"Now take the cradle, hard-hearted man," the woman cried, "and turn the baby into the fire, too, since I can cook nothing to make its milk in my breasts."
"Is the cradle worth anything, constable?" asked the magnificent-looking man with the gray silvery lights around his horsy nose; "if it's worth taking, I want it. People who can't pay their debts must live single like Jacob Cannon, and not be distrained."
A boy, with his face scratched, and dissipation settled in it, bounded suddenly into the aghast group of spectators, and made a vicious dive to recover the effects around Jacob Cannon's feet, but that mighty worthy took him by the collar and, holding him up, dropped him over a fence like a bug:
"Owen Daw, here be witnesses to an assault insultus, actionable as a trespass vi, the quotient whereof is damages or the equivalent in Georgetown jail. Take heed, good citizens, and especially I note you, Captain Van Dorn."
"I'll kill him," shouted the young bully of Johnson's Cross-roads, and late distrainer on the profile of Cyrus James, Esquire, seizing an ugly stick.
"Justifiable as son assault demesne," remarked the creditor, carelessly, as he wrenched the bobbin from the spinning-wheel and knocked the boy down with it.
His commanding manner and the ready hand operated to abash the latter, and, deeply pained with the scene, Levin Dennis fervently and impulsively cried to Van Dorn:
"Oh, Captain! can't you pay her debts! I'll give all Joe's going to give me, to pay you back. See how she lays on the bare floor! Hear her child crying for her! Oh! I think I hear my mother's voice a-callin' of me home as I listen to it."
Van Dorn, feeling Levin's hands grasp his own with simple confidence, heard and did not turn his head, while blushes like roses bloomed successively upon his fresh, effeminate cheeks. He did not repel the boy's hands, however, but looked at the scene with worldly and unpitying curiosity.
"To pay the distraints of Isaac and Jacob Cannon," he murmured, softly, "would keep a poor slaver poor. You must grow accustomed to such cries: I had to do so. Learn to love money like that merchant and me, and you will think them music."