“What you want, hah?” said old Jim, poking his head from the garret window of the kitchen, and looking as sour as a persimmon before frost. “Guess Massa Squire Higginson drunk, hah? What you want? Spose I'm gwyin to git up afo sunrise for notin, and for any body but my Massa Sheppard?”
“Why you old dog,” said I, in a passion, “I am your Master Sheppard; that is, your Master John Hazlewood Higginson, Esquire; for as for Sheppard Lee, the Jersey kill-deer, I've finished him, you rascal; you'll never see him more. So get down and let me into the house, or I'll——”
“You will hah?” said Jim, “you will what?”
“I'll shoot you, you insolent scoundrel!” I exclaimed in a rage—as if it were the most natural thing in the world for me to be in one; and as I spoke I raised my piece; when “bow-wow-wow!” went my old dog Bull, who had not bitten a man for two years, but who now rushed from his kennel under the porch, and seized me by the leg.
“Get out Bull, you rascal,” said I, but he only bit the harder; which threw me into such a fury, that I clapped the muzzle of my gun to his side, and having one charge remaining, blew him to pieces.
“Golla-matty!” said old Jim, from the window, whence he had surveyed the combat; “golla-matty!—shoot old Bull!”
And with that the black villain snatched up the half of a brick, which I suppose he kept to daunt unwelcome visiters, and taking aim at me, he cast it so well as to bring it right against my left ear, and so tumbled me to the ground. I would have blown the rascal's brains out, in requital of this assault, had there been a charge left in my piece, or had he given me time to reload; but as soon as he had cast the brick, he ran from the window, and then reappeared, holding out an old musket, that I remembered he kept to shoot wild ducks and muskrats in the neighboring marsh with. Seeing this formidable weapon, and not knowing but that the desperado would fire upon me, I was forced to beat a retreat, which I did in double quick time, being soon joined by my dog Ponto, who had fled, like a coward, at the first bow-wow of the bull-dog, and saluted in my flight by the amiable tones of Dinah, who now thrust her head from the window, beside Jim's, and abused me as long as I could hear.
Our hero finds that in assuming the body of Squire Higginson, he has invested himself with a troublesome superfluity of fat—that he has moreover a touch of the asthma—together with a whizzing, humming, and spinning in the head. One day, while gunning, these infirmities prove more than usually inconvenient, and he is upon the point of retreating to the village to get his dinner, when a crowd of men make their appearance, and setting up a great shout, begin to run towards him at full speed. Hearing them utter furious cries, and perceiving a multitude of dogs in company, he is seized with alarm and makes for the woods. He is overtaken however, charged with the murder of Sheppard Lee, and committed by Justice Parkins—a mass of evidence appearing against him, among which that of Jim Jumble is not the least important, who swears that the prisoner came to his house, shot his bull-dog, threatened to blow his brains out, and bragged that he had “just finished Mr. Lee.”
In this dilemma our hero relates the whole truth to the prosecuting attorney, and is considered a madman for his pains. The body of Sheppard Lee, however, not appearing, the prisoner is set at liberty, and takes his way to Philadelphia in the charge of some new friends appertaining to him as John Hazlewood Higginson, Esquire. He finds himself a rich brewer, living in Chestnut Street, and the possessor of lands, houses, stocks, and Schuylkill coal-mines in abundance. He is troubled nevertheless with inveterate gout, and a shrew of a wife, and upon the whole he regrets his former existence as plain Sheppard Lee. Just opposite our brewer's residence is the dwelling of Mr. Periwinkle Smith, an aristocrat, wealthy or supposed to be so, although some rumors are abroad touching mortgages. He has an only daughter, and among her frequent visitors is one Isaac Dulmer Dawkins, Esq., a young dandy of the first water, tall, slim, whiskered, mustached, of pure blood, and living on his wits. This personage is often noted by our hero, upon his passage to and from the house of Mr. Smith. Suddenly his visits are discontinued—a circumstance which the brewer has soon an opportunity of explaining to his satisfaction. Going to the Schuylkill for the purpose of drowning himself, and thus putting an end at once to the gout and the assiduities of Mrs. Higginson, our hero is surprised at finding himself anticipated in his design by I. Dulmer Dawkins, Esq. who leaps into the river at the very spot selected for his own suicide. In his exertions to get Mr. D. out, he is seized with apoplexy—reviving partially from which, he discovers a crowd attempting to resuscitate the dandy.
“I could maintain,” says our hero, “my equanimity no longer. In the bitterness of my heart I muttered, almost aloud, and as sincerely as I ever muttered any thing in my life, ‘I would I were this addle-pate Dawkins, were it only to be lying as much like a drowned rat as he!’ I had not well grumbled the last word, before a sudden fire flashed before my eyes, a loud noise like the roar of falling water passed through my head, and I lost all sensation and consciousness.”