“Can you guess who did it?”
“Oh! ay! can I guess? I think I can. It’s Ned Arrison, I’m a’most certain.”
“Who is Ned Arrison?”
“He’s a vagabond well known about these parts, Major, and likely to git his desarts if he’s ever caught by the folks. He used to be a hanger-on of young Aylesford; he was ostler, I believe, at Sweetwater, for awhile; and as Master Charles, as they called him, was always in the stables, the two got pretty thick. Arrison’s ten years the oldest, however, and wasn’t born in this country either, but had to leave Ireland when he was about nineteen, I’ve no doubt for gittin’ into some scrape or other there. He taught the young fellow to drink, and play cards, and worse, if all accounts are true. Long before Katie’s father died, however, the tricks of Arrison were found out, and he was turned off.”
“What makes you think he had to leave Ireland for committing some crime?”
“Why, you see, Major, the rogue has had some eddication, and it stands to reason that such a man couldn’t have been brought up an ostler, or forced to fly his country without being in a scrape. To do young Mr. Aylesford justice, he’d never have been so thick with Arrison, if the fellow hadn’t had some eddication. But this, and his cunning, and his always being ready to lick Master Charles’ shoes, or go down on his knees to sarve him, which pleased the lad’s high notions, made him the right-hand man of the young fellow.”
“But all this does not prove that Arrison had anything to do with yesterday’s affair.”
“Not so fast, Major. It helps, as you’ll see by-’m-bye. Arter being turned off, Arrison went away, and I heerd was living in Philadelphy. I’ve no doubt at all that Master Charles and he were as thick as ever, there, when the lad went up to town to school. I’ve heerd that a poor girl, whom it’s said the youngster ruined, was arterwards made to marry Arrison, in order to hush it up; and that Arrison took the wife for the money that was put down, and then spent the money and broke his wife’s heart, that is if it wasn’t nigh broke before: but of this I ain’t sartain, as what happens away off in Philadelphy, isn’t easy to be got at here; and I never liked to ask outright, when I’ve been in town, and, besides, didn’t know rightly who to ask.
“When the war broke out, and the time came, before Washington re-crossed the Delaware, that ‘most everybody feared the king was going to win, who should come down here but Arrison, and as Katie’s father was now dead, Master Charles was living at the big house, and took Arrison into his employment at once. There was deviltry enough went on, in a few weeks then, to ruin the souls of a hundred men. However, before long, the tables turned, and this young Mr. Aylesford, who, as I’ve said, is as cunning as he is hot tempered, began to be afeerd for himself, if he allowed such a tory to live with him. At this Arrison went away agin. But not long after he was seen, with some other precious scoundrels, hanging about the British camp; and by-’m-bye he came back to our parts, where he took to a reg’lar refugee life. Some of us, at this, turned out and tried to hunt him off. But we couldn’t find him, till one day, he robbed a house down near the Banks. John Sanders was away when it happened, but coming home at night, and hearing from the women all about it, and how Arrison had sworn at ‘em, and struck his old mother because she tried to hide some silver tea-spoons under her apron, he swore an oath, that he’d have revenge. He guessed that the refugees wouldn’t go far that night, for they’d come in a boat, and as the wind was agin them, they’d naturally wait for the next tide: besides there were few men left in these parts at that time, and so they’d nothing to fear. On this, he struck through the woods, coming out on the shore of the river, t’other side of the big bend, some dozen miles below this. He’d taken his axe with him, and what does he do now,” and Uncle Lawrence laughed a low laugh, “but cut a path through the brush, alongside the river, leavin’ just bushes enough between him and the water to hide him. He made his path a couple of hundred feet long, and when he’d finished it, lay down at its lower end, after having double-loaded his gun with buckshot, to watch for the refugee boat. It was a bright starlight night, and I’ve often heerd Sanders tell, that as he lay there, he could see the dark tide, as it rolled by, rippling past the pint, and twinkling as if a swarm of fire-flies was settling close over it. It was as still, too, as a grave-yard. He could hear the water lip-lapping agin an old tree trunk, that lay in the stream right in front of him; and the whip-poor-wills, he said, never wailed so loud; while, whenever an owl hoo-hooed, away off in the swamp, it a’most skeered him, it seemed so near. At last, arter he’d waited a long while, he heerd the sound of oars, soft-like, as if a boat was being rowed only just enough to give her steerage way. He peeped out, his heart a-beatin’, and sure enough there they were, dropping down the river with the tide. He knew Arrison, who had the tiller; and thought he knew one of the others too. There were five of ‘em. So he kneeled down, resting his gun lest his hand should shake, for he wanted to be cock-sure, and when the boat came directly opposite, blazed away. He jumped up at once, but not before he’d time to see that Arrison clapped his hand to his side, as if hurt, and that the fellow next to him, who was pulling the stroke oar, tumbled over dead like. Then he ran, let me tell you, for dear life. The men who weren’t hurt, fired right off. But,” and again Uncle Lawrence laughed his low chuckle, “Sanders, by this time, was two hundred feet off, one way, while the tide had carried them a couple of hundred in another; so that their buckshot only stripped a few leaves off the bushes, and cut down a huckleberry branch or two. Sanders got home safe before daylight, and we heerd no more of Arrison for a long while, till it was told that he’d been laid up, for months, with a wound, and had arterwards gone over to Maurice river to carry on his deviltries there, thinking that these parts was too hot for him.”
“Now that’s just the kind of rogue,” continued Uncle Lawrence, “that would rob a poor widow. And what makes me think, above all, that it was he burned widow Bates’ house, was that, when Arrison was living at Sweetwater last, he insulted the widow, one day, when he was drunk, for which her husband, who was alive then, gave him a sound thrashing. He’s the very man to remember such a thing, and take out his revenge in this cowardly way.”