said he, when the proposition was mooted to him,
" I know shoost te boat. I can make a wagon to run like a
shtreak of greased lightnin', and I want money pad."

They rode together down the west side of Port Tobacco River,
and on the way Atzerodt slipped behind the others furtively, saying :

" Tere's a tog here at Carpenter's dat I believe knows a rebel
from a Union man. He comes for me efery time, although I sold
him to tis feller."

As they spoke, a large fierce dog came down to the road, bound
ing, looked at them an instant and leaped the fence, and, hardly
barking at all, vaulted in the air at Booth's knee. Atzerodt slipped
past and whipped his horse, and the other horses fled behind him,
the dog still rushing at Booth's stirrup, and so they got off with the
first impressions of real war.

Three or four rhiles below Port Tobacco, where they could see
St. Thomas's Manor-house and Chapel Point beyond the broad
ocean inlet which cut into Charles County like the cleft of a human
heart, was a house near the water, and in a ravined copse near it
Atzerodt uncovered a large boat on low wheels and axles.

"I made tese wheels," said he. "Te Yankee navy has proke
efery boat afloat to stop te running of te blockade ; so we haul tis
one up an' hide it. Abe Lincoln will git to Fergeenia so soon in dat
boat he won't know it from Marylin."

" How far to Washington from this spot ? " asked Booth.

" T'irty-six mile. If you git dat old Abe at four o'clock in te
afternoon, you can make dis boat-landing at half-past eight, and haf
him in Fergeenia py ten."

" I'm going to ride it to-night through Piscataway," said Booth.

As they approached the Unionist's dwelling, the alert dog came
out again, like a faithful sentinel.

" I'll settle with him now ! " the actor remarked, between his
teeth, and stopped and balanced his pistol.

The dog, which seemed to be setter and mastiff, and old for his
variety, ran along the inside of the worm-fence till opposite them,
and there vaulted high ; as he rose in the air, Booth's pistol was dis
charged, and the dog came rolling down the slope dead as a stone.*

* Related to the author by Thomas A. Harbin, who was in the abduction
secret .

474

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

If every Union sentinel had been like this poor Fritz, whom John
Brown had also left to guard his cabin, the road which spies and as
sassins traveled so long might now have a sweet and peaceful name.

" So Abe Lincoln shall die by this pistol," exclaimed Booth, "if
other measures fail to bring him ! And now, both of you " — Ije
slipped another cartridge in the Derringer, and held the pistol up in
his right hand — " hold up your hands and say what I shall say, and
swear. Which of you refuses, dies like that dog, and his life I will
have at any time he dares to disobey me or betray me ! You both
possess my secret — you both know what the l oil-business ' means."

The smoking weapon in his hand, his pale face and obdurate
expression, and deep tragedy voice, made Atzerodt's stomach grow
faint, and he hardly had the strength to raise his arm.

Herold was rather seized with admiration, and a b'lushing grin
marked his countenance as he held his hand up.

" You swear," said Booth, "never to leave this enterprise, never
to tell of it, to live and die in it, under the penalty of death in this
world and hell in the next, for which you entreat — so help you
God ! "

The mastery of Booth over both of them he felt to be complete.
All the way back to Port Tobacco they were nearly silent, and there
he dismissed them, with instructions to call on him in the capital
city, at the National Hotel, and turned his horse toward Wash
ington.

Over this same road, but sixty-five years before, a galloping serv
ant had come to get a doctor for the dying Father of his Country,
and Booth could see Dr. Brown's old house overhanging the Port
Tobacco River ; and, as he approached Piscataway in the shades of
evening, he saw Mount Vernon across the wide water of the Poto
mac, and fancied he could almost hear the steamers on the river toll
their passing bells. Not the smallest idea entered his head that the
man he meant to pursue would subdue the heart of the whole world
by his love, as Washington had done by his dignity.

As he passed out of the ruined town of Piscataway, whose old
brick chimneys stood houseless, like the widowers of many wives,
he noted the long, red-brick Catholic church, with green shutters
and yellow cupola, and under the wooden cross in its gable the
words :

" Come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden, and 1
will refresh you."

THE BAND.

475

Two ladies came out of the churchyard with the priest, and drove
away in a country carriage. Booth looked respectfully at them, and
said to the priest :

" Father, who are those pleasing ladies ? "

" That is Mrs. Surratt and her daughter, sir, who formerly lived
close by, but have removed to Washington."

" Isn't there a son in that family ? "

" Oh, yes, sir, Mr. John. He's the widow's only stay now. His
brother is in Texas — perhaps in the Confederate army."

As Booth took the straight river road, he thought of the inscrip
tion over the old church many times : " Come unto me, and I will
refresh you " ; or, as the Protestants have it, " I will give you rest."
" Ah ! " he said — as in the night, at quite ten o'clock, he saw from
the Insane Hospital slope the lights of Washington flash across the
Eastern Branch — " I don't like this abduction plan as well as my
hint about the back of the theatre. I must have the performance
actable ! "

" What is your name ? " asked the guard at the bridge. " You
are coming ba.ck pretty late."

" Lloyd Quantrell," answered Booth.

The guard took down -the name in a book, and said :

" Pass over, sir."

CHAPTER XLIV.

THE BAND.

As Abel Quantrell and Katy, his ward, were playing cards at
the window in Old Town — money invariably staked, for Abel gam
bled as he battled, for realities — John W. Booth went past with two
slouchy, inferior men.

" Sam Arnold and Michael O'Laughlin ! " reflected Hannah Rit-
ner, aloud. " O'Laughlin deserted from the rebel army at South
Mountain to escape fighting at Antietam. He was Booth's school
mate and Booth's mother's tenant. That Arnold also went to the
war for loot, and his name is a common one in mountain Maryland.
But what companions ! "

" The square of his father," said Abel Quantrell, speaking with
difficulty — " who was, Hannah, a man of soft whims, but his delight

476 KATY OF CATOCTIN,

was to be the Hector of low and boozing" inferiors. He would wait
at a three-cent liquor-saloon for the police-station to discharge its
vagrant lodgers — men, often, of some social past, but ruined by
drink and the habits of slavery — and there he would set the brandy
up and inveigh, recite, and squander the gifts of beauty and temper
ament upon those swine by the hour and the day." *

"Aunt Hannah," said Hugh Fenwick, "the soldier who calls
himself Payne, or Powell, has been here, asking for you. He has again
deserted from Mosby's or Gilmore's band, and taken the oath."

" I can not help him," said Hannah Ritner ; " for a while I thought
he had a modest heart, but the murderer was there, although he had
a preacher for his father. He beat the poor colored woman where
he lodged in Baltimore, and was compelled by the provost to go
north of the city. He stamped upon her like a demon because she
would not clean his room in an instant. I fear that so many of
these whipped but not penitent men, between the lines — this city is
full of them — will become fire for some evil tinder. Who is this
Mrs. Surratt you visit, Fenwick ? "

" A widow, with a fairer daughter. She is not very deep, had an
old husband, and may not be averse to a young one."

" There is her danger," Hannah Ritner mused ; " conspiracy can
hide beneath love like the copper-snake under the blueberry-bush.
Do you believe Lloyd Quantrell has entered Washington ? "

" The guard took that name down as he crossed the bridge."

" It was not Lloyd," spoke Katy Bosler. Her German accent
was all gone now, and only the beaming eyes expressed a discom
posure. Lovely and refined by study and society she had grown.
Her lover's father looked at her and said :

" Do you maintain that traitor to be true to anything? "

"Yes, tp his father, if not to me."

" Look at this young man who has waited upon you almost four
years — sedate, religious, tender as a girl — what comparison does
your betrayer bear to him ? Give him your hand, while still the
fugitive holds out against every natural affection, and let him return
to find love sealed forever against his claims."

The old man had staggered up and sustained himself on Fen-
wick's broad shoulder, and the coarse lines returned to his fallen
mouth as he strove to close it hard. The divinity-student looked

* Mr. William Wilkison's recollections of Booth, the elder.

THE BAND. 477

at Katy in modest reverence and respect, his red and white colors
healthy as the peach-skin — his habits adapted to all degrees and
sects.

" Miss Kate," said Fenwick, " I broke my heart to unite you to
another one. It has healed under your forgiveness and confidence.
We have pursued our studies together, and grown in unison of
mind — I hope, of soul. When will you let me restore you to your
father as my wife ? "

Katy stood with quiet grace, hearing this speech, and all watch
ing her closely.

" I want the truth," she said. " I have heard you, Hugh, tell
one falsehood. Lloyd Quantrell never has. His going to the war
against his father's wishes shows the rude sincerity of the man.
Why he never writes to me I can't tell. Maybe he's tired of a
child's love, or is waiting for the war to end, and to see me again
with eyes of understanding. I have tried to raise myself to his
mind. He may come back, unworthy of my troubles, and leave me
free to enjoy, as your pupil still, the world of intellect displayed by
the tenderest friendship."

A slight movement of her head toward him indicated a prefer
ence for his society.

" The test shall be," spoke Hannah Ritner, " to set you, Fen-
wick, and Lloyd Quantrell, face to face ! "

" I never can fear that test," the demi-clerical spoke, with cheeks
where the roses had suddenly flown. — "Brother Abel, your friends,
the nuns, are at the door."

A trio of nuns came in and made themselves sociable, and Abel
Quantrell allowed prayers to be offered for him in his afflicted state.
He liked women better than men, but liked his indignations best of
all ; and among these last was a hatred of the Napoleons — singu
larly enough, for their treatment of their wives — and the pope had
refused to divorce the brother of Napoleon from his Baltimore wife
at the emperor's demand. So Abel Quantrell, with a swerving
against power everywhere, had become a favorite and patron of the
Sisters of Charity, and the less ascetic monastic orders, like the
Visitation Nuns, who were now engaged in the gradual work of
converting him — the more desirously, because his political opinions
had come to rule the land. He, resisting authority, and they, shel
tering under it, proved that extremes often meet.

It was Hugh Fenwick, in pursuance of his amateur diversions,

4/8 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

who set on this conversion ; but the old man, in his enfeebling age,
grasped only the worldly part of the proposition — that he, or some
body, might convert the pope to proclaim for The People everywhere.
For the heaven of blessedness they promised him he did not care,
nor greatly for his worldly fame ; but the idea of taking the most
reactionary engine in the world, as he esteemed it, and running it
forward, gave to his own mind a light of satyr joy. If Pepin and
Rienzi and Hildebrand had seized Rome, why could not a Yankee
do the same, and batter aristocracies down with a crozier ?

Thus they prayed together, unavowedly, for the trophies of this
world — the ecclesiastics to add an important radical to their pantheon,
and, perhaps, get their share of appropriations ; the old agitator, to
reverse Rome, and use it on this earth for democracy.

Katy, alone, prayed to God for justice and mercy, kneeling among
the rest.

When Abel Quantrell had received the kisses and benedictions
of the gratified Sisters, and all had gone, he turned to his ward and
said :

" What did you pray ? "

" To give God your soul, and let it eat the bread of love."

" Through whom ? "

" Father, I tried to say through God's Son ; but into my mouth
kept coming the words and the face of your own son, Lloyd. Oh !
yield your heart to forgiveness of our poor wanderer, and the Son
of Heaven will come there too, like Jesus and the dove to the water
of John's baptism."

As she looked, a tear came down his cheek, that all the pursing
and folding of his lips could not retard.

With a scream of joy, Katy kissed the old man's eyes.

" My prayer is answered ! " she cried. " You love your boy ! "

"Let him stand the rest of the test," old Abel Ouantrell said;
" the war is nearly done."

Mr. Booth, meantime, had been demonstrating his social and
business resources to create a band of abductors. He sounded two
or three actors of Maryland stock ; but they imputed any war scheme
of his to the drink he was taking so freely, and Ned Spangler was
the nearest he could come to a convert.

While this poor, imbruted carpenter worked at Ford's Theatre,
Booth would slip in and study the situation of afternoons, try the

THE BAND. 479

lighting apparatus, to plunge the auditorium in profound darkness
or blazing light, pace the length of the stage and of the aisles to the
back door, and sometimes come leaping down from the upper box
to the stage-floor, like a trapeze-performer.

This leap might have been made by many a lad for a wager or
exercise, and a gymnast would esteem it no hard matter ; the gym
nasium had prepared Booth for some great public exhibition of this
kind of prowess in which he excelled all actors, though many of
these kept up their physical training for the death-scenes, wrestles,
and combats so rife in the dramas of a sword-wearing age ; but
" the jump " was Booth's monopoly, he being light and flexible in
the ankles and knees, and with a bow-legged tendency, which en
abled him to drop akimbo after he had stepped limberly.

How much of his ultimate black deed is traceable to his passion
for strength for brutal ends a prize-fighter might guess. The fact
that he could so leap from a high place invested his purpose with a
public ambition he never could shake off, and materially weakened
his interest in the original abduction design.

The theatre would give him an audience which a highway as
sault could not afford ; it was really the safer place of the two, from
the entire novelty of its selection^and his superior knowledge of its
exits, and the ignorance of the public of there being any rear avenue
from a theatre, or conversance with such a purely professional path ;
and, more than this, to abduct the President from the theatre would
make but one hero of the act. Booth was jealous of giving other
men fame by his idea.

The miserable parcel of country tools he had assembled would
do to drive the vehicle from the back of the theatre, and could be
kept unseen over the foot-lights. He had the full run of Ford's The
atre by intimacy with nearly all its people ; the man was found in
Spangler to do his more sneaking work within it ; where could he
get an actor, filling a part at the moment, to catch the President
when Booth should throw him from the upper box and leap down
after him and drag him down the dark aisles to the back door? *

* a Booth urged that the part I would have to play would be a very easy
affair and was sure to succeed, but needed some one connected or acquainted
with the theatre." — S. K. Chester, actor.

1 ' I asked Arnold what his part was to be ; he said he was to catch the Presi
dent when he was thrown out of the box at the theatre." — E. G. Homer's testi
mony.

480 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

There was manifestly no such ruffian, with intelligence enough
to be an actor, except this man himself.

No sense of his hospitality as an actor, and the son and brother
of actors, ever occurred to him, when considering how to earn a
mean distinction by thus brutalizing the theatre of his friends and
dragging an elderly magistrate across its boards though an invited
guest. The hospitality of the Bedouin Arab this gypsy could not
feel in his native tent.

The tatterdemalions he assembled came easily enough. Dr.
Mudd brought him the widow Surratt's son, originally a modest
country boy, now inflated by some experience as a civilian spy and
secret-mail carrier, and who had known no other employment in
all the multiform opportunities on either side of that war, except
in the little tavern and bar of his mother, ten miles from Wash
ington.

Through this son of twenty-two, Booth gained access to the
widow's little boarding-house in an obscure yet central part of Mr.
Lincoln's capital, only six street blocks from Ford's Theatre and six
from Booth's hotel.

It may have been the only respectable house the actor visited in
that full city ; and the only friends (if the family were some country
farmers, and priests, and people off the courses of public life.

Fenwick alone among the visitors there could have exposed
Booth's insidious relations to the softer sex. He knew the two or
three boarders there who were all of his religious profession, and
who gave a scanty living to the family, where the actor's advent was
the sensation of its dull existence.

There was the widow, older than Booth, but in full health and
bright color ; and the widow's daughter, agreeable to the eye and the
mind ; and the actor seemed to be rich, influential, manly, and even
beautiful. Booth took the son, by the mother's help, from his first
occupation, in an express-office, where he had just entered upon an
honest livelihood, and sent him to obtain persons for the abduction
scheme in the vicinity of Port Tobacco ; some of these the govern
ment afterward considered beneath responsibility and let them go,
or never discovered them.

The plot at one time had quite a show of names in it, but the
contingent was always the largest at the distant end, where running
instead of fighting was to be the task ; for no person higher endowed
than a ruffian or tramp cared to earn the precarious livelihood of

THE BAND. 48 j

Booth's bounty and be scouting in the army-mired lanes of a pleas
ant city in the winter at the benoof of a theatrical speculator.

Generally speaking, all who were in the contraband mail and
carrying business, on both sides of the Potomac, knew that some
thing sensational was coming.

The manager of this motley company was alarmed lest his copy
right should be invaded by some other adventurer, and on one occa
sion his hirelings reported that a plot had been overheard in a hotel,
nearly like that of his abduction. He swore his men by oaths, at
once theatrical and practical, only after he had awakened their cupid
ity by often-postponed explanations : the part of the oath they kept
in mind was that they would be pursued for life and assassinated if
found false ; and he at times observed to them that they were in his
power, and had already done enough to be justly hanged by the army
within whose lines they spied and confederated.

Booth, in fact, saw that the President's death was a very prob
able incident of the abduction, and he labored to draw the courage
of his satellites up to that philosophy. But one of his Baltimore
recruits, Arnold, who had the only good countenance in the party,
reflecting on the matter more and more, finally took the position, in
a meeting of the band, six or seven in number, that if Booth meant
to play fair, he should go ahead and capture the President, or release
them all from their obligations. This was the only man steady
enough to earn a living, and, although Booth turned on him and
swore he ought to die, the man maintained his point, and soon after
got away.

The morale of all the band would have broken early but for their
absolute dependence on the actor for mental occupation, employ
ment, and drink. He had bought two or three horses, and went rid
ing among them, spying out the President's ways and experiment
ing with parts of the route of flight, and at least twice again he went
down to Mudd's, exciting that weak, bitter person with golden
prospects or alarms. Money, indeed, was the object of everybody
taken into Booth's confidence ; and he, after arousing that hope,
marveled that it was the only vitality his enterprise had. Nobody
seemed heartily to hate Mr. Lincoln but himself, and he did so
because the President's mildness had laid him open to an animal's
passions.

As the beast hates the lamb, attacking the weakest after observ
ing it, Booth's carnal appetite had fallen on Lincoln because he was
31

482 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

the softest enemy in nature and speech, and had sought the moral
pathways through the physical warfare, to ends beyond the lusts of
victory. Booth could not formulate this, though he felt it ; the bully
always detects the magistrate by something above the common in
him : Mr. Lincoln's tender strains, used in the affirmation of human
brotherhood and final rights, had affected Booth like a woman's
hymns heard by the painted, ambushed savage ; to his doctrines
and qualities they seemed atheistical ; they involved consideration
for a " nigger," and touched the core of the war.

Besides, Mr. Lincoln was the ruling foe arid name to the scornful
thousands and the illiterate millions who contended against him,' and
Booth had once been a favorite among these, and would be again a
hero. He knew their impulses, but he could not foresee their edu
cation, and he did not know that the calamities of war bring resig
nation, in which a better humanity is born.

The young Surratt, a long, sunken-eyed youth, grew also doubt
ful about the public reward from the insurgent side for the contem
plated outrage, and was perhaps dissatisfied with Booth's influence
under his mother's roof. Th^t house was being used too much by the
conspirators not to awaken there the wonder of a government clerk
or two, who saw the well-dressed actor, mature in all his bearing,
call often in the little parlor at the top of a high ladder of wooden
steps, and next in the hostess's private room, and have long, confi
dential talks with her ; and, as the son worked out of the original
plot, the mother was taken in, and proved the sincerest recruit.

The hand that touched hers expressed a confidence, the eyes
which drew so near her beamed an interest, the tone lowered to her
ear sounded so much will and half-filial, half-passionate respect, that
she obeyed with almost the joy of the affianced.^ She at first had
feared and objected to any perilous adventure for her boy ; but he
was not as scrupulous of her mighty hazard ; although many a female
spy had been sent to the prisons, to be exploited and released,
until, in the blind belief that the American Government was too
gentle to punish a woman, these knights and squires from the gutter
played a woman's life against the ruler's, and ran away and left her
with all the evidence piled around her.

Into this little house Booth sent his fellow-assassin to call upon
the son, and have the mother find him lodgings in Ford's Theatre
block — a giant brute entering there by the name of Woods, tried
under the name of Payne, but really named Powell. He was hardly

THE BAND.

483

twenty years old, the son of a slave-owning- preacher in the Gulf
States, and dyed in civil war since his boyhood, at first in regular
warfare — till Hannah Ritner found him at Gettysburg — and after
that a partisan horseman among the Potomac valleys, learning guer
rilla feats. He deserted and returned to Baltimore, and, tortured
for money to meet his expenses, he brutally beat his chambermaid,
and was sent to the provost-marshal as a misbehaving prisoner, and
ordered to live north of Baltimore.

In that instant of despair, a deserter from one side, a " suspect "
upon the other, without money, clothes, or address, he heard his
name called at twilight by a beautiful-faced man on the steps of
Barnum's Hotel, past which this Payne was dragging himself, a
homeless tramp.

" Booth, is that you ? I want bread ; I am starving ! "

" You are the very man I want. I'll give you money, to go into
business with me, if you'll swear to stick ; it's in the oil-business." *

This butcher of twenty was what Booth needed to conclude or
intensify his project ; and in that man, of weak cultivation and easily
frenzied brain, he poured his subtilest distillations, awoke the sub
sided sentiment of revenge, carried him up and down Washington
and Alexandria to see lost or gutted dwellings deserted by their
former owners in the fell suicide of party or sectional passion, and
pointed out the houses of the President and Cabinet as the authors
of the war. The barbarian aroused himself, like the gladiator to
whom Nero gave the torch while accusing the Christians. Payne
trembled and raged, and Booth adjured him never to let such men
be victorious.

As has been said, Booth was the first, perhaps the only, actor
Payne had seen at Richmond before hostilities, while the slave States
were arming ; and, after that play, with proud self-confidence, he
had sought the actor out, and found him easily won by his inferiors ;
and now, after four years of separation, the intimacy is renewed,
when the reckless soldier is Booth's pupil and pauper, eating the
bread of him who gives him also a stone.

At last the intentions of Booth were revealed, and the murderer,
long glutted with blood, yearns for more.

" Now," said Booth, " that I have seduced a soldier, I'll take
Abe Lincoln as it suits me, and let these country louts and lunch-
fiends quit, or make them obey."

* Argument of Payne's counsel, W. E. Doster.

484 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

Something mysterious was happening in the great victim's favor.
By prying into the circle of his grooms, Herold, who had been an
apothecary's clerk where the President's family bought medicine,*
several times anticipated the times and routes of Mr. Lincoln's driv
ing excursions, and the band started out with horses, arms, and
cords supplied by Booth, but never found the President where they
went. Again and again this information was obtained, only to prove
false. The weaker spirits began to feel superstitious on the subject,
and Surratt discovered that the government was building a stockade
at the bridge to lower Maryland, menacing an attack from outside,
and he wanted to withdraw.

Booth observed that Major Luther Bosler was often riding on
the roads he and his tools took at such times, and the thought
of treachery somewhere, other than his own, discomposed his
mind.

Besides, the abduction plot was too expensive, and the coinci
dence of an opportunity and of the relays and boats to be set for the
event was very unreliable. His character was running down, from
the public observation of his low companions and of the low mail-
stage inns and saloons he frequented with them, and by the alcohol
he drank while evolving a mathematical problem from an empty
mind. The season that winter and spring was severe, and the clay
roads of lower Maryland were almost impassable, so that, when the
band seemed ready above, word would come from below to post
pone the deed.

But nothing was retarding the magnificent campaign of Liberty.
On January 31, 1865, the lower House of Congress, after more than
two years' debate and delay, passed the amendment abolishing
slavery, Maryland giving it four votes out of five, led by Mr. Davis,
and ended by the Congressman from Booth's own native town ; t
and after that the rebellion lived only four months — Savannah, Co
lumbia, Charleston, Wilmington falling, as the great scythe of Sher
man moved like the rainbow of a comet onward — and meantime
Abraham Lincoln stood before his countrymen to be inaugurated
again.

A brilliant star stood at midday in the sky, following clouds and

* Thompson's drug-store, one square east of the President's mansion ; Her
old there discharged, July 4, 1863.

t Edwin H. Webster, of Belair. The only Marylander to oppose it came
from the counties below Washington.

THE BAND. 485

rain,* as the great procession went up to the Capitol. In the train
of the President hung Booth and his band on horseback, with a
scheme to hitch to the President's carriage and gallop away with it,
but a single glimpse of the actual scene had destroyed this theory.

The President, before the grand assemblage of his sovereigns —
the now equal and consistent people — stood lofty and history-
wrinkled, confronted by thousands of his maimed and crutched sol
diery, shedding tears before his face, as the knights of the Crusade
wept at the sight of Jerusalem and its shrine. He kissed the Bible,
after the roar of voices, at the words —

" Whose arrows are sharp, and all their bows bent ; their horses'
hoofs shall be counted like flint. "t

The President spoke as words can never speak without a great
event behind them, or a destiny following near.

" Each side," said he, " looked four years ago for an easier tri
umph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. . . . With
high hopes for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
. . . With malice towrard none, with charity for all, with firmness in
the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we
are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall
have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all
which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among our
selves and with all nations."

These words, the last preceding his solemn oath, enemies might
have felt the nobleness of ; but as the President walked back through
the Rotunda of the Capitol a man stood in his path dressed in a rowdy
imitation of an officer's clothes, and striving hard to get to the front
of a cordon of people who themselves opened an avenue for their
Chief Magistrate.

It was Booth, full of brandy and self-comparison, moody under
the expenses of his band, and suddenly seized with the idea that he
could also inaugurate himself this day and take the first page in his-

* Arnold's " Lincoln," page 401.

t Marked by Mrs. Lincoln, where his lips touched the book.

\ " He exclaimed, striking the table, 'What an excellent chancel had to
kill the President, if I had wished, on Inauguration-day ! ' He said he was as
near the President on that day as he was to me. This he said on Friday, the
7th of April, one week previous to the assassination." — Testimony of S. K.
Chester, actor.

486 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

In his long boot-leg was a knife ; in his overcoat-pocket a pistol,
covered by his right hand.

He pressed along and had broken through the front line amid
some confusion and resistance, and his white face, with black jewels
in it and cruel teeth sparkling, expressed a sinister purpose.

The President came along in cloak, and cordial countenance un
der his tall hat, between the glow of good-will and the celestial mel
ancholy which plays around the immortal times of man.

As the President looked into the young man's intense and under-
gazing eyes, he seemed to recognize an acquaintance, and lifted his
left hand to his hat, uncovering his heart.

At this moment a large woman rushed across the President's
path, and threw herself upon the actor, crying :

" You shall not crowd me out of my place twice ! "

" Shame ! shame ! " from the people, thus disturbed in expecting
to see their ruler, eye to eye.

The woman's velocity was like her weight and will ; she bore
the actor far back, and faced him with an inflamed and hostile face,
and cried :

" What woman will you push next out of her place ? "

The President had gone through the small, guarded door toward
the Supreme Court.

The man gritted his-teeth, paid no heed to his assailant, and
rushed down the dusky, hidden stairs in the shell of the old Cap
itol.

Hannah Ritner was also heedless of the people who gaped at
her and her wild hair and mien. She who had thus made a tumult
before the President, went down Pennsylvania Avenue, and turned
into Nelly Harbaugh's quarters.

" Nelly, are you ready to show Miss Pittson the character of the
man who wants her to elope with him ? "

" No. She is a proud creature, and let her be unfriended as I
was. Who advised mef"

The strange woman listlessly picked up the girl's hand and looked
it over, while Nelly felt a sense of superstition come over her jealous
cruelty.

" Go to her," sighed Hannah Ritner, "and you shall find the red
bird."

She repeated from the old Dutch prediction she had made sixty-
five months before :

THE BAND. 487

MGaed der roth-fogel uf'n reis',
Dann waersht net dunkel or net weiss ! " *

"Hannah," exclaimed the actress, "do you see fortunes with
your mind or your witchcraft ? "

" How can I know, girl ? She who wills to be a mother might
receive, by widening love of all mankind, the genesis of them all who
came in strong contact with her. Your beauty and will impressed
me. I saw you would fall by climbing, and still the hand that shook
you from purity would have to be a treacherous, fierce one, and in
time would kill. Now, go and learn who the red bird is."

" I know," said Nelly; "I have used my old lover Atzerodt to
discover that John Booth is in some rebel plot. But Atzerodt does
not know himself just what it is to be. Booth may not know."

" Go to Light Pittson, my girl ! What shall happen there, will
put you in Booth's heart again, and you shall read it for me."

" Then I will not go, to be the menial of that man again."

" You must," said Hannah Ritner, rising and showing the latent
power she employed with such self-suffering ; her bosom heaved
and her eyes conveyed deep night and lightnings, -and her hair seemed
to fall, unshaken, like a great black serpent uncoiling from a tree.

" Oh, mercy ! Hannah, do not look at me like that ! "

" Awake — the woman is dying in you ! Did Pilate's wife not send
him word, ' Have thou nothing to do with that just man, for I have
suffered in my dreams of him ' ? The high-priest's house-maids
challenged Peter's treachery. And Jewish women followed Christ
when every man turned from him — a magdalen, a fallen one, that
day, the purest, bravest, in the world ! What now can save the
just man at our side but women ? He is a man himself and will
not fear ! Let woman only waken, and he is saved ! "

As she hesitated, like an oracle seeking to be remedial to its
own harsh prophecy, Nelly Harbaugh threw herself at Hannah's
feet and cried :

" Teacher, I will go ! "

Hannah Ritner staggered like a drunken woman as she reached
the street, and some in that evil quarter might have laughed at her.
As she reached the avenue, the bands and bugles, dispersing, filled
the sky with sweetness like fhe angel choirs.
" Mother ! " spoke a gentleman.

* See page 59.

488 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

" O Edgar, my son, I have been all night guarding the President
as he sat from midnight to the morn, signing bills at the Capitol in
the last night of the session. They would not let me see him. He
will not admit me any more. And yet that Booth and parcels of
his band were lurking there : I saw them, Edgar ! " *

"Mother, since your strange behavior in the Capitol to-day, there
is talk of confining you at the insane asylum. Your presence
here threatens your grandchild, Light, with some exposure, before a
good man can marry her. Let me tell you that the President is in
no danger, among ten thousand friends, and if he were, his duty is
above his life."

" Send him away, I implore you ! "

" There is no place he will go but to the army."

" Then send him there ! Go with him. I am not mad, my boy."

" No, mother. You do affect my sensibilities ; for you are so
often right. He shall go."

Hannah Ritner next sought Hugh Fenwick in the old Catholic
Church of St. Patrick, where he was enjoying the day in congenial
mysticism among the tapers and altar matters.

" By yonder Host," she said, pointing to the wafer's place, " go
this day to Mrs. Surratt's, and in your holiest relation, whatever that
may be, tell her that her new friend is fatal, and will splash with
righteous blood the woman's century ! "

" Is her house being watched ? " asked Fenwick, with well-bred
surprise.

" Yes, by me and the stars ! "

The novitiate crossed himself.

" I will go and tell her," he said.

" Then every woman will have been warned," lisped Hannah
Ritner, hastening away.

Had she been one moment earlier, she might have seen Booth
and two of his men ride up the alley right opposite this church, be
hind Ford's Theatre.

" I guess it's none of my business to become unpopular with
Mrs. Surratt," mused Fenwick to himself, after she had gone.
" What can I do, if Ouantrell ever returns ? I hope he is in this, or
some other, treason scheme."

* The testimony of the intelligent witness Louis J. Weichman is that Booth
and Surratt went to the Capitol the night of March 3d, and Surratt had been
all day after the procession on horseback.

THE BAND. 489

A few days afterward the band was called together, and all were
mounted, Booth at the head. The information was positive that
the President would go that afternoon to visit the wounded soldiers
in a suburban hospital.

He was now to be forced, by the plan, at the pistol's point to get
upon a horse and ride ; and at Surratt's tavern carbines, and rope to
tie him, had been concealed only a few days before his second in
auguration.

He did ride out, but some cavalrymen were beside his carriage,
put there by the Secretary of War ; and he went, not to the hos
pital, but down to the river and to the army, to stay away several
days.

Booth sent Payne to the army with a pass, to assassinate him,
but the President was kept upon a steamboat in the James River,
and the strange man was repulsed when he tried to board.*

" Ah ! " said Booth to Payne, when the latter returned to Balti
more, "had you been there on the 4th of March, I would have
killed him like Caesar in the Capitol."

Young Surratt, who had been fishing a long time for the confi
dence of the insurgent government, now got a job to take a female
spy from his mother's house in Washington to Richmond, and
there he was paid to go with dispatches to Canada. He left his
mother, never to see her again. The day he left Richmond the
American army broke the thickest shell of the rebellion in, and
President Lincoln entered Richmond amid the joys of a mighty race
set free. He was in no danger there, where the people had lived
behind their own lines.

Upon the Qth of April, 1865, Virginia and her valiant army sur
rendered to the government.

There still remained a large insurgent army in North Carolina,
and other smaller armies in more remote States.

President Lincoln addressed the people from his mansion in
Washington on the night of April nth, saying :

*' If universal amnesty is granted to the insurgents, I can not
see how I can avoid exacting in return universal suffrage, or at
least suffrage on the basis of intelligence and military service."

There were then hundreds of thousands of colored soldiery,

* President Lincoln's son, at the trial of John Surratt, gave testimony as
above, that a tall man, rather of Surratt's appearance, tried at City Point to
see the President.

490

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

and the insurgent President had demanded the right to arm the
slaves.

Booth was standing before Mr. Lincoln on the outskirts of the
large assemblage.

" That means nigger citizenship," he said to little Herold, by
his side. " Now, by God ! I'll put him through."*

CHAPTER XLV.

ASSASSINATION.

WHEN a man has once let murder enter his mind, it will drive
out all the lesser passions. Booth had recovered Nelly Harbaugh,
and raised the flame of love in her again, but it did not satisfy. His
voice had returned, and he had played at Ford's Theatre with Nelly
in the cast, to their mutual credit ; but he now wanted to act
murder, and his diabolical part, Pescara, was of itself an explana
tion of the assassin's mind.

Pescara hates the Moors because they are of a different race and
views from his, and resolves to exterminate them, forces the noblest
of their wives, though she is white, and stretches her husband and
his aged friends upon the rack of the Inquisition, crying aloud as*
he stabs :

" Ha ! ha ! a Moor —

One of that race that we have trodden down
From empire's height and crushed — a damned Morisco !

What if I rush,
And with a blow, strike life from out his heart ?

Come forth, my sword !

Be true as fate to me. Rise, Spaniards, rise !
Rush on the slaves, and revel in their blood !"

Fifty years before this — the last play-part acted by John Wilkes
Booth — an Irish lawyer had made the character of Pescara, from a
close study of Booth's father's rendering of types of hideous cruelty
and revenge. The piece was no longer allowed to be played in

* Frederick Stone, counsel for Herold after Booth's death, told the author
that this was the occasion of the deliberate murder being resolved upon by
Booth, and in the words above.

A SSA SSINA TION.

49 I

England, but the father had played it in America, and this son now
demanded to play it at a fellow-actor's benefit.*

By another promise he had made, to play for the benefit of the
chief officer of that theatre, his access to the building had become
nearly like a proprietor's, and there Spangler was Booth's man and
sworn confederate.

The day before Good Friday, April I4th, Booth, seeking to decoy
the President to a theatre, went also to the National Theatre and
suggested to the proprietor to invite Mr. Lincoln the next night,
which was to be the celebration of raising the public flag again
upon Fort Sumter. Both theatres were therefore tendered to the
President ; but his wife accepted Ford's Theatre, since " The Amer
ican Cousin "was to be played there — a piece of the humor flavored
to Mr. Lincoln's cares.

Although Booth had sold one of his horses, he could hire others
less expensively ; for he meant to steal them at the livery-stables.
All the band still hung around him except two. He sold his buggy
the day after he resolved to murder. The bills of exchange he had
bought on Canada constituted nearly all his means, and he meant
to spend the rest on this bloody spree, to which liquor was now
giving demoniac ferocity.

He designed to kill the President himself, and to kill Mr. Seward
— the founder of the Republican party — by the hands of Payne ; for
Booth was an exemplification of bigotry in general, in that he
chiefly hated the thinkers and writers among his opponents. There
is something of Booth in every narrow, domineering intellect, and
five months before this murder he began to be a literary man him
self, and keep a diary like his grandfather.f

* John McCullough. This piece was played March 18, 1865, by Booth, in
the presence of Surratt, Herold, and Atzerodt, and probably Arnold and
O'Loughlin — some of whom were in the President's box.

f In November, 1864, Booth deposited with his brother-in-law, J. S. Clark,
a long composition, extenuating some crime he meant to commit, of which the
following is pertinent to the motive of this book :

"When I aided in the capture and execution of John Brown (who was a
murderer on our \V estern border, and who was fairly tried and convicted be
fore an impartial judge and jury of treason, and who, by the way, has since
been made God), I was proud of my little share in the transaction, for I
deemed it my duty that I was helping our common country to perform an act
of justice. But what was a crime in poor Brown is now considered (by them
selves) as the greatest and only virtue of the whole Republican party. Strange

492 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

Payne was not told of his particular task until evening, when it
was plain that General Grant would not come to the theatre ; but,
had it been otherwise, Booth reserved Payne for a bloody part in
the theatre-box.

O'Loughlin came over from Baltimore to be made the assassin
of Secretary Stanton and General Grant ; but, after taking a look at
them, he wisely concluded to finish out his spree, and, in this case,
wine was wit.

The new Vice-President, a Southern man, and hardly an oppo
nent of slavery, Booth desired to kill because he was a " renegade "
and the successor, and he concluded to put this task on Atzerodt.

Little Herold was to guide Payne to Mr. Seward's door, and
then show him, by an upper bridge over the Eastern Branch, the
road to meet Booth at Surratt's.

Booth's reliance on Atzerodt lay not in the latter's courage, but
his despair, at being left behind, the accomplice in a great crime,
and penniless in Washington, while his safety would lie in escaping
to his own district and using his own transportation there to Vir
ginia.

Booth, drinking at intervals all Friday, fed this hideous scheme,
the logical outcome of himself, his courses, and his former plot, with
whisky, which hardened his purpose and shut out all moral abstrac
tions.

He set Spangler to work upon making him a bar for the private
box after it was prepared for the President — by taking out a par
tition, and decorating the double box with flags ; and, seeing the
position of the President's chair, Booth took a small gimlet he had
bought and bored an eyelet-hole through the thin box-door, and cut
it clean with his pen-knife ; while in a short private passage behind
the box, used to reach the inner box without passing through the
first, he made in the cheap theatre plastering a hole to fit the wooden
bar, so as to bar out the audience, forcing the other end of the stick
against a little door opening inward from the second or dress circle.

If a trap had been invented to catch the victim, it could not have
been more complete or economical than these united boxes, the
little blind passage behind them, and the narrow wicket opening
obliquely to the side-wall. • Once within there, the murderer could

transmigration ! Vice so became a virtue simply because more indulged in.
I thought then, as now, that the abolitionists were the only traitors in the land,
and that the entire party deserved the same fate of poor John Brown."

A SSA SSINA TION.

493

take breath, be unseen by any, fix the bar behind him, peep through
the eyelet-hole at the President in his box, open the box-door, and
fire.

The key to his own escape Booth had been forging at a gym
nasium for years — the cat-leap — and this day he tried it again and
again in the darkness of the deserted theatre, while his man was
loosening the screws of the bolt-catch on the door toward the audi
ence, so that it might open to the murderer's push.

The bait to this trap was the American flag, the cheese of com
edy, and the sympathy between the glad people and their well-
acquitted servant. Coming to that theatre, the President would
bring revenue, in a crowded house, for its sullen scullions, some of
whom cursed him as they were fixing the colors.

The carpenter and scene-pusher, who had been taken into the
plot long before, was, like accomplices generally in murder, of dead
self-respect, no ambition, no particular wickedness ; and, while hat
ing the great emancipator, had sold himself to be a slave. Booth
owned him, fed him on drink, shillings, and familiarity, and meant
to leave him behind, as other adventurers in war had lost their slaves
— no loss when lost.*

In the stable that Spangler attended behind the theatre, for
Booth, was a one-eyed racking horse, which Booth had bought on
his second visit to Dr. Mudd, from one of Mudd's neighbors, and
in his presence ; it was a brownish bay, a stout work-horse, with
heavy fetlocks down to the feet. Beside this heavy animal, intended
for Payne, Booth put on Friday afternoon a small bay mare he had
hired on C Street, in the rear of his hotel, of a city livery-man from
lower Maryland ; for, with highwayman's impartiality, he took both
the horses he afterward sacrificed, from his Southern friends.

Spangler had fitted up that old stable with two stalls for Booth,
and thus was his carpenter, hostler, and door-keeper.

Had this insignificant man been of honest poverty-proof, the
greatest of poor white men might have been saved ; for Spangler
made Booth's plan possible, as, without a confederate on that stage,
Booth's leap from the box would have been as reckless as Harle
quin's leap through a flying trap without any assistant beneath.

The door at the rear of the theatre opened inward ; the horse
beyond it had to be held ; from the baited and barred box, through

* Mr. Harbin, who was in the abduction plot with Mudd and Booth, related
to the author that Spangler understood Booth's design from an early period.

494

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

the juggling shifts of scenery, to the ready-made exit and the rear
door closing in the face of pursuit, the saddled horse, and the con
venient stable — this fellow Spangler was like a clothes-pin, of no in
centive in himself, but taking hold everywhere.

As Booth gave Spangler the bay mare, he handed him a tie-rein
to hitch her. The mare had black legs, mane, and tail, a spotted
" off " fore-foot, and a white star in the forehead.

Soon afterward, Herold and Atzerodt separately appeared at a
stable, masked, from the head of Pennsylvania Avenue, by a small
square of trees — the livery-keeper thereof having been the messenger
between Richmond and Washington at Nat Turner's slave insurrec
tion in 1831.* There Atzerodt left a small bay mare, to be kept till
called for ; with difficulty, on his bad face, he had obtained it of a
livery-man.

When Herold afterward came, he asked to pre-empt a lady's
saddle-horse for that afternoon.

" Here," said the clerk, " is the easiest-moving horse in the sta
ble. He is a single-footed racker."

He brought out a light roan, with black legs, tail, and mane, a
little worn on the back by ladies' saddles. As the horse was chased
along the stable's length, his feet came down —

" Tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a ! "

" Now, le' me see yer saddles and bridles ! " said Herold, with
country-jockey slyness ; and, walking into the harness-room, he
picked out for himself, indifferent to advice, an English saddle with
steel stirrups, and a double-reined and double-bitted bridle.

This boy, as he was generally called, was twenty-three years old,
not ill-connected, and a natural product of Washington city as it
was in slave-times — without any fixed place or tone, unaffected by
any of the subjects or men of government ; his bias toward the South,
but not stable enough to reason or argue that, or any other subject ;
and, while they had no outward resemblance, Booth and Herold
belonged to each other by the frequent tie of nothing-to-do — the
same which brings dogs together unassorted. Their highest trait
was mutual — restless exercise — Herold 's maggot toward sporting,
Booth's toward physical and fierce adventure. Herold had been as

* A. Nailor, Sr. — Thaf. insurrection almost led to the voluntary abandon
ment of slavery by Virginia, because it cost sixty-one white people's lives. The
messenger in question lived to hire a horse to the emancipator's murderer,
after the sacrifice of more lives than Virginia had people.

A SSA SSINA TION. 49 $

high as hospital assistant and as low as the monkey of a quack doc
tor who practiced upon the vices of the town.

By Booth's combination of low tastes and high mental ferocity
he was able to sleep with Herold and dream with President Lincoln,
and the explanation is easy : his self-assertion met no resistance
from his mindless followers, and with them he basked in grateful
amiability, or ruled them with tyrannic effervescence. That was the
condition of all masters' sons among their slave playfellows : Booth's
father left him no slaves, so he wrent and found white ones, to Icve
and admire him like the others, in the catching pride of slavery's
contact.

Strange that, amid this studied guilt, Booth believed he had the
heart of love and the manner of chivalry !

When moral resistance gives completely away, the reasoning
safety merely flutters. Mrs. Surratt sometimes borrowed the horses
Booth but recently owned for his abduction scheme, and, on the day
he declared he should now kill the President, she sent to Booth to
borrow his horse and buggy again ; he hired another for her, and
she went to Surrattsville, and on the way she saw her tenant who
kept the inn, and told him, at Booth's request, that the "shooting-
irons " would soon be called for. By the obligation thus created,
and ripened confidence, Booth concluded, on the day of the murder,
to send her to Surrattsville again. She had no adviser, and consid
ered that woman's part in war and politics did not count. On this
occasion she had private business, and paid for her own buggy before
he came.

Those horses, which Booth long owned — one of them, like its
rider, to come home to her door — had been liveried nearly in the
rear of her house, on the parallel street — an alley running through —
by her own son. To that same stable she sent on this Good Friday,
whereupon the crucifix she worshiped had been reared. Her mes
senger was a boarder who had been a schoolmate of her son, and
who had seen nearly every person in the plot come to her house,
and ride these and other horses before it, and display pistols, bowie-
knives, bits of disguise, and fancy riding accoutrements about the
son's bedroom, until his curiosity had reached the point of wonder.

As the boarder went to the stable, there was Atzerodt, being re
fused a horse ; and as he went to her door with the buggy, there was
Booth again, in close conversation with Mrs. Surratt, and Booth gave

496 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

her a tied package to carry. It was then almost three o'clock. The
murder had been shaped by Booth in every part for that night, and
at a time only seven hours distant. He did not tell her how he was
allying her with his crime.

Where was Hugh Fenwick, with his delicate consideration for
women— he who had accepted the duty of giving this widow some
warning to stand upon, and revive her thinking parts ?

Where was her son — a voter, a man subject to draft, and mature
enough, in his own esteem, to outwit and capture the ruler of the
whole land ?

He had gone from Richmond to Canada, and — fateful now to
remember ! — she had gone part of the way to Richmond with him,
and a female spy was in the carriage at her side.

So the widow drove that Good Friday the long and hilly ten
miles to her spy-haunted tavern, that for four years had done its evil,
sinister part, and three years and a half of that time was her own
abode — post-office of the government, as well as custodian of the
insurgent mail. Her heart was light, for her son had received three
hundred dollars at Richmond.*

All care had been thrown aside, in view of the virtual conclusion
of the war. A little picket on the wayside spoke to her with court
esy as the cavalrymen turned their horses toward Washington. She
reached her tavern half an hour before sundown, and rested in the
dwelling part, and dictated a business letter till her tenant came
home. She went out to him at his wood-pile, and handed him
Booth's package, and said :

" Mr. Lloyd, put this with the other things of John's you've got
hid away."

" What things ? " asked the man, fuddled by drink. He had
been that day at his county court, to prosecute a customer who had
stabbed him.

" Why, you know well enough. The shooting-irons, ammuni
tion, and so on, hid over the store-room. They will be called for by
parties to-night — late to-night. Give them to the men who ask for
them, and have two bottles of whisky ready, too."

* "Next Tuesday, and the jig's up. Good-by, Surrattsville ! Good-by,
God-forsaken country ! Old Abe, the good old soul, may the devil take pity on
him ! " — Letter sworn to be John Surratt's, dated at leaving his tavern to live
in Washington, November 12, 1864— five months before the assassination. —
(Surratt's trial.)

A SSA SSI HA TION. 497

As the man took the package up-stairs, curiosity tempted him to
open it. It contained a field-glass, such as military officers used to
observe a distant enemy. His visitor's buggy was hardly out of
sight when he reached far under the rafters of his main hotel, from
a small hidden loft connected with his bar, and brought out two fine
Spencer breech-loading carbines, in canvas covers, a box of ammu
nition for them, a coil of rope, and a monkey-wrench, such as might
be used to screw up the nuts of carriage-wheels. He brought these
out and put them upon his own bed, to be ready when called for
that night.

" These things has troubled my mind ever sence John Surratt left
'em yer," mused the landlord, tipsily. " He and Dave Herold and
Port Tebakker Atzerodt come together, just before ole Abe's inog-
eration, and sence John's been to Richmond this house has been on
the pint of bein' s'arched. Well, I'll git rid of 'em now ! "*

Twenty miles down and back brought Mrs. Surratt, at almost
nine o'clock, to the descent of a hill overlooking Washington. The
city was illuminated, and the young man at her side expressed some
mild glow of satisfaction at Peace.

" I am afraid that all this rejoicing will be turned into mourn
ing," she said ; " this is a proud and licentious people, and God
will punish them."

Her violent hostilities in the war, she felt to have been in vain,
and the scene humiliated her. The horse shied in the city at the
torches of a glad procession going to serenade the President.

They were tired when they reached the little steep-staired house ;
but hardly had they supped, when the bell rang.

Booth appeared before her, stern and intense with the excite
ment and stimulation of the day. Drink changed his nature, but

* How well the government treated this family and tavern may be inferred
from the following boastful paragraph in John Surratt's public lecture on his
military campaigns, delivered at Rockville, Maryland, December, 1870 : " We
ran a regularly established line from Washington to the Potomac, and I being the
only unmarried man on the route, I had most of the hard riding to do. I devised
various ways to carry the dispatches, sometimes in the heels of my boots, some
times between the planks of the buggy. Never in my life did I come across a
more stupid set of detectives than those generally employed by the United States
Government. They seemed to have no idea whatever how to search men. . . .
It was a fascinating life to me. It seemed as if I could not do too much or run
too great a risk." On one occasion, it is Weichmann's testimony that John Sur
ratt told him he was going on the stage with Booth to play at Richmond.
32

498

KATY OF CATOCT2N.

keyed up his physical system and made him positive as the intoxica
tion of tyranny.

" The devil and his hour have concurred at last ! " he said. " I'm
going to kill him, and as many more as my few braves can reach
to-night ! "

" Lincoln ? "

" Yes ! "

He seemed insane between the bloody purpose and the vagrant
yet deeply preoccupied day.

" O John, friend, pet — oh, sir, think how you will bring me in !
Here I am just home, and have done your errand with my own."

" Fear not," said Booth ; "your tavern tenant is with us in feel
ing, and he'll never betray you. I have closed up every leak and
written my confession, and shall show myself to Lincoln's thousands,
among whom I mean to strike him ! "

She endeavored to affect him, but it was too late. The mark
of the drink was in his brow, deep as the brain. He talked strong
and with dramatic accent, broke down her feeble plaint, and made
her see, the instant he had left her, the injury she had done her
family by mixing in the war between the lines and suffering the
daring conspiracy of abduction to enter her household and get pos
session of her son. Oh, for this son to-night, to rush upon an
errand and arrest the madman's hand !

She had no son : the insurrection had swallowed them both up,
and the last, willful fugitive, and restless, but once meek and pious
boy, had received the Confederacy's employment only the moment
before its fall, and might now be hastening home from Canada in
time to perish !

She thought of the youth who had driven her that afternoon, as
one to send and give the alarm. Alas ! he was a clerk under the
stern Carnot of the War Department, Mr. Stanton.

Finally, she thought of Hugh Fenwick, and of his intimacy with
Secretary Stanton's brown-eyed friend, Major Bosler ; but him it
seemed impossible to find to-night in the peace-celebrating and
holiday-taking city. The door opened, and her late escort came
in, and found her running over her prayer-beads nervously.

" Pray ! pray ! " she said, " for my intentions."

" Ah ! " said he, " I thought you were a Christian, and wanted
peace to come, even if we must have our Union back."

The hall and parlor filled with the laughter of young women,

A SSA SSINA TION.

499

her daughter among them, and the hostess chased them to bed.
Then she sat down and said :

" Oh, he's an actor ! He won't do anything like that, fierce as
he has often talked."

Ten o'clock came sounding from the city bells.

As she stepped into her room and finished her toilet to retire
for the night, the hoofs of horses — two of them, as it seemed —
went past the door loudly.

" How that cavalry tears along to-night ! ' she said, and put oflt
the light.

Turning the great Doric Interior Department of marble, Booth,
after leaving Mrs. Surratt, paused under a hotel and bought at a
drug-store a vial of medicine. In the inn above, Payne had been
kept caged, like a beast before the performance, for two weeks, his
room previously secured by the Surratts, and he was visited there
by Mrs. Surratt, and that dusk he had received his instructions.

Booth turned into the hotel block a few steps farther on, by the
dark theatre alley, and clicked his key in his low stable-door.

" Lew, wake up ! " he whispered.

" I haven't been asleep, John," from a voice in the straw.

" This is the vial you are to take to Se ward's : remember, the
doctor's name is Verdi. Herold will see you pass Nailer's stable
and follow you, and be your guide. Take out your horse first !
Good-by, and make yourself a great man ! "

They shook hands in the dark, and the horse, bought by Dr.
Mudd, went out of the narrow alley with that powerful column of a
youth on his back — the youngest of the band.

When the horse's feet had died away, Booth led out his bay
mare and pulled her up the dingy theatre area to the low stage-
door, beside which was a bench. One or possibly two poor tene
ments were now inhabited in this court of stables, and a colored
woman in one heard the call of " Ned," and it was repeated at a
stage-window above.

Spangler appeared and held the animal until some one within
had summoned a lad of the foundling order, by the name of " Pea
nuts," who distributed the theatre-bills. He took the horse and lay
down upon the bench, and there in the solitude, the moon being
not yet up, the horse stamped for almost an hour, and the boy dozed
in the chilly night.

5oo

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

Booth had passed in, whispered to Spangler, and had come out
at the theatre front, on Tenth Street. Just as he reached there, the
President's carriage drove up, and the tall form of Mr. Lincoln was
seen, behind an officer and a young lady, coming forward with his
wife upon his arm. These four, assisted by ushers, passed into
one of the round doors of the theatre.

Booth felt a quivering and a gloating together pass like a cold
and a warm current to his heart. The man so long hunted was in
his den ; he rather rejoiced that there were women with him, to lull
apprehensions and reduce the area of resistance. He knew the
accompanying officer carried no arms where ladies went, as only
the ill-bred do. Yet there was a nervous void in his breast as he
muttered, under the blowing alcove lamp :

" This time I think I've got him ! "

He went into one of the three saloons girding the theatre, and
drank, and rushed out.

" Do I regret that I am in it ? " he asked. " No, I'll go through
with it ! I've sent my friends in there, and told them they would see
great acting."

He walked rapidly — the spurs rattling a little on his feet — to the
avenue, and turned into the Kirkwood Hotel, and mounted some
flights and knocked at a door.

A cry and a shivering chatter followed, and a voice asked :

"Who's— where?"

" I — open ! " the actor's bass rolled low.

" O Mister Boot ! I tought it might pe, maype — somepodies.
He ! he ! "

The coachmaker of Port Tobacco was there, Andrew Atzerodt,
a little boozy, but more ashen pale under his dirty skin and low-
crowned hat.

" Why ain't you ready ? All are out but you. If you fail to do
your work, remember! Your name goes in the hands of the
authorities, and they'll hang you without a trial. Where's your
knife?"

" Tere, Mr. Boot ! "

He pulled up the mattress of the hotel bed and showed a large
bowie-knife, and under his pillow was a revolver, loaded and
capped.

"You have got Herold's overcoat on the peg," said Booth,
"with my bank-book and tooth-brush in it. It may turn cold. I

ASSASSINATION.

501

can't do my job with an overcoat on, and depend on you to fetch it.
We all move on our men at five minutes after ten, sharp ! Andy
Johnson's room is right under you. Go at him and finish him — or
he'll raise the alarm on you ! Then, as I told you, mount your
horse at the door and ride fast for Benning's Bridge, where Payne
will meet you. Your only hope for life is to obey ! "

He was gone, and Atzerodt fell on the bed, and sobbed and
panted in the terror of the grave.

" Where can I go now ? " he moaned. " I don't know. May-
pe I can go up-country where I got a gal and a cousin. I reckon
tey won't haf me. Te witch at Shmoketown said I would pe
hanged and Boot pe burnt. My God ! my God ! Tat is a pad
man — tat Boot. I tought he was shoost braggin', like me, and
now he's got drunk, and maype he'll kill somepodies. Oh, let me
prays some ! "

He dropped upon his knees and set up what he thought was a
prayer, but it came to him, after he had grown very fervent, that it
was a piece of a song he was saying.

•' I don't know none," he exclaimed. " I'm gone up. If I
shteal dat horse, I'll pe sent to te penitentiary. I wish I was tere
now! I reckon I '11 go down and tell Andy Johnson I was put on
him to kill him, and won't do it. Then I won't pe hanged."

He leaped to his feet, put on his hat, felt confident and plausi
ble, and went down to the Vice-President's room. A soldier had
been guarding it in the earlier evening ; he was now gone, and no
response came from Atzerodt's knock.

The wretch hastened out, disconsolate, and up the avenue to
Nailer's stable to get his mare.

He saw Herold and Payne turn the corner of the avenue around
the Treasury Department facade, riding steadily.

Atzerodt spurred his horse down the obscure streets of Murder
Bay, behind the stable, and rode along the stinking ditch of the old
Tiber Canal, and wondered where he could go.

" I been goin' to te devil efer sence John Brown's times," he
said. " Nigger-ketchin' got me to plockade-runnin', and dat got
me to know Surratt and Boot, and I reckon I'll shoost go take a
drink at some dive and git hanged."

He dismounted, all incongruous and weeping, at the settled city
line, seeing there the red light of a bar. A woman came past him
and called his name —

502

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

" Andrew ? "

" Why — Nelly ! Don't you know I told you I should hang for
you some day ? Go stop dat Boot : he's at te theatre, and old Abe
Lincoln's there, and tere'll pe murder ! "

The woman checked a short scream, and ran through the next
cross-street to the avenue, and up to Ford's Theatre, where she had
the entree.

" I can give you, Miss Starr, a seat, if you can get it emptied,
right opposite the President's box," said the ticket-seller.

She hastened through the lobby and past the parquet, and up
the dress-circle stairs, and gave an usher whom she knew her
ticket, whispering:

" Has John Booth been here to-night ? "

" I saw him over yonder just now, near the State box. — Please
give this lady her seat, sir ! "

As the usher spoke, a report came from somewhere, startling
and loud. Nelly glanced at the President's box.

There sat the President, with his head dropped, as if glancing
away from the piece into the parquet, sleepily, while his wife had
turned her head toward the young lady at her side, each looking at
the other, and the officer behind the ladies had risen.

Smoke next curled curiously, slowly, at last strong out of the
box, and in the smoke it seemed that the officer and some other
one there were fighting. A voice came out of the short m&tte like
a command given on a ship, with the word " revenge " in it, and a
flash of steel or glass followed ; and then, while the play seemed to
halt, and part of the audience to be observing the box, a bare
headed man in black, with pallid face and large eyes, came right to
the box-railing, parted the flags, set his left hand on the rail, passed
his right hand up with a knife flashing below the palm, and vaulted
lightly over to the stage, fourteen feet below. There came trailing
down with him a strip of the starry corner of a flag caught upon his
foot. He fell to one knee, faltered, slowly rose and turned his face
toward the people, and uttered, in a sepulchral, enforced tone, " Sic
semper tyrannis!" and raised the knife again. Then stooping,
like one with his belly yearning for the ground, he made awkwardly
the skipping strides of actors who run off in combat-scenes, and dis
appeared beneath Nelly's eyes toward the prompter's hidden desk.

Everything had been done — from the firing of the pistol to the
disappearance — in hardly one minute.

A SSA SSINA TION.

503

There passed over the audience electric waves of wonder, in
quiry, movement, and sound. As they wavered to understand it all,
the piece also stopped upon the stage, and people there came run
ning from behind the painted scenes ; the orchestra rose, and a wild
scream came down from the upper box, through the festooned flags,
and the portrait of Washington. The President sat as before, quiet,
as if the pleasant farce were going on, and smiles had brought him
near to sleep, like babies' dreams.

Now, all the audience was up, and people were pushing at the
little door behind the President, and against the dress-circle wall.
They could not for a moment get in there, and began to scale the
posts and gilded pilasters of the box ; while other people clambered
over the orchestra tins and wire-nettings, and ran across the stage
— some hither, some thither — in a maze that plain wayfarers never
had explored. Actors and actresses came out in their fancy attires,
powder, and rouge ; and some wanted to faint, some to help, and
everybody pointed, explained, and shouted.

There stood upon the mimic stage a dairy scene — like that where
the President's fate had been foretold on John's Brown's farm — partly
flanked by a toy fence, and masked by a wing of other scenery, with
a bird-house and bench before the dairy, the front scene now torn
open in the spasmodic actions of some thirty people employed upon
that stage.

God had called the emancipator home when there were " no
cares upon his face."

As the President was carried down the stairs, Nelly followed,
being among the last to leave, and she saw his body enter a dwell
ing opposite, where Booth had at one time lodged with a fellow-
actor.

At this moment the fellow-actor, in another lodging, was burn
ing Mr. Booth's labored confession, in the terror of one on whom
had been pilloried a deadly secret.

"I know the red-bird now," sighed Nelly Harbaugh, "and he
has marked me with the dark ! In the morning they will find me
neither dark nor white, but where poor Lincoln is, asking Him to try
my cause/'

504 KA7"Y OF CATOCTIN*

CHAPTER XLVI.

FLIGHT OF SPIES.

ABEL QUANTRELL sat on Good-Friday night in his house,
preparing to antagonize the President ; and Katy was reading
from Lincoln's speech on the third anniversary of the Baltimore
riots :

" Calling to mind that we are in Baltimore, we can not fail to
note that the world moves. Three years ago, those soldiers could
not pass through Baltimore. I would say blessings upon the men
who have wrought these changes, and the women who have as
sisted them ! "

"That means you and Davis here," said Senator Pittson, "and
here you are 'blessing' the President up and down hill."

" Oh, what a scene was that ! " spoke Hannah Ritner. " The old
negroes and the children, the fair girls and the new-married pairs,
weeping, and singing, and praising God, when the tall, tender man
came past — and they say it has been the same in Washington and
Richmond. Oh, why be so impatient with him, friends, when these
poor slaves have waited for him trustfully these hundred years ? "

" Lincoln is a fine politician," said Mr. Davis, who now had two
Maryland senators, and nearly all the delegation in Congress, but
considered that he was no politician at all ; " I wish he would move
in here, and show me how to let all the returning rebels vote, and
yet not break him down. I see the same soured element returning,
and they will wheedle our Presidents away, and we shall always be
thirty years behind the North and West — afraid to say ' Liberty '
loud, singing the old pine-tree Maryland whine, and rather rejoicing
that we are wrong."

" Cube it," said old Abel Quantrell, looking like the face of Moses
carved on his broken tablets. " Liberty is not a gift, but the return
ing of a right. The gift is the ballot. Freedom itself is a coun
terfeit without civil rights. Put me to sleep among the blacks, and
let Gabriel call me when Africa is white ! "

Senator Pittson observed that Winter Davis a little flinched at
this, though with grim admiration.

" O friends ! " said Lloyd's half-brother, " all true legislation is for
the present. See how we have got along ; and the greatest man

FLIGHT OF SPIES.

505

on the globe this day, in popular faith, is Uncle Abraham. I trem
ble for his perfectness of fame."

The door opened, and Light Pittson entered on the arm of Lu
ther Bosler. Light's father looked up with a quick interest.

" Senator," said Luther, " this lady is to be my wife."

They all started up except Abel Quantrell, whose limbs would
no longer bear him, and he made a motion to Hannah Ritner, who
came and kissed him, while Katy and Light's father alternately em
braced the affianced couple.

As Mr. Davis departed, the old radical spoke from his wheeled
chair, bringing it forward :

" Bosler, in this house we pretend nothing. Do you know thai
I am the father of this boy, and that this saint should be my wife ? "

He pointed to the senator and to Hannah Ritner. They looked
at the lover calmly, yet both were anxious for his response.

" I have known it long," replied Luther Bosler. " To give this
lady my name has been my purpose, since I first discovered the pos
sibility of a misapprehension."

He reached his hand to Abel Quantrell 's grandchild, but she was
gone from his side, and now stood with flashing and indignant eyes,
comprehending a situation she had never anticipated.

" Spare yourself, sir," said Light Pittson, "an act of charity ! It
was for this you professed to love me ! I know the blemish in my
nature now, and it points me where to fly. The man who is all ro
mance, and against whom I have been so hypocritically warned be
cause he was not pure enough for me, implored me to leave Wash
ington with him this night. I will not return there, but will follow
him to where my friend, my uncle Lloyd, rights in Virginia, and I
shall be the wife of Mr. Booth ! "

" O Light ! " spoke Katy Bosler, seeing the trouble of the senator
and his parents. " Am I so wicked ? Yet where is my wedding-
ring?"

The door-bell rang as the town clocks sounded midnight. Hugh
Fenwick, entering, exclaimed :

" It is too true— Wilkes Booth has killed the President ! The
Secretary of State has been butchered ! The assassin's companion,
following him across the navy-yard bridge, gave the name of Lloyd
Quantrell ! "

At this appalling information the silence was long, till broken by
Light Pittson 's asseveration :

506 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

" I will marry Mr. Booth, if at the foot of the scaffold ! "

Abel Quantrell looked up at Hannah Ritner with a hard but
ghastly face.

." Three times the base is the cube," said he. " Am I not happy
in my posterity ? "

" I don't believe it was Lloyd ! " cried Katy Bosler.

" No, child," spoke A_bel Ouantrell, upon the inward breath of a
groan, " for both my sons had honest mothers."

" Fenwick," exclaimed Hannah Ritner, " did you warn that
woman Surratt, as you swore to do under the altar of your church ?
I see you did not ! I arrest you, sir, as one of the assassins ! "

Before he could reply, she had taken hold of him with a grasp of
man's strength, and drawn a bunch of keys from his clothing.

" Major Bosler, take these ; arrest this man, and search his room
and trunk. If he has done Lloyd Quantrell an injury, they shall
settle it, man to man ! "

Old Abel Ouantrell's head fell down. The second stroke of pa
ralysis had come to him.

The interview between Nelly Harbaugh and Light Pittson had
commenced in hostility, and ended in good influence ; for behind it
had been Hannah Ritner, her object a double one — to reveal Booth's
impurity to Light, and have her awaken in Nelly's nature a new in
terest in the actor, that his dangerous character might be under
Nelly's control.

Booth had now fallen entirely under the malignant influence of
his contemplated crime, and he deceived both women : secretive as
the grave to Nelly while daily in her chamber, and though forbidden
by Light to see her again, his pen was at work vainly seeking to
have her meet him in Virginia. He desired to enter there with the
double trophy of a " Yankee " senator's daughter and the President's
death. Light Pittson attracted his lower nature, and her sympathy
with the misfortunes of the Southern people, of late unreservedly
expressed, caused her name to be more closely linked with Booth's
than the facts warranted, and gave her parents many apprehensions,
who now knew the unprincipled relations of that worthless person
in many an unguarded woman's life !

Booth was piqued that Nelly Starr, as she was called, valued
Luther's love, while he, her injurer, had never gained her heart ;
and he had a grudge against Senator Pittson for ruling him out of

FLIGHT OF SPIES.

507

Light's society. On the other hand, Nelly relieved Luther Bosler
from any suspicion of having prejudiced Booth, and showed Light
that Lloyd Quantrell had taken that pains. She exceeded her own
intentions when she found the excellences of Miss Pittson's nature,
and freely implored her to see the gentleness and merit of the sol
dier Nelly had sacrificed and lost.

It was from this advice, and from loathing evil, that Light ac
cepted the officer in time to hear that her own family had been
throwing stones at others from a house of glass. Their trouble
was the deeper, that now the world would mention Light's name
as connected with Booth in a tender passion.

If she would only marry Luther Bosler before the scandal could
get well abroad !

Nelly Starr had undertaken, from both ambition and loneliness,
to remodel Booth's education, to study his parts with him, and get
out of his mind the rant and fustian of his old father's exam-
pie

She found him headstrong and incurable. With profound belief
in himself, and enamored of his one bloody idea — the wickedest in
the land, but he thought it the greatest — he already lived in the satis
faction of one famed and great. He was like the man in the tale,
who had tried to discover where the unforgiven sin was, and thrilled
with the conceit that it was monopolized in his own breast.*

The intuition that there was something too deep for her in
Booth's thought and intention, rallied all the energies of Nelly's
nature, and Hannah Ritner kept the motive alive. Nelly sounded
him about the President, and he even complimented Mr. Lincoln.
She inquired about his prospects.

" Why," said he, " I was always popular South, and now we
shall have peace, and I will be the first to enter there^and you and I
will draw great houses, Nelly."

On the day of the murder he came to her again, renewed the
protestations and endearments of deceitful love, and bade her go to
Ford's Theatre that night, as he had requested many others, in the
egotism of his bloody patent-right. Later on, he sent her word that
Jie would call for her, but, finding his time spent, she heard by acci
dent from Atzerodt the explanation of his mystery, and hastened to
the theatre, forever too late !

When the officers came to seek the assassin's mistress, as the
* Hawthorne, (i Ethan Brand."

508 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

papers related, they found her insensible, and an empty bottle of
chloroform at her side.*

Liquor crazed the Booths, but made them "letter-perfect," as the
actors would relate, in their parts : so Wilkes Booth had an unnat
ural brightening of his faculties all thabday, and when the moment
approached to carry out his threat, he merely drank more often and
more regularly, and his last act in front of the theatre was to drink
alone, at a bar ; next he stepped into the lobby and noted the
time, and then he climbed the dress-circle stairs and made his way,
with spurs upon his feet, along the wall to the right, behind the
stools and chairs packed there, asking one person to move, or bow
ing to another, until he was within a few steps of the little door en
tering the box passage.

There he paused, put his low-crowned, slouched hat behind his
back, and inclined his head forward, with a large seal ring on his
little finger raised to his chin.

His head was broad, the forehead large, and the black hair,
parted behind, had a curling tendency ; and the nearly straight,
heavy, black eyebrows shaded black eyes which wore a look between
modesty and obduracy, and, in conjunction with the decisiveness of
the mouth, conveyed the idea of dangerous equipoise, needing only a
breath from the willful soul within to overturn the whole fabric of
the man.

His nose was thin and not prominent, rather subordinate to the
brow. In his expression could be felt the influence of both alcohol
and self-consciousness. His chin was small, and the rich black
mustache around the mouth hid a commonness there, and his neck
was scarred just above the collar by both a tumor and a wound.

He weighed one hundred and sixty pounds, was hardly five feet
eight, and unusually compactly set, the child of a large, healthy
Englishwoman, who survived him more than twenty years, and of
a small, Jewish-marked, and acutely organized English father.

The lower portion of this young man's face was almost generic
in Baltimore. His clothes were dark, bound with silk trimmings,
and he was not unobserved by many, most of whom saw only the

* " The detectives proceeded to the house at the corner of Thirteenth Street
and Ohio Avenue, where Booth spent much of his time, Ella Starr, the woman
who attempted suicide, being his mistress." — "Washington Star," April 17,
1865.

FLIGHT OF SPIES.

509

fine, sparkling contrasts of his face and did not know his name.
He had avoided the company of the average stock actors as beneath
his notice, to shower time and favors upon ignorant dependents.

He now pushed the last chair aside, took a card from a case,
and handed it to a messenger of the President, who read the name
and hesitated.

" He has just sent for me," said Booth, " and is expecting me."

The messenger heard the words, looked into the serious, respect
ful countenance, and said no more.

Booth stepped down one step, as the circles inclined, and pressed
the door at once with his hand and knee : the loosened screws came
out, and he entered the passage and closed the door behind him.
He took the wooden stick from a corner and barred the door against
the audience.

He then bent his eye from that darkness to the eyelet-hole, and
saw the President, with his head a little turned from the stage, ex
posing his neck and the lower portion of his brain to the assassin.

Mr. Lincoln was seated in a cushioned and arm-furnished rock
ing-chair at the angle of the box nearest the audience, and immedi
ately before the door Booth had bored ; in placing his seat there the
confederate had allowed for a space between him and the next
chair, for the assassin to escape by.

Booth saw to the buttoning of his coat, drew the Derringer
pistol from his pocket, opened the door, and fired the powerful slug
into the President's brain, his weapon nearly against Mr. Lincoln's
skull. The sting and smoke produced a kind of paralysis among
all in the box.

He immediately dropped the Derringer upon the floor of the
private box and drew a large bowie-knife, and, rushing to the front
of the box, shouted in the deepest tragedy tones :

" Revenge for the South ! "

The officer in that box was the step-son of a senator, and the
young lady there was his espoused wife. He came forward and
took hold of Booth, uncertain what the intrusion meant, when the
assassin, in the frenzy between desperation and drink, endeavored
to stab him to the heart ; but the officer's left arm was interposed,
and the sharp blade ripped it from the elbow almost to the shoulder.

As the inmates of the box recoiled, and the wife of the President
screamed, the murderer, whose victim sat unmoved and unprotest-
ing, rushed between Mr. Lincoln and his wife to the railing, cleared

5io

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

away a festooning" flag with a motion of his clinched hand and the
knife-handle, and by his unemployed left hand vaulted over to the
stage below. Ever)' motion had been rehearsed again and again.

The matter of these exterior ornaments — there being three differ
ent flags upon the broad united box — he could not provide as per
fectly for, and in descending more than twice his own stature his
spur was caught by a ravished blue ensign, and he was thrown out
of his adjustment and struck the stage upon the opposite foot, and
came down with a swooning feeling that, for an instant, threatened
to detain him there until he could be seized.

In the leg of a man are two long bones, the thinner one, called
the fibula, or splinter-bone, being on the outside, and serving to
keep the ankle from turning outward. It lies there somewhat like a
ramrod on the outside of a gun. By the unexpected shock of falling
on this foot only, the rather unusual accident resulted of the imme
diate fracture of this bone alone, and not of the accompanying stock,
or larger bone ; but it produced a momentary nervous shock in the
assassin's whole system.

Booth rallied his powers, exclaimed, "Sic semper tyrannzs!"
according to rote, and limped across the stage to the opposite wing,
more sobered than he had been at any stage of the tragedy.*

As he proceeded, between pain and ferocity, he resolved to slash
and kill anybody who came in his way. His confederate had cleared
him a lane to escape down — the scenery piled against the wall ; and
when Booth, who had dropped his hat as he entered the box, had
nearly reached the back door, he met the orchestra leader and cut
twice at him and kicked him, and the back door mysteriously swing
ing open in his face, he passed out, and it shut behind him.

The boy " Peanuts " stood there holding his horse, as Spangler
had ordered him to do, and weary, after being exposed a whole hour
in the lonely night in that passive task, he had been aroused from his
orphan meditations by the firing of the pistol ; and suddenly a man
ran upon him, cursing and shouting :

" Give me that horse ! "

With one foot in the stirrup, Booth turned and struck the boy
savagely with the butt of the knife, and knocked him down upon
the cobble-stones and kicked him there.

* Booth said to Thomas Harbin, in Virginia, that if he had not been a very
courageous man he would have given up and have been taken right there, as
he for an instant seemed about to faint.

FLIGPIT OF SPIES. 5!!

Then, digging his spurs into his horse, he turned out of the nar
row alley and spurred again, so that the animal ran up on the oppo
site pavement under St. Patrick's old brick church.

" Ride hard ! " cried Booth to Herold, waiting there ; " the devil
is to pay ! "

They turned at Ninth Street, and went two blocks behind the
Patent-Office, and passed Mrs. Surratt's door at a full run ; and,
crossing the naked Judiciary Square, between the Court-House and
the old jail, descended the next street beyond the City Hall, and
crossed the little Tiber on the Avenue.

The moon came out as they galloped up the slopes of Capitol
Hill, and a few people passing there turned to see such fierce riding.

" Walk your horse, Dave," said Booth to Herold, " and let me
get over the navy-yard bridge before you come. I want you to
give the name there of Quantrell. I'll fix that fellow as I have fixed
Sam Arnold, who deserted me ; for I have left his letters to me in
my trunk at the hotel, and they'll hang him, sure ! "

When Herold reached the bridge, a few minutes after Booth, he
added to OuantreH's name the information that he had been on a
low female carouse in the city. The sergeant, in the kindly glow of
restored peace, passed both these murderers. After they crossed
the bridge, Booth got with difficulty and pain on Herold's easier
riding-horse— the same once owned by Hannah Ritner.

In the mean time Herold had ridden with Payne to the door of
the Secretary of State, in an old tall brick house, on a secluded side
of the President's green square. At the next corner below, in a
brick dwelling, was the headquarters of the commander of the city
of Washington, where generally orderlies and horses were to be
found ready to take dispatches ; but these murderers had chosen a
late hour of the night, when the military business was done, and
while peace was so far insured that discipline was much relaxed.

Leaping from his horse, Payne handed the bridle to Herold, who
sat there with a foolish smirk of dread.

The tall brigand, with perfectly beardless face, and something of
an Indian in bearing and in straight black hair, and with a powerful
columnar neck and broad chest, walked up to the bell and rang it.

He wore the heaviest cast-off boots of Wilkes Booth, black cloth
trousers, an overcoat of white and brown, conspicuous in the night,
a dark-gray undercoat, and a slouched brown hat. He was familiar

512 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

with saber and knife exercise, and had been kept sober until just
before this essay, when he was toned up to his bloody work by
drink.

He had disappeared within the hall-way, perhaps five to seven
minutes, when Herold, sitting on the horse in morbid apprehension,
heard cries and shouts within the old gloomy house, and the sound
of blows and of falling bodies.

The horses raised their ears, and moved around their halters un
easily.

" Murder ! Murder ! Murder ! " came in a half-stifled outburst
from the mysterious interior, and was followed by the same terrible
word in a piercing scream from a lifted window at the eaves.

Herold let go of the halter of the other horse, and stuck his spurs
into his own fleet roan.

" Tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a ! " came the single-footed racking
echoes out of the old cobble-stones, and the horse turned the mili
tary headquarters and skipped down the softer avenue, until, at Wil-
lard's Hotel corner, a man rushed out at Herold, crying :

" Here, now ! Get off that horse ! I didn't hire him to you to
ride all night ! "

Seeing the livery-man, but not recognizing him in the terror of
the moment, Herold wheeled up Fourteenth Street, past the news
paper correspondents' offices, and, turning dowrn F Street, had barely
paused at the outlet of the alley, when Booth burst out, and they
joined in fierce, wild flight, as has been seen.

CHAPTER XLVII.

PAYNE.

THE Secretary of State was a man almost sixty-four, of slight
and delicate structure, and without any personal enemies except
those whose unjust interests felt the silver arrows of his argument.
In youth he had been a tutor in a slave State, and formed the opin
ion that the systems of free and slave labor were irreconcilable. As
Governor and senator of the most powerful State in the Union, he
nurtured -freedom among the young men and made it captivating,
and now was triumphantly closing the greatest career of any foreign

PA YNE.

513

secretary from the New World. The same hand which sealed the
Proclamation of Emancipation had foiled Europe in its attempts to
divide the raiment of the republic, and was yet to settle with the
crowned puppet in Mexico, and also to terminate Russian rule in
America.

Ten days previous to this Good Friday Mr. Seward had been
thrown from his carriage and his jaw and arm broken, and he was
now lying helpless in his bed. With cruel indifference, Booth con
sidered that these disabilities made it the easier to dispatch him,
and used the package of medicine to procure for Payne admittance
to his chamber of sickness.

The ruffian entered, and was dressed as neatly as Booth could
afford. He stated to a colored boy in the hall that the doctor had
sent verbal instructions by him about taking the medicine, and
spoke awhile plausibly in a soft, fine voice through his thin lips ;
but, as the black boy protested that Payne could not go up-stairs,
Payne thrust his right hand in his white-overcoat pocket and said he
should "gv up, with a menacing air, somewhat considering whether
he should not dispatch the door-keeper on the spot.

Finally, he started up the stairs alone, the uncertain boy preced
ing him, and at the top of the house — the third story — the eldest
son of the invalid, who was the Assistant Secretary of State, came
out to see what was the matter.

The man, holding up the package, repeated that the doctor had
sent him to make a personal communication to Mr. Seward.

At this the son unwittingly entered his father's room, thus laying
bare its location to the murderer ; but, coming back in an instant,
he said :

" Father is asleep now ; give me the medicine, and I will repeat
the doctor's instructions to him."

Payne said that would not do, and kept insisting with rising ag
gressiveness that he must go in, until peremptorily told to retire.
He muttered an assent of disappointment, turned a step down the
stairway, and then leaped back with his heavy pistol in his hand,
and proceeded, cavalryman-fashion, to beat in young Mr. Seward's
skull, merely saying in a low, vengeful tone :

" I'm mad ! I'm mad ! "

His temper was a fierce paroxysm, indiscriminate, and bent on
massacre.

The upper floor of that lonely house had been for some time a
33

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

kind of hospital ; the aged Secretary's wife also lying maimed and
ill in an adjacent room, and she was to expire, her death accelerated
by this night's events, within a few weeks.* The Sewards were an
affectionately domestic family, and their daughter Fanny — who also
died before many months — and their eldest son's wife, occupied this
remote upper floor, with the two sons — the Assistant Secretary
aforesaid and Major Seward — and a wounded soldier-nurse detailed
from one of the hospitals.

The helpless statesman had been unable to sleep all day, with
fever and debilitation, and had just dropped into repose when the
solid, decisive tread of a man was heard on the stairs, and Fanny
Seward said to the soldier — a lad from the forests of Maine, named
Robinson : " I wonder who that is ? Some one not used to approach
ing sick-rooms, I should think ! "

The same tread called Assistant Secretary Frederick Seward
from his wife's room, in the front of the house ; and he, confront
ing this stranger with the package, only observed that the man
was rather dull in understanding, and imputed his obstinacy to his
fidelity to the doctor.

Payne, indeed, was of a low order of intelligence, approximating
to the family slaves he had been overseer of, and his mental organ
ization was both inharmonious and deficient ; his eyes without the
radiance of mind, the two sides of his head unsymmetrical, his
memory slow, and his moral distinctions weak. Education might
have disciplined and aroused his mind, but the instinctive habits of
the Alabama plantation, and the school of war, had made him only
a machine of his savage temper. The obstacles he encountered
aroused this to the highest pitch before he had struck a blow.
Booth had set his mechanism like a clock to this hour, and the
alarm-spring was now released.

Frederick Seward had closed the sick-chamber door behind him
when he returned, but Fanny Seward, his sister, opened it to see
what the messenger wanted, and left it partly open. Therefore,
when the assassin turned back, and with all his strength beat his
great navy revolver on Frederick's head, he also rushed for the door
ajar; but the stunned man, with affection almost stronger than life
— his head open to the brain — slipped before the assassin, blindly
groping against the wall, and pulled the door fast and staggered be-

* Mrs. Seward died June 21, 1865, surviving the assassination about seven
weeks, and departing two weeks before the execution of Mary E. Surratt.

PAYNE. 5I5

fore it, so that Payne could not reach the kncb, but continued to beat
his frail obstructor, and again fractured his skull with the pistol.

The gas in this landing-hall burned bright, and Frederick Sew-
ard's wife came out, wondering, in time to see her husband and a
giant, in a great white coat, fall into the sick-room through the
burst-open door.

For months this son was speechless, and between life and death.

The sick-room had a single gas-light turned low, and on the
farther side, near the front window, was the statesman's bed, in
which he was raised to an inclined position by a skeleton hospital
apparatus, and was leaning over the farther side of the bed so as to
let his broken right arm, in the bandages, be free of the bed-frame.*

The assassin in the dim light discovered his victim, and drew his
knife. His hat had fallen off, and, as he bounded toward the bed,
the soldier-nurse interposed, and was felled to the floor by a down
ward thrust of the knife in the scalp ; and the daughter of Mr. Sew-
ard also coming between, Payne with his left hand hurled her aside
and 'threw himself across the bed, holding the sick man down with
one hand, and stabbing him with the other.

The eldest son's interference had deranged the assassin's sight
or nerves, and, aiming to cut Mr. Se ward's throat, he merely cut his
cheek nearly off, and wounded his neck. The bowie-knife had an
upper edge and sharp upturned point, and, hastening to complete
his work, Payne drew it backward, and also slashed the lower side
of the secretary's neck.

As Payne was about to complete his work, the soldier-nurse, still
suffering from a battle-wound in the leg, leaped upon his back in the
bed and seized his upraised .arm, while Miss Fanny Seward cried,
" Don't let them carry father off ! " and she threw up a side-window
overlooking the near President's mansion, and screamed "Mur
der ! "

The house was now alarmed, but not a weapon was at hand for
defense, while the murderer still had a revolver full of balls and his
blood- dyed knife. The colored boy had run down the two flights of
stairs to hunt assistance at the avenue ; the eldest son lay insensible
in his own blood ; three women were there, but Mr. Seward 's wife,
dangerously ill, required the assistance of the other two.

The Secretary's younger son, in deep sleep, was now slowly

* How like the wounded Coligni's assassination on St. Bartholomew's
night !

5 1 6 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

aroused by the noise, and groped into the hall in his shirt and
drawers.

Nothing meantime had saved the great Secretary's life but the
common soldier and his own astute action.

As soon as the soldier seized his assailant, Mr. Seward rolled
himself up in the bedclothes, dropped out on the farther side, and
rolled under the shelter of the bedstead.

The soldier from the forests of Maine now grappled with the
soldier from the forests of Florida — pine-tree against pine — the one
gigantic, hardly of man's age, armed, and in a premeditated task, to
which his Seminole-like temper had now fully aroused ; * the other,
surprised, stabbed in the head, confused, unarmed, and barely con
valescent. Yet Robinson clung to Payne as if he had been the last
resistant in the last ditch of disunion. Both had been private sol
diers, and they fought with the desperation of an ordeal by single
combat.

The Floridian — longer, stronger, and padded in an overcoat —
brought his knife right over his shoulder-blade backward and drove
it into private Robinson's shoulder twice, to the bone.

The man still held to Payne's arms, and pulled him off the pub
lic man's bed and rolled with him on the floor. In the oversetting,
Payne slipped his knife into his pocket and gripped his heavy pistol
there again by the barrel, and, with the frenzy of a tiger, struck
Robinson, with his right hand released below the elbow, time and
again and under the left ear, the heavy pistol-butt seeming to split
the soldier's spinal column. But Payne could not shake the man
off, who clung to him like a sheriff to a highwayman, and held him
closer, so that he could not fully command his weapons.

The assassin then dropped his pistol, which was found in pieces
on the floor, the pine-knot cranium of Maine having been too hard
for it ; but there was left the bloody knife, and this Payne produced
again, and attempted the favorite feat with bowie-knife, of disem
boweling his detainer as they had both leaped to their feet.

* Payne was from Florida, of Alabama birth, his family named Powell, and
it is a curious suggestion that he may have been related to the Seminole Osce-
ola, for which see Benton's "Thirty Years,'.' vol. ii, chap, xix : "The prime
mover in all this mischief, and the leading agent in the most atrocious scene of
it, was a half-blooded Indian, of little note before that time, and of no conse
quence in the councils of his tribe. His name is nqt to be seen in the treaty of
Payne's Landing ; we call him Powell ; by his tribe he was called Osceola." —
Benton's speech, 1838.

PA YXE.

517

The agile soldier hugged him from behind, slipping sidewise as
the knife was pulled upward, and also avoiding the lift-strokes
against his breast — for the murderer, with lightning-like rapidity, cut
upward and downward, toward groin and bowels below, and head
and lungs above. In dodging these strokes, Robinson worked his
way to the unknown maniac's front, and they clutched now, eye to
eye, and only one man armed.

Robinson seized Payne's wrist, pinned the knife to his side, and
streaming blood, while the other was uninjured, even unbruised,
tripped his knee to throw him, Northern fashion, over his hip to the
floor.

The soldier's wounded leg would not support him in the effort
to lift this gladiator, whose weight was nearly two hundred pounds,
and all of it brawn ; as he raised the great column up, his leg be
gan to give way.

" I'm mad ! I'm mad ! " the assassin gasped between his teeth
in the dim room, feeling that he was rinding his match.

Both men now wTorked for each other's throats, and Robinson
was the quickest. His idea was to edge the man over the threshold
and work him against the banisters of the stairs, and throw him
down the well thereof. Intelligence, growing by steadiness and
moral consciousness, was compensating for his loss of blood and
many wounds ; for this man had come from the land of wild beasts,
and had fought the winter, freezing at his vitals in the roaring tor
rents of the Aroostook. His alligator opponent was already sliding
out, worried and broken-spirited, and his heart in his legs, when
the fresh son of the Secretary, almost undressed, entered the room
and took hold of the assassin.

Major Augustus Seward had leaped to the conclusion that his
father was delirious, seeing a man in the imperfect light firmly held
by another ; but taking hold of this former person, he became con
scious of a frantic strength and extraordinary size, and his next idea
was that it was the military nurse — a stranger to most of the house
hold—who had gone crazy and attacked his father ; for the sick
man's bed xvas empty.

" I'm mad ! I'm mad ! " repeated this stranger in a low voice, as
if by rote, the vehemence in it gone, and this suggestion he derived
from Booth, who had told him to pass for a lunatic after begin
ning the combat, and throw the sick man's attendants off their
guard.

518 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

" Major, for God's sake, let go of me ! " said the nurse, all bloody,
and now somewhat held, too, by the son.

The major pushed both men toward the chamber-door.

" Take his knife from this hand I am holding and cut his
throat ! " the nearly breathless attendant said.

The major still pushed the enclasped pair toward the door, and
there Payne let go of Robinson, and with his left fist knocked him
down, while drawing the released knife upon Major Seward and
cutting him with spent strength in the forehead and hand.

The assassin now sprang with the terror of death toward the
stairs, and bounded down them. The whole combat, in all its
involutions, had hardly occupied five minutes.

As he w^as going down he overtook a messenger of the State
Department escaping also, and Payne, by a forward blow, stabbed
him between the spine and the rib, and felled him there.

At the street the dark-brown horse was just making off. Payne
pursued him, and mounted with the ease of one long in the
irregular cavalry, and plunged into the miry ground of Vermont
Avenue, and disappeared in the darkness of the scantily settled
suburbs there. In mounting the horse he had dropped his bloody
knife in the street.

He had wounded five men in that encounter, but failed to take
the life of any one, and they all recovered, while his own sluggish
yet torrid temperament had been deranged by the courage and
pertinacity of the only and the accidental soldier encountered by
any of these spies.

With the scant drilling Payne had received in the by-ways of
Washington, he now lost his way. Herold had been placed at the
door by Booth to work upon the pride of Payne, and make him go
through with his part ; but now Herold had run away, and Payne
was reduced to a mere boy in spirit, and he forgot the roads.

He aimed to strike the old Bladensburg toll-gate, which stood at
the corner of the road to Benning's Bridge. Even in our day the
inlet to this by-road from the turnpike is narrow, like a private lane,
and, though Booth had repeatedly shown it to his band,* Payne
failed to recognize it.

He rode through the northeastern suburbs skirting the boundary,

* John McCullough told me that Booth put him on a horse and took him
to Benning's Bridge, months before the murder, saying, " If a man was in a
scrape, here would be a good lane to get out."

PA YA'E.

519

took the old Bladensburg pike, and followed it farther than the East
ern Branch should be, and then got into an army-road leading be
tween two of the forts. Movements in those earthworks struck con
sternation to him ; he heard horses come out from the city, and the
picket called. So he rode into a piece of woods, and, as the moon
came out of the horizon, beheld his nearly white overcoat soaked in
blood.

With a shudder he removed it, and threw it upon the ground.

He saw his shadow in the woods, and he had no hat upon his
head.

In despair he took off his undercoat, and cut the sleeve from his
woolen shirt over the muscular arm, and made himself a sort of cap
of it.

Then he rode his horse across the fields and back into the east
ern skirts of the city, and finally felt his way down toward a brook
in the red-clay soil, and saw broad water open before him : he recog
nized the Eastern Branch he was to cross.

As Payne picked his way toward the environing marshes to find
the bridge, cavalry dashed down the crossing road, and he heard
the guard doubled and set, and the order given to let no man pass
alive. The bells from the city struck twelve o'clock.

He turned back and urged his horse with fury, until he saw the
Poor-House at the river's brink, and thought how glad he would be
of a refuge there. As he looked up, a meteor trailed across the sky,
and filled his heart with superstition.

He rode down along a strand before naked bluffs of clay, and
turned up a dismal ravine from the chill river, on whose summits
were some poor people's houses. In these he heard animated talk,
and distinguished the words :

" Nobody knows who did it. It seemed like de devil hopped
down all black and said — "

" What did he say ? "

" ' He's sick ! Sing fur hosannas ' ! "

" What's dat ? "

The door opened, and heads appeared.

" It's him — de devil ! "

Payne spurred his horse away, and before he could recover self-
possession had been stopped by a great yellow hospital on a plateau,
and not far away the dome of the Capitol was seen sailing through
soft, fleecy clouds, like Columbus's egg upright under a setting swan.

520 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

He saw people ride out. The town was alarmed. Slipping
from his sweating horse, he left it forever, and crept away across the
moor-like April commons until he saw a large cemetery rise under
the trees, with monuments and vaults.

It occurred to him that at the old Virginia churches he had some
times found an empty vault above the ground to bivouac in, and he
tried the slabs upon several of these Washington vaults until one
gave way, and he removed it far enough to creep within and lift
the slab back by his back and shoulders.

He then lay down in the cold stone walls, felt the glutinous blood
on his coat-sleeve at the wrist, and knew that he was spotted every
where. He was splashed with mud, bruised, wrenched, thirsty,
and abandoned ; unacquainted with any family in Washington ex
cept Mrs. Surratt's, and he had no hat to wear, so that it would be
suspicious for him to walk abroad, and had no money to equip or
move himself.

He lay there all night without blanket or overcoat, chilly and
miserable. It occurred to him to attack and kill any man who might
approach, but the next day the cemetery was deserted, as the murder
had called everybody in marveling groups to the city.

He lay still all day Saturday, and on Easter-Sunday, when Christ
arose, a funeral came near him, and a person dropped a newspaper,
which Payne reached out and took, after all were gone. Near it lay
a pick for digging graves, and this also he drew within the vault.

The paper contained a proclamation from the stern yet tender
Secretary of War, saying :

" One hundred thousand dollars reward /

" The mtirderer of our late beloved President, Abraham Lin
coln, is still at large !

" Fifty thousand dollars will be paid by this department for his
apprehension.

"Twenty-five thousand dollars reward for A. Atzerodt, some
times called 'Port Tobacco.'

" Twenty-five thousand dollars reward for David E. Herold.

" All persons harboring or secreting the said persons, or either of
them, or aiding or assisting their concealment or escape, will be
treated as accomplices, subject to trial before a military commission
and the punishment of death.

" Let the stain of innocent blood be removed from the land ! "

PA YNE.

521

As Payne read this with horror, he observed that his own name
was not printed, probably not known, and that none of his victims
were dead. In a revulsion of gratitude and tears, he tell upon his
face in the stone vault, and said a prayer his Baptist father had
taught him.

The fourth night following the crime fell upon the old graveyard
and the monuments of senators, vice-presidents, state ministers, and
jurists. Payne, nearly dead with hunger, crawled forth that drizzling,
chilly, Monday night among the low cedar-trees to execute the only
device he could mature : to visit Mrs. Surratt, with the pick upon his
shoulder and in the guise of a sewer-digger, and obtain a hat and
clothes and money.

He left the cemetery after ten o'clock, and came over Capitol
Hill, avoiding the Avenue, and, ascending the widow's high wooden
steps, he rang the hall-bell. In a moment the door opened with a
quick twist, and an alert and searching-eyed man confronted the
stan-ing wretch, but not before Payne had walked right into the
hall pursuant to his plan and from his fears. The man shut the
door behind him, and locked it.

" I guess I am mistaken/' faltered Payne.

" Whom do you want to see ? "

" Mrs. Surratt."

" This is right ; walk in ! "

The Nemesis that punishes by man's delays had brought the
assassin to the headquarters of the band at the very moment when
the family there were being arrested. Payne was taken before them,
all surrounded by their personal effects, and waiting for a carriage.
His prevarications had aroused the officer's suspicions, and a cocked
pistol was held at his body, and he was made to lay the pick down.

Mrs. Surratt had just requested permission to fall on her knees
and pray. As she arose, making the sign of the cross, the officer
said :

" Mrs. Surratt, do you know this man ? "

She looked, and saw the man, above all others, she had most to
fear.

Raising her hands, fresh from making the holy sign, the wretched
woman swore :

" Before God, sir, I do not know this man — I never saw him
before ! "

Yet he had been her guest, had sat in the very box where the

522 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

murder was to be done, with her son and family, and had been
secreted in the hotel in the theatre-block by her request.

The circle of the crime was now completely closed. On Payne's
feet were Booth's boots, marked with his initials ; Payne's horse was
afterward identified as purchased by Booth in Dr. Mudd's presence,
a quarter of a mile from the latter's house. In Booth's vest at the
hotel had been found — with the handcuffs befitting a slave-buyer,
but intended to bind the martyr President's hands — the card of
Mrs. Surratt's son. And Mrs. Surratt's daughter bore unwilling
testimony that Payne had lodged in her brother's bed.

The photographs of insurgent chiefs in the house, a card with
" Sic semper tyrannzs!" upon it, the testimony of the family and
boarders, and the flight of the son back to Canada, indicated too
well the character of the house, and the most responsible person
there : the only one with claims to religion and family ties was this
spiteful-hearted woman, on whom the heavy hand of the state had
fallen when the blood of its chief cried aloud that mercy to woman
had been abused.

A Baltimore actor in New York, to whom Booth had proposed to
take a place at Ford's Theatre, and there turn off the gas while he
committed the crime, came and testified ; and the evidence around
Spangler, the carpenter, gathered tight. O'Laughlin was arrested,
and Arnold's letter, found in Booth's trunk, incriminated them all.
Arnold made a full confession, as did Atzerodt, but the Government
would admit neither as its witness. Vengeance, postponed for years
on cowards and lurking spies, was to fall at last !

Atzerodt had spent a miserable night at the stage-tavern behind
Booth's hotel, and in the morning he struck out for the mountain coun
try, selling his pistol in Georgetown, and he was arrested half-way to
the Catoctin Valley, hiding in bed., and endeavoring to disguise him
self in the German dialect — a thin disguise, but the only honest gar
ment he had left. He immediately informed upon Herold, whose
coat, he said, and bowie-knife were to be found in the room at the
Kirkwood Hotel, where Atzerodt came on the morning of the assas
sination-day. They found there a silly mixing of arms, cartridges,
spurs, and liquorice ; the latter designated Herold's tastes as an apoth
ecary's boy, and Booth's Montreal bank-book was in his pocket,
The Government now meant to promote Mr. Herold to a position
more worthy of his years, and teach him dignity by elevating him.

IN THE SHORT FIXES.

523

The fact was apparent to the Government that, next to Booth,
the active genius of evil had been the widow Surratt's son, who paid
no more attention to the obligations of his protection than had Payne,
who displayed at the moment of his arrest the military safeguard and
solemn oath of amnesty.

But this son had been absent from Washington, on messenger
spy- service, for three weeks prior to the assassination, and the de
liberate murder of the President, Vice-President, General, and min
isters had been resolved upon after the son disappeared ; therefore
some other person in the house of the Surratts would have to bear
the responsibility of complicity in this later plot.

There was none but Mrs. Surratt, and she had been the tool of
Booth ; her message to the country tavern that day, her silence after
the crimes, her denying of Payne, and the continued absence of her
son, as well as the testimony concerning her violent talk for years,
led the Government to conclude that she might have been the un-
womaned spirit of the whole plot.

Atzerodt met her at the prison, looking up at her window, and
exclaimed :

" ' Te last man was a womans.' Look tere ! I see my dreams.
And te black man with te white face, will hang us all ! "

CHAPTER XLVIII.

IN THE SHORT PINES.

WHEN the assassin passed over the navy-yard bridge from the
city he gave his own name — " Booth." In his years of premeditating
some deep act of treachery he had cultivated police officers and de
tectives, and observed that they were governed by their suspicions
and always distrusted candor. So, when he had given the name of
Booth, the earliest professional officers who arrived at the bridge
exclaimed : " This must have been the dummy, to make us a false
scent. The real Booth has gone another way."

Meantime, Booth, leading Herold in the ride, spurred his racking
horse fiercely, and they both rode without mercy until they reached
Surratt's, standing out against the old fields and woods like En-
dymion's bower in the kiss of moonlight.

524 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

" Get off," said Booth, " and wake the man up ! I've got a tooth
ache in the foot. We must find a doctor to set this broken bone,
which moves and scrapes."

Herold, raised by the exercise from his fears, went in and shook
up the drunken landlord, a besotted creature, who had once been on
the police force in Washington, but had dropped down to keep this
low country bar. He set the whisky-bottles ordered by Mrs. Surratt,
that very sunset, before Herold, who said, " For God's sake, Lloyd,
go get them things ! " And, while Mr. Lloyd was bringing down
one carbine, and the cartridges for it, and the field-glass the lady
had fetched, Herold gave Booth, sitting on his goaded roan, a bot
tle of whisky. He was already drunk,* but drank more than half
the bottle, and sat on his horse between sleepiness and recklessness,
now stiff, now swaying. He boasted aloud of murdering the Presi
dent himself, and of having killed Mr. Seward, at least, of the Cabi
net ; and nothing of this import affected the landlord at all, who
had, in six months, heard so many atrocious hopes and wishes ex
pressed there against the public authorities that he rather congrat
ulated the assassins.

" I can't take my carbine," said Booth ; " I can't manage it with
this leg. Where is the nearest doctor ? "

" There's a ole Doctaw Hoxton nigh by, but he won't practice
no mo'. You must git down Beantown way, to find any doctaw to
night. There's Doctaw Mudd ! Don't you want t'other carbine,
and the rope and wrench ? "

" No. We want a splint and a crutch. Put down that carbine,
Dave ! "

"John, I can't do without my gun," replied Herold. "I reckon
Payne and Atzerodt ain't a-coming."

" Dr. Mudd's the man," exclaimed Booth, spurring the roan
horse Herold had watered, and the soft road gave the sucking
sounds —

" Tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a ! "

The next day, when a parcel of officers reached Surratt's tavern,
some of them friendly in former years with Mr. Lloyd, he affected
not to have seen anybody that night, and gave them the wrong hint
for pursuit ; yet in their company was the young boarder who had

* Lloyd's testimony in the Surratt trial: "The man talked as if he was
drunk ; he was drunk, in fact."

IN THE SHORT PINES. 525

driven Mrs. Surratt there, and had seen her privately speak to this,
her tenant, and in the tavern was even now the remaining carbine
and the rope designed to bind Mr. Lincoln. In a few days more,
when things were looking serious, Mr. Lloyd told the truth, and the
son's coil of rope became the deserted mother's punishment.

Thousands of times in that tavern had it been wished aloud that
"somebody would kill Abe Lincoln," and these curses were flying
home to roost.

The night-ride on that lonely road was marked by neither coher
ent talk nor thinking, liquor having imbruted both the fugitives, and
Herold gave forth some drug-store knowledge about remedies for
fractures and bone-fevers, and Booth indulged in some jargonry
about tyrants and fate.

Before daylight the house of Dr. Mudd, remote from the high
road, was entered by this pair, who had probably intended, but for
the fracture of the leg, to leave his house to the east, although this
was not certain to themselves, for it was a convenient breakfast-
place for them, and on a more retired route to Pope's Creek.

At the first announcement of their deed and errand, Mudd was
rather rejoiced, but, as the day wore on, he took the reflections in
cident to his weak moral quality, became afraid of his negroes, and,
after he had completed a crutch for Booth, Dr. Mudd and Herold
started out to see if Bryantown had heard the news, leaving Booth
to doze off his liquor and pain.

As Herold came to a brook within sight of Bryantown hollow,
he observed blue-coated soldiers in the public roads of that hamlet,
and shrank back into the brush, while Mudd went on, and learned
at the store and tavern confirmation of the assassin's tales, that the
ruler and his chief secretary had been killed. Proclamations were
being put up, and Mudd saw the terrible situation he was in, as a
harborer of outlaws and the first convert in that whole country to
Booth's mad theatrical schemes, of abducting the man since killed ;
the introducer of Booth to Surratt, and known to every resident of
that district to have been visited by Booth in the previous fall.

He saw the floating vultures over the heights about Bryantown
church, with a pathetic sense of being the next carcass, perhaps, to
draw them to the ground. There was his cousin and medical pre
ceptor in the village, to whom he had long been inimical as the soli
tary Union white man there. How strong and clear that kinsman

526 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

seemed to-day in the eyes of the restless man who wanted, above
all things in this world, an honorable and loyal adviser now — one
who had kept his heart generous and faithful to the dead ruler ! The
towns-people had not yet got the idea of Booth as the assassin, and
considered that word — pronounced among the negroes " Booze " —
to probably apply to a local assassin named Boyle, who had some
time before killed a provost-marshal.

Mudd hastened home to urge his visitors to depart, and, enter
ing his main room, saw the desperate man asleep, snatching at
sighs in his bandit dreams, and pistol, knife, and carbine in his
reach. He had shaved off his mustache. Mudd thought of
Lloyd Quantrell's warning, bitterly : " Take care you don't enter
tain, some time, a man less candid than I am, and who may come
into this room, unless you guard it with a humble spirit ! " He
pressed Herold to play on Booth's fears, and they were mounted at
early dusk, Booth being in dreadful pain and lifted upon his horse.
Martial law had been declared at Bryantown.

Where next were these two vagrants to go ?

Unerringly along the returning thread of that dark spy and
secret mail system, which had been maintained since the war began
for universal slavery.

The chief post station on it between Mudd's and the river was
Captain Sam Cox's, almost twenty miles away, by the roundabout
road to avoid Bryantown and the soldiery. A negro was paid to
guide them there, and they arrived at Cox's near Saturday mid
night.

Sorrow had struck the household of this earliest taker-up of the
sword. His adopted son had returned from Richmond, with the
news of another nephew's death ; and barely had the news of
President Lincoln's taking- off been received, when here were the
assassin and his pilot, both probably known to Cox, and Herold cer
tainly known to him — for Herold, as has been said, had gone to a
school near by — and he now came in and awakened the family, while
Booth sat on his horse in an outer barn-yard, awaiting a reply.

Captain Cox we have already had a glimpse of at Port Tobacco,
drilling his company at the outset of the war. A ringleader, with
the force of a consumptive, he had done his best for the insurgents
and lost the stake ; and now that he was ready to meet the new
situation and strengthen his considerable property by free applica
tion, the hidden paths of his record were traced backward, by this

IN THE SHORT PINES.

527

insensate theatrical fool, mimicking war, until, like the barber
monkey in the tragedy, Booth had cut an innocent throat.

There was nothing to do but get the men away : Herold was
directed to send off the negro and to hide Booth, and be his guard
in a thicket of nearly impenetrable short pines about a mile from
Cox's house and four or five miles from the Potomac, and Cox was
to have them fed until his henchman, Jones, could slip them over
the river.

In the drizzling night of that open spring, the dawn of Easter-
Sunday and the arisen Saviour, the gratuitous murderer entered the
pine-thicket, not to arise from the ground for six nights and days.
An overseer, a white man, was sent to bed them, and on Sunday,
Jones, the Charon who long had kept the ferry to the Confederacy,
was directed to seek them out.

Every hour made the situation of all who harbored them more
perilous, as every new development more firmly located the con
spiracy in this peninsula of swamp-bottom hill and wilderness. The
Government, misled by Dr. Mudd, began to beat up the swamps,
though the pines had always been the hiding-places of go-be
tweens ; and from their covert, where the little tree-stems were so
close that sunlight could not pierce to the earth, Booth and Her
old heard the scouting cavalry tread past on the roads with jing
ling sabers and bridles and neighing animals. Said Booth to Her
old, "They can also hear our horses if they can not see them."

When Jones came in on Sunday morning, he found Booth's bay
mare loose in the more open woods, nibbling, with the saddle upon
her. He whistled, according to a signal conveyed to him by Cox's
nephew, and was met by Herold with the cocked carbine, mount
ing guard like a little sneak spaniel, barking watch.

Booth lay on the ground, pale, with his foot tied and supported,
and blankets around him. His broken fibula now exclaimed
against his pride of strength, and like a needle in the bone sewed
and sewed into his flesh and nerves, as if the heart was the thimble
to drive it with every industrious pulsation. He felt the nimble en
terprise of this heart as it rose and returned to the seamstress task,
while, at times, it seemed that the sewing-spirit with one hand
lifted his flesh up like a fabric from the floor and threw it against
the shuttle ; and then the long, quivering shaft of bone drew a
groan of agony, as it seemed to pull a strand of lockjaw through
the being of the wretch.

528

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

"Oh, a doctor! Can't I have a doctor?" exclaimed Booth to
Jones.

" No, my young friend. Not a doctor in the country dare come
to you. We can't trust anybody, and our own lives depend on get
ting you away from us. The best we can do for you is to feed you,
and, if we can, to send you to Virginia. Every negro in the land
is wailing for Lincoln and watching us. Your horses must be
killed, or they will betray you ; nobody dares keep them, as they
will both be advertised by age, size, and spot. There is no doubt, I
reckon, about your being Booth ? "

Jones was an old, cool river-scout, whose face concealed in
mournful Maryland lines the amiable craft and fortitude of a Daniel
Boone. He was uneducated, and had been raised with Captain
Cox as the poor boy companion.

Booth raised his hand at this query and showed the initials " J.
W. B." pricked into his wrist in boyhood.

" I want a doctor. I want to get to Virginia, where I can have a
doctor. And I want the newspapers ! "

Jones left them common negro and country fare, and next day
brought the papers of Baltimore and Washington. The whole
land was mourning for the President, and the assassin found that
every Southern and conservative interest sought to repudiate him.

He now appreciated, for the first time in his life, discipline. His
crime he did not regret, but the world seemed to have become un
grateful. How had men lost pride in him who only had treasured
up and executed their threats and hates of years ! Did they not
see his courage, devotion, and stratagem ?

Alas ! he who is the executioner of base and frivolous popular
resentments, only realizes for himself their infamy, being instantly
deserted by his instigators ; for no man thinks any man is wicked
enough to wreak in cruelty the passing political intentions of the
heart. But women and non-combatants will be politicians, and, as
they talk, some men will do.

Booth read the papers every day, as once and only once in the
day his humble steward came with the meat and brought them.

" Dave," he said, " do you know I feel, some way, as if I was
a fugitive slave, like one of them John Brown had, who had got
away, and only one poor man had the humanity to feed him ? "

But his heart sank deeper after this suggestion, when he thought
how he had gloated for nearly six years upon his implacability to

IN- THE SHORT PINES.

529

any abolitionist ; and here he wanted life and freedom, the dearer to
him every hour.

No relief the papers gave — some of them the very papers which
had assisted to mold and arm his mind for murder ; papers which
had represented the war for the Union of the country as tyranny
and malice, and were edited by renegade or mercenary or unspirit-
ual men, to lead communities deeper and deeper into sullenness
and self-abasement. And now they named him, the Junius Brutus
Booth of the age and famous Tarquin-killer, a crazy man and a
drunkard, and, what was still worse, said he was a circus-jumper,
and never could act !

At this he would have started up and killed somebody, but only
his wounded ankle felt the bone take a great hem in it, and his heart
pushed the bone-needle in, and with the chill sweat of anguish on
his pale and working face he said over, to drown the pain, the words
he had often recited to others from Tom Hood :

" Stitch — stitch— stitch,
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
Sewing at once, with a double thread,
A shroud, as well as a shirt ! "

He must needs run on to the next stanza a little and say :

" But why do I talk of death,
That phantom of grisly bone ?
I hardly fear his terrible shape,
It seems so like my own —
It seems so like my own
Because of the fasts I keep ;
O God, that bread should be so dear,
And flesh and blood so cheap ! "

" Who ever thought that any man would live to remember that
' Song of the Shirt ' in the middle of these gloomy little pines, or
that death should grow visible to me on the end of my favorite
rhyme ? My foot, that I was so proud of, turned traitor to my per
formance, and now even my recitations bring ghosts to me."

He threw himself out of position, and nearly howled with pain,
to hear at a distance the firing of a pistol or carbine. It was the
horses Herold was killing in a ravine of Zekiah Swamp.

These animals, no more than the theatre where Lincoln died,
34

530 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

would ever again be used for men's low purposes. The great ge
nius of war, Secretary Stanton, notified the Baltimore showmen who
would have opened the theatre while yet it might " draw," like a
museum of horrors, that they never should prostitute the blood of
Lincoln ; and to this day its walls contain the curious wounds and
operations of the war, out of whose great opera of groans and agony
this tender air of healing mercy and science still lulls the place where
the emancipator died.

The horses had been led down a narrow gully, deepening as it
was descended from the pine summits to an arm of the great Zekiah
Swamp, until the sky above seemed far withdrawn and the smell
of decay, some said, was absorbed by the rank vegetation and the
shell-lime in the cliffs. There, if the wandering buzzards did feast
upon the flesh of those steeds which Herold shot, they did so un
discovered, like familiars in the Inquisition, and picked white the
humble and unoffending bones ; and in the legends of that country
the slain animals alone are thought to have had souls and were rid
den by the brutes. Hannah Ritner's racking steed the negro hears,
as he waits at Cox's Station — where the railroad has rifted the little
pines, like a beam of education from the moon — go past on Good-
Friday and on Easter nights, sounding —

" Tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a, tick-a-tock-a ! "

So does the flight of old barbarisms continue, in the remem
brance of martyrs' days and deaths and benefactions.

Day came and night spread round its solemn gloom, all divine
with infinite life of waking insects, and in the mornings sang the
mysterious birds, each with its secret and its praise, its living pur
pose and its joy of species. There was a red bird over Booth's
head, with a single note like a melted berry or cherry, so lush and
full, like " Cheery ! cheery ! cheery ! " and saying it impatiently, like
a bride to be kissed again and again.

Another little bird, like a ball of wool with a bit of beak in it, and
on a little twig — some of the wren or sparrow tribe, perhaps —
whistled :

" Coo-choo — chilly-chilly ! "

House-martins came near, but flew away again, and one bird
cried, " Hoo-e ! hoo-e ! " and then softly added, " Hooch ! hooch ! "

Far overhead, like the police upon false scents, the crows or
rooks went straight in pairs only, the bird ahead crying, " Hack \
hack ! " — the following bird adding " Hock ! "

IN THE SHORT PINES. 531

All these sounds the actor heard, wondering how Nature could
take her outlawry with such joy ; and the cocks and turkey-gobblers
in farms of unknown location crowed and clucked, like the sounds
of a world drifting away in Noah's ark.

When the sun rose at morning, all the tree-tops seemed to steal
toward blossoming, and the moon remained with its inner lamp
gone out, like love repulsed yet duteous. No tree could the assas
sin see but the little pines, though Herold, who could walk, and
strayed away a little, reported that he had seen prickly pears or
cactus growing in the marl sand, and that the swamps were full of
maples already budding red, of fox-grape vines like the cables of
great, unseen ships, and birch and beech, oak, poplar, and sycamore;
while on the upland, in the stiff white soil or gray clay, among the
red and white oaks grew the green holly, deep, cool cedar, and
liberty-loving pine.*

Booth had to threaten Herold that if he ever forgot their mutual
danger, and shot at a bird or wild animal, he would kill him ; for
Herold was continually gunning in his mind, and the highest flight
Booth could take in bathos or invective never carried Herold
above " pa'tridges. " Sometimes, when Booth's mind was full of
grisly things, and the chill of horror dampened his brow, he would
hear the boy near by whistling "Bob White, Bob White," softly,
and looking with his shy blue eyes at his carbine, like a child
denied the shooting of its gun on Christmas Sunday. When Booth
talked about eagles and Cassar, Herold told a story of losing a
canvas-back duck and being kicked over by his shot-gun.

"Ah, Dave," said Booth, "you are Nimrod, a mighty hunter
before the Lord."

Before the Lord ! The idea remained in Booth's mind. Why
any hunter before the Lord ? Brought before the Lord for killing ?
Or killing where the Lord would save ? What did it mean ? And
must the mighty all stand before the Lord ?

Up to this time Booth's title for preachers had been " Bible-
thumpers," t and he despised religious reflections ; but he began to
fear his mind might run that way. He grew tired of the news
papers, as they all stamped upon his name and act. He read of

* The author made this study April 15, 1884, at Cox's Station, on the site
of Booth's concealment.

t John Matthews, actor ; story related by him of Booth.

532

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

the arrest of his eldest brother, "June," for having been the cus
todian of his abduction secret ; of Payne's capture ; Mrs. Surratt's
arrest ; Arnold, O'Laughlin, and Atzerodt hunted down ; and of his
own trunk found with a colonel's military dress-coat in it and two
pairs of handcuffs.

Ah ! the illustrious man he had sentenced to wear those
shackles, like the' last remaining slave, was now the theme of
poetry and eulogy everywhere, while Booth's labored confession
never appeared, and no man spoke for him.

For two days and nights he anticipated some visitation from his
victim's spirit, like the dead Caesar entering the tent of Brutus ; but
it did not come. The third night, when all mental anxiety seemed
allayed, and his mind was dozing, the President and he sat quietly
reciting Shakespeare together in the woods. Again the tall, loving
man called him " my eloquent young friend," and challenged him to
follow, passage by passage, from the bard of Avon. Again he gave
the speech of Antony, and the President replied from Imogen, and
led the way down all the plays, to Robert Burns, at last.

Booth wondered he did not speak of being killed, and make
some accusation, and finally expressed an apology, more rhetorical
than repentant, to the President's face.

" Don't mind it," said the President ; " we lived in a period of
misunderstanding. I got well and came to see you, thinking you
wanted a little company. Good-night, Johnny ! "

As he took the President's offered hand, it was so cold that he
awoke, shouting, in the midnight chilliness of the pines.

" I've seen it ! " he faltered to Herold, who had waked and was
wondering.

" A pa'tridge," asked Herold, " or a fox ? "

'• That long-lived fox, Dave — Abe Lincoln. Don't sleep ! Come,
talk awhile ! "

And then the ankle began to knead with itching and shooting
pains, the heart to do needlework with the bone, the quilting-party
to start, and the hot fever sizz in the night's rainless drizzle.

Night after night he sat in the woods with Lincoln, hearing parts
of Shakespeare long studied and forgotten, and seeking to explain
matters, and only the dread settled in his soul that the victim would
soon go, and at last would come that cold hand, and Booth would
wake shouting again.

It is the going of apparitions and not their coming that we often

IN THE SHORT PINES.

533

dread ; they come like life's own semblance, and they leave death's
desertion behind them. Booth, left alone, was haunted, for nothing
but this spirit did him the benevolence of society.

Three ideas became the new construction of his life : To enter a
warm house and feel a fire ; to get to Virginia and the sure sympa
thy and doctoring for him there ; and to have the appreciation or
forgiveness of his mother. Already the sun of glory was set in his
heart, and the world was like an empty theatre when company,
lights, and audience are gone.

He sat in the woods as in that theatre, seeing the dead man in
the box, and he with a broken leg transfixed to the stage. There
were but two of them, guarded by the poor, boyish scullion Herold,
and they must face each other out.

"Oh, let me smell your fire," he said to Jones, "and drink my
coffee warm ! These woods are like a damp tomb to me."

When life seemed only dear from its eternity and intensity, and
despair made a solid wall of the pine poles, Jones appeared in the
night of Friday, a week following the assassination, and bade them
instantly depart.

" It is your only chance," said he ; "the cavalry has gone on a
false clew to St. Mary's County, and to-morrow they will be back
to beat up these pines."

He and Herold lifted Booth on Jones's own horse, and Herold
led him, while Jones preceded to guide by a whistle agreed upon.

For nearly one hundred and fifty hours Booth had lain on the
ground unmoved, and his bones seemed now collected from a vault
and put together cold. Yet he clutched his revolver as they gained
the high-road, on which they had quite a space to go in impenetra
ble darkness ; for life grew more precious as it ran down, like the
final sands which shine crystal in the hour-glass. Suffering the
death of apprehension, of bodily thorns, and of bone-coldness, Booth
saw, at last, a gleam of warming light in an old, decayed house.

" My God ! " he said, " there's fire. Coffee, too ! Take me in ! "

The weather-beaten and poverty-ground guide shed some tears
at the anguish in -the plaint.

" No, friend ! There's my negro in the kitchen. He's faithful
to me, whatever I do. But you — "

He had killed the freedom-giver, and murdered the prince of
peace !

In the dripping fog of an old pear-tree Booth ate and drank,

534 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

sitting on the horse, and saw that the last man he knew in Maryland
trembled to shove him forever from her shores.

He paid for the little boat he was to take, at the bottom of the
long- gully — his ready money was nearly gone — and, looking at a
little compass by the aid of an end of candle, he was rowed by Her-
old out on the mysterious river.

For hours they pulled in currents and tides, the boat aleak,
Booth's foot on blades of fire, conferring, quarreling, apologizing,
cursing, sighing. His scullion and pilot was becoming a tyrant, the
thin veneering of Herold's modesty wearing off in the friction of
beasts' life.

At morn they were grounded in a marsh under a bluff of clay,
and Herold landed, while Booth nodded over his clutched carbine.

" Here was Virginia, thank God ! " he said again and again,
"and his patron State would not forget her champion."

Herold returned. "We're lost," he said. "This is Maryland
yit — ole Nanjemoy ! I've shot pa'tridges on this farm."

The proprietor, beside himself with dread, had sent Herold away
with food ; and now all day they hid among the brush at the water's
marge, miserable, impatient, waiting for night and another endeavor.

The Sabbath rose upon a low strand with raveled banks of clay
and copse before, and the Potomac plashing under the boat.

" Virginia ! " cried Herold. "John, you're going crazy ! Come,
hobble along. The gunboats are watching eveiy rod of landing
now."

Booth struggled up, carrying his cross beneath his arm in an old
oar made by a bowie-knife into a crutch, and with imprecations he
climbed the ruined land and reached at last old Bryan's hut — the
other Charon, opposite Jones of Maryland.

Bryan lived with a negro woman, and had no other wife, and
was illiterate, mercenary, and suspicious. He heard that Booth was
a Confederate officer, whose horse had thrown him and broken his
leg, but had his doubts. He had horses, but no vehicle, so Herold
sallied out to seek some method of conveyance to the Rappahannock
crossing, half a day distant.

Beneath an oak-tree, in the field before Bryan's naked abode,
Booth reflected that this was the Virginia of his idolatry — this slave
of a negro woman Virginia's embassy to him. But the real Vir
ginians were not far off ; there was consolation in that !

His wandering visions were wholly of his mother now — that poor

IN THE SHORT PINES.

535

exile from her native land to a home of logs and dry clay woodlands
like this. He remembered the story of her coming hither, cheated,
perhaps, dogged by her predecessor, set in a doubtful light, yet
blessed by beauteous children, and bound, as in bonds, by them, to
the everlasting banishment of a false position, unless they should
bring honor out of misunderstanding, and crown her patient age with
their manly virtues and the healing of charity.

Had he respected his mother, whose only hope was in this gen
eration, whose marriage had been a dish of herbs served in a thea
tre's pewter silver, yet whose pride in her sons had been all the con
solations of religion ?

At slow, deliberate pains, unauthorized, uncommissioned, un
timely, he had done this great, gratuitous murder, and set the light
of Lincoln's life against the cottage where his mother hid, and invited
the world's inquisition and comparison.

Yet even there, all stricken by his crime, she seemed his mother
still, and pitying him who had not where to lay his head — refused
by hearths and refusing the grave.

The President was by his side, calling him "Johnny," and say
ing, " Never mind " ; that it had been an age of misunderstanding,
and now he was well again ; and so that strange, cheerful man went
on reciting to Booth the wail of King Edward's widow for her sons,
Prince Arthur's plaint to Hubert, Jane Shore's appeal for Christian
shelter, Macduffs despair at his children slain, and Portia's lines to
Mercy. Again the President's cold hand awoke him, and he cried :

" Mother, I thought it was my country. I thought it was for
the best ! "

" John Booth," said a voice of grave, sad pity, "you have set up
the corpse of the Confederate cause and assassinated it ! Joe John
ston surrendered to General Sherman last Tuesday. There is no
place to hide you nowr this side of Mexico ! "

Booth looked up — an old, old man he was, all overgrown with
ragged beard, uncombed and dirty, and like a city tramp feeding
from the garbage-barrels, as he hobbles on in faded, crumpled rai
ment ; and so he seemed to Lloyd Quantrell, who now gazed at him
in Virginia.

536 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

CHAPTER XLIX.

THE RETURN.

WHEN Lloyd Quantrell said there was no place for Booth to
hide, short of Mexico, he spoke from locality. Herold had found
Lloyd on the farm of Iturbide's aunt, and Iturbide was to become
Emperor of Mexico if Maximilian lived.*

It was to protect the ladies there that Lloyd went to seek Booth
and compromise himself. When he reached Booth, the woe-worn
plight of that bravo touched his heart, and smothered the indigna
tions he meant to express. He exerted himself to procure from
Bryan horses to carry them away, and he concealed their identity.
Proclamations and descriptions had not been posted up in this part
of Virginia. Quantrell, however, said to Booth as the latter indulged
in some boasting on his feat :

"They will take you before you get far. I feel for you, John ! "

" I will never be taken," said Booth, "to be paraded over Wash
ington. If the worst comes, I'll put a ball from this through my
head ! "

He showed an elaborately mounted pistol.

Quantrell always believed, in the sequel, that Booth shot himself.

When Mr. Booth reached the summer dwelling of a rich Vir
ginian, some eight miles distant, that evening, it was lighted and
merry for the close of war and the return of soldier friends ; but the
proprietor had adopted a rule to entertain no spies or suspicious per
sons, and the assassin and his uninteresting friend had to sleep in a
colored woman's cabin on the farm. Cut to the heart, and hereafter
dropping Virginia and gratitude from his mind, Booth wrote next
morning to the proprietor :

" I have some little pride. I can not blame you for want of hos
pitality. You know your own affairs. I was sick, tired, with a

* At the moment in the text the clerical Emperor, Maximilian, had adopted
young Iturbide, whose father had married Miss Green, of Georgetown, D. C.
Her sister, Mrs. Quesenberry, lived on the farm near Booth's landing-place. In
two years more, Mr. Seward, reviving from his wound, was to see that govern
ment "by the people and for the people" did not perish even from Mexico. In
spite of the appeals of our Government, Maximilian was executed — " one of the
most solemn scenes ever witnessed, save the murder and burial of Abraham Lin
coln," says the Hapsburger's law-officer and biographer, Fred Hall.

THE RETURN.

537

broken limb, and in need of medical advice. I would not have
turned a dog from my door in such a plight. However, you were
kind enough to give us something to eat. . . . ' The sauce to meat
is ceremony ; meeting were bare without it.' Be kind enough to
accept the inclosed five dollars (although hard to spare) for what I
have received." *

A negro was hired to take them in a cart to Port Conway, across
the weary hills and hollows — twelve miles' journey — where they
arrived early Monday morning, and some disbanded rebel cavalry
were picked up by Herold and used to procure Booth ferriage
across the Rappahannock. He rode on a young officer's horse along
the skirt of old Port Royal town, and was left at a retired farm
house three miles south of it — a wretch without a plan, a friend, or
a country !

Let man hereafter hesitate who issues himself a commission,
creates himself a state, and expects alliances for nothing but a crime !

President Lincoln died in a plain room, opposite the theatre, after
breathing unconscious for nine hours, his chief officials around him,
and his wife and son in another room. The bed was cheap and
humble, the prints horses and sheep, but the wise men were there,
and the spirit he exhaled freshened the world and made Caesars
piteous.

His death was the woman's spikenard-ointment that perfumed
his weary feet and diffused his balm wherever humanity had wounds.
He had Been his own precursor, and the faculties and moralizers
felt ashamed that he had come, instead of another ; but his wisdom
put their words to better than shame— to contrition. They said he
had no model, but they had not seen the poor ; for in the clay of
which God made men are left many models for Jove or Jesus.

Mr. Lincoln was composite of every humble, natural, and unaf
fected feeling ; one touch of pretension would have slain him more
than the assassin's ball. He was one of the rare great men who
could live without quarreling, envy, or even indignations. The
man who killed him was replete with all the virtues of the self-com
placent.

* Letter from Booth to Dr. Stewart, composed in his diary found on his
dead body— the date April 23 or 24, 1865. Booth had outlawed himself, and
his mere lodging at this man's house cost the host captivity and great mental
anxiety.

538 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

Men reflected that the theatre and slavery put together were the
combination in Herodias and in Nero ; that the purest reproof was
written on the ground, and that spittle which cured the blind man
could cure a blind age.

Lincoln's power was in his philosophy : to be gentle with infirm
ity, like the Creator, and to hold humor to be man's golden book of
law. The piece he lost his life to see had seemed to the critics vulgar
enough, yet it proved, in time, to contain more humor than any actor
ever made, and its subject was his native land, however imperfectly
described.* The great war hardened, but could not construct this
man ; he was made out of the trials of little causes and in the com
petitions of popular politics, and his patience was tested at every
point before Heaven would trust him with its sword or pen. New
discoveries in morals he never felicitated himself upon, but found
perennial comfort in human nature. Living in a fiery transport of
human faith to break away from fettering bondages of body and of
mind, he succeeded greatest because he was richest in love and
mightiest in trust.

The farm of Jake Rosier looked almost princely in the spring, as
the masons and carpenters had improved and enlarged the buildings,
and art had arranged the grounds ; but the old man, with his fair pos
sessions, had a hunger that neither wrealth nor heaven could satisfy,
till, one morning, he came down from bed, and saw that strangers
had entered his house in the night, taking advantage of a latch
never secured by any bolt.

A child of fair hair and large dark eyes, like his missing daugh
ter's, sat playing upon the floor.

"Why, bubflly" exclaimed Jake, stammering, "whose is te
baby ? "

"Danpa's," lisped the child, arising; "we's turn home."

" We ? " articulated Jake ; " I dinks I hear my olty. Is it te
shpook of death ? "

He sank trembling into a seat and stared at the child, as if his
hour had come.

" Don't you know Winter, danpa ? " asked the child, coming up
and leaning on his knee.

"Winter? " the old man said. " It was winter when my Katy

* "The American Cousin" made, in the subordinate part of Dundreary ',
the fortune of Mr. Sothern, who played it till his death.

THE RETURN.

539

went away. Winter nefer has been gone since then. It will pe
winter in my heart till — Bi'm-by."

Tears dimmed his eyes, but through them came a vision of a
woman in the Dunker dress entering the door, and the early sun
shine from the crest of the Catoctin Mountain followed her along
the floor, giving her the golden halo of the martyrs in the Baptist book.

" Fader," said the apparition, kneeling down, " I waited till the
war was ended for the father of my boy to come and put the ring
upon my finger. I trusted him, and still will trust, and here, it has
been predicted by the good witch, that he will come to-day to do
me right. May we stay here, fader ? "

She took the boy into her arms, and waited like one afraid.

" Stay with fader? " the old man said, tottering up, " where can
you stay but here ? I feel te summer in my old heart, and all my
prayers is answered. Te only ring I'f looked for is my child's arms
around my neck, where Gott unites us and noting can efer diwide."

They were kneeling, and they entered into prayer. The old
man used his native Dutch, and thanked the Lord, not for the gift
of honor, nor even purity, but for the gift of child ; and as he
prayed, the door being open, the unaccredited creation came in —
chickens without pedigree, ducks without a family tree, the peacock
without other primogeniture than a spangled tail, Guinea-hens fear
ing to forget their name of species, and conning over " buckwheat-
buckwheat," and the capon, most indifferent of all.

The child — also uncertified in the herd-book of mankind — left
the prayer, and ran and raced among these, his silken ringlets
bounding from his shoulders, and in his large eyes the mountain
landscapes seemed to stand reflected like Narcissus in the well.

" Fader, forgive my ingratitude," spoke Katy, as she and the old
man walked forth upon the new veranda in the soft spring air ; " I
longed to see you, but I did not come for that : love for his father
brought me here."

She pointed to her boy.

" 1 know, my child," said Jake, " how te young must leave fader
and modder and cleaf to a young man, and nater led you away and
back to home ag'in. Te Lord be thanked for nater, dat makes te
lost sheep find home. But his fader has peen a rebel, and Fader
Abe is killed ! How can Luter, your bruder — poor Lincoln made
him a cheneral te day he died — meet te man dat wounded him and
took his sister's goot name ? "

540

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

As they spoke, there was a sound of hoarse and broken singing
in the road, and three men approached the gate, staggering drunk-
enly, but one of them had music in his windpipe, though he was
the drunkest of the three, and with arms across the gate, sweeping
the house with his dazed, unseeing eyes, he let the deep notes roar
to the sound of an accordion he played :

" My country ! "Pis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing ! "

His great stature and weight, unmanageable against the frail lattice
gate, broke it down, and he fell on his face in Bosler's lawn, the ac
cordion flying from his hand and breaking to pieces.

His companions looked at him with tipsy grins, and hands in
idiotic flowing gestures, and laughed a loud and hollow —

" Ha ! ha ! ha ! ha ! "

The mocking sound seemed to roll between the parallel mount
ains, and echo and echo, like the mourning-guns from Harper's
Ferry.

" The slave-catchers have got my Lloyd ! " shouted Katy. " The
Logans have brought him back ! "

She started down the path with winged feet, pursued by her1
boy.

The ragged, ruined, wind-beaten man turned up his dry, bleared
eyes and muttered :

" I'm for she Gover'ment! I'm true blue. Hurrah for she ote
flag!"

" O Lloyd, my love," cried Katy, " there is one battle more that
you and I must fight — for your poor soul ! "

" My love," the great giant looked up and spoke, with humor in
his beggary, " we shelebrated she peash lash night at Harper's
Ferry. We shwore allegiensh on honor bright. It'll be all right
in she morning when we go shee my father — God blesh him !"

" Ha ! ha ! ha ! ha ! " went up the laughter of Lloyd's retreat
ing comrades, pursued by echoes from bridge and barn and dwell
ing.

"I am promised this conversion," spoke Katy, kissing her child
as she held him in her arms, and looked to the skies with streaming
eyes ; " God, who has given me his father's penitence, will not
deny me my husband's soul ! "

THE RETURN.

541

" Paptize him in te spring-house where we found him," cried
Jake Bosler ; " he'll come to — Bi'm-by."

With this, Jake poured on the drunkard's head cold water from
the dairy, and Katy rubbed his temples ; and while they worked at
him in dread and pity, people stole in the gate and stood around
them.

•' That is your man," spoke one of these at last. " Put your
irons on him while you can ! He is strong and dangerous."

As Katy saw bracelets with chains slipped over her lover's
wrists, she screamed and leaped from the ground.

Strange men were standing there, and, shrinking in their rear,
was Hugh Fen wick.

The cold water and the woman's scream brought Quantrell, also,
to his senses, and he stood up in his rags, and looked at his hands
thus manacled, and asked :

" What's this ? 1 took the parole ! "

" We arrest you," said one of the strangers, pistol in hand, " as
one of the assassins of Abraham Lincoln, and you are wanted in
Washington.''

" My God ! " exclaimed Lloyd ; " who has suspected me of such
a crime as that ? "

" Mr. Fenwick, here, saw you in Washington the day of the
murder. Your name was given at the bridge. You met Booth in
Bryantown last fall, and met him again last Sunday in Virginia.
You made an oath with him and Beall, the pirate, to be revenged
on the Government."

" Take hold of him," cried Fenwick, edging away. " See how
he looks at me ! "

" If I am guilty of this crime," spoke Quantrell, humbly, " I
shall not ask to live. If I am innocent, I will rid the world of that
man who has accused me ! "

Katy threw herself upon her husband, all shackled and dishon
ored as he was.

" No, no," Jake Bosler spoke ; " te blood of te President must
first pe washed from his hands."

Lloyd put back his wife with gentle strength.

" Katy, your father is right. If that is my boy, let him never
see me again — till I am dead or exonerated."

Lloyd had come home by way of Harper's Ferry, and his one
bad habit, following him through the war, had now brought him to

542 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

the stage that he could not drink without becoming drunk. A
popular companion and honorable soldier, his song and accordion
had been known through the camps, and his counsel had always
been tranquillizing and just, so that many of his army friends felt their
sense of country and freedom return, until, when the physical war
ended, the moral rebellion was also worn to a thin shell wherever
men were gentle-natured.

Put in a military prison, Quantrell was allowed to see nobody,
and his old father said :

" That boy is not guilty. Though I shall not see him, I know
that his obedience to me and to his poor cause never would allow
him to be an assassin. I can say, with Admhal Penn, when they
thrust his son William into a prison, ' This is the reward I have
from the government my services restored.' "

In another direction the old man was more successful — to have
his son's wife righted by the Roman Church.

In that body was an historical passion to defend marriage, and
Abel Quantrell's wishes were sent to Rome itself.

His views had prevailed in the land, and the indifferent moral
assistance they had received from a church long identified with
slavery, created there a greater desire to conciliate the powerful
political party of which he was a rather popular oddity.

The candor and extremeness of his views, his kindness to in
dividual insurgents and his high political influence, and also his
chivalry to women, for whose weakness he made every allowance,
created an enthusiasm for him among the Sisters of Charity and
poorer monastic orders — especially the Irish — and they worked upon
the higher clergy until a dispensation, or other species of conces
sion, was made, somewhat in these words :

" The sacrilegious person who presumed to administer the mar
riage ordinance in name of Holy Church may be taken into orders,
and his ordaining can date from a time anterior to his sin, pro
vided that he take the vows of the most rigorous monastic life and
disappear from the world."

" I like a church that can do anything," Abel Quantrell said,
sardonically ; " here the marriage-ring is taken out of solution, and
the circle squared ; but how are you going to catch the bird, to put
the salt on his tail ? "

The Sisters of the Church resolved to have the secular law pun
ish Fenwick for personating a priest, if he refused to be a monk.

THE RETURN.

543

That individual was, indeed, in deep waters ; but he put all his
amateur versatility in motion, and had made himself a useful auxil
iary to the Government in detecting the assassins. The escaped
Surratt had been hidden in Canada by the mistaken zeal of priests
there, who could not see that they were taking his mother's life, as
well as violating the law of nations. Ultimately, when it was too
late to save the woman, the shallow son was tracked to Rome, and
found in the Papal Guard, where another American recruit from
Maryland * knew him and gave him away for the reward, and then
the Papal Government ordered him delivered up.

The church hostility to Fenwick, however, was the greater, be
cause of his prying cognizance of certain family facts, in making
use of which, for the ends of justice, he was doing the principal
good of his life. Nothing showed the legal and worldly incapacity
of neophytes and priests more than the behavior of both Fenwick
and his enemies in this matter, and proved that while denouncing
secret societies the Church forgot its own tendency that way.

Fenwick had a fine smattering of doctrinal lore and the church
institutes, and he fought for his life with an adroitness worthy of
those other Bohemians, Huss or Jerome, before councils armed with
fire.

The woman he dreaded and depended on, with nearly equal
anxiety, was Hannah Ritner. In the demoralization of his mind
between cunning and devoteeism, self-love and superstition, he con
sulted this strange seer, who was worthy of being the mother ab
bess of the whole nation.

She looked at him with a weary touch of humor in her grand
face, and wrote him some lines, and dismissed him. He read them
with a great sense of fear in his heart ; for of all things living or
dead, he feared Lloyd Quantrell most :

" Little mousey in mishap.
Choose the dog, or choose the trap !
Death is in the mastiff's yell,
Life's rernaindei in the cell.
Mice as foolish thou may'st tease
In the trap, and eat the cheese."

Fenwick was taken to Nelly Harbaugh by Hannah Ritner while
he was in this state of apprehension, and told to co-operate with

* St. Marie.

544

KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

that actress, who now was preparing for a ctibut as a " star " with
her own company, and while keeping refuge in the ragged house
at the edge of the purlieu, she discussed with him the basis of a
social play, and Fenwick outlined several themes. He had no other
than assisting literary talents, while she, by pains and application,
had ransacked the Library of Congress for foreign models of some
drama which should display her personal charms.

Nelly saw that the hideous old pieces out of the Gunpowder-
Plot age — the butchering Richards and mouthing Brutuses — had
survived their day to end with this murderer, and that the French
and other Continentals had recreated the stage and made the heart's
woes and the inconsistency of human environment the drama of the
present. Fenwick was a good literary milliner, and Nelly was a
wonderful head and bust to hang his subtleties upon.

In the course of their experiments they found a topic near home,
so inspiring to them both, that an interest of opposites kindled in
their natures, and while the subject they mutually labored upon was
of Fenwick's eavesdropping in people's houses, Nelly Harbaugh
saw in it a chance to repay a noble favor at the sacrifice of her own
idolatry.

The Government had released her, finding her clear at every
point of complicity in the President's murder ; and now, with her
stage name changed again, she was prepared with a dry, seared,
but still ambitious heart, to run the actress's career and draw upon
mankind for her outfit and advertisement.

Luther Bosler entered one day, when she was sitting among new
dresses, ornaments, and properties for her debut, and he said :

" Nelly, joy and misfortune have come together. My old Bunker
brethren have made me a preacher again, taking the view I did, that
this war was a sacred duty ; but Lloyd, my poor prodigal brother,
is in the toils of hard evidence, and my lady — you know it was Miss
Pittson — has rejected me and offended Abel Quantrell, and still ad
heres to the subjects of her romantic sympathy, Booth, the assassin,
and Lloyd Quantrell, who is in chains."

While they spoke, the voices of newsboys in the streets were
heard approaching, roaring as they came almost breathless :

" Capture of Boot', de assassin ! Capture of David E. Herold J
Death of Wilkes Boot' in Virginia ! De ' Evening Staw ! ' '

Nelly had started up, the roses gone from her face, and she
threw out her hands for something to take hold of. but only found

THE RETURN. 545

the broad shoulders of General Bosler, and there she leaned, not
coming nearer, while some tears ran from her eyes.

" Pardon me, Luther," she said. " You know what he was to
me — my greatest 'injurer — but it was in the wiles of love, and for
my account I pray God to forgive him."

" Live to do mercy, my sister ! " spoke Luther with his palm
above her golden-yellow tresses ; " to set at rest the misunderstand
ings of other hearts, and to be of the peace-makers who shall be
called the children of God ! "

" I will, Luther, I will ! I see within my hands, let down to me
from angels, the cords of many compassions, and pray for me, O
brother! that I shall have the wisdom and assistance, even in this
false art of playing life, to set the innocent free, to save the foolish
one, and let love and not blood be the law ! "

At the farm overhanging the sunken road which wound behind
it, and was screened by trees and thickets partly in bloom, Booth
had awaited the unknown with a broken heart. Nobody in Port
Royal town would take him in ; at his identity with the assassin —
which Herold had blabbed — and at his own showing of the inked
initials under his skin, " J. W. B.," the soldier had shrunk away and
hid him. and gone ahead, not to return, except with his takers.

Herold, too, was growing restive under his confinement to this
crippled outlaw, and high words had passed between them ; for
Booth was nearly destitute, and Herold was a hireling as well as a
vagrant, and now Booth could give him neither adventure nor money.

After Captain Jett, the Virginian, had left Booth at Garrett's
farm, Herold rode nearly to Bowling Green, fifteen miles away, with
the disbanded insurgents, and the next day, Tuesday, he went quite
to Bowling Green and back ; and hardly had he returned, when blue-
clad cavalry went around the farm-gate and down into the swamp-
crossing, and could be seen filing up the southern slope, carbines all
ready, and their sabers, like sleighing-bells jingling, to kill the last
enemy, and go to Northern homes.

Booth did not know that they were riding to get Captain Jett
and find where he had hidden that broken-legged man ; but Booth
did know that the blue-coats were now south of him, and Virginia
unthankful to him.

The Garretts, who owned the farm, became distrustful of their
35

546

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

two quarreling guests, though Booth had used all his tender talk
to get their confidence, and played with their child, and breathed
domestic sentiment. He felt that he must have lost his art since
this blood had smeared him.

A neighbor or two dropped in and sounded the stranger, as he
lay out in the yard under the trees, and went away suspectful. At
last the men of the family said : " We can not accommodate you
another night ; our house is full."

They had no idea that here were the murderers whose capture
would make them rich ; but they felt that something was not honest.

This man, all armed, yet not in uniform ; this boy, so unworthy
of the man, and so sniveling and fugitive ; their inquiry about roads
and distances, and want of innocence or location — could they be
horse-thieves ?

" We can sleep in the barn," said Booth. " Allow us to go in
there ! "

His pleading eyes, in which some of the humility and light of
childhood had returned, procured a wavering assent ; but after they
had entered the small barn, the eldest son of Garrett, considering
that they might steal the horses, slipped out and locked them in.

They were at last enjailed ; but the assassin had a repeating
carbine and a pair of pistols, and kept his tone of confidence up, to
Herold, as they made their beds in the straw.

They would reach the mountains, and go through Tennessee to
the Gulf, and Herold should yet have rambling.

Herold fell asleep, but Booth would never sleep again !

CHAPTER L.

DEATH OF BOOTH.

THERE are three crimes hard to excel in wickedness : the rob
bing of woman of her innocence, of a good magistrate of his life,
and of a race of brother- men of simple, humble rights. All these
were now to settle with John Wilkes Booth.

Negroes, of the race he would deprive of freedom, informed upon
the disappearance of Jones's boat in Maryland, and described two
armed and suspicious men adrift.

DEATH OF BOOTH. 547

The man whose affianced virgin Booth had taken away, General
Luther Bosler, received upon the army telegraph-wire from Chapel
Point this information in the War-Office at Washington, and he
drew down a Coast-Survey chart and looked it over with Secretary
Stanton. " Here is the route they must take," said Luther, ."through
King George County to Port Royal, the usual route of spies. By
putting some cavalry on a steamboat, they can be landed at Bell
Plain and intercept the murderer ! "

The great Secretary, who grieved for the good magistrate, his
friend, replied, " Take that action at once, and send two of my po
lice-officers along ! "

So, as Booth lay down in the barn, the cavalry had scoured the
country behind him and gone past, receiving his description from
the negro ferryman at the Rappahannock River.

Death is a ghastly presence at the end of long sickness and the
wearing out of nature ; but to him who is well, robust, and super
stitious, and who has inflicted Death's embrace upon another, and is
sneaking a\vay from Nemesis, Death is the King of Terrors. How
slight had seemed death-giving to this young man, who preferred
cruelty for his pastime ; but how vast and inconsolable was death-
taking to him, even when life had lost its meanest relations !

He forgot his burning foot in the clammy sweat of fear and the
craving of the appalled heart. The barn seemed full of witnesses,
the straws to be musket-barrels, the night-sounds to be accusations,
the roof of the shamble to be high as black heaven, and all the in
terval the throne of Death !

He thought of each particular of every pertinent subject, and
still the sequel of each would be Death. It seemed unreasonable
that Death should not allow any matter whatever to be considered
without thrusting in its horrible demand, and he proceeded softly,
cunningly, to head off that grisly guardsman and get past, " run
ning like a cat," as he had expressed it, and taking the by-ways
of joy and love — thinking over his finest love-sentence with Light
Pittson, when he stole her first resisting kiss ; of his soft, prolonged
amours against the mountain-maid ; of the many humble subur
ban coquettes entrapped at theatres, and the yielding of women of
station to his untiring wiles ; and still Death closed the reminis
cence and seemed to say, " Cold to the bone forever is my assigna
tion, and neither audience nor applause will ever be there ! "

With this fear of the black face was a care and oppression he could

548 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

not understand — an old man's feeling, haunting him and abiding,
mixed with the dread little boys have of being lost by their parents
in great cities, or wandering far away from home penniless and with
out lodging. Between the two — the old pauper's dread and the
child's desertion — Booth's anxiety roved the whole earth, and lived
for ages in those few hours.

Where were New Guinea, Kamchatka, Patagonia — and could
the newspapers go so far and make him known ? Where was
Crusoe's Island, or the Florida of the Young Marooners, or the
pirates' Isle of Pines ? He felt his geographical ignorance, and, the
more, that he had never admitted it before in his blind, headstrong
folly.

He also felt the cowardice which attends upon money spent and
gone.

Would he have dared to kill the President if Booth had always
been a poor, unprodigal young man ? Or, rather, was not his deadly
vanity the offspring of the fool's money and the dupe's gaming ?

He thought of the dollars wasted on bowie-knives, revolving
pistols, spurs, pocket-compasses, horses, and livery-men ; on drinks,
loans, clothing, lodging, fire, and concubines for the parcel of
tramps and roustabouts, who were soon to be paraded, beside him
self, before the fashion and society of Washington, like Falstaffs
band with him, for Prince Hal in the midst. How the officers of
the army court-martial — men of courage too well ingrained to be
conscious of it — would despise the skulking and treacherous gypsy
they were to foul their minds with ! He had not even an overcoat,
and his bank-book was left in Atzerodt's room with Herold's outfit.

And all this he had given his mental dignity and powers to bring
about, unasked, untempted, unabused, in evil and gratuitous self-
seeking, like the beaten politicians who had made war upon the
Union from the groveling yet soaring spirit of the vulture — to pick
the eyes and vitals from the dead republic, expecting to reproduce
them in that sable image of the Prometheus-eating bird.

Booth felt that he was also part of that blind trap, and a statesman
of the thinly scenic government whose civil dramatis persona were
now, like strolling players, wandering toward the Gulf. Even State-
rights was a mockery, and the unavowed John Brown was more
the hero of Virginia than h'e who had killed a commander-in-chief,
shouting the motto of the State.

He groaned again, " Sic semper tyrannis ! "

DEATH OF BOOTH. 549

The circling furies in the sound began to repeat, " Sic — Semper
• — sic — Tyrannis. At him, dogs ! "

The old barn echoed with the hissing sound of " Sic, sic," as
used to blood-hounds on the scent, and fiery dogs went round his
brain, all fever-filled, and their eyes and teeth were gnashing.

" Heroic! ! Dave Herold ! some water, for God's sake — I'm afire ! "

The boy slept peacefully, having, of himself, premeditated no
crime.

Then the prediction of the old Quaker witch at Harper's Ferry,
that he should cry " Water, water, Lord ! " came to mind. He burst
into another chilly sweat, between terror and malaria, to think he
had already verified this prophecy.

" Never mind, my eloquent young friend," said the tall President,
sitting there in the barn upon the straw, " don't mention your mis
understanding of me ! You know I recovered, and bear no malice.
Now — that pretty piece from ' King John,' where Constance mourns !
Oh, if you had really killed me, think of how my wife and children
would have cried ! How pleasant to think it was all a mistake ! "

With faltering tongue he tried to match Shakespearean passages
with his victim again, who laughed and laughed at his discomfiture,
and put out his cold, cold hand, and this time it shot a pang of chilli
ness to the outlaw's heart.

" O mother ! " he cried, " save me — oh, pray for me ! ' Pray !
pray ! pray !r"

As he stirred the straw he lay in, there seemed animal footsteps
outside, and whispering, and then the ringing of accoutrements. A
fear greater than he could ever have imagined came upon him, and
an oppression like the removal of every living organ from the in-
casements of the body.

" Dave ! Dave ! " he whispered, and his hair seemed to stand, as
the noises proceeded upon the sward. He thought they might be
spirit-sounds, like those the bandit Stevens heard at Harper's Ferry,
and, for an instant, was relieved to hear a human voice speak aloud
in the night :

*' To the persons who are in this barn ! We call upon you to
surrender your arms to the man who will come in for them. We
notify you that you are surrounded, and had better give up."

A neighing of horses came on the night air, and a sound like the
cocking of gun-locks went round the barn, from side to side, from
end to end. Herold heard it, and was up, with sniveling in his cry :

550

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

" John, we're tuk ! Le's us give in. I don't want to be shot ! "

•' Get down, you coward ! They may be our friends."

Booth had roused up, and stood upon his crutch, with the car
bine in his hand. The night was so dark that the many cracks in
the barn afforded no view of forms outside, now mysteriously still,
as if their fire-arms were intently aiming at him. The door was
next unlocked, and a man entered, saying:

" They were going to hang father and me if we hadn't told them
you had gone to the barn. If you don't come out, they'll burn our
property."

Booth swore, while trembling, that he would kill the man for be
traying him.

" 'Tain't worth while," said the son of Garrett, "to kill me. It
won't save you. If you hain't done nothing wrong, you can come
out safe."

Bqoth damned his soul in impotent profanity, and only the
greater fear of what was coming restrained his hand from brutality.
The young man cowered and backed out of the door, and then
Herold said :

" I want to surrender. I'm afraid ! I want to see my sister ! "

" Will you leave me, too ? " cried Booth — " the last follower I
have, the last friend ? "

'• I'm a coward," said Herold. "You can tell them I didn't kill
nobody. Oh, do, and let me go ! "

Booth cursed him also, and fought for a little parley ; so precious
is life to those who take it from others wantonly !

He indulged the hope that these might be insurgent soldiery,
with his ignorance of news and an obtuseness of general perception
wrhich steadily diminished his mental reputation, until his brain, at
last, seemed a mere glittering pin-head, like one of the beads sown
upon an actor's royalty.

" Perhaps I am taken by my friends," he shouted, and the inter
val seemed a year before the cool, thief-taker's voice outside re
plied :

" Come and see ! Your life will not be taken by us if you sur
render."

He asked whom he was thought to be, and another silence so
long as if to answer, "You are nameless; you are nothing; you
are annihilation " — was followed by a dry response to come out, or
take the consequences.

DEATH OF BOOTH.

551

There was a cricket, or katydid, or strong-throated animal in
the barn, which all the while counted its accorded measure of pray
ers during this term of agony, till the assassin's ears seemed burst
ing ; but Herold hardly noticed it, he said, though hearing in the
distant night the baying of coon-hunters' dogs, where the freedmen
celebrated their deliverance in the rolling country.

" Oh, let me go, and say, John, I didn't kill the President, be
fore we part ; it'll save your soul, maybe, to* let up on me."

The assassin had already put his hand around his crutch and
taken hold of his revolver, with the action, rather than the meaning,
of killing himself; but at the word " soul " he dropped the pistol in
the straw and shouted greedily :

" There's a man here who wants to surrender. Take him out !
He is innocent of any erime."

Without saying good-by, so much was he afraid of the enemy
before and behind, Herold put out his hands through the door
opened for him, and they were handcuffed before he stepped across
the sill. The two detective officers searched him and then hand
cuffed him around a small tree near by, and one of them, disap
pointed in the small and pusillanimous object he had found, kicked
Herold's posterior with an interjection of contempt.

"I don't know that man in there," sniffled Herold ; " I met him
on the road by Port Tebakker, and he hired me to be his nuss, with
his leg broke."

" Here ! here ! " spoke the same unfeeling voice beside the barn,
nearly at Booth's side, yet shifting, as if the possessor had a stealthy
foot, " surrender, or we'll burn you like a rat In this barn ! If you
have any gratitude to the man who sheltered you, save his property !
We are men of business, and this is your last chance."

A low word of " Be ready ! " in another voice, showed that the
death-vise was being screwed close.

How now to die was Booth's soul-strained option — by suicide,
fire, or in combat ?

The cricket sang indifferent to his ordeal ; the sounds of the
midnight hunting seemed musical as heaven, and made the world
stretch wide and dear to all who could still possess it. He alone
was to let go of life, and the muffled familiars of death seemed glid
ing up to him like sheriffs' men, and from the invisible beams of the
barn seemed to droop the hangman's cord.

He rallied every desperate ambition, and breathed a prayer to

552

KATY OF CATOCTIN,

Nature in her generosity that he might have the courage to be a
soldier for one moment, as he had never been, since John Brown's
time.

At the suggestion of John Brown, his wandering powers took
coherence and example, and he remembered the manner in which
old Brown had faced his fate, and Booth tried to be his pupil.

" Captain," called Booth, assuming a hollow, theatrical voice,
" give me a living chaitce : withdraw your men a hundred paces
from the barn, and I'll come out and fight you ! "

This had been John Brown's request, wrhen entrapped in his en
gine-house, and Booth aspired to die like Brown.

He repeated the request, and thought it quite unmerciful that he
was not accorded a little stage-space to. die effectively in.

" We'll waste no more time," the civil officer, without, spoke in
a tone of disgust.

The katydid or cricket never ceased to call its resounding beads,
and " Pray, pray, pray."

Booth searched the heavens and the world for some interces
sor, and fetched from weakness his mother's name. By that saint
he asked for fifty yards and for a little more time.

Everything was refused.

" Now, then, my brave boys," he declaimed, in the tones of the
stage again, " prepare a stretcher for me ! "

" Stretchers " were the canvas biers to carry out of battle wounded
men. Booth — assuming to the end — would appear to be a veteran
entitled to the honors of war.

He raised his carbine, feebly resolving to kill some one, or to
fire it off, at least, and as he stepped, on foot and crutch, toward the
center of the barn, to be farthest from men's aiming, a friction-
match was scratched behind him as if his broken bones had rasped
each other, and sent a cold chill up his spine.

He turned, and saw the barn on fire !

A lighted wisp of straw, twisted by some one without, had fallen
into loose hay, and some brush, piled against the outside of the barn,
was also afire. The warm flame for a single instant carried the odor
and crackle of his father's log-cabin to his heart, and he shouted, as
his crutch fell from under his arm and left him helpless :

" Captain, do it quick ! Now shoot me through the heart ! "

The cricket ceased to sing, though everything besides came forth
in the bright light, till what had been the throne of gloom stood re-

DEATH OF BOOTH. 553

vealed in the blessed implements and yield of husbandry, and there
were wasps flying around their nests in the roof, scenting flame,
and in the litter of the floor ran rats in single file, all slyly, as from
a sinking ship, and one squealed as it crossed his shadow like an old
witch in an incantation scene.

The plow and harrow-teeth took a ruddy gleam ; some swallows
in the timbers flew round and round, blinded by the fire, and the
pegs for tobacco and the burning tobacco-leaves grew to be ferns
and scallops of gold, as they hung, like gilded scenes in spectacles,
around the desperate man.

He had seen fires upon the stage and helped to stamp them out,
and he limped, toward the greater flame near a corner ; but suddenly
a great tongue of fire licked him and singed him as if Cerberus at
hell's door had fondled on him with a furnace-tongue !

Fear seized him, and he ran toward the door on misfitting bones
— the door held open as by some invisible angel — and as he ran, the
ponderous beams and trees in the structure seemed to fall upon his
skull and mash it like an egg.

Booth next felt water in his face, and two men were holding him
up and searching his body and putting their fingers in his brain.

" It's here," said one, " right where he shot the President, behind
the ear, and on the same side, and here it's come through ! "

In gagging torments he discerned before him two men in Con
federate dress, all shown by the light of the burning barn, which
was reflected in the homestead porch he lay upon.

" Did — he — betray — me ? " sighed Booth, pointing to one of
these, the officer who had brought him to the house.

He did not hear the answer, but he made it himself :

" Tell — mother — I thought — I did — best — rights — a country —
till— I died. Kill me ! Kill me ! "

Herold, tied to the tree in the little flat lawn, saw them turn
Booth, to make him comfortable, and heard him gasp and groan,
and Herold shed the only tears.

Booth could not swallow, and his words were measured like dew
in the honeysuckle's cup, that drooped above his eyes and opened to
the fire.

He saw them, in his paralysis, hold up the arsenal of things he
had carried so long — a great, fierce knife, with rust of blood upon
it ; two pistols with revolving cylinders thick as his riven ankle, and

554 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

loaded in every chamber ; a seven-shotted carbine ; a candle-spotted
pocket compass ; his diary full of protestations and despair, and hold
ing Light Pittson's name ; his pipe and scarf-pin, and the likenesses
of ladies ; and a little Catholic medal. He sighed :

" Tongue ! "

The detective opened his mouth and said :

" Booth, no blood is on your tongue."

He started at his name, which seemed a century since it had
been mentioned, and gasped :

" Hands ! "

The officer raised his hand and moistened it with a piece of ice,
and lifted it all limp to Booth's face. It fell uncontrollable, like his
broken foot.

He feebly moved his eyeballs through an arc which swept all
nature and exhaled the closing words :

" Useless — 'sless ! "

His face now expressed the unseen agony for which there was
no word, and his cherished pride of strength pushed Death away
that mercifully drew near again and again, but ever was repelled by
the flushing rose and pulse of life, till the fine countenance of the
actor and athlete seemed a battle-ground of wounds and spasms,
growing hollower with each contention, and ready at the cock's
crow, like the wandering ghost, to fade into the morn.

A carbineer had killed him in the barn ; and, long afterward, was
found in the ashes there the field-glass delivered to him at Surratt's
— its leather case found uninjured in a distant farm-house.

The cocks began to crow. The morn awaked with sullen eye.
A doctor had come, but it was too late.

The assassin's body was put into a negro's cart and hauled to
the Potomac, and on the way the captors read to the thrilled negro's
ears, from Booth's diary, such words as these :

" Hunted like a dog through swamps and woods — wet, cold, and
starving, with every man's hand against me — behold the cold hand
they extend to me — God can not pardon me if I have done wrong —
serving a degenerate people — so ends all— that makes life sweet
and holy — misery upon rny family — no pardon in the heaven for
me, since man condemns me so— bless my mother — the curse of
Cain upon me ! " *

* These entries are to be found beginning " Te amo" and the first date
"Friday, the Ides," in Lieutenant-Colonel Conger's testimony in Surratt's

EM1GRAVIT. 555

When the body was brought to the city of Washington, Senator
Pittson and his daughter with others identified it.

There was one great scar upon his neck, made long before by a
tumor from a pistol-ball which had been accidentally shot into his
side, and had worked its way out to his neck, and the tumor had
been torn open by a jealous woman before healing.

" Here, Light, my daughter," said the senator, " is a symbol of
what should turn you from the spurious to the good romance. Old
shows and showmen try to stop the world and kill its real actors.
Theatricals in government are doomed."

" Miss Light," said Luther Bosler, drawing the beautiful woman
from the awful scene, " let us reflect that, perhaps, in John Brown's
illegal act to do good, this boy, Booth, found his example ; and so
violence is a poor ally of justice everywhere. I am a Dunker yet, in
the belief that peace is the only good result of war. "

" Thank you for your charity to that poor Absalom," said Light.
" I fear that I have wronged, in you, a gentleman."

" I am earnestly waiting," said Luther, " to forgive you, and with
all my heart ! "

CHAPTER LI.

EMIGRAVIT.

THE judge-advocate, who was to arraign the prisoners before a
court-martial of nine accomplished officers, made up his case in
advance. Lloyd Quantrell was brought from prison and privately
examined. The state of public feeling made it difficult to separate
what men imagined from what they knew ; but the military attor
neys were the coolest of the people, and the civil attorney-general
had settled the propriety of their jurisdiction

" This is a crime," said the judge-advocate, " which has been
committed in the midst of a great civil war, in the capital of the
country, in the camp of the commander-in-chief of our armies ; and
if the common law of war can not be enforced against criminals of
that character, then I think such a code is in vain in the world."

trial, vol. i, p. 310. The testimony of different persons naturally differs very
much.

556 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

The only excuse of moment for the eight culprits arraigned, was
that the court could not have jurisdiction ; and the blood of the
President might have smoked for justice in vain had his slayers
been turned over to the common courts of Washington, where the
virus of slavery, like a deadly alkali, long survived in the soil ; and
more than two years afterward a jury failed to punish a principal in
the conspiracy.

Ouantrell had nearly abandoned hope as he saw the case close
around him— Booth dead, and Fenwick testifying that he had seen
Lloyd in Washington.

Hannah Ritner appeared, before the findings were determined,
and with her came Lloyd's wife, and Luther Bosler, and all the
Pittsons.

" What is the power that woman exercises over me ? " said Lloyd
to his wife. " Has she come here to destroy me ? "

Hannah had grown very gray, and, since the death of the Presi
dent, her flesh and bearing were both reduced.

" I have but one labor in this life to do," the gaunt and weary
woman said, " and my strength is just enough to finish it. It has
been testified by General Bosler that this man " (pointing to Lloyd)
" swore on oath with Booth to revenge the South. He has been a
Southern soldier to the last — no more, no less.

" Again, he visited Booth at Bryantown. Gentlemen, I sent him
there, claiming to have his father's commands, whom he so revered,
and here is the letter he sent to that father, which I have never
shown to any man before this day. Read it, and behold with what
scorn he rejected the assassin's advances and discouraged his plot !

" There was another vow this young man made, and he has kept
it in the faithfulness of hunger and love's temptation— he made it
to his father in the bitter sundering of civil war — never to play the
spy, nor cross the lines of war. I set one oath against the other, and
they become consistent."

Lloyd's eyes were flowing as he heard his father's name, and had
found an advocate in this incomprehensible being, who had long ago
predicted his career.

" Gentlemen," continued Hannah Ritner, " it is of record that
Lloyd Ouantrell manumitted his slaves ; and here is the bill of sale
to his father, that the act might be effected. Would that manu-
mitter hate the President for the act of emancipation, and desire to
have his blood ? "

EMIGRA VI T.

557

" How came she by all my father's private papers ? " asked
Quantrell of himself. " Is she a soothsayer indeed ? "

" And still there lies the charge that Mr. Quantrell was in Wash
ington. Twice his name was given at the bridge. In the first case
he has no witness ; for Booth, who gave his name, in mean re
venge, can never speak again ; but in the other case, where the
companion of the assassin, on Good-Friday night, passed for Major
Ouantrell, I read your mind, Mr. Assistant Advocate, and charge
that Herold has admitted already that he gave the name of Quan-
treli at Booth's direction ! "

Something of the old fire and spiritual frenzy was in her manner
now, and an exclamation of wonder and fear went round the apart
ment when the attorney bowed his head, saying :

" Yes, Herold has relieved the prisoner of that charge, but Fen-
wick saw him here."

" Call Fenwick in ! " said Hannah Ritner. " He is confined in
this prison, and I dare the prediction that he will say he was mis
taken."

The Old Capitol Prison it was — once the seat of government
when the British invader destroyed the Capitol edifice, and from its
shades the gloomy spirit of Calhoun, brooding over beleaguered
slavery, had floated away like a soul upon the river Styx.

Fenwick appeared and glanced around the room, and Lloyd
Quantrell rose and looked at him, relentless and avaricious of his
life as some highwayman, and his port was like the executioner's.

" Look at these letters, Fenwick," said Hannah Ritner, " and see
if you identify the writer of them in this presence ! "

She gave him a bundle, and he turned them over once, and be
came pale and seemed to swoon for an instant. Hannah Ritner
took the letters back and spoke :

" Give him that Bible and cross, and let him swear that Quan
trell was the man he saw ! "

Fenwick took the book and cast a look of imploration on Han
nah Ritner and of terror upon Ouantrell, and faltered :

" I see I was mistaken. That was not the man I supposed to
be my old friend Lloyd Ouantrell."

As Katy embraced her husband with the rapture of relief, the
Government's lawyer exclaimed :

" Mr. Fenwick, you have barely saved yourself. We have been
looking for some one to make an example of for perjury, and we

558

KATY OF CATOCTIN.

had already obtained a clear alibi for Major Ouantrell. — There re
mains, major, but one undisproved imputation against you : did you
see the fugitives, Booth and Herold, in Virginia ? "

Ouantrell had remained standing, still looking the speechless
fury of an injured friendship upon Fenwick.

" I did see Booth," said he, " and gave him the commonest of
fices of mercy. If he had been strong, reckless, and my equal for
an encounter, I might have treated him far differently ; but he was
helpless, disappointed, so changed in all the attributes of man, that
I saw remorse was working out a penance worse than death, and
that death also was close before him. My situation made me mor
ally weak : I did not know what to do, and I let my impulses decide
me. I thought of him in better times, the playmate of my childhood
— and of his mother's sorrow. Something is due, gentlemen, to our
weakness at the close of such a war, and the lingering tyranny of
hospitality we may have extended, even to those whose crime we
abhorred ; and perhaps the great victim of that crime, overlooking
our exposure and temptation, guided our hands to mercy, or forgave
the little charity in which we sinned ! "

Prompt, soldierly, manfully, as Quantrell spoke, the justice-seek
ers weighed his manner and his words, and the plea he made saved
life and captivity to many ; for the Government was now possessed of
every person's name and act of abetting, in the course of that long,
mysterious crime — the original parties to the abduction plot, all of
whom were guilty of the consequences of that beginning ; the shel-
terers of Booth from point to point, to some of whom he went, re
lying upon their implication in past misdeeds ; and some who made
his cause their own.

It was determined to let those go, in time, wno had merely done
humane offices to the fugitives, or who had not been active in the
plot. Captain Cox, and Jones, who sold Booth his boat, and the
Brawner-s and Smoots, who had been leagued with Atzerodt and
Surratt to row the captive President over the river, escaped the
court-martial, as did several aiders and abettors in Virginia, to
wrhom the assassin disclosed his name, and who had read the pub
lic proclamations.

Yet, with low, abiding party malice, the kindly discriminating
military men, who punished only the grossest of those offenders,
were traduced for years !

The judge-advocates shook Quantrell's hand, and the benignity

EMIGRA VI T

559

and greatness of the Government, as Lloyd's palms thrilled beneath
the grasp of soldierly opponents, he felt like more than pardon — like
fatherhood.

" Never," said he to Luther Bosler, " shall my father find me sul
len to his ideas of freedom and of nationality again. As I am for
the Government now, I shall be among those who have ever been
for it, and who look not to the past."

In a few days Quantrell was paroled, but ordered not to leave
the city, and Fenwick was imprisoned as a slippery witness.

." Quantrell," said Hannah Ritner, " I am going to see your
father, who is in the mountains, to escape the heat of Baltimore.
He is very ill, but I trust you may see him once more. When you
are permitted, come to my old cabin, where I read your fortunes by
the light of a great personal experience. And here, my children,
are letters taken from poor Fenwick's trunk, full of the music of the
turtle-dove."

When she had gone, Lloyd and Katy found every letter Lloyd
had written to his wife through the long war and separation, breath
ing love and devotion and brave trust in Heaven and time.

" O husband," said Katy, " you need but one thing more to
wash your spirit white — humility."

" Where can I find it, my darling ? "

"Where I have found my wedding-ring again — in the water-
brook of my tears. Lloyd, you must be baptized among the Dunk-
ers, who are people of peace and worldly rest, and have no wars
nor idle passions. Liquor and tumult wait to consume you in the
city. Come into our mountains and be wrapped in their soft arms
of shelter and of love ! "

" Katy, the man who denied you these letters of assurance, and
let you think me all these years a villain and seducer, ought not to
live."

"Hush, Lloyd! he was false to you— because he loved your
wife."

The pains ecclesiasticism was at to make the most of Abel
QuantrelTs conversion and to rectify his son's matrimonial irregu
larity, gave slight concern to Lloyd and his wife, who were well
understood to have been married as legitimately as was usual, and
to have been unusually faithful ; and when it was found that Katy
would be nobody's convert, and that Quantrell would probably be-

560 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

come a Dunkard, the Church set about ordaining and disciplining
Hugh Fenwick, who was meek as a sheep.

There being no strictly monastic institution for American men,
Fenwick's captivity lay between the old novitiate block in Frederick
City and the convent at Georgetown. Beneath the convent slept an
assassin who had once been a soldier and a priest, and before Abra
ham Lincoln's birth this person had sacrificed fifty-two human lives
by an infernal machine he exploded, to kill First-Consul Napoleon
Bonaparte. Escaping to America, he was used awhile, with his aris
tocratic notions, to put down " usurpations of the laity," * and final
ly he died director of the Georgetown convent.

At this Limoelan's tomb, in the middle of the Sisters' vault,
where politics lay dead amid disappointed love or immolated sensi
bility, Lloyd Quantrell and his wife were led to witness the penance
and hear the confession of Father Fenwick at last.

It distressed them both to see the plight of this overtaken fox as
he paraded in the gloomy place with sandals on his feet, in a long
shirt, with a shaved head, and carrying a ponderous candle.

" Katy," said the monk, " the fasting and the tasks I must do
for the remainder of my days, will not be hard compared to the
pain of losing you forever ; and I can not blame my imperfect nature
that, having drunk once at the wells of your soft eyes, I should have
been always athirst to see my image reflected there. But your hus
band was my friend, and the injury I did to him will weigh upon my
soul in the solitude of my cell, unless he fully forgives me and takes
my hand."

" Take it, Lloyd," said Katy. " He always was respectful to me,
nnd was the best of teachers. We are blessed so much that we can
not hate anybody."

" Fenwick." said Lloyd Quantrell, " I fear if we had met else
where than in these mysterious shades, I should have given you my
hand in more than cordiality. But since the world is to close upon
you, my spirit shall not stay here to give you any trouble. I tempted
you, being myself under love's sore temptation, and I ask you to for
give me for the infliction our clandestine marriage has brought
upon you."

" Do you forgive me unreservedly, Lloyd ? "

" Without reserve. If we ever meet in this world, it shall not be
as enemies."

* De Courcy's " History of the Catholic Church in the United States."

EMIGRAVIT. 561

As the receding footsteps of the happy pair were lost on Fen-
wick's ear, he murmured to himself :

" I feared that live fellow more than all these unmuscular ghosts.
Since he is no longer dangerous, I'll make my way to Nelly's soon,
and she has promised to marry me. How true it is that —

' When the devil was sick, the devil a monk would be ;
When the devil got well, the devil a monk was he ! ' "

As Lloyd Quantrell reached the city, the drums of the two great
disbanding armies of the Union thrilled his ears. For two days they
had been passing in procession before the President's house, and he
looked with astonishment at the resources of the state, unending, it
almost seemed, like the corn-fields of the New World. More than
one million men were marching back to private life, and, alas ! of
fellow-countrymen, more than half a million had lost their lives, and,
last of all, the magistrate of all.

General Bosler called to Lloyd that they would go to the theatre
that night and see Nelly Harbaugh bring out her new piece. A
private box just accommodated the Pittson family of three, and
Luther, Lloyd, and Katy.

" I have never before been in a theatre," said Luther, "but this
poor girl needs our assistance, and presented me with this box."

Lloyd thought there was an appearance of constraint on Mrs.
Pittson's face; for he had no knowledge of the close ties which
bound him to the senator, and these had embarrassed Mrs. Pittson
from the instant when her daughter met Lloyd at Harper's Ferry.

As Light and Katy sat together at the front of the box, with
their contrasts of bright and night, many a returned veteran of the
war looked at them in almost trembling homage, as the wonders of
a beauty perfected during the war. Light was still excited on the
painful subject of her father's parentage ; but its discovery had done
much to bring domestic humility to her heart, and this night she
was to relinquish or accept Luther Bosler, who had arranged to settle
in Kansas with other Dunker emigrants, and to take Jake his father
along — the old place having been sold to Katy, who was to live in
Catoctin Valley with her husband.

The curtain rose upon a school scene in the old Dutch country,

and Nelly Harbaugh was a pupil. The teacher, a lame youth, full of

animal life and with beauty in spite of his lameness, betrays a rough

favor for this pupil, who weaves around his strength and suscepti-

562 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

bility the coquetries of love and willfulness ; and with some humor
ous display of German habits and patois the girl is ordered to be
" kept in " after school and set to a task, for punishment. When
all the lads and maidens go, and the teacher is alone with his tor
mentor, he asks why he is persecuted, and betrays the deep feelings
of his heart, and avows the love she has fully understood. But he is
poor, hated as a Yankee trespasser, an abolitionist, and worse than
infidel. His loneliness, however, has been his greatest charm to
her ; for he is loved through pity.

While they all praised the acting, and felt the native inspiration
in the tale, the curtain rose upon the teacher's home in the Green
hills of Vermont : a little mother, hardly to be distinguished from
her large brood, sewing shoes for livelihood, and the flour gone in
the barrel. Poverty and struggle are revealed, and nothing is left
but one son, whose education has taken the last cent of the patri
mony, and whose pittance as a teacher is the widow's stay. And
now this son has felt the pangs of love himself, and would be mar
ried where there is family pride and high connections, but no for
tune. The teacher has sent his favorite pupil to his mother, and
at the widow's tale of woe and ceaseless dependence the pitying
maid resigns her hopes, and hears the widow's gratitude.

" Why, this is the tale my father has often told me of his own
life," said Lloyd. " How beautiful is Nelly in her dark wig and
false tresses, and I seem to be reading a story I already know ! "

He looked at Light Pittson, and saw her face full of emotion, as
she said :

" There is surely romance here, and, Lloyd, it concerns us
both."

Now the scene showed the teacher discharged and in a bare law-
office, desperate for occupation, but deeper hurt in love's involve
ments ; for his pupil is promised by her guardian to a man of rising
station who is to be the Governor of a new American Territory, and
has already gone there to prepare her home. His absence is pro
longed, and love re-enters the hearts of the twain behind him. A
strong, remorseless, mighty power impels the lover to demand what
nature ever would concede him — the possession of his idol ; and in
his burning zeal her weakness melts like wax.

The actress and the man played passion to the life, as only in
rare, dauntless breasts its fires burn and heave ; and when the tardy
lover comes, he finds — his rival's child.

EM 1C R A VI T.

563

The father offers the amends of honor and the marriage rite, but
is refused by his lady, because there are hungrier mouths to feed at
his mother's hearth.

In admiration of the woman's spirit, the rival becomes her gal
lant friend, and asks the gift of her child as the solace of his West
ern home.

The scene where the parents relinquish to the behests of society
the offspring of their passion, touched multitudes to tears, and Nelly
was called before the curtain and made the heroine of the city.

" Lloyd," said Luther Bosler, gravely, " could any heart be so
hard as to impute evil to that little child ? "

" None but a coward's," Lloyd replied.

He looked at Edgar Pittson, who smiled at all this tale, as one of
life's kindly trifles.

The last scene of the play shows that fortune has turned in the
lame lover's favor, and he has secured clients, following, and gold,
and seeks the image he had worshiped, to become the companion of
his maturity.

She has made for her penance austerity, and exposure for philan
thropy's sake, and taken vows to Heaven holier than enthusiasm's ;
and she haunts the wilderness of the hills.

He is a man, and the social instincts draw him hard ; and so,
while the music of a lighted church woos him to his bridal with
another, the lady of his youth stands in the winter snows outside,
resigning him in the extremest woe of expiation.

" What is this tale ? " Lloyd Quantrell whispered ; " it seems to
me I know that teacher, and that suffering woman, too."

" Lloyd," said Nelly Harbaugh, to whom they had gone, in her
dressing-room, to give her congratulations, " I chose that part to
play, because none could render it by deeper experience than mine ;
and I also heard there was an old misunderstanding in your father's
life, hard to be explained and better to be represented. Do you
understand it now ? "

" I ? Why, I thought I felt my father through it all. That wom
an, then, who suffered all too nobly — she was who ? "

" Lloyd, I think it was meant for my mother," Edgar Pittson
said, without the least excitement of manner. " The old were once
young, and romance blazed in their lives and made fantastic shad
ows and similitudes, such as they see who live by country hearths
and stir the embers to an occasional glow. I was the child they

564 KATY OF CATOCTIN.

parted from. Your father was my father also ; and now, I hope,
your German brother will be my son."

He looked where Luther Bosler stretched his hand to Light
Pittson, and saw the roses climb to her cheeks as she accepted it,
and Katy kissed her fondly.

•' Lloyd," said Light, " do you remember when you kissed me in
the train that night at Harper's Ferry ? Something purer than love
made you do it — the romance of old times flowing in our related
veins. I want you to kiss me again ; and to kiss my mother's dread
of you away, also."

" I am all confused again," said Lloyd, tenderly kissing all the
ladies, and his wife at last. " How came this play to be made ? "

" Why," said Edgar Pittson, " I found that Jesuitical fellow, Fen-
wick, knew something of it, and I freely told him the rest, and I sup
pose he made the piece for Nelly."

" Don't abuse him," cried Nelly Harbaugh. " I am to try the
remainder of life with him, and he will have enough lies to tell, as
my husband and traveling agent, to keep me well advertised."

"But the lady who is your mother, brother Edgar," said Lloyd,
" do I know her ? "

"Thank God, she still lives," spoke the senator, in fervent re
spect, " and is at this moment with your father ! Lloyd, she has
fulfilled a mother's part with you, and is worthy of your tenderest
care. She has genius, that may have been developed by her misfor
tune into nearly double sight, and a heart as loving as universal hu
manity."

" I have not wandered from my father's house for years," said
Lloyd, " to return with mean uncharity. Now I can see, in his
wounded heart, the reasons for his suffering, and his spirit of resist
ance to all forms of oppression. I might, also, have returned and
found Katy another's, or been parted from her by my own error —
and even she has been pointed at, with all her purity, as one wooed
and flung aside. He who gave me the precious gift of life trans
mitted his warm affections to me also, and I long to throw myself
at my father's feet and assure him that nothing in his youth could
keep me from honoring him forever."

" That has been my feeling, Lloyd," said Edgar Pittson, " and in
honoring our parents we are promised long life in our land. Our
father's apparent preference for me over you was another proof of
his generous nature, for he thought you possessed the greater share

EMIGRA VI T.

565

of worldly acknowledgment. There are men who hate the offspring
of their mistakes and banish them to unaccredited obscurity, but I
have possessed my father's love and given him all my confidence,
and I have worked in his heart an equal love for you, my brother.
Your wife has been his daughter, and is possessed of half his estate.
Thus religion can be brought out of what might have been dishonor,
if we had let nature be our shame. I have used the disadvantage of
my birth to incline my heart toward other willful or weak fellow-
creatures, and make the allowances of charity for them, and a faith
that is never ashamed goes with me ; and when you took your side,
Lloyd, with the slave States, in arms, I gave you my sympathy, all
the more, that I felt you were in error ; and I knew, if your life was
spared, that you would come back to your father's house a noble
man."

As these tones of strength and gentleness came down like a
shower in sunshine, and love looked out at Lloyd from every eye,
he tried to speak, but could not. His tongue grew thick, and a sob
came up from his deep chest that moved all to tears.

" Let me sit awhile alone here," he said at last ; " I want to cry a
little."

They kissed his forehead, one after another, and stole away.

And there, as in the theatres, where the apostles preached of
old in the colonies of the Greeks, the spirit of conversion came "upon
Lloyd Quantrell ; the birth of peace in his soul, and the alighting of
the heavenly dove.

A religious instinct, derived from his mother, took root in his con
trite heart like a rose-bush, and her prayers were answered as by the
singing of a bird from its thorns. The desires of duty and of rest
overcame him, and he went out changed, like the bright spirit that
was seen going from the fiery furnace of Nebuchadnezzar.

It was a Sunday laden with blossoms and dove-warblings when
Quantrell sat again in the old Bunker meeting under the azure bar
of the South Mountain, and heard Luther speak the gospel of peace
and forgiveness.

Lloyd thought how he had been spared where so many fell —
some by the sword, and some by the flesh ; some by their weakness,
and some by their strength ; some shipwrecked upon the world ; some

566 KATY OF C A TO C TIN.

brought home, like the ark of Noah, to the mountain-tops ; and the
soft, illimitable bar of the mountain gave him rest to look upon it
as if it were the rainbow of God's covenant brought down to be his
barrier against the consuming fires of human rage.

As he walked toward the flowing stream to kneel and be dipped
into the Pietist brotherhood, Katy looked at him with the sense of
an old belief now assured, and Jake Bosler murmured :

" Nefer mind ! — Bi'm-by is come, Katy ! "

Then they went on to the inclination of the mountain, where
Smoketown stood like something lost and sprinkled along the high
way. The jaws of the sundered hillocks drank them in, and the
witch's wild lawn stood in rank strength and flower, around her lit
tle cabin, while the clear torrent gurgled around the fruit-tree roots,
and near the door two doves were sitting side by side on an apple-
bough, and in a low tone were saying :

" Coo-roo ! — ah, coo-roo ! "

" Go in, my brother," Edgar Pittson said ; " your father is ex
pecting you. Tread lightly, for he is very low to-day ! "

There, in the little home the lonely woman had kept so many
years in danger and the terror of bad laws, sat Hannah Ritner beside
a bed lighted round by tapers ; and on the bed was a face closed in
a smile of plaintive obduracy, as if regarding the ceremonial of his
death indulgently, because women had pleased to arrange it.

" We have taken him into holy church, and sprinkled him with
holy-water," said one of the nuns of Emmitsburg.

" Father," Lloyd whispered, bending to kiss the sleeper ; but the
coldness of the lips made him start. — " O Edgar," he cried, " come
here ! "

The elder son entered and touched the old man's brow.

" Lloyd, we are equals now. We have no father."

" I thank God, Edgar, that the blood I saw on his face when we
parted, is there no more. He told me we should never meet again ;
but I know there is a land where all tears are wiped away. And
now, where is our mother — she who suffered with him all those
years ? "

" Here, friends," spoke Luther Bosler, " and she has not sur
vived him long. See ! she is not yet cold. The last poor fugitive
to take shelter in her cabin, has passed on with her. No blood
hounds can follow them."

Lloyd and his wife knelt down at Hannah Ritner's feet, and still

EMIGRA VIT. 567

the turtles at the door were heard to murmur together, as she had
foretold.

" Pray ! " said Edgar Pittson to his new son.

Luther raised his hands above the aged sister of the Magdalen,
and spoke what came upon his lips :

u Thou shalt be called by a new name, which the mouth of the
Lord shall name. Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken ; neither
shall thy land any more be termed Desolate ; but thou shalt be
called Hephzi-bah, and thy land Beulah : for the Lord delighteth in
thee, and thy land shall be married. For as a young man marrieth
a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee."

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" ' The Faith Doctor ' is worth reading for its style, its wit, and its humor, and not
less, we may add, for its pathos." — London Spectator.

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great interest. . . . One who tries to keep in the current of good novel-reading must
certainly find time to read ' The Faith Doctor.' " — Bitffalo Commercial.

" T A BELLA " AND OTHERS. By EGERTON CAS-
J—^ TLE, author of " Consequences." Paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.00.

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\vho have been cloyed by a too long succession of insipid sweetness and familiar
incident." — London Aihen&um.

" The author is gifted with a lively fancy, and the clever plots he has devised gain
greatly in interest, thanks to the unfamiliar surroundings in which the action for the
most part takes place." — London Literary World.

" Right stories, all exhibiting notable originality in conception and mastery of art,
the first two illustrating them best. They add a dramatic power that makes them
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its practice." — Boston Globe.

New York : D. APPLETON & CO.. 72 Fifth Avenue.

D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS.

NOVELS BY MAARTEN MAARTENS.

GREATER GLORY. A Story of High Life.
J- By MAARTEN MAARTENS, author of " God's Fool," " Joost
Avelingh," etc. I2mo. Cloth, $1.50.

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Dutch novelists, it is doubtful if many American readers knew that there were Dutch
novelists. His ' God's Fool' and 'Joost Avelingh' made for him an American reputa
tion. To our mind this just published work of his is his best. . . . He is a master of
epigram, an artist in description, a prophet in insight." — Boston Advertiser.

" It would take several columns to give any adequate idea of the superb way in
which the Dutch novelist has developed his theme and wrought out one of the most
impressive stories of the period. ... It belongs to the small class of novels which
one can not afford to neglect." — San Francisco Chronicle.

" Maarten Maartens stands head and shoulders above the average novelist of the
day in intellectual subtlety and imaginative power."— Boston Beacon.

GOD'S FOOL. By MAARTEN MAARTENS. i2mo.
Cloth, $1.50.

" Throughout there is an epigrammatic force which would make palatable a less
interesting story of human lives or one less deftly told." — London Saturday Review.

" Perfectly easy, graceful, humorous. . . . The author's skill in character-drawing
is undeniable." — London Chronicle.

" A remarkable work." — New York Times.

"Maarten Maartens has secured a firm footing in the eddies of current literature.
. . . Pathos deepens into tragedy in the thrilling story of ' God's Yov\.'"—Philadel*-
phia Ledger.

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to-day." — Boston Daily Advertiser.

"The story is wonderfully brilliant. . . . The interest never lags; the style is
realistic and intense; and there is a constantly underlying current of subtle humor.
... It is, in short, a book which no student of modern literature should fail to read."
— Boston Times.

" A story of remarkable interest and point."— New York Observer.

'OOST AVELINGH. By MAARTEN MAARTENS.

I2mo. Cloth, $1.50.

"So unmistakably good as to induce the hope that an acquaintance with the Dutch
literature of fiction may soon become more general among us." — London Morning
Post.

" In scarcely any of the sensational novels of the day will the reader find more
nature or more human nature." — London Standard.

"A novel of a very high type. At once strongly realistic and powerfully ideal
istic." — London Literary World.

" Full of local color and rich in quaint phraseology and suggestion." — London
Telegraph.

" Maarten Maartens is a capital story-teller."—/^// Mall Gazette.

"Our English writers of fiction will have to look to their laurels."— Birmingham
Daily Post. .

New York : D. APPLETON & CO.. 72 Fifth Avenue.

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