mean your uncle, do you?"
"Yes," she said, "that's him, and he says if I don't call him 'uncle'
he'll cut off my big toe!"
Billy Warlock jumped upon his feet like a shot. "The devil he did!" he
cried. "I'll punch his head for that!"
"And his knife has got six cutters in it!"
"I guess he was only funning," said Billy. "He didn't mean it."
"That's what he said," she insisted.
"Yes, my dear, but he didn't mean it. He was joking."
"That's what he said!" Her accent was very positive, and she added as if
conning it over, "His knife had six cutters."
Billy felt himself somewhat at a loss to deal with this well-formed
impression, so he contented himself with the remark, "But you haven't
told me what your name is yet?"
She rose upon her knees in the bed and leaned over toward him. "My
really name is Lotchen."
"Lotchen what?"
"That's all--just Lotchen."
"Where's your mother, Lotchen?"
"I don't know; do you?"
"There's something queer about this business," said Billy to himself.
"And if that Wrangler man don't make it plain he'll find hisself in
trouble. What is your father's name, Lotchen?" he inquired aloud.
"Who's that?"
"Your father. Haven't you a father?"
"I don't know. The black man says he can turn me into a toothpick if he
wants to."
Billy doubled up his fist and looked at it grimly.
"Well, he won't want to," he said. "Don't you be afraid. I'll take care
of you."
"Oh, will you?"
"For a little while, anyhow."
"How long?"
"Well, till you get your breakfast."
"Where's he gone?"
"Who?"
"The black man."
"He's upstairs in his room. You can go to him after breakfast."
"I don't want to go. I'm afraid of his knife. I sit and hold on my big
toe all day. Have you got a knife, too?" She looked at him with an
expression he could not understand. Perhaps her natural trust in mankind
had been somewhat shaken.
"My knife wont hurt you," he said. Lotchen crawled to the edge of the
bed, leaned over and put her two hands on his, and said, "Then let's you
and me run away from the black man."
Billy looked much amused. "No," he replied, "we won't do that, Lotchen;
but I shouldn't wonder if he was to run away from us. Don't your uncle
love you?"
"He loves his nose better," she replied.
"His which?"
"His nose. He's all the time rubbing it up and down."
"But don't he love you, too?"
"No."
"What makes you think that?"
"'Cause I'm afraid of him."
"When did you see him first, Lotchen?"
"Oh, ever so long. He's had me, you know."
"Yes, I know that. What's he been doing with you?"
The expression on her face was so blank that Billy saw, whatever Mr.
Wrangler might intend, she knew nothing more than that she was being
"had" under circumstances that caused her constant fright. He did not
question her further, but went into the kitchen where his mother was
getting the griddle hot for the buckwheat cakes and the spider hot for
the sausages, and he told her of Wrangler and the child. She went in to
see Lotchen, and snuggled the little one up to her close and tight, and
told her she should have a merry Christmas and she mustn't be afraid of
anybody, for her Billy, that is, Billy's mother's Billy, could whip
anybody on earth, she didn't care who he was, and nobody should frighten
this dear little soul; and the old lady began now to express her ideas
in that strange language which is hidden from the wise and prudent but
revealed unto grandmammas and babes. "B'essings!" she said, "b'essings
on 'e dear heart an' e' 'ittie body, wiv 'e 'ittie youn' nose, an' 'e
ittie b'u' eyes, an' 'e ittie youn' cheeks, an' e' ittie youn' evysing,
an' nobody s'all bozzer her at all, not 'e 'east ittie bit, 'tause s'e
was a sweet ittie fwing, and Billy, wiz him big fist an' him date big
arm, Billy dust take 'e b'ack mans an' all 'e uzzer mans wot bozzer zis
ittie soul an' 'e frow 'em yite in 'e Norf Yiver, yite in, not carin'
'tall bout 'e ice, but dus' frow 'em in an' yet 'em det out e' bes' way
zay tan. B'ess ittie heart!"
Then Lotchen smiled and put up her pretty face to be kissed, which she
didn't have to do twice before it was kissed by them both, and Billy who
hadn't slung hammers all his life for nothing, rolled up his
shirt-sleeves and doubled up his fists, and sparred away at the air as
if to suggest what would happen to any one who laid as much as his
little finger on her.
All through the breakfast Billy kept his eyes on that round, pretty
face, and wondered what he should say and do when the "black man" came
to get her. He began to grow moody and sullen as the buckwheat cakes
disappeared, and when thirty of them had been disposed of Billy felt
himself ready to meet Mr. Wrangler. He had some questions he desired to
ask Mr. Wrangler, and the oftener he thought them over the more he felt
his fingers itch to close themselves around Mr. Wrangler's long and
scraggy neck. He waited an hour, two hours, but no Mr. Wrangler came,
and at last Billy concluded to mount the stairs and to interview Mr.
Wrangler in the hall bedroom.
He told Lotchen to go into his room, where she had spent the night, and
on her assuring him that she wasn't afraid, he locked her in and stowed
the key away in his pocket. Then he shot upstairs to the hall bedroom.
He knocked, but no answer came. He opened the door. The room was empty.
The bed was just as he had left it the night before with the impression
upon it of the little form he had carried away. It had evidently been
without a tenant during the night. All that Christmas Day he waited and
watched for Mr. Wrangler, but he waited and watched in vain.
* * * * *
Two days afterward an express wagon drew up before the smithy, and a box
was delivered to Billy marked with his name. It contained a liberal
supply of child's clothing, which Lotchen recognized as hers. Little by
little Billy and his mother drew from her fragments of her history. She
remembered a big house by the water, and a little bed of
lilies-of-the-valley under a couple of pear-trees. She remembered a
colored man named Pete, but there was no response in her memory to the
words "father" and "mother," and the only woman who appeared to be
impressed on her mind was one who called her "Lassie" and gave her
horrid stuff from a bottle in a wooden spoon.
Days and weeks and years went on, and Billy Warlock's purse grew plumper
and his heart grew lighter with each of them. His smithy in the cellar
grew in dimensions and gradually he absorbed the little old house over
it. The saloon disappeared, and the room it had occupied became a parlor
for Lotchen. The lodgers went out one by one until the whole house was
Billy's dwelling.
One day when she was nearly fourteen years old, Billy received a letter
that worried him a good deal. It was dated at the Newcastle Jail in
Delaware. It read:
MY DEAR WARLOCK:
It seems to be definitely settled about my being an error of
judgment. You can see by the enclosed newspaper clipping that I
ought not to have been involved in the scheme of the creation. You
needn't mention it to anybody else. I forget what name you knew me
by, but I think it was
CEPHAS WRANGLER.
The newspaper clipping contained these words:
Nothing, therefore, remains for the Court but to pronounce the
sentence which a jury, almost wholly of your own selection, has
adjudged your fitting doom. The crime you have committed is the
most dreadful known to the law. For it there is but one penalty,
the requisition of your life in forfeit for the one you have taken.
The sentence of the Court is that you be conducted hence to the
prison from which you came, and that you be confined there until
Friday, the 18th day of March, following, and that you then,
between the hours of 7 and 11 in the morning, be hanged by the neck
until you are dead, and may God have mercy on you!
This is all that Billy Warlock knows or cares to know of the
circumstances under which Lotchen became his child. He never made the
slightest effort to discover more. It didn't interest him, and he didn't
wish it to interest her. She was his child, and that was enough--at
least, it was enough for several years. The precise moment at which it
ceased to be enough is not fixed in Billy's mind, but last Christmas,
when Lotchen found a gold watch in her stocking, and when she came and
put her arms around his neck and kissed him, which she hadn't done very
often of late, and when she whispered that she wished she had something
to give him, Billy turned his eyes to the floor and stuck his big fists
in his trowsers pockets, and did a power of thinking. He knew then, if
he had not fully known it before, that for her to be his child was not
enough. So he said very solemnly, "Are you sure you mean that, Lotchen?
Now, don't answer without you know, for you might have something you
wouldn't want to give me, and if I was to ask for it and you was to look
hesitatin', I--well I don't know what I should do."
"I don't have to think, Billy," Lotchen answered promptly, "for I've
been thinking a great deal and wondering whether you--"
She stopped there short, and her face--her pretty face, her dear, round,
dimpled face, her truthful, honest, womanly face--got very red, and she
jumped up and ran out of the room.
After that last Christmas, Billy and Lotchen talked and walked with each
other on a different footing from that on which their intercourse had
previously been conducted. He said nothing to her, nor she to him, that
referred to their interrupted conversation until October came, and then
one day he said: "Lotchen, is my Christmas gift ready?" and he held out
his hand to her--both hands--and smiled.
"Yes, Billy," she answered.
And on next Tuesday morning, Christmas morning, when the bells are
ringing merrily and all the world is glad, Billy Warlock, as I said at
the very beginning of my story, dressed in his big frock coat and the
whitest of snowy neckties, will--but you know the rest, so what's the
use of my telling it?
MR. CINCH.
In the construction of Mr. Cinch nature had been generous, not to say
prodigal, of materials, but certainly a wiser discretion might have been
exercised in using them. The centre of Mr. Cinch's gravity was much too
far above his waist. All the rest of him appeared to have been fitted
out at the expense of his legs, which, unable to endure so oppressive a
burden, had spread.
To say that the shape of his legs was a source of unhappiness to Mr.
Cinch would be a feeble and inadequate expression of his feelings. "Them
bow-legs" was a phrase into which he poured a degree of self-contempt
altogether pitiful. They were, of course, homely to look at and not in
the least serviceable. Unaided by his stout hickory stick, they could
not transport Mr. Cinch across the room. But there was no evidence that
their shape or size was due on their part to any motive of malice or of
indolence, and it seemed quite unreasonable that he should feel toward
them so harshly.
His disgust for them did not, indeed, originate with himself. It is
entirely probable that he would never have thought of despising them as
he did but for Mrs. Cinch. That excellent lady, with all her many
virtues, could never forgive those legs. Their degeneration, as she
regarded it, had not begun when she married Mr. Cinch. He was then a
slight young man and his legs were unexceptionable in size and shape.
They had become bowed and insufficient within comparatively recent
years, and she had never felt quite able to accept Mr. Cinch's
assurances that he was not at fault in the matter.
Let it not be thought that this excellent couple were wanting toward
each other in those sweet graces which so beautify the marriage
relation. They had lived and loved together nearly a quarter of a
century, and had shared in those years their full measure of joys and
sorrows. But Mrs. Cinch was not without her humors, and when she was
entertaining an acid humor she could not get her husband's unfortunate
legs out of her mind.
No matter what may have been the subject that had originally vexed her,
it was the invariable experience that those legs became the focus to
which her excited wrath was drawn, and then, indeed, it must be owned,
she was exceedingly hard to deal with. She would recall in bitter
phrases the fact that he had married her with other and honester legs,
and she would plainly intimate that in substituting these he had acted
in an unfair and unmanly way.
This was naturally distressing to Mr. Cinch. He keenly felt the
injustice of the insinuation, but at the same time his mind was filled
with a supreme loathing of his legs, and he was only deterred from going
to a hospital and from having them straightway taken off by the
reflection that an entirely legless husband was not likely to be more
satisfactory, upon the whole, than one whose legs were bowed.
It was from a domestic scene such as these sentences have indicated that
Mr. Cinch issued one morning recently, and passing out through his
hallway into the street as fast as he could wobble, he tumbled into his
waiting coupe and hurried down to business. Mr. Cinch was the keeper of
a livery-stable, an establishment held in much esteem by the public and
the trade, and yielding an abundant revenue. His business was one of the
largest of its kind in New York, a fact which, with many others equally
important, was set forth in unmistakable phrases upon Mr. Cinch's
business cards, copiously illustrated with cuts of prancing horses and
handsome vehicles and of the extensive premises in which they were kept.
The appearance of the coupe as it rolled into the stable fetched from
the inner office Mr. Cinch's manager, a bald-headed young man, with red
eyes and a hopeful soul, who dexterously assisted his employer to
alight, and aided him into the main office and into the huge arm-chair,
so placed as to command a fair view of the entire establishment. From
this arm-chair, Mr. Cinch rarely moved throughout the live-long day.
"Well, Bob," said Mr. Cinch, so soon as he had caught his breath, "how's
things going?"
"Fair to middlin', sir, fair to middlin'. The regulars is 'bout the
same, but the casuals is light."
"Well, a man can't always have things the way he wants 'em, Bob; ef he
could there wouldn't be as much trouble as they is."
"No, sir, that's very true, sir, nor so much fun, neither, come to think
of it."
"How do you make that out, Bob?"
"Well, sir, ef everybody could have whatever they wanted, there wouldn't
be much excitement going on. They'd get tired o' wanting before long
fearful that the time 'ud come when they wouldn't be nothin' to want."
Mr. Cinch was quite impressed with the force of this philosophy. Bob's
views on men and things often entertained Mr. Cinch. He had a good deal
of respect for Bob. Bob's circumstances had denied him many of those
early advantages which are so useful in cultivating the habit of
profound thought, and yet, to his greater credit, it must be said that
he not infrequently performed a deal of subtle cogitation. In this he
pleased Mr. Cinch, who was by no means all a man of beef and brawn. Mr.
Cinch had read a considerable quantity of poetry and was a subscriber to
a scientific periodical. He had a decided tendency toward occult
speculation, and had reached that point in his orthodoxy where he
believed there were a good many more things that we don't know than that
we do.
He had turned over Bob's remark once or twice in his mind, and was about
to say something by way of rejoinder when the office door was opened and
a young woman entered, observing that she wished to pay her bill.
She was a tall, well-dressed, stoutly built young woman, with large,
strong features, and an abundant supply of blonde hair, partially
covered with a sombre brown bonnet. Her eyes were big and blue, and her
voice quite pleasant to hear.
"This way, miss," said Bob, from his high stool behind the desk. "What
name, please?"
"Frances Emiline Beeks."
"Beeks, miss? Yes, miss. Let's see--BA to BE, Barker, Becker, Beech,
Beeks! Frances Emiline Beeks. Eighty-seven dollars and fifty cents, if
you please."
"That seems like a good deal of money," observed Miss Beeks.
"Well, now, it is, miss," said Bob. "But you use a kerridge a good deal,
miss, mostly every day and sometimes oftener. You've called more this
month than ever. Why don't you keep a hoss, miss? That ud be the
cheapest."
"It certainly would if my bills are to run up like this. However, I'm
too busy now to talk about it. Let me have your pen while I fill out
this check. There--is that right?"
"Yes, miss, thank you. I think that sorrel would suit you nicely. He's
only--"
"Well, I'll think it over. Good-morning!"
Miss Beeks went out and Mr. Cinch, who had been regarding her over his
glasses, inquired, "Who's the young woman, Bob?"
"I don't know, sir, hardly," said Bob, "but I think she's some kind of a
doctor."
"She seems to be makin' pretty good bills."
"And they gets better all the time. Whatever she doctors, it's a good
business, for she pays her bill the day after she gets it every time."
"What makes you think she doctors?"
"She said so, as near as I could make out. She come in here one day last
month--it was when I had that staving big bile on my elbow, you
remember?"
"Yes."
"Well, I was settin' here huggin' that bile, and it was just thumpin'.
Seemed to me 's if they was a whole bag o' carpet-tacks stuck in that
arm. I was so used up I couldn't walk around, and so stuck full of pain
I couldn't set still. Well, 's I said, she come in and ordered a coach,
and while it was being fetched around she give me a look and she says,
'What's the matter?' I says 'I got a bile.'
"'A what?' says she.
"'A bile,' says I.
"'Oh, no,' says she.
"'Well, if you don't think so,' says I, 'look there,' says I, and I
prodooced the bile, which 'peared to me to be pretty good evidence.
"She looked at it and then says, as cool as you please, 'Well, what of
it?'
[Illustration: "'A WHAT?' SAYS SHE. 'A BILE?' SAYS I.'"]
"'Don't you call that a bile?' says I, 'and if you don't think it hurts
you'd better.' You see, bein' nearly crazy with the hurts of it, and her
so unconcernin', I thought she was workin' a guy on me. But she says,
'I see what you call a bile, and maybe you think it hurts, but I know it
don't. Why, what is it?' says she; 'it's nothing but a little lump of
red flesh. It don't hurt. It can't hurt. How can it? Flesh don't live
any more than wood or stone, and if it don't live, how can it feel? It's
you that feels and hurts, and you have made yourself believe it's this
little lump of red flesh, and you've gone and painted it and greased it
and wrapped it up and fooled with it when there's nothing the matter
with it, and everything the matter with you.' That's what she said,
looking me dead in the eyes."
Mr. Cinch had grown very much interested in Bob's account of this
peculiar conversation. As Bob went on he had screwed around in his
arm-chair, and had drawn his brow into a reflective knot.
"I don't know as I understand what that means, Bob," he observed,
cautiously.
"It took me a good while to get it through me," replied the manager,
"but I think I see what she was driving at. She means that a man's body
is just like any other matter and don't make feelings, and that's it's
his soul that does the feeling, and that when his soul feels bad he says
he has a bile or the colic or the rheumatism, and begins to put on
plasters and take pills when he ought not to do anything of the kind,
but ought to talk to her and get her to cure his soul. That's the way
she give it to me, anyhow. She talked here for half an hour. She said
that it was silly to set your feelings down to this or that place in
your body. She said she could talk to me awhile about the--er, let's
see, gravity, no, yes, gravi--oh, I know! about the gravitation of the
soul, and my feelings would get good and the bile go down."
"Oh, rats!" remarked Mr. Cinch.
"Well, I don't know, sir," replied Bob, doubtfully. "I don't know but
what I think there is something in it?"
"Stuff! Bob, how kin there be? Do you mean that she made out 'at she
could cure anything by just talking to you?"
"Not exactly; no sir. Her p'int is that what we call biles or malaria,
or--"
"Bow-legs, mebbe," put in Mr. Cinch both jocosely and ruefully.
"Yes, sir, bow-legs."
"What!"
"Bow-legs, too--why not? Just as easy bow-legs as biles."
"Well, go on."
"All such things, she says, is appearances. Our souls being sick, they
look through our eyes in a sorter cock-eyed way and see something they
call a bile or a pair of bow-legs. The bile and the bow-legs aint really
there, you know; we only think so, which is just as bad as if they was
there. If we was to go to her and get our souls well, we'd look out of
our eyes straight and wouldn't see no bile or bow-legs. Neither would
nobody else. This is the best explaining I can do, sir. I understands it
pretty well, but I can't talk it. She's a daisy talker, though. She can
talk like a dictionary."
"Bob," said Mr. Cinch, solemnly, "do you mean to tell me that this young
woman can talk me into believing that I aint got bow-legs?"
Bob hesitated. He looked at Mr. Cinch long and seriously. Mr. Cinch took
up his walking-stick and slowly lifted himself upon his feet.
"Look at them legs, Bob. You can shove a prize punkin through 'em
without touching. Can this young woman make me believe them legs is
straight? If she can, Bob, if she can, she don't need to buy no hoss,
nor pay no coach-hire any more."
The responsibility of this awful moment was too much for Bob. "If I was
you," he said discreetly, "I'd talk to her about it the next time she
comes in."
[Illustration: "LOOK AT THEM LEGS, BOB!"]
Mr. Cinch made no reply, but he continued for several minutes to look
ruefully down where he believed his legs to be, and then he resumed
his chair. Bob returned to his accounts and a heavy tide of business
flowed in to engage their attention. Business was always well done in
Mr. Cinch's office, and it suffered that morning no more than on any
other morning, and yet there was a certain influence in the room which
seemed to be affecting both him and Bob. They talked together less than
usual and in addressing others were short and sharp. When Bob got off
his stool and said he was going to luncheon he broke a silence which
might almost be called ominous.
He was not long gone, but upon his return the office was empty. It was
so unusual a circumstance for Mr. Cinch to go out that Bob wondered not
a little what had happened. His wonderment increased as the afternoon
drew along and Mr. Cinch did not return. Nobody could tell where or when
he had gone or in what manner his departure had been effected. He had
not made use of his coupe or any other vehicle. No scrap of writing
could be found that threw the least light upon so startling a
proceeding, nor did any one turn up with whom a message had been left.
Evening approached and numerous misgivings entered Bob's mind. He knew
that Mr. Cinch's domestic life was not without moments of bitterness,
and he was satisfied that one of them had preceded his appearance at
the office that morning. The vague suspicions that crept into his head
were strengthened when, just before 6 o'clock, a messenger came from
Mrs. Cinch loaded with inquiries. Mr. Cinch's life was as regular as the
movements of the stars. He had gone home at 4:30 P.M. for twenty years.
Bob was really alarmed. He made a careful search throughout the stables.
That failing to give him the slightest clew, he went to see Mrs. Cinch.
When he told that excellent woman that her husband had disappeared, she
precipitately swooned away. The unhappy incident of the morning was
still fresh in her repentant mind, and she could have no doubt that her
over-worried lord had sought in the North River the peace of mind she
had denied him in his home. Bob could not comfort her. He could only
apply a wet towel to her heated temples and beg her to be calm. This he
did with praiseworthy diligence during the greater part of the evening,
and when he left it was with the understanding that, if the missing man
were not seen or heard from by the next morning, he would notify the
police and have them send out a general alarm.