her rolling gait, to
watch things without that stirred her mind more than her lover's
recitation; "what good kin these tales do you, Captain? My God! the
roads is full of people, and they are all looking yer. Is it at me, Van
Dorn?"

He coughed painfully, still watching her, however, and answered:

"Only a quarter-race, I guess, dear Pat! What! are you _fearing_, at
your time of life?"

"No," cried Patty Cannon, defiantly, taking something from her bosom;
"here is the same dose I gave my husband, if the worst comes."

"Bravo, Patty! you only tarnish into age, like an old bronze, that is
harder by time and oxidizing. I was a gentleman, and yet you mastered
me. How strange to see us together beleaguered here, myself by death,
and you by the law! Why, we have defied them both! Let them come on! Do
you believe in everlasting fire?--that every injury is a live coal to
roast the soul? I know you do; and, if you do, how beautiful your rosy
grate will be, tough charmer, with boys spoiled in the bud, and husbands
in the blossom, with families of freemen torn apart, and children, born
free as the flag of their country, sent to perpetual bondage and the
whip. _Poca barba, poca vergueenza!_[13] Who but a woman could have put
it into William Bouser's head, when she had kidnapped him and thirty
negroes more, and sold them all to Austin Woolfolk, in Baltimore, to
rise at sea on Woolfolk's vessel, and massacre the officers, only to be
hanged at last, and all to make Woolfolk a better customer!"[14]

"There are people all round the house, Van Dorn. I hear them on the
stairs and in the rooms. Have mercy!"

"Devils, or men, Patty? Both are your courtiers, remember, and perhaps
they crowd each other. What do we care? _Que contento estoy!_ Perhaps I
am indifferent because no blood is on my hands, vile slaver though I am!
Joe Johnson and his low-browed brother you could teach to kill; me,
nothing worse than to steal and fondle you. Patty, you believe in hell.
I am a believer, too; for I believe in heaven."

"O Van Dorn; how you do talk!"

"Since you entrapped my son, young Levin Dennis--_chito! quedito!_ do
not start, fair fiend--to have his father make another Johnson of him, I
have discovered, through the little girl, the beauteous damsel now,
Hulda Van Dorn, the sin you meant to spot me with; and, listen, Patty!
it was my son, rich with his mother's loyalty and love--dear guardian
wife, that never shall learn of my ruin here, no