He and Ichabod Nesbit, he stated, were half-brothers. Ichabod being the younger by nearly twenty years, there had never been much companionship between them, and they drifted farther and farther apart after the death of their mother. She had been an English girl and her first husband, Mr. Hatch’s father, was an Englishman. With the family lived the mother’s sister, whom they called “Aunt Harriet.” A good many years after Mr. Hatch’s father died, his mother had been married a second time to John Nesbit. Of this union Ichabod was born. At the breaking out of the Revolutionary war, Ichabod was a wild, worthless young fellow and left home presumably to become a soldier, and Theodore Hatch, having become a Quaker, meanwhile, remained in Pennsylvania and saw his brother no more.
Time passed and the mother of the two half-brothers died. It then developed that property she had had in her own name had all been spent by her second husband, now deceased, and by Ichabod. But her sister, “Aunt Harriet,” was still possessed of means, through fortunate investments in Philadelphia.
However, she was also possessed of a stern, Loyalist spirit, and though she privately admitted that King George III. was a “sap-head,” in her own language, she strongly insisted that no matter who or what the king was, his subjects should be loyal. She resolved to return to England, and secretly disposed of her property, though at great sacrifice. She would not, however, take with her to England the wealth she had acquired in the Colonies whose rebel spirit she hated.
What was to be done? She determined to give all that she left behind to her nephews, Theodore Hatch and Ichabod Nesbit. But as both were absent, she hit upon the plan of hiding her fortune, and then, after writing a careful description of the location of the hiding place, cut the writing in two, sending one-half to one nephew, the other to the other; and sending to each, also, a long letter explaining her plan and urging them to be more brotherly—Ichabod to be a better man and Theodore to be more charitable toward him.
To obtain her fortune they would thus be obliged to meet and put together the two halves of the written description of the spot where the money and valuables were secreted, or they could not find that hiding place. Well pleased with her novel scheme, the old lady bade the half-brothers an affectionate farewell in the letters which she wrote, and at the earliest opportunity departed for England, never to return.
Nearly a year passed, the Quaker stated, before the lawyer to whom the secret letters were entrusted found Theodore Hatch and delivered his letter to him. The lawyer knew nothing of the letter’s contents, and when the Quaker inquired of him concerning Ichabod Nesbit, he could give no information save that Ichabod had been in Philadelphia expecting to find his aunt and get some money; but she was gone, and he got instead the letter left for him.
“You can tell that pious half-brother o’ mine that if he wants to do business with me he can hunt me up. I ain’t goin’ to look fer him.”
This was the message Ichabod left for the Quaker, the latter said, but the lawyer, not knowing what the words meant, gave them no particular thought.
CHAPTER XI.
HELPING THE DELAWARES—DANGER.
“Thus thou knowest that much time passed ere I made any effort to find Ichabod,” the Quaker concluded. “I did at last hear that he was living in Connecticut, and had settled down to peaceable pursuits. So, in the course of time, I set out to find him, and having no family and no kin, save Ichabod, I proposed to give all my time to it. With all my earthly possessions in my saddle-bags, therefore, I mounted my dearly beloved mare and set out. I have been traveling ever since. In time I learned of Ichabod’s death. It was at the Eagle tavern that I heard of it. Friend Quilling there knew of the half-letter which Ichabod had, and knew of what I was in search, as soon as I inquired for Brother Nesbit. For Mr. Quilling and Ichabod were very friendly.