"Cyrus, you are not fit for the rude boys around father's tavern, who always impose on you. Please don't go there again."
"Where else kin he go?" inquired Patty Cannon, severely; "thar ain't no church left nigh yer, sence Chapel Branch went to rot for want of parsons' pay. Let him go to the tavern and learn to fight like a man, an' if the boys licks him, let him kill some of 'em. Then Joe and the Captain kin make somethin' of Cy James, an' people around yer'll respect him. Why, Captain, honey, ain't ye hungry?"
This was addressed to a man with several bruises on his forehead, and an enormous flaxen mustache, as soft in texture as a child's hair—a man wearing delicate boots with high Flemish leggings, that curled over and showed full women's hose of red, over which were buckled trousers of buff corduroy, covering his thighs only, and fastened above his hips by a belt of hide. His shirt was of blue figured stuff, and his loose, unbuttoned coat was a kind of sailor's jacket of tarnished black velvet. He hung a broad slouched hat of a yellowish-drab color, soft, like all his clothing, upon a peg in the wall, and bowed to Hulda first with a smile of welcome, to Madame Cannon cavalierly, and to Levin with a graceful reserve that attracted the boy's attention from the notorious woman at he head of the table, and held him interested during all the meal.
"Pretty Hulda, I salute you! Patty, buenos dias! I hope I see you well, friend!"—the last to Levin.
As he took up his knife and fork Levin observed a ring, with a pure white diamond in it, flash upon the Captain's hand. He was a blue-eyed man, with a blush and a lisp at once, as of one shy, but at times he would look straight and bold at some one of the group, and then he seemed to lose his delicacy and become coarse and cold. One such look he gave at Hulda, who bowed her eyes before it, and looked at him but little again.
To Levin this man had the greatest fascination, partly from his extraordinary dress—like costumes Levin had seen at the theatre in Baltimore, where the pirates on the stage wore a jacket and open shirt and belt similar in cut though not in material—and partly from his countenance, in which was something very familiar to the boy, though he racked his memory in vain for the time and place. The stranger was hardly more than forty to forty-five years of age, but the mistress of the house treated him with all the blandishments of a husband.
"Dear Captain! pore honey!" she said; "to have his beautiful yaller hair tored out by the nigger hawk! Honey, he fell onto me, and I thought a bull had butted me in the stummick."
"He broke no limbs, Patty," the captain lisped, feeding himself in a dainty way—and Levin observed that his fork was silver, and his knife was a clasp-knife with a silver handle, that he had taken from his pocket—"Chis! chis! if he had snapped my arm, the caravan must have gone without me to-night. I am sore, though, for Señor was a valiant wrestler."
"He'll git his pay, honey, when they sot him to work in Georgey an' flog him right smart, an' we spend the price of him fur punch. He, he! lovey lad!"
"I took this from him to-day when I searched him carefully," the captain said, handing Patty Cannon a piece of silver coin.