Produced by David Starner, Melissa McDaniel and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal
signs=.
CARDIGAN
[Illustration: See p. 40
CARDIGAN AND SILVER HEELS]
_Cardigan_
_By_ ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
Author of "The Maid-at-Arms," "The Tree of Heaven,"
"Fighting Chance," etc.
Illustrated
A. L. BURT COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK
Published by arrangement with Harper & Brothers
BOOKS BY
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
LORRAINE. Post 8vo $1.25
THE CONSPIRATORS. Ill'd. Post 8vo 1.50
A YOUNG MAN IN A HURRY. Ill'd. Post 8vo 1.50
CARDIGAN. Illustrated. Post 8vo 1.50
THE MAID-AT-ARMS. Illustrated. Post 8vo 1.50
THE KING IN YELLOW. Post 8vo 1.50
THE MAIDS OF PARADISE. Ill'd. Post 8vo 1.50
IN SEARCH OF THE UNKNOWN. Ill'd. Post 8vo 1.50
OUTDOORLAND. Ill'd in Colors. Sq. 8vo, net 1.50
ORCHARDLAND. Ill'd in Colors. Sq. 8vo, net 1.50
RIVERLAND. Ill'd in Colors. Sq. 8vo, net 1.50
THE MYSTERY OF CHOICE. 16mo 1.25
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, N. Y.
Copyright, 1901, by ROBERT W. CHAMBERS.
_All rights reserved._
TO
MY FATHER
AND
MOTHER
INTRODUCTION
This is the Land of the Pioneer,
Where a life-long feud was healed;
Where the League of the Men whose Coats were Red
With the Men of the Woods whose Skins were Red
Was riveted, forged, and sealed.
Now, by the souls of our Silent Dead,
God save our sons from the League of Red!
Plough up the Land of Battle
Here in our hazy hills;
Plough! to the lowing of cattle;
Plough! to the clatter of mills;
Follow the turning furrows'
Gold, where the deep loam breaks,
While the hand of the harrow burrows,
Clutching the clod that cakes;
North and south on the harrow's line,
Under the bronzed pines' boughs,
The silvery flint-tipped arrows shine
In the wake of a thousand ploughs!
Plough us the Land of the Pioneer,
Where the buckskinned rangers bled;
Where the Redcoats reeled from a reeking field,
And a thousand Red Men fled;
Plough us the land of the wolf and deer,
The land of the men who laughed at fear,
The land of our Martyred Dead!
Here where the ghost-flower, blowing,
Grows from the bones below,
Patters the hare, unknowing,
Passes the cawing crow:
Shadows of hawk and swallow,
Shadows of wind-stirred wood,
Dapple each hill and hollow,
Here where our dead men stood:
Wild bees hum through the forest vines
Where the bullets of England hummed,
And the partridge drums in the ringing pines
Where the drummers of England drummed.
This is the Land of the Pioneer,
Where a life-long feud was healed;
Where the League of the Men whose Coats were Red
With the Men of the Woods whose Skins were Red
Was riveted, forged, and sealed.
Now, by the blood of our Splendid Dead,
God save our sons from the League of Red!
R. W. C.
BROADALBIN.
PREFACE
Those who read this romance for the sake of what history it may
contain will find the histories from which I have helped myself more
profitable.
Those antiquarians who hunt their hobbies through books had best drop
the trail of this book at the preface, for they will draw but a blank
covert in these pages. Better for the antiquarian that he seek the
mansion of Sir William Johnson, which is still standing in Johnstown,
New York, and see with his own eyes the hatchet-scars in the solid
mahogany banisters where Thayendanegea hacked out polished chips. It
would doubtless prove more profitable for the antiquarian to thumb
those hatchet-marks than these pages.
But there be some simple folk who read romance for its own useless
sake.
To such quiet minds, innocent and disinterested, I have some little
confidences to impart: There are still trout in the Kennyetto; the
wild ducks still splash on the Vlaie, where Sir William awoke the
echoes with his flintlock; the spot where his hunting-box stood is
still called Summer-House Point; and huge pike in golden-green
chain-mail still haunt the dark depths of the Vlaie water, even on
this fair April day in the year of our Lord 1900.
THE AUTHOR.
CARDIGAN
CHAPTER I
On the 1st of May, 1774, the anchor-ice, which for so many months had
silver-plated the river's bed with frosted crusts, was ripped off and
dashed into a million gushing flakes by the amber outrush of the
springtide flood.
On that day I had laid my plans for fishing the warm shallows where
the small fry, swarming in early spring, attract the great lean fish
which have lain benumbed all winter under their crystal roof of ice.
So certain was I of a holiday undisturbed by school-room tasks that I
whistled up boldly as I sat on my cot bed, sorting hooks according to
their sizes, and smoothing out my feather-flies to make sure the moths
had not loosened wing or body. It was, therefore, with misgiving that
I heard Peter and Esk go into the school-room, stamping their feet to
make what noise they were able, and dragging their horn-books along
the balustrade.
Now we had no tasks set us for three weeks, for our schoolmaster, Mr.
Yost, journeying with the post to visit his mother in Pennsylvania,
had been shot and scalped at Eastertide near Fort Pitt--probably by
some drunken Delaware.
My guardian, Sir William Johnson, who, as all know, was Commissioner
of Indian Affairs for the Crown, had but recently returned from the
upper castle with his secretary, Captain Walter Butler; and,
preoccupied with the lamentable murder of Mr. Yost, had found no time
to concern himself with us or our affairs.
However, having despatched a messenger with strings and belts to
remonstrate with the sachems of the Lenni-Lenape--they being, as I
have said, suspected of the murder--we discovered that Sir William had
also written to Albany for another schoolmaster to replace Mr. Yost;
and it gave me, for one, no pleasure to learn it, though it did please
Silver Heels, who wearied me with her devotion to her books.
So, hearing Esk and fat Peter on their way to the school-room, I took
alarm, believing that our new schoolmaster had arrived; so seized my
fish-rod and started to slip out of the house before any one might
summon me. However, I was seen in the hallway by Captain Butler, Sir
William's secretary, and ordered to find my books and report to him at
the school-room.
I, of course, paid no heed to Mr. Butler, but walked defiantly
down-stairs, although he called me twice in his cold, menacing voice.
And I should have continued triumphantly out of the door and across
the fields to the river had not I met Silver Heels dancing through the
lower hallway, her slate and pencil under her arm, and loudly sucking
a cone of maple sugar.
"Oh, Michael," she cried, "you don't know! Captain Butler has
consented to instruct us until the new schoolmaster comes from
Albany."
"Oh, has he?" I sneered. "What do I care for Mr. Butler? I'm going
out! Let go my coat!"
"No, you're not! No, you're not!" retorted Silver Heels, in that
teasing sing-song which she loved to make me mad withal. "Sir William
says you are to take your ragged old book of gods and nymphs and be
diligent lest he catch you tripping! So there, clumsy foot!"--for I
had tried to trip her.
"Who told you that?" I answered, sulkily, snatching at her sugar.
"Aunt Molly; she set me to seek you. So now who's going fishing, my
lord?"
The indescribable malice of her smile, her sing-song mockery as she
stood there swaying from her hips and licking her sugar-cone, roused
all the sullen obstinacy in me.
"If I go," said I, "I won't study my books anyway. I'm too old to
study with you and Peter, and I won't! You will see!"
Sir William's favourite ferret, Vix, with muzzle on, came sneaking
along the wall, and I grasped the lithe animal and thrust it at Silver
Heels, whereupon she kicked my legs with her moccasins, which did not
hurt, and ran up-stairs like a wild-cat.
There was nothing for me but to go to the school-room. I laid my rod
in the corner, pocketed the ferret, dragged my books from under the
library table, and went slowly up the stairs.
At sixteen I was as wilful a dunce as ever dangled feet in a
school-room, knowing barely sufficient Latin to follow Caesar through
Gaul, loathing mathematics, scorning the poets, and even obstinately
marring my pen-writing with a heavy backward stroke in defiance of Sir
William and poor Mr. Yost.
As for mythology, my tow-head was over-crammed with kennel-lore and
the multitude of small details bearing upon fishing and the chase, to
accommodate the classics.
Destined, against my will, for Dartmouth College by my guardian, who
very well understood that I desired to be a soldier, I had resolutely
set myself against every school-room accomplishment, with the result
that, at sixteen, I presented an ignorance which should have shamed a
lad of ten, but did not mortify me in the least.
And now, to my dismay and rage, Sir William had set me once more in
the school-room--and under Mr. Butler, too!
"Master Cardigan," said Mr. Butler when I entered the room, "Sir
William desires you to prepare a recitation upon the story of
Proserpine."
I muttered rebelliously, but jerked my mythology from the pile of
books and began to thumb the leaves noisily. Presently tiring of dingy
print, I moved up to the bench where sat the children, Peter and Esk,
a-conning their horn-books.
Silver Heels pulled a face at me behind her French grammar book, and I
pinched her arm smartly for her impudence. Then, casting about for
something to do, I remembered the ferret in my pocket, and dragged it
out. Removing the silver bit I permitted the ferret to bite Peter's
tight breeches, not meaning to hurt him; but Peter screeched and Mr.
Butler birched him well, knowing all the while it was no fault of
Peter's; yet such was the nature of the man that, when angry, the
innocent must suffer when the guilty were beyond his wrath.
I had remuzzled the ferret, and Peter was smearing the tears from his
cheeks, when Sir William came in, very angry, saying that Mistress
Molly could hear us in the nursery, and that the infant had fallen
a-roaring with his new teeth.
"I did it, sir," said I, "and Mr. Butler punished Peter--"
"Silence!" said Sir William, sharply. "Put that ferret out the
window!"
"The ferret is your best one--Vix," I answered. "She will run to the
warren and we shall have to dig her out--"
"Pocket her, then," said Sir William, hastily. "Who gave you leave to
pouch my ferrets? Eh? What has a ferret to do in school? Eh? Idle
again? Captain Butler, is he idle?"
"He is a dunce," said Mr. Butler, with a shrug.
"Dunce!" echoed Sir William, quickly. "Why should he be a dunce when I
have taught him? Granted his Latin would shame a French priest, and
his mathematics sicken a Mohawk, have I not read the poets with him?"
Mr. Butler, a gentleman and an officer of rank and fortune, whose
degraded whims led him now to instruct youth as a pastime, sharpened a
quill in silence.
"Gad," muttered Sir William, "have I not read mythology with him till
I dreamed of nymphs and satyrs and capered in my dreams till Mistress
Molly--but that's neither here nor there. Micky!"
"Sir," I replied, sulkily.
Then he began to question me concerning certain gods and demi-gods,
and I gaped and floundered as though I were no better than the inky
rabble ruled over by Mr. Butler.
Sir William lounged by the window in his spurred boots and scarlet
hunting-coat, and smelling foul of the kennels, which, God knows, I do
not find unpleasant; and at every slap of the whip over his boots, he
shot me through and through with a question which I had neither
information nor inclination to answer before the grinning small fry.
Now to be hectored and questioned by Sir William like a sniffling lad
with one eye on the birch and the other on Mr. Butler, did not please
me. Moreover, the others were looking on--Esk with ink on his nose,
Peter in tears, a-licking his lump of spruce, and that wild-cat thing,
Silver Heels--
With every question of Sir William I felt I was losing caste among
them. Besides, there was Mr. Butler with his silent, deathly laugh--a
laugh that never reached his eyes--yellow, changeless eyes, round as a
bird's.
Slap came the whip on the polished boot-tops, and Sir William was at
it again with his gods and goddesses:
"Who carried off Proserpine? Eh?"
I looked sullenly at Esk, then at Peter, who put out his tongue at me.
I had little knowledge of mythology beyond what concerned that
long-legged goddess who loved hunting--as I did.
"Who carried off Proserpine?" repeated Sir William. "Come now, you
should know that; come now--a likely lass, Proserpine, out in the bush
pulling cowslips, bless her little fingers--when--ho!--up
pops--eh?--who, lad, who in Heaven's name?"
"Plato!" I muttered at hazard.
"What!" bawled Sir William.
I felt for my underlip and got it between my teeth, and for a space
not another word would I speak, although that hollow roar began to
sound in Sir William's voice which always meant a scene. His whip,
too, went slap-slap! on his boots, like the tail of a big dog rapping
its ribs.
He was perhaps a violent man, Sir William, yet none outside of his own
family ever suspected it or do now believe it, he having so perfect a
control over himself when he chose. And I often think that his
outbursts towards us were all pretence, and to test his own capacity
for temper lest he had lost it in a long lifetime of self-control. At
all events, none of us ever were the worse for his roaring, although
it frightened us when very young; but we soon came to understand that
it was as harmless as summer thunder.
"Come, sir! Come, Mr. Cardigan!" said Sir William, grimly. "Out with
the gentleman's name--d'ye hear?"
It was the first time in my life that Sir William had spoken to me as
Mr. Cardigan. It might have pleased me had I not seen Mr. Butler
sneer.
I glared at Mr. Butler, whose face became shadowy and loose, without
expression, without life, save for the fixed stare of those round
eyes.
Slap! went Sir William's whip on his boots.
"Damme!" he shouted, in a passion, "who carried off that slut
Proserpine?"
"The Six Nations, for aught I know!" I muttered, disrespectfully.
Sir William's face went redder than his coat; but, as it was ever his
habit when affronted, he stood up very straight and still; and that
tribute of involuntary silence which was always paid to him at such
moments, we paid, sitting awed and quiet as mice.
"Turn the children free, Captain Butler," said Sir William, in a low
voice.
Mr. Butler flung back the door. The children followed him, Esk
bestowing a wink upon me, Peter grinning and toeing in like a Devon
duck, and that wild-cat thing, Silver Heels--
"You need not wait, Captain Butler," said Sir William, politely.
Mr. Butler retired, leaving the door swinging. Out in the dark hallway
I fancied I could still see his shallow eyes shining. I may have been
mistaken. But all men know now that Walter Butler hath eyes that see
as well by dark as by the light of the sun; and none know it so well
as the people of New York Province and of Tryon County.
"Michael," said Sir William, "go to the slate."
I walked across the dusty school-room.
"Chalk!" shouted Sir William, irritated by my lagging steps.
I picked up a lump of chalk, balancing it in my palm as boys do a
pebble in a sling.
Something in my eyes may have infuriated Sir William.
The next moment he had me by the arm, then by the collar, whip
whistling like the chimney wind--and whistling quite as idly, for the
blow never fell.
I freed myself; he made no effort to hold me.
"Keep your lash for your hounds!" I stammered.
He did not seem to hear me, but I planted myself in a corner and cried
out that he dare not lay his whip on me, which was a shameful thing to
taunt him with, for he had promised me never to lay rod to me; and I
knew, as all the world knows, that Sir William Johnson had never
broken his word to man or savage.
But still I faced him, now hurling safe defiance, now muttering
revenge, until the scornful rebuke in his eyes began to shame me into
silence. Tingling already with self-contempt, I dropped my head a
little, not so low but what I could see Sir William's bulk motionless
before me.
Presently he said, as though to himself: "If the boy's a coward, no
man can lay the sin to me."
"I am not a coward!" I burst out, all a-quiver again, "and I ask your
pardon, sir, for daring you to lay whip on me,--knowing your promise!"
Sir William scowled at me.
"To prove it," I went on, desperately, still trembling at the word
"coward," "I will give you leave to drive a fish-hook through my hand
and cut it out with your knife; and I'll laugh at the pain--as did
that Mohawk lad when you cut the pike-hook out of his hand!"
"What the devil have I to do with your fish-hook and your Mohawks!"
shouted Sir William, with a hearty oath.
Mortified, I shrank back while he fumed and cracked his whip and swore
I was doomed to folly and a most vicious future.
"You assume the airs of a man," he roared--"you with your sixteen
unbirched years--you with your gross ignorance and grosser impudence!
A vicious lad, a bad, undutiful, sullen lad, ever at odds with the
others, never diligent save with the fishing-rod--a lazy, quarrelsome
rustic, a swaggering, forest-running fellow, without the polish or the
presence of a gentleman's son! Shame on you!"
I set my teeth and shut both eyes, opening one, however, when I heard
him move.
"I'll polish you yet!" he said, with an oath; "I'll polish you, and
I'll temper you like the edge on a Mohawk hatchet."
"One red belt," I added, impudently, meaning that I defied him.
"Which you will cover with a white belt before the fires in this
hearth are dead," he answered, gulping down the disrespect.
He laid his heavy hand on the door, then, turning, he bade me write
with the chalk on the slate the history of Proserpine in verse, and
await his further pleasure.
Sir William had shut the school-room door upon me. I listened. Had he
locked it I should have kicked the panelling out into the hallway.
Standing there alone in the school-room beside the great slate, I read
in dull anger the names of those who, tasks ended, were now free of
the hateful place; here Esk had left his name above his sum, all
smears; here fat Peter had written seven times, "David did die and so
must I."
With a bit of buckskin I dusted these scrawls from the slate, slowly,
for I was not yet of a mind to begin my task.
I opened the window behind me. A sweet spring wind was blowing.
Putting up my nose to scent it, I saw the sky bluer than a heron's
egg, and a little white cloud a-sailing up there all alone.
That year the snow had gone out in April, and the same day the
blue-birds flew into the sheep-fold. Now, on this second day of May,
robins were already running over the ground below the school-room
window, a-tilting for worms like jack-snipes along the creek.
Folding my arms to lean on the sill, I could see a corner of the
northern block-house, with a soldier standing guard below in the
sunshine, and I peppered him well with spit-balls, he being a friend
of mine.
His mystified anger brought but temporary pleasure to me. Behind me
lay that villanous slate, and my task to deal with the ravishment of
that silly creature, Proserpine--and that, too, in verse! Had it been
my long-legged Diana with her view-halloo and her hounds and shooting
her arrows like a Huron squaw from the lakes! But no!--my business lay
with a puny, cowslip-pulling maid who had strayed from the stockade
and got her deserts, too, for aught I know.
Leaning there in the breezy casement I tried to forget the jade,
attentively observing the birds and the young fruit-trees, Sir
William's pride. Now that the snow had melted I could see where mice,
working under the crust in midwinter, had fatally girdled two young
apple-trees; and I was sorry, loving apples as I do.
For a while my mind was occupied in devising a remedy against
girdling; then the distant sparkle of the river caught my eye, and
straightway my thoughts slipped into their natural channel, smoothly
as the river flowed there in the sunshine; and I laid my plans for the
taking of that bull-trout who had so grossly deceived and flouted me
the past year--ay, not only me, but also that master of the craft, Sir
William himself.
Thinking of Sir William, my lagging thoughts drifted back again to my
desk. It madded me to pine here, making rhymes, while outside the
sweet wind whispered: "Come out, Michael--come out into the green
delight!"
Now Sir William had bidden me, not only to write my verses, but also
to bide here awaiting his good pleasure. That meant he would return
by-and-by. I had no stomach for further quarrels. Besides, I was
ashamed of my disrespect and temper, and indeed, selfish, idle beast
that I was, I did truly love Sir William because I knew he was the
greatest man of our times--and because he loved me.
Resolved at last to accomplish some verses as proof of a contrite and
diligent spirit, I set to work; and this is what I made:
"Proserpine did roam the hills,
Intent on culling daffydills;
Alas, in gleeful girlish sport,
She wandered too far from the fort,
Forgetting that no belt of peace,
Bound the people of Pluto from war to cease;
Alas, old Pluto lay in wait,
To ambush all who stayed out late;
And with a dreadful war-whoop he
Ran after the doomed Proserpine--"
Absorbed in my task, and, moreover, considerably affected by the
piteous plight of the maid, I stepped back from the slate and for a
moment conceived a generous idea of introducing somebody to rescue
Proserpine and leave Pluto damaged--perhaps scalped. Reflection,
however, dissuaded me from such a liberty, not that I found the
anachronism at all discordant, for, living all my life in a family
where Indians were oftener seen than white men, my hazy notions
concerning classic myths were inextricably mixed with the reality of
my own life, and were also gayly coloured by the legends I learned
from my red neighbours. So, lazy dunce that I was, with but a fraction
of my attention fixed on my tasks, mythology to me was but a
Graeco-Mohawk medley of jumbled fables, interesting only when they
concerned war or the chase.
Still I did not feel at liberty to rescue Proserpine in my verses or
plump a war-arrow into Pluto. Besides I knew it would enrage Sir
William.
As I stood there, breathing hard, resolved to finish the wretched
maiden quickly and let the metre go a-limping, behind me I heard the
door stealthily open, and I knew that long-legged wild-cat thing,
Silver Heels, had crept in, her moccasins making no noise.
I pretended not to notice her, knowing she had come to taunt me; and,
for a space, she stood behind me, very still. Clearly, she was reading
my verses, and I became angry. Not to show it, I made out to whistle
and to draw a picture of a fish on the slate. Then she knew I had seen
her and laughed hatefully.
"Oh," said I, "if there is somebody come a-prying, it must be Silver
Heels!" And I turned around, pretending amazement at the justness of
my hazard.
"You saw me," she answered, disdainfully.
"It is your hour for the stocks," I hinted.
"I won't go," she retorted.
To secure that grace of carriage and elegance of presence necessary
for a young lady of quality, and to straighten her back, which truly
was as straight as a pine, Sir William and Mistress Molly were
accustomed to strap her to a pine plank and lock her in the stocks for
an hour at noon, forbidding Peter, Esk, and me to tickle the soles of
her feet.
It was noon now; I could hear the guard changing at the north
block-house, tramp! tramp! tramp! across the stony way.
"If you don't go to the stocks now," I said, "you'll be sorry when you
do go."
"If you tickle my feet, you great booby, I'll tell Sir William," she
retorted, balancing defiantly from one heel to the other.
"Will you go, Silver Heels?" I insisted.
"My name isn't Silver Heels," she observed, still coolly tilting back
and forth on heels and toes. "Call me by my right name and perhaps
I'll go--and perhaps I won't. So there, Mr. Micky Dunce!"
"If I call you Felicity Warren, will you go?" I inquired cautiously.
"There! you have called me Felicity Warren!" she cried in triumph.
"I didn't," said I, in a temper; "I only said that there was such a
person. But you are not that person! Anyway, you toe in like a Mohawk.
Anyway, you're half wild-cat, half Mohawk."
"It's a lie!" she flashed; "I'm all white to the bones of my body!"
It was true. Indeed, she was kin to Sir William and niece to Sir Peter
Warren, but, to torment her, we feigned to believe her one of Mistress
Molly's brood, half Mohawk; and it madded her. Besides, had not the
Mohawks dubbed her Silver Heels, a year ago, when, with naked flying
feet, she had beaten us all in the foot-race before Sir William and
half the people of the Six Nations?
The prize had been a Barlow jack-knife, which, before the race, I had
looked upon as mine. Besides, I had rashly given my old knife to Esk,
and that left me without a blade to notch whistles.
"You are a Mohawk," I said, resentfully; "also you are a cat-child
beneath notice. When you are hungry you cry, 'Miau! _Eso
cautfore!_'--like Peter."
"I don't!" she said, stamping her moccasin.
"Anyway," said I, disdaining to torment her further, "the guard is
changed these ten minutes, and Sir William will come to find you here
a-prying. _Esogee cadagcariax_," I added, incautiously.
"Who is Mohawk, now!" she cried, clapping her hands. "Bah, Mister
Micky, it is spoon-meat _you_ require to make you run the faster after
jack-knives!"
This outrageous taunt ruffled me, the more for her laughter. I
attempted to hold my head in the air and look down at the presumptuous
child, but it appeared she had grown very fast in the past months
since the race, and I was disturbed to find her eyes already on a
straight line with mine, though she was but fifteen and I sixteen.
"I'm as high as you," she said.
"I can jump and touch the ceiling," said I; and did so.
She strove in vain, then called me dunce, and vowed what brains I had
were in my feet. For that, and because she pushed me, I seized the
chalk and wrote high on the slate:
"Silver Heels is Mohock she toes in like ducks."
She caught up the buckskin to wipe out the taunt, jostling me till the
ferret in my pocket jumped out and ran round and round the room.
I jostled her; then she gave me a blow and a quick shove, whereupon I
stumbled, pulling her to the floor to rub her face with chalk. She
twisted and turned, kicking and striking while I rubbed chalk into her
skin, till of a sudden she coiled up and bit me clean through the
hand.
I was on my feet with a bound; she also, all white in the face and her
eyes aflame.
The blood began welling up, running into my palm and along the fingers
to the floor. At that same instant I heard the door of the nursery
open, and I knew that Sir William was coming through the hall to the
school-room.
From instinct I thrust my wounded hand into my breeches-pocket.
"Don't tell!" whispered Silver Heels, in a fright; "don't tell--and
here is the jack-knife."
She thrust it into my right hand, then sped across the floor to the
open window, and over the sill, dropping light as a cat on the grass
below.
My first impulse was to follow her and give her such a spank as
Mistress Molly administered the day she trounced her for pushing Peter
into the creek. However, it was already too late; Sir William came
quickly along the hall, and I had scarce time to step to the slate
when he marched in.
Sir William had changed his clothing for the buckskin hunting-shirt
and breeches which he was accustomed to wear when angling. He carried,
too, that light, seasoned rod, fashioned for him by Thayendanegea, and
on his bosom he wore a bouquet of gayly coloured feather-flies, made
by Mistress Molly during the winter.
He approached the slate whereon my verses stared white and unfinished;
and at first his brows knitted and he said, "Fudge, fudge, fudge!"
Then of a sudden he sat down on the bench, clapping his hand to his
brow.
"Oh Lord!" said he, and fell a-laughing, while I, hot, ashamed, and a
little dizzy, my breeches-pocket being full of blood, gnawed my lips
and glowered askance.
"The Lord's will be done," said he, taking breath. "Who am I to
ordain, when He who fashioned yon tow-head designed it to hold neither
Latin nor the classics?"
"It pleases you to laugh, sir," I muttered.
"Pleases me! Pleases me, quotha! Lad, it stabs me like a French dirk,
nor can I guard the thrust in tierce! I have been wrong. A friar is
not made with a twisted rope nor a man hanged with words. If you are
not born a scholar, 'twas the mint-mark I could not read aright; and
no blame to you, lad, no blame to you. Micky boy! Shall we leave Caesar
to go marching with his impedimenta and his Tenth Legion? Shall we
consign the hypothenuse of all triangles to those who mend pens from
the quills of wild-geese which better men have brought down with a
single ball?"
I was regarding him wildly, uncertain of his meaning.
"Shall we," cried Sir William, heartily, "bid the nymphs and dryads
farewell forever, lad, and save our learning for Roderick Random and a
bowl of cider and the bitter nights of December?"
His meaning was dawning upon me slowly, for what with the pain of my
hand and the dizziness, I was perhaps more stupid than usual.
"No," said Sir William, with a thump of his fist on his knee, "the
college which my Lord Dartmouth has endowed is a haven for those who
seek it, not a prison for men to be driven to."
He paused.
"I should have sought it," he said, dropping his head. "No wilderness,
no wintry terrors, neither French scalping parties nor the savages of
all the Canadas could have kept me from instruction had I, in my
youth, been favoured by the opportunity I offer you."
I gazed at him in silence while the blood, overrunning my leather
pocket, ran down to my knee-buckles.
"I was poor, without means, without counsel, save for the letters Sir
Peter Warren wrote me. I traded for my daily bread; I read Ovid by
lighted pine splinters; I worked--God knows I worked my flesh to the
bone."
He sat, fingering the bunch of scarlet feather-flies in his breast.
"Our Lord gives us according to our needs--_when we take it_," he
said, without irreverence. "I could have gone to England, to Oxford; I
had saved enough. I did neither; I did not take the instruction I
wished for, and God did not teach me Greek in my dreams," he added,
bitterly.
The blood was now stealing down my stocking towards my shoe. I turned
the leg so he could not observe it.
"Come, lad," he said, brightening up; "learning lies not always
between thumbed leaves. I only wish that you bear yourself modestly
and nobly through the world; that you keep faith with men, that your
word once given shall never be withdrawn.
"This is the foundation. It includes courage. Further than that, I
desire you, once a purpose formed and a course set, to steer
fearlessly to the goal.
"I know you to be brave and honest; I know you to be a very Mohawk in
the forest; I believe you to be merciful and tender underneath that
boy's thoughtless and cruel hide.
"As for learning, I can do no more for you than I have done and have
offered to do. If it pleases you, you may go to England, and learn the
arts, bearing, and deportment you can never acquire here with us. No?
Well, then, stay with us. I want you, Micky. We Irish are fond of each
other--and I am an old man now--I am nigh sixty years, Michael--sixty
years of battle. I would be glad of rest--with those I love."
My heart was very soft now. I looked at Sir William with an affection
I had never before understood.
"There is one last thing I wish to add," he said, gravely, almost
sadly. "Perhaps I may again refer to it--but I pray that it may not be
necessary."
I sat up and rubbed my eyes to clear them from the sickly faintness
which stole upward from my throbbing hand.
"It is this," he continued, in a low voice. "If it ever comes to you
to choose between his Majesty our King and--and your native
land--which God forbid!--go to your closet and kneel down, and stay
there on your knees, hours, days!--until you have learned your own
heart. Then--then--God go with you, Michael Cardigan."
He rose, and his face was years older. Slowly the colour came back
into his cheeks; he fumbled with the brass-work on his fish-rod, then
smiled.
"That is all," he said; "let Pluto chase Proserpine to hell, lad; and
a devilish good place they say it is for those who like it! Where is
that ferret? What! Running about unmuzzled! Hey! Vix! Vix! Come here,
little reptile!"
"I'll catch her, sir," said I, stumbling forward.
But as I laid my hand on Vix the floor rose and struck me, and there I
lay sprawling and senseless, with the blood running over the floor;
and Sir William, believing me bitten by the ferret, pouched the poor
beast and lifted me to a bench.
He must have seen my hand, however, for, when a cup of cold water set
me spluttering and blinking, I found my hand tied up in Sir William's
handkerchief and Sir William himself eying me strangely.
"How came that wound?" he said, bluntly.
I could not reply--or would not.
He asked me again whether the ferret bit me, and I was tempted to say
yes. Treachery was abhorrent to me; I hated Silver Heels, but could
not betray her, and it was easy to clap the blame on Vix.
"Sir?" I stammered.
"I asked what bit you," he said, icily.
I tried to say Vix, but the lie, too, stuck in my throat.
"I cannot tell you," I muttered.
"Then," said Sir William, with a strange smile of relief, "I shall not
force you, Michael. May I honourably ask you how you come by this
jack-knife?"
I shook my head. My face was on fire.
"Very well," he said. "Only remember that you are a man, now--a man of
sixteen, and that I have to-day treated you as a man, and shall
continue. And remember that a man's first duty is to protect the
weaker sex, and his second duty is to endure from them all taunts,
caprice, and torments without revenge. It is a hard lesson to learn,
Micky, and only the true and gallant gentleman can ever learn it."
He smiled, then said:
"Pray find our little Silver Heels and return to her the jack-knife,
which was her wampum-belt of faith in the honour of a gentleman."
And so he walked away, smoothing the fur of the red-eyed ferret
against his breast.