“Ah! you couldn’t,” pleaded Corrie in a tone of deep pathos.
“P’raps,” observed John Bumpus, “p’raps if you hand over the young gen’l’m’n to the ‘grampus,’ he’ll make him speak.”
On hearing this, the boy set up a howl of affected despair, and suffered Henry to lead him unresistingly to within a few feet of Bumpus, but, just as he was within an inch of the huge fist of that nautical monster, he suddenly wrenched his collar out of his captor’s grasp, darted to the door, turned round on the threshold, hit the side of his own nose a sounding slap with the forefinger of his right hand, uttered an inexpressively savage yell, vanished from the scene, and,—
“Like the baseless fabric of a vision,
Left not a wreck behind.”
Except the wreck of the milk-saucer of the household cat, which sagacious creature had wisely taken to flight at the first symptom of war.
The boy was instantly followed by Henry, but so light was his foot, that the fastest runner in the settlement had to penetrate the woods immediately behind his mother’s house for a quarter of a mile before he succeeded in again laying hold of the refractory lad’s collar.
“What do you mean, Corrie, by such conduct?” said his captor, shaking him vigorously. “I have half a mind to give you a wallopping.”
“Never do anything by halves, Henry,” said the boy mildly. “I never do. It’s a bad habit; always go the whole length or none. Now that we are alone, I’ll give you a reasonable account of what I know, if you’ll remove your hand from my collar. You forget that I’m growing, and that, when I am big enough, the day of reckoning between us will surely come!”
“But why would you not give me the information I want in the house. The people you saw there are as much interested in it as I am.”
“Oh! are they?” returned Corrie with a glance of peculiar meaning; “perhaps they are more interested than you are.”