The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times

by George Alfred Townsend

Virgie was put in a loft over the kitchen of the house, and left to her contemplations. The place was nearly dark, and she was jaded for want of sleep, the past night's excitement having shaken her nervous system, and soon she began to doze fitfully, and dream almost awake.

She saw Meshach Milburn, who seemed to have become a little, old-faced child, reaching up to an older person, very like himself in features, and taking a steeple hat from his hand. This older child reached back, and took a similar hat from another, still older; and then the first two vanished, and two old men were giving and receiving the hat.

Then nothing was left but the hat alone, which was a huge object with fire belching from it, and by the flame a circle of wizards went round and round in dizzy glee, all wearing hats of similar form, but higher, higher, till they reached the sky and stars, and each was spouting flames.

Among these riotous wizards she recognized the features of the tall kidnapper and of Judge Custis; and Vesta, too, was there, and old Aunt Hominy, all giving a hasty look of shame or sorrow or severity at her, till she, fearing, yet fascinated, leaped into the circle, and danced around and around with the rest, till her feet made a fiery path and her head was burning hot, and finally she lost her balance, and fell into the great hat, whose high walls, like mountains, surrounded her, and nothing could she see in the bottom of the old felt tile but a little grave, and peeping from it was the face of the murdered child the kidnapper had taken away.

"Come," said a voice, and Virgie awoke, with fever in her temples and hot hands, to see the head of her conductor looking into the loft as if with red-hot eyeballs.

She only knew that she was going again in the old wagon, and a boy was in it, and that after a certain time, she could not tell how long, she was helped to the ground at an old landing, where the road stopped, and was placed on board a sort of scow, which the breeze, laden with mosquitoes, was carrying into a broad, islet-sprinkled water.

The man Hudson was sounding, and was watching the sail, while the boy steered, and Virgie was lying, sick and cold, in the middle of the skiff, covered with the man's large coat.

It seemed to her to be afternoon, and the ocean somewhere near, as she heard low thunder, like breaking waves; and once, when she rose, in a stupefied way, to look, there were familiar objects on both shores, and she thought it was the Old Town beach near Snow Hill inlet.

A little later the man brought her oysters and some cold pork-rib, with corn-bread, to eat, and the shores grew closer, and finally seemed almost to meet, as the skiff, scraping the bottom, darted through a narrow strait.

Then the stars were shining over her, and the waters grew wide again, and, lying in a trance of flying lights and images, she thought she felt her lips kissed, and a voice say "Darling!"