I saw Amy at intervals, though the wintry weather and ten miles of snow-covered country that lay between us were serious barriers to frequent meetings. Moreover, the colonel's residence at Applewood had changed the tenor of life and society there. Mr. Jedediah Pawkie and the godly elders of his synagogue were banished therefrom with very little ceremony, and the aspect of the colonel's Malay servant seemed, as the incarnation of sin, to suggest very unpleasant ideas to their minds. The country at this time was swarming with troops, as an invasion was expected from France. Horse, foot, artillery, line, fencibles, and militia (to say nothing of volunteers), were quartered everywhere, and, as a regiment of remarkably smart light infantry (the old 43rd, I think) occupied a temporary wooden barrack at the village of Applewood, the house and lawn became the daily resort and lounge of the officers, to whom the colonel's full-bodied old port and the billiard-room proved very acceptable.
I trembled for my influence over Amy; yet I never hinted, even in the most distant manner, as to whose mistake she was indebted for becoming the heiress of her aunt. Indeed, much as I boyishly loved this girl, and brilliant though her prospects, I had soon other things given me to think of.
About this time, I remember there occurred a terrible episode, which seriously affected the health of my mother, and of Lotty too. A travelling pedlar, one of those itinerant jewellers, who were much more numerous in those years than in the present, made his appearance at our cottage one day, and opening his pack or box on the sill of the window, at which my mother was seated, reading, insisted on displaying his store of gold and silver watches, rings, bracelets, baubles, and thimbles; and offered to buy old metals, to barter or exchange, with all that pertinacity peculiar to his craft. Though very pressing, he loudly repudiated the most remote idea of wishing for profit on any transaction. He had also some antiques, and little Indian curiosities, which my mother was examining with some interest, when suddenly her eyes dilated, and she uttered a cry, between a shriek and a moan,—a terrible cry, which seems yet, at times, to ring in my ears, and which made the startled pedlar spring nearly a yard high, and spill half his stock upon the parlour floor. Among the articles which he termed his curiosities, her eye had detected a little round plate of silver, to which a thin fragment of bone was attached, and on it was engraved, "Oliver Ellis, Captain, 21st Fusiliers."
It was the plate with which my father's head had been trepanned, after the storming of the fort at Skenesborough, and whereon, as I have mentioned elsewhere, he had fancifully had his name, rank, and the number of his regiment, engraved. On seeing this affecting and terrible memento, the poor old lady fainted, and the pedlar, in great alarm, bundled up his wares and departed with precipitation—for his dealings were not always on the side of honesty, and, not knowing what manner of scrape he had fallen into, he left the village, and long before my mother recovered was gone beyond recall.
With the knowledge that her husband was buried in his soldier's grave, far, far away, on the bank of the mighty Hudson, where the kind hands of dear comrades had heaped the green sods over him, she had learned to be content and resigned to her bereavement, as the fortune of war and the will of God; but now, with this new knowledge that his last resting-place had been violated,—when, or by whom, or under what circumstances, she could never learn,—made her wretched indeed! A high fever was the result, and a long illness, from which she was saved with the utmost difficulty. Of the devil of a pedlar who caused all this evil, we could never discover the slightest trace. He had come and gone like the "Sandman" of the German romance, or that unpleasantly ubiquitous personage, with whom our friend Dr. Twaddel, wrestled in the spirit, every Sunday.
While my mind was occupied by this affair, the thoughts of the worthy Mr. Macfarisee were ever running on the missing will. I know not whether he connected me with its disappearance, but he was now more exacting, more annoying, and more pettily tyrannical than ever, and his concealed wrath hovered over my devoted head, like the sword that erst hung by a horse's hair above the pericranium of Damocles. One day, I was alone in Macfarisee's business-room, when happening to open a book near to me, the following passage struck my eye:—
"Why should I wear out a dreary life in poverty and obscurity, while I loathe one and detest the other? There are, who talk of calm content, of gliding unnoticed through the road of life: let those who like such ignoble path follow it. Did I make myself? Did I wish to enter on this mortal struggle? Did I give myself feelings, ideas, or wishes? My future rests upon my belief, as if I could believe what I chose."
These questions filled me with strange thoughts, and I sank into one of my day-dreams, from which I was roused by the unwelcome entrance of Macfarisee. Perceiving that no other person was present, he began, in an unusually bland tone of voice, to refer to the scene that took place at Applewood on the day of the funeral, adding,—
"There is something very mysterious, Oliver Ellis, in the disappearance of that document!"
"So I have heard you say, sir, many times."