He required not to be thus stimulated, if they had but known it: he had been stimulated sufficiently already, by the tossing hair and fair face of the little girl, to peril his life, and he was not the man to look back when he had his hand to the plough.
The blood besmeared his face, and streamed down his neck, and wet his shirt-bosom and sleeves, and still the voices cried, "Hold on, Johnny!" They thought he was being battered to death, though the blood was from the mouth of the horse, for the entire weight of the man was being dragged by the bit.
At the toll-gate an old woman ran out with a broom,—she could have shut the gate, but did not,—and when Johnny had stopped the horse, which he did a little farther on, she told him that but for his being in the way she could have stopped the beast at once, and that, if he was as badly battered as he seemed, she would be at the pains of getting the poor-house cart, and seeing that he was carted away! The old carriage was surrounded in a few minutes, and the child lifted out, and kissed and coaxed, and petted and praised, and fed with candies and cakes, and handed from the arms of one to another; and the feet and legs of the horse were carefully examined, and he was dashed with cool water, and combed and rubbed, and petted and patted, and given a variety of either grand or endearing names; but nobody looked after Johnny, and the only kindness shown him was that of the old woman with the broom.
But even Fortune tires of frowning at last, and the time of her relenting toward John Chidlaw was at hand.
He was washing the blood from his face in a wayside puddle, when the man who owned the horse and buggy came breathlessly up. "My good friend," he said, slapping him on the shoulder, "you have saved my child's life!" And then his hand slipped from shoulder to waist, and he positively hugged the astonished Johnny, who was almost awe-struck at first, for the hugger was well to do, and he that was hugged was exceeding poor, as the reader knows.
"My name," he said, introducing himself, "is Hilton, David Hilton, and I keep the ferry at the lower end of the town; should n't wonder if I could put business in your way! You can turn your hand to a'most anything, I reckon,—a man of your build mostly can."
A fortnight later, and John Chidlaw was the master of a little black sailboat not much bigger than a canoe, and his business was to carry butchers' meat, bread, poultry, and vegetables from the market-town in which he lived to the great hotels situated on the hills above the opposite shore. His boat had, therefore, in his eyes, somewhat the dignity of a merchantman; and as he was entitled to a part of the profits of the trade he carried on, he was at once a proud and a happy man. He had christened his boat "The Rose Rollins," and kept her as neat and trim as she could be. He wore a sailor's jacket, from professional pride, and used all the nautical phrases he could muster. His shoulders got the better of their stoop, and his chest of its hollowness, in a wonderfully short time; and one day, when he was asked about the scar on his hand, he answered that he had been bitten by a whale when he was a young man at sea. It will be perceived that he was gaining confidence, and growing in worldly wisdom. The questioner was a very timid person, but she said she guessed she could trust herself with an old sailor like that, and at once went aboard. She was a milliner, laden with boxes for the ladies in the opposite hotels, and was the first female passenger the master of the Rose had had;—for his legitimate trade was merchandise, and not the transportation of men and women; but occasionally, as his confidence grew, he had taken a passenger or two across the ferry, on his own hook, as he phrased it.
"I took such a wiolent fancy to the name o' your wessel," says the milliner, "and that is how I come to take passage with you. Ain't she a nice little thing, though?"
"Trim as a gal o' sixteen!" says John. "But had n't you better unlade yourself o' your merchandise, and fix to enjoy the sail some?"—and he began taking the boxes from her lap.
"O sir, you 're wery good!" says the milliner, quite blushing. And then she adjusted her skirts, and flirted them about as she adjusted them, and then she untied her bonnet-strings and knotted them up again, for nothing in the world but the pleasure of tying knots in ribbon apparently; but John Chidlaw thought he had never in his life seen such a graceful and enchanting performance. He brought his jacket directly, and offered to spread it over the board on which she was sitting.