For, in the days of yore, the birds of parts
Were bred to speak, and sing, and learn the liberal arts.
_The Cock and the Fox_.
Thine is the adventure, thine the victory;
Well has thy fortune turned the dice for thee.
_Palamon and Arcite_.
During the rest of the journey, Morton, on Mrs. Holyoke's invitation,
was one of the party. Again and again he was impelled to learn his
fate; but recoiled from casting the die, dreading that his hour was
not come. Still, though every day more helplessly spell-bound, his
mood was not despondent.
They came to the town of ----, a half day from home.
"My household gods are not far off," said Morton. "My father was born
at Steuben, a few miles below, where my grandfather used to preach
against King George, and stir up his parish to rebellion. I have
relations there still, and have a mind to spend to-morrow with them."
This announcement proceeded much less from family affection than from
another motive. Mrs. Holyoke saw it in an instant.
"Excellent! Then Miss Leslie can accept her friend's invitation to
make a day's visit at this place; and you will meet her and escort her
to Boston."
And Morton, much rejoiced at this successful issue of his diplomacy,
repaired to his relatives at Steuben; Holyoke and his wife proceeded
homeward; while Miss Leslie remained to accomplish the visit with her
country friend.
Morton spent a quiet day in the primitive New England village, a place
of which boyish association made him fond. On the next morning, Miss
Leslie was to come to Steuben, with her hostess; but as there was an
abundance of time before the train would appear, he strolled along a
quiet road leading back into the country. He soon came to an old inn,
over whose tottering porch King George's head might once have swung.
Nothing human was astir. The ancient lilacs flaunted before the door;
the tall sunflowers peered over the garden fence; the primeval
well-sweep slanted aloft, far above the mossy shingles of the roof.
The rural quiet of the place tempted him. He sat under the porch, and
watched the swallows sailing in and out of the great barn whose doors
stood wide open, on the opposite side of the road.
A voice broke the silence--a voice from the barn yard. It was the
voice of a hen mother, the announcement that an egg was born into the
world. Not the proud, exulting cackle which ordinarily proclaims that
auspicious event, but a repining, discontented cry, now rising in
vehement remonstrance with destiny, now sinking into a low cluck of
disgust. Morton, skilled in the language of birds, construed these
melancholy cacklings as follows:--
"Whither does all this tend? Why is my happiness blighted, my
aspirations repressed? Why am I forever penned up within these narrow
precincts, amid low domestic cares, and sordid, uncongenial,
unsympathizing associates? And thou, my white and spotless offspring,
what shall be thy fate? To be steeped in hot water, and eaten with a
spoon? Or art thou to be the germ of an existence wretched as my own,
doomed to a ceaseless round of daily parturition? O, weariness! O,
misery! O, despair!"
And throwing her ruffled feelings into one indignant cackle, the hen
was silent.
The advent of a human biped here enlivened the scene. This was a young
gentleman on horseback, a collegian to all appearance, admirably
mounted, but bestriding his horse with the look of one who has just
passed his first course under the riding master, and rides by the
book, as Touchstone quarrelled. This important personage, with an air
oddly compounded of assumption and timidity, proceeded to call the
hostler, and order oats for his horse, after which he strutted into
the house, switching his leg with his whip.
As ample time remained, Morton continued his walk along the road, his
mood in harmony with the brightness of the morning. He was in a humor
to please himself with trifles. A ground squirrel chirruped at him
from a crevice of the wall. He stood watching the small, shy visage,
as it looked out at him. Then a red squirrel, a much livelier
companion, uttered its trilling cry from a clump of hazel bushes.
Morton seated himself on a stone very near it. The squirrel resented
the intrusion, ran out on a fence rail towards the offender,
chattered, scolded, swelled himself like a miniature muff, made his
tail and his whole body vibrate with his wrath; then suddenly dodged
down behind the rail and peered over it at the trespasser, his nose
and one eye alone being visible; then bolted into full sight again,
and scolded as before, jerking himself from side to side in the
extremity of his petulance; till at last, without the smallest
apparent cause, he suddenly wheeled about and fled, bounding like the
wind along the top of the stone wall.
This interview over, Morton looked at his watch, saw that it was time
to go back towards the village, and began to retrace his steps
accordingly. He had gone but a few paces, when he saw a countryman, a
simple-looking fellow, running at top speed, and in great excitement,
up a byway, which led to the railroad, the latter crossing it by a
high bridge, at some distance from the station.
"What's the matter?" demanded Morton.
"The railroad cars!" gasped the countryman.
"What of them?"
"They'll all go to smash, and no mistake."
"What!" cried Morton, aghast.
"Fact, mister. Some born devil has been and sawed the bridge timbers
most through in the middle."
"What!" cried Morton again.
"Sure as I stand here! I seen the heaps of sawdust on the road. That's
the way I come to take notice. The minute the locomotive gets on the
bridge, down she'll go, and no two ways about it."
Morton had no doubt that the man was right. The newspapers, within the
last few weeks, had contained various accounts of impediments, great
and small, maliciously placed on railroads. It was a species of
villany which was just then having its run, as incendiarism will
sometimes have; and a like case of a bridge partly sawed through had
lately occurred in a neighboring state.
"You fool!" exclaimed Morton, in anguish and despair; "why didn't you
get on the track, and stop the train?"
"I'd like to see you stop the train!" retorted the man.
Morton turned to run for the road, bent on stopping the engine, or
letting it pass over him. But as he turned, a new arrival caught his
eye. This was the cavalier who had baited his horse at the inn, and
who, seeing the excited looks of the two men, had checked his pace,
and was looking at them with much curiosity.
Crazed with agitation, and hardly knowing what he did, Morton leaped
towards him, seized his horse, a powerful and high-mettled animal, by
the head, and, with a few broken words of explanation, called on him
to dismount. The astonished collegian did not comply. Morton bore back
fiercely on the bit; the horse plunged and snorted; the rider clutched
the pommel; Morton took him by the arm, drew him to the ground,
mounted at a bound after him, and, as he touched the saddle, struck
his whalebone walking stick with all his force over the horse's flank.
The horse leaped forward frantically, and rushed headlong down the
road. His discarded rider saw his hoofs twinkling for an instant out
of the cloud of dust, and thought he had had a Heaven-directed escape
from a madman.
The small village above Steuben, at which Miss Leslie and her friend
were to take the train, was three miles off. The road ran almost
directly towards it for more than three fourths of the way, when it
made a bend to the right. Morton, with his furious riding, very soon
reached this point. He could see the station house before him, on the
left, and not more than a third of a mile distant. The space between,
though uneven, had no visible impediments but a few low fences and
scattered clumps of bushes. Morton pushed through the barberry growth
that fringed the road, galloped over the hard pasture, leaped one
fence, passed a gap in another, and half way to his goal, found
himself and his horse in a quagmire. At this moment, straining his
eyes towards the cluster of houses, he saw, with agony at his heart, a
white puff of vapor rising above the trees beyond. Then the dark
outline of the train came into view, checking its way, and stopping,
half hidden behind the buildings.
Morton knew that it would stop only for a moment, and plied his horse
with merciless blows. The horse plunged through the mire,--the mud and
water spouting high above his rider's head,--gained the firm ground,
and bounded forward wild with fright and fury. It was too late. The
bell rang, and with quicker and quicker pants, the engine began to
move. Morton shouted,--gesticulated,--still it did not stop, though
the passengers seemed to take alarm, for a head was thrust from every
window, while the occupants of an open carriage drawn up on the road
were bending eagerly towards him.
Morton wheeled to the left, and urged his horse up the embankment in
front of the train. With a violent effort, he reached the top. The
engineer was running against time, and cared for nothing but winning
his match. He blew the steam whistle; and as Morton dragged on the
curb with desperate strength, the horse reared upright, pawing the
air. But, as he rose, Morton disengaged his feet, slid over the
crupper to the ground, and let go the rein. The horse leaped down the
bank, and scoured over the meadow, mad with terror. Morton took his
stand in the middle of the track, and facing the advancing train,
stood immovable as a post. The engineer reversed the engine, brought
it to a stand within a few yards of him, and, with a profusion of
oaths, demanded what he wanted.
Before the breathless Morton could well explain himself, the
passengers began to leap out of the cars, and running forward,
gathered about him. He soon found words to make the case known. But
one object alone engrossed him. He pushed on among the throng of
questioning, eager men, mounted the foremost car, and made his way
through it, the crowd pushing behind and around him, and plying him
with questions, to which, in the confusion and abstraction of his
faculties, he gave wild and random answers. He looked at every face.
Edith Leslie was not there. He crossed the platform into the next car,
passed through it, and still could not find her. It was the last in
the train. And now a strange feeling came over him, a bitterness, a
sense of disappointment, as if his efforts and his pangs had been
uncalled for and profitless; for so intensely had his thoughts been
concentred on one object, that he forgot for the moment the hundred
men and women whom he had saved from deadly jeopardy.
The train rolled back to the station, the distance being only a few
rods. Morton got out and leaned against the wall of the house. Men
thronged about him with questions, exclamations, thanks, praises. The
reaction of his violent emotion produced in him a frame of mind almost
childish. He was restless to free himself from the crowd.
"It's nothing; it's nothing," he answered, as fresh praises were
showered on him. "I saw the train going to the devil, and did what I
could to save it. Any of you, I dare say, would have done as much. Be
good enough to let me have a little air."
The crowd gave way, and he walked forward past the corner of the
building. Here, standing on the road, close at hand, he suddenly saw
an open carriage, and in it, pale as death, sat Miss Leslie, with her
friend, and a boy of twelve, her friend's brother. He sprang towards
it with an irrepressible impulse.
"My God! Miss Leslie, I thought you were in the train."
"And so we should have been," said the boy, "but the cars came in
three minutes before their time."
Edith Leslie did not utter a word.
Some of the passengers were soon about him again. He repeated to them
what he knew of the danger, and told them how he had learned it. In a
few minutes, several men were seen at a distance on the railroad,
running forward with a handkerchief tied to a stick to warn off the
train. A few minutes later, a Connecticut pedler, one of the
passengers, came up to Morton.
"Mister, they're going to do the handsome thing by you. They're
getting up a subscription to give you a piece of silver plate."
"The deuse they are!" was Morton's ungrateful response.
Going into the room where the passengers were met, he found that the
pedler had told the truth; on which, for the first and last time in
his life, he addressed an assemblage of his fellow-citizens. He told
them that he thanked them for their kind intention; but that if he had
done them a service, he wished for no other recompense than the
knowledge of it, and urged them, if they did any thing in the matter,
to devote their efforts to gaining the arrest and punishment of the
scoundrel who had attempted the mischief. His oratory was much
applauded; many, who had thought themselves in for the subscription,
joyfully buttoned their pockets, and, instead of the plate, he
received a series of complimentary resolutions, to be published in the
newspapers.
Meanwhile, having made his speech, he had lost no time in making his
escape also. Going back to the carriage, Miss Leslie's friend asked
him to accompany them home, whence they could return to take the
afternoon train, when the bridge would, no doubt, be repaired. Morton,
however, declined the invitation, and, having sent two men to catch
the horse, with instructions to refer the distressed owner to him, he
drove in a farmer's wagon to Steuben. In a few hours, he rejoined Miss
Leslie and her friend; and having escorted both safely to town, took
leave of the former, that evening, at the door of her father's house.
Several of the newspapers next morning contained the resolutions
passed by the passengers, trumpeting Morton's humanity, presence of
mind, &c. He himself very well knew that the praise was undeserved,
since he had neither thought nor cared for the objects of his supposed
humanity, and, far from acting with presence of mind, had scarcely
known what he was about.
The bridge had been cut by an Irish mechanic in the employ of the
road, who, for some misdemeanor, had been reprimanded and turned out,
and who had passed half the night in preparing his demoniac revenge.
It afterwards appeared that he had been a state's prison convict in a
neighboring state, and that he would have been still in confinement,
had not the officious zeal of certain benevolent persons availed to
set him loose before his time.