"Captain," she said, "how many people I see out yonder in the fields! Maybe thar's to be a fox-chase."
"Sit, Patty! Let me drink, in my last days of life, the wine lees of your memory. You are so dear to me! Turn in the golden sun, that I may linger on that face which autumn's ashes fall upon, though through the dead leaves I see the russet colors smoulder yet! How daring was your girlhood: the poor blacksmith farmer, whose name you will transmit forever, fretted you with his sickness and his scruples, and, he aqui! you stilled him with the same cup you mixed for Betty's husband. His daughter you gave to wife to his apprentice, a strong, stolid man, capable of heroism, Patty, for he died for you, his dear misleader, on the shameful scaffold, though all the crowd knew who his instigator was; but, like a man, he died and never told."
"Van Dorn, you hurt me," Patty broke out; "I cannot laugh to-day, and these tales depress me, honey. Where shall we go when you are well?"
"La gente pone, y Dios dispone! Stay yet, and chat awhile. I would not, for the world, see you discouraged,—you, unfathomable angel! who, in this mangy corner of the globe, looked abroad over the land like Catherine, from her sterile throne, over the mighty steppes, and levied war upon the hopes of man. How you did trouble Uncle Sam, great Patty, robbing his mails for years between Baltimore and the Brandywine! Young Nichols still serves his term for that shrewd trick you taught him, of cutting the mail-bags open as he sat, with the corrupted drivers, on the crowded stage, stealthily throwing the valuable letters in the road, to be gathered by a following horseman.[10] Es admirable! Young Perry Hutton, reared by you to kidnap, then to drive the mail and filch its letters—a Delaware boy, too—perished on the gallows for killing a mail-driver more scrupulous than himself, who detected him under his mask.[11] Young Moore—was he your connection, darling?—stopping the mail-stage at the Gunpowder Forge, fell under the driver's buckshot.[12] And Hare—"
"Captain," called Patty, "I see men and boys all over the fields yonder, running and digging and dragging away the bresh. Is them ole buryins of mine suspected?"
"Pshaw! darling, 'tis your warm imagination, and Joe's unkindness. I would make you happy with the memory of your daring acts. Que maravilla! In your little pets you stamped a life out, when another woman would only stamp her foot. There was that morning when your fire would not burn, and a little black child bawled with the cold and angered you; if its body is ever dug up where it was laid, the skull cracked with the billet of wood will tell the tale. You once suspected me of truantry from your charms—Quedo, quedo! exacting dame—and the pale offspring of poor Hagar you threw upon the blazing backlog, and grimly watched it burn. The pursued children whose cries you could not still, that yet are stilled till hell shall have a voice, not even you can number. Evangelists, O Patty, dipping their pens in blood of saints to write your crimes, would make the next age infidel, where you will seem impossible, and all of us mythology!"
"Be still!" the woman cried, rising and walking, in her rolling gait, to watch things without that stirred her mind more than her lover's recitation; "what good kin these tales do you, Captain? My God! the roads is full of people, and they are all looking yer. Is it at me, Van Dorn?"
He coughed painfully, still watching her, however, and answered:
"Only a quarter-race, I guess, dear Pat! What! are you fearing, at your time of life?"
"No," cried Patty Cannon, defiantly, taking something from her bosom; "here is the same dose I gave my husband, if the worst comes."