EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
BY
THEODORE WINTHROP,
AUTHOR OF " CECIL DREEME " AND " JOHN BRENT."
SEVENTH EDITION.
B O S'T O N:
TICKNOR AND FIELTDS.
1864.




Entered according tn Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by
TICKNOR  AND  FIELDS,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
CAMBRIDGE:
WELCH, BIGELOW, AND  COMPANY,
PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.




PART I.








EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
I.
THE Cavaliers always ran when they saw Purltan Colonel Brothertoft and his troop of white
horses coming.
They ran from the lost battle of Hornecastle, in
the days of the great rebellion, and the Colonel
chased.
North and West he chased over the heaths
and wolds of his native Lincolnshire.  Every
leap took him farther away from the peaked
turrets of Brothertoft Manor-House, —his home,
midway between the towers of Lincoln Cathedral and Boston on the Witham.
Late at night he rode wearily back to Horncastle.  He first took care that those famous
horses were fed a good feed, after their good
fight and brave chase, and then laid himself
down in his cloak to sleep beside Cromwell and
Fairfax.
Presently a youth on a white horse came gallop



8           EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
ing into the town, up to the quaint house where
the Colonel quartered, and shouted for him.
Brothertoft looked out at the window. By the
faint light he recognized young Galsworthy, son
of his richest tenant and trustiest follower.
" The King's people have attacked the ManorHouse," cried the boy. "My lady is trying to
hold it with the servants. I come for help."
In a moment a score of men were mounted
and dashing southward. Ten miles to go. They
knew every foot of it. The twenty white horses
galloped close, and took their leaps together
steadily, — an heroic sight to be seen in that
clear, frosty night of October!
The fire of dawn already glimmered in the
east when they began to see another fire on the
southern horizon. The Colonel's heart told him
whose towers were burning.  They rode their
best; but they had miles to go, and the red
flames outran them.
Colonel Brothertoft said not a word.  He
spurred on, and close at his heels came the
troop, with the fire shining on their corselets and
gleaming in the eyes of their horses.
Safe! yes; the house might go, - for his dear
wife was safe, and his dear son, his little namesake Edwin, was safe in her arms.
The brave lady too had beaten off the marauders. But fight fire as they would, they could




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.             9
rescue only one angle of the mansion.  That
"curious new brique fabrick, four square, with
a turret at each corner, two good Courts, a fine
Library, and most romantick Wildernesse; a
pleasant noble seat, worthie to be noted by alle,"
- so it is described in an Itinerary of 1620, —
had been made to bear the penalty for its master's faith to Freedom.
" There is no service without suffering," he
quietly said, as he stood with the fair Lucy, his
wife, after sunrise, before the smoking ruins.
He looked west over the green uplands of his
manor, and east over his broad acres of fenny
land, billowy with rank grass, and all the beloved
scene seemed strange and unlovely to him.
Even the three beautiful towers of Lincoln
Cathedral full in view, his old companions and
monitors, now emphasized the devastation of his
home.
He could not dally with regrets. There was
still work for him and the Brothertoft horses to
do. He must leave his wife well guarded, and
gallop back.
So there was a parting and a group, - the fair
wife, the devoted soldier, the white charger, and
the child awakened to say good-bye, and scared
at his father's glinting corselet, - a group such
as a painter loves.
The Colonel bore westward to cross the line
1 *




10          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
of march of the Parliamentary army, and by and
by, as he drew nearer the three towers of Lincoln, they began to talk to him by Great Tom,
the bell.
From his youth up, the Great Tom of Lincoln,
then in full swing and full roar, had aroused,
warned, calmed, and comforted him, singing to
hlim, along the west wind, pious chants, merry
refrains, graceful madrigals, stirring lyrics, more
than could be repeated, even " if all the geese
in Lincoln's fens Produced spontaneous wellmade pens," and every pen were a writer of
poetry and music.
To-day Great Tom had but one verse to repeat,
i" Westward ho! A new home across the seas."
This was its stern  command to the Puritan
Colonel, saddened by the harm and cruelty of
war.'' Yes, my old oracle," he. replied, " if we fail,
if we lose Liberty here, I will obey, and seek
it in the New World."
For a time it seemed that they had not failed.
England became a Commonwealth.  Brothertoft
returned in peace to his dismantled home. Its
ancient splendors could never be restored. Three
fourths of the patriot's estate were gone. He
was too generous to require back from his party,
in its success, what he had frankly given for the




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          11
nation's weal.- He lived quietly and sparingly.
His sole extravagance was, that, as a monument
of bygone grandeur, he commissioned Sir Anthony Vandyck to paint him, his wife, his boy,
and the white charger, as they stood grouped for
the parting the morning of the fire.
So green ivy covered the ruins, and for years
Great Tom of Lincoln never renewed its sentence of exile.
Time passed. Kingly Oliver died. There was
no Protector blood in gentle Richard Cromwell.
He could not wield the land. " Ho for cavaliers! hey for cavaliers!"  In came the Merrie
Monarch. Out Puritans, and in Nell Gwynn!
Out crop-ears and in love-locks!  Away sad
colors! only frippery is the mode. To prison
stout John Bunyan; to office slight Sam Pepys!
To your blind study, John Milton, and indite
Paradise Lost; to Whitehall, John Wilmot, Earl
of Rochester, and scribble your poem, "Nothing! "  Yes; go Bigotry, your jackboots smell
unsavory; enter Prelacy in fine linen and perfume! Procul, 0 procul, Libertas! for, alas!
English knees bend to the King's mistress, and
English voices swear, " The King can do no
wrong." Boom sullenly, Great Tom of Linc.oln,
the dirge of Freedom!
Ring solemnly, Great Tom  of Lincoln, to
Colonel Brothertoft the stern command revived.




12           EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
Syllable again along the west wind the sentence of exile, —," Westward ho! A new home across the seas! "
Every day the nation cringed baser and baser.
Every day the great bell, from its station high
above all the land, shouted more vehemently
to the lord of Brothertoft Manor to shake the
dust from his feet, and withdraw himself from
among a people grown utterly dastard.  His
young hopes were perished. His old associates
were slain or silenced. He would go.
And just at this moment, when in 1665 all
freedom was dead in England, Winthrop of
Connecticut wrote to his friend at Brothertoft
Manor: " We have conquered the Province of
New Netherlands. The land is goodlie, and
there is a great brave river running through
the midst of it.  Sell thy Manor, bring thy
people, and come to us. We need thee, and
the like of thee, in our new communities. We
have brawn enow, and much godlinesse and
singing of psalms; but gentlemen and gentlewomen be few among us."
So farewell to England, debauched and disgraced!
Great Tom of Lincoln tolled farewell, and the
beautiful tower of St. Botolph's at Boston saw
the exiles out to sea.




II.
BLUFF is the bow and round as a pumpkin
is the stern of the Dutch brig, swinging to its
anchor in the bay of New York. It is the new
arrival from England, this sweet autumn day of
1665.  The passengers land. Colonel Brothertoft and family! Welcome, chivalric gentleman,
to this raw country! You and your class are
needed here.
And now disembark a great company of
Lincolnshire men, old tenants or old soldiers of
the Colonel's. Their names are thorough Lincolnshire.  Here come Wrangles, Swinesheads,
Timberlands, Mumbys, Bilsbys, Hogsthorpes,
Swillingores, and Galsworthys, old and young,
men and women.
These land, and stare about forlornly, after
the manner of emigrants.  They sit on their
boxes, and wish they were Well back in the old
country. They see the town gallows, an emillent object on the beach, and are taught that
where man goes, crime goes also. A frowzy
Indian paddles ashore with clams to sell; at




14           EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
this vision, their dismayed scalps tremble on
their sinciputs. A sly Dutchman, the fatter prototype of to-day's emigrant runner, stands before
them and says, seductively, "Bier, Schnapps! "
They shake their heads firmly, and respond,
"Nix!"
Colonel Brothertoft was received with due distinction by Governor Nicolls and Mayor Willet.
Old Peter Stuyvesant was almost consoled that
Hollanders were sent to their Bouweries to smoke
and grow stolid, if such men as this new-comer
were to succeed them in power.
The Colonel explored that'' great brave river"
which Connecticut Winthrop had celebrated in
his letter. Its beautiful valley was "all before
him where to choose." Dutch land-patents were
plenteous in market as villa sites after a modern
panic. Crown grants were to be had from the
new proprietary, almost for the asking.
The lord of old Brothertoft Manor selected his
square leagues for the new Manor of Brothertoft
at the upper end of Westchester County, bordering upon the Highlands of the Hudson. A few
pioneer Dutchmen - De Witts, Van Warts, and
Canadys - were already colonized there.  His
Lincolnshire followers soon found their places;
but they came from the fens, and did not love
the hills, and most of them in time dispersed to
flatter country.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          15
The new proprietor's wealth was considerable
for America.  He somewhat diminished it by
reproducing, as well as colonial workmen could
do, that corner of the old manor-house untouched
by the fire. It grew up a strange exotic, this
fine mansion, in the beautiful wilderness. The
" curious fabrick " of little imported bricks, with
its peaked turret, its quaint gables, its square
bay-window, and grand porch, showed incongruously at first, among the stumps of a clearing.
And there the exiled gentleman tried to live
an exotic life. He bestowed about him the furniture of old Brothertoft Manor. He hung his
Vandyck on the wall..He laid his presentation
copy of Mr. John Milton's new poem, Paradise
Lost, on the table.
But the vigor and dash of the Colonel's youth
were gone. His heart was sick for the failure
of liberty at home. The rough commonplace of
pioneering wearied him. He had done his last
work in life when he uprooted from England, and
transferred his race to flourish or wither on the
new soil. He had formed the family character;
he had set the shining example.  Let his son
sustain the honor of the name!
The founder of Brothertoft Manor died, and a
second Edwin, the young Astyanax of Vandyck's
picture, became the Patroon.
A third Edwin succeeded him, a fourth fol



16           EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
lowed, and in 1736 the fifth Edwin Brothertoft
was born. He was an only child, like each of
his forefathers. These pages chronicle his great
joy and his great sorrow, and how he bore himself at a crisis of his individual life. Whoever
runs may read stories like his in the broad light
of to-day.  This one withdraws itself into the
chiaroscuro of a recent past.
The Brothertoft fortunes did not wax on the
new continent. Each gentle Edwin transmitted
to his heir the Manor docked of a few more
square miles, the mansion a little more dilapidated, the furniture more worn and broken, the
name a little less significant in the pushing world
of the Province.
But each Edwin, with the sword and portrait
of the first American, handed down the still more
precious heirlooms of the family,- honor unblemished, quick sympathies, a tender heart, a
generous hand, refinement, courtesy, -in short,
all the qualities of mind and person that go "to
grace a gentleman."
It became the office of each to be the type
gentleman of his time.
Perhaps that was enough. Perhaps they were
purposely isolated from  other offices.  Nature
takes no small pains to turn out her type blackguard a complete model of ignobility, and makes
it his exclusive business to be himself.  Why




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.           t7
should she not be as careful with the antagonistic order?
The Brothertofts always married women like
themselves, the female counterparts of their mild
manhood. Each wife blended with her husband.
No new elements of character appeared in the
only child. Not one of them was a father vigorous enough to found a sturdy clan with broad
shoulders and stiff wills, ordained to success
from the cradle.
They never held their own in the world, much
less took what was another's. Each was conscious of a certain latent force, and left it latent.
They lived weakly, and died young, like fair
exotics. They were a mild, inefficient, ineffectual, lovely, decaying race, strong in all the
charming qualities, feeble in all the robust ones.
And now let the procession of ancestors fade
away into shadows; and let the last shadow
lead forth the hero of this history in his proper
substance!




III.
EDWIN BROTHERTOFT, fifth of that name, had
been two years at Oxford, toiling at the peaceful tasks and dreaming the fair dreams of a
young scholar.
It was the fashion of that time to send young
men of property to be educated and Anglicized
in England.
Bushwhackers and backwoodsmen the new
continent trained to perfection.  Most of the
Colonists knew that two and two make four,
and could put this and that together.  But
lore, classic or other, — heavy lore out of tomes,
— was not to be had short of the old country.
The Massachusetts and Connecticut mills, Harvard and Yale, turned out a light article of domestic lore, creditable enough considering their
inferior facilities for manufacture; the heavy
British stuff was much preferred by those who
could afford to import it.
Edwin went to be Anglicized. Destiny meant
that he shall not be. His life at Oxford came
to a sharp end.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.           19
His father wrote: "My son, I am dying the
early death of a Brothertoft. I have been foolish enough to lose the last of our fortune.
Come home and forgive me!"
Beautiful Oxford! Fair spires and towers and
dreamy cloisters, - dusky chapels, and rich old
halls, —green gardens, overlooked by lovely
oriels, —high avenues of elms for quiet contemplation, - companionship of earnest minds,
- a life of simple rules and struggles without
pain, —how hard it was for the young man to
leave all this!
It was mid-January, 1757, when he saw home
again.
A bleak prospect.  The river was black ice.
Dunderberg and the Highlands were chilly with
snow. The beech-trees wore their dead leaves,
in forlorn protest against the winter-time. The
dilapidated Mkanor-House published the faded fortunes of its tenants.
Tenants at will," so said the father to his
son, in the parlor where Vandyck's picture presided.
"Whose will?" Edwin asked.
"Colonel Billop's."
"The name is new to me."
"He is a half-pay officer and ex-army-contractor, -a hard, cruel man. He has made a
great fortune, as such men make fortunes."




20          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
"Will his method suit me, father?  You
know I have mine to make."
"Hardly.  I am afraid you could not trade
with the Indians, —a handful of beads for a
beaver-skin, a'big drunk' for a bale of them."
"I am afraid not."
"I fear your conscience is too tender to let
you put off beef that once galloped under the
saddle to feed troops."
" Yes; and I love horses too much to encourage hippophagy."
" Could you look up men in desperate circumstance, and take their last penny in usury?"
" Is that his method?"' Certainly.  And to crown all, could you
seduce your friend into a promising job, make
the trustful fool responsible for the losses, and
when they came, supply him means to pay them,
receiving a ruinous mortgage as security? This
is what he has done to me. Do any of these
methods suit my son?" asked the elder, with a
gentleman's scorn.
"Meanness and avarice are new to me," the
junior rejoined, with a gentleman's indignation.
" Can a fortune so made profit a man?"
"Billop will not enjoy it. He is dying, too.
His heirs will take possession, as mine retire."
Edwin could not think thus coolly of his father's death. To check tears, he went on with
his queries.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          21
"He has heirs, then, our unenviable successor? "
" One child, heir or heiress; I do not remember which."
"L Heir or heiress, I hope the new tenant will
keep the old place in order, until I can win it
back for you, father."
" It cheers me greatly, my dear son," said the
father, with a smile on his worn, desponding face,
" to find that you are not crushed by my avowal
of poverty."
" The thought of work exhilarates me," the
younger proudly returned.
"We Brothertofts have always needed the
goad of necessity," said the senior, in apology
for himself and his race.
"Now, then, necessity shall make us acquainted with success. I will win it. You
shall share it."." In the spirit, not in the body. But we will
not speak of that. Where will you seek your
success, here or there?"
He pointed to Vandyck's group of the Parliamentary Colonel and his family. The forefather
looked kindly down upon his descendants. Each
of them closely resembled that mild, heroic gentleman.
" " ere or in the land of our ancestors? " the
father continued.  " Your generation has the




22          EDVIN BROTHERTOFT.
choice. No other will. These dull, deboshed
Hanoverians on the throne of England will
crowd us to revolution, as the Stuarts did the
mother country."
"' Then Westchester may need a Brothertoft,
as Lincolnshire did," cries Edwin, ardently. His
face flushed, his eye kindled, it seemed as if the
Colonel, in the vigor of youth, had stepped down
from the canvas.
His father was thrilled. A life could not name
itself wasted which had passed to such a son.
"But let us not be visionary, my boy," he went
on more quietly, and with weak doubts of the
wisdom of enthusiasm. "England offers a brilliant career to one of your figure, your manners,
and your talents. Our friends there do not forget us, as you know, for all our century of rustication here. When I am gone, and the Manor
is gone, you will have not one single tie of property or person in America."
"I love England," said Edwin, "I love Oxford; the history, the romance, and the hope of
England are all packed into that grand old
casket of learning; but "-  and he turned towards the portrait -" the Colonel embarked us
on the continent. He would frown if we gave
up the great ship and took to the little pinnace
again."
Clearly the young gentlemen was not Angli



EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.           23
cized. He went on gayly to say, "that he knew
the big ship was freighted with pine lumber,
and manned by Indians, while the pinnace was
crammed with jewels, and had a king to steer
and peers to pull the halyards; but still he was
of a continent, Continental in all his ideas and
fancies, and could not condescend to be an
Islander."
Then the gentlemen continued to discuss his
decision in a lively tone, and to scheme pleasantly for the future. They knew that gravity
would bring them straightway to sadness.
Sadness must come. Both perceived that this
meeting was the first in a series of farewells.
Daily interviews of farewell slowly led the
father and the son to their hour of final parting.
How tenderly this dear paternal and filial love
deepened in those flying weeks of winter. The
dying man felt his earthly being sweetly completed by his son's affection. His had been a
somewhat lonely life. The robust manners of
his compeers among the Patroons had repelled
him. The early death of his wife had' depressed
and isolated him. No great crisis had happened
to arouse and nerve the decaying gentleman.
"Perhaps," he said, " I should not have accepted a merely negative life, if your mother had
been with me to ripen my brave purposes into
stout acts. Love is the impelling force of life.




24           EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
Love wisely, my son! lest your career be worse
than failure, a hapless ruin and defeat."
These boding words seemed spoken with the
clairvoyance of a dying man. They were the
father's last warnings.
The first mild winds of March melted the
snow from the old graveyard of Brothertoft Manor
on a mount overlooking the river. There was
but a little drift to scrape away from the vault
door when they came to lay Edwin Brothertoft, fourth of that name, by tile side of his ancestors.




IV.
FouR great Patroons came to honor their peer's
funeral.
These were Van Cortlandt, Phillipse with his
son-in-law Beverley Robinson, from the neighborhood, and Livingston from above the Highlands.
They saw their old friend's coffin to its damp
shelf, and then walked up to the manor-house
for a slice of the funeral baked meats and a libation to the memory of the defunct.
A black servant carved and uncorked for
them. He had the grand air, and wielded knife
and corkscrew with dignity. Voltaire the gentlemen called him. He seemed proud to bear
the name of that eminent destructive.
The guests ate their fat and lean with good
appetite. Then they touched glasses, and sighed
over another of their order gone.
"' The property is all eaten up with mortgages,
I-hear," says Phillipse, with an appropriate doleful tone.
"Billop swallows the whole, the infernal
2




26           EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
usurer!" Van Cortlandt rejoined, looking lugubriously at his fellows, and then cheerfully at his
glass.
" He's too far gone to swallow anything. The
Devil has probably got him by this time. He
was dying three days ago," said Beverley Robinson.
"Handsome Jane Billop will be our great
heiress," Livingston in turn remarked. "Let
your daughters look to their laurels, Phillipse! "
" My daughters, sir, do not enter the lists with
such people."
"' Come, gentlemen," jolly Van Cortlalldt interjected, " another glass, and good luck to our
young friend here! I wish lie would join us;
but I suppose the poor boy must have out his
cry alone. What can we do for him? We
must stand by our order."
"I begin to have some faith in the order,"
says Livingston, " when it produces such' prefux
chevaliers' as he. What can we do for him?
Take him for your second son-in-law, Phillipse!
The lovely Mary is still heart-whole, I believe.
Our strapping young friend from Virginia, Master George Washington, has caracoled off, with
a tear in his eye and a flea in his ear. Slice off
twenty or thirty  thousand  acres from  your
manor, marry these young people, and set them
up. You are too rich for our latitude and our
era."




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          27
Mr. Adolphus Phillipse was a slow coach.
The other's banter teased him.
"Mr. Livingston," he began, swelling  and
growing red.
" Come, gentlemen," cries Van Cortlandt, pacificator, " I have a capital plan for young Brothertoft."
" What?" Omnes inquire.
" He must marry Jane Billop."
"Ay, he must marry Jane Billop," Omnes
rejoin.
"A glass to it! " cried the proposer.
" Glasses round!" the seconders echo, with
subdued enthusiasm.
"A  beauty!" says Van Cortlandt, clinking
with Phillipse.
"An heiress! " says Phillipse, clinking on.
"An orphan and only child! " says Robinson,
touching glasses with his neighbor..
", Sweet sixteen! " says Livingston, blowing a
kiss, and completing the circle of clink.
These jolly boys, old and young, were of a
tribe on its way to extinction, with the painted
sagamores of tribes before them. First came
the red nomad, striding over the continent. In
time followed the great Patroon, sprawling over
all the acres of a county. Finally arrives the
unembarrassed gentleman of our time, nomad in
youth, settler at maturity, but bound to no spot,




2S          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
and cribbed in no habitation; and always packed
to move, with a brain full of wits and a pocket
full of coupons.
The four proprietors finished their libations
and sent for Edwin to say good-bye. His deep
grief made any suggestion of their marriage
scheme an impertinence.
Jolly Van Cortlandt longed to lay his hand
kindly on the young man's shoulder and say,
" Don't grieve, my boy!' Omnes moriar,' as we
used to say at school. Come, let me tell you
about a happy marriage we've planned for
you!"
Indeed, he did arrange this little speech in
his mind, and consulted Livingston on its delivery.
"Let him alone!" said that' magister morum.' " You know as much of love as of Latin. The match is clearly made in heaven. It
will take care of itself. He shall have my good
word with the lady, and wherever else he wants
it. I love a gentleman."
" So do I, naturally," Van says, and he gave
the youth honored with this fair title a cordial
invitation to his Manor.
The others also offered their houses, hearths,
and hearts, sincerely; and then mounted and
rode off on their several prosperous and cheerful
ways.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          29
Meanwhile, a group of the tenants of tlie Manor, standing on the sunny side of the vault, had
been discussing the late lord and the prospects
of his successor.  As the elders talked, their
sons and heirs played leap-frog over the tombstones, puffed out their cheeks to rival the cherubs over the compliments in doggerel oni the
slabs, and spelled through the names of extinct
Lincolnshire families, people of slow lungs, who
had not kept up with the fast climate.
"I feel as if I'd lost a brother," said Squire
Jierek Dewitt, the chief personage among the
tenantry.
"A fine mahn, he was!" pronounced Isaac
Van Wart, through a warty nose. "'But not
spry enough, - not spry enough!"
" Anybody could cheat him," says lean Hendrecus Canady, the root and Indian doctor, who
knew his fact by frequent personal experiments.
" Who'd want to cheat a man that was everybody's friend?" asked old Sam  Galsworthy's
hearty voice.
"The boy's a thorough Brothertoft, mild as a
lamb and brave as a lion," Dewitt continued.
" But I don't like to think of his being flung on
the world so young."
" He can go down to York and set up a newspaper," Van Wart suggested.
"If I was him, I'd put in for Squire Billop's




30          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
gal, and have easy times."  This was the root
doctor's plan.
" Well, if he ever wants a hundred pounds,"
says Galsworthy, —'ay, or five hundred, for
that matter, -he's only got to put his hand
into my pocket."
"'You can't put your own hand in, without
wrastlin' a good deal," Van Wart says.
Sam laughed, and tried. But he was too
paunchy.
" I'm a big un," he said; " but I was a little
un when I got back from that scalpin' trip to
Canada, when Horse-Beef Billop was Commissary. I did n't weigh more'n the Injun doctor
here; and he, and that boy he feeds on yaller
pills, won't balance eight stone -together. It's
bad stock, is the Billop. I hope our young man
and the Colonel's gal won't spark up to each
other."
It was growing dusk. The dead man's R. I.
P. had been pronounced, and the youth's' Perge
puer!"  The tenants, members of a class presently to become extinguished with the Patroons,
marched off toward the smokes that signalled
their suppers. The sons dismounted from the
tombstones and followed. Each of them is his
father, in boy form. They prance off, exercising
their muscles to pull their pound, by and by, at
the progress of this history. Old Sam Galswor



EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.           31
thy junior has hard work to keep up with the
others, on account of his back load. He carries
on his shoulders little Hendrecus Canady, a
bolus-fed fellow, his father's corpus vile to try
nostrums upon.
And Edwin Brothertoft sat alone in his lonely
home, - his home no more.
Lonely, lonely!
A blank by the fireside, where his father used
to sit. A blank in the chamber, where he lay so
many days, drifting slowly out of life. Silence
now,' silence, which those feeble words of affection, those mild warnings, those earnest prayers,
those trailing whispers low from dying lips, would
never faintly break again.  No dear hand to
press. No beloved face to watch sleeping, until
it woke into a smile. No face, no touch, no
voice; only a want and an absence ill that lonely
home.
And if, in some dreamy moment, the son
seemed to see the dear form steal back to its
accustomed place and the dear face appear, the
features wore an eager, yet a disappointed look.
So much to say, that now could never be said!
How the father seemed to long to recover human
accents, and urge fresh warnings against the
passions that harm the life and gnaw the soul,
or to reveal some unknown error sadder than
a sin.




32           EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
And sometimes, too, that vision of the father's
countenance, faint against a background of twilight, was tinged with another sorrow, and the
son thought, "He died, and never knew how
thoroughly I loved him.  Did I ever neglect
him? Was I ever cold or careless? That sad
face seems to mildly reproach me with some
cruel slight."
The lonely house grew drearier and drearier.
" Colonel Billop," wrote Mr. Skaats, his agent
and executor, "has been removed by an all-wise
Providence. Under the present circumstances,
Mr. Brothertoft, I do not wish to disturb you.
But I should be glad to take possession at the
Manor at your earliest convenience.
" Respectfully, &c.,
" SKERVEY SKAATS."
Everything, even the priceless portrait of the
Puritan Colonel, was covered by the mortgages.
Avarice had licked them all over with its slime,
and gaped to bolt the whole at a meal.
Edwin did not wish to see a Skervey Skaats
at work swallowing the family heirlooms. He
invited Squire Dewitt to act for him with the
new proprietor's representative.
New York, by that time, had become a thriving
little town. The silt of the stream of corn that
flowed down the Hudson was enriching it. Ed



EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.           33
win had brave hopes of making at least his daily
bread there with his brains or his hands.
While he was preparing to go, Old Sam Galsworthy appeared with a bag of guineas and a fine
white mare of the famous Lincolnshire stock, —
such a mare as Colonel Brothertoft used to ride,
and Prince Rupert's men to run from.
" Squire Dewitt told me you were going to
trudge to York," said Sam.
"I was," replied the orphan; " my legs will
take me there finely."
"It was in my lease," said Sam, " to pay a
mare-colt every year over and above my rent,
besides a six-year-old mare for a harriet, whenever the new heir came in."
"l Heriot, I suppose you mean, Sam."' We call'em heriots when they're horses,
and harriets when they're mares.  Well, your
father' would n't take the colts since twelve year.
Ele said he was agin tribute, and struck the colts
and the harriets all out of my lease. So I put
the price of a colt aside for him every year, in
case hard times come. There's twelve colts in
this buckskin bag, and this mare is the token
that I count you the rightful owner of my farm
and the whole Manor. I've changed her name
to Harriet, bein' one. She's a stepper, as any
man can see with half a blinker.- The dollars
and the beast is yourn, Mister Edwin."
2* 




34          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
Edwin shook his head.' You are very kind,
Sam; but I am my father's son, and against
tribute in any form."
"I have n't loved your father forty year to
see his son go afoot. Ride the mare down, anyhow. She don't get motion enough, now that
I'm  too heavy for her, bein' seventeen stone
three pound and a quarter with my coat off."
Edwin's pride melted under this loyalty.
"I will ride her then, Sam, and thank you.
And give me a luck-penny out of the bag."
" You'11 not take the whole? " pleaded Galsworthy.
No. And when the root-doctor heard this, he
stood ilendrecus Canady junior in a receptive
position, and dosed him with a bolus of wisdom,
as follows: 
" Men *is divided into three factions. Them
that grabs their chances.  Them  that chucks
away their chances. And them that lets their
chances slide. The Brothertofts have alluz ben
of the lettin'-slide faction. This one has jined
the Chuckin'-Aways. He'11 never come to
nothin'. You just swaller that remark, my son,
and keep a digestin'af it, if you want to come
to anything yourself."
Next morning Edwin took leave of home, and
sorrowfully rode away.
A harsh, loud March wind chased him, blow



EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          35
ing Harriet Ieriot's tail between her legs. The
omens were bad.
But when, early the second morning, the orphan crossed King's Bridge, and trod the island*
of his new career, a Gulf Stream wind, smelling
of bananas and sounding of palm-leaves, met
him, breathing welcome and success.




V.
WITH youth, good looks, an English education, the manners and heart of a gentleman, and
the Puritan Colonel's sword, Edwin Brothertoft
went to New York to open his oyster.
"Hushed in grim  repose," the world, the
oyster, lay with its lips tight locked against the
brutal oyster-knives of blackguards.
But at our young blade's first tap on the shell
the oyster gaped.
How pleasant it is to a youth when his oyster
gapes, and indolently offers him the succulent
morsel within! His oyster is always uneasy at
the hinge until it is generously open for an Edwin Brothertoft.  He was that fine rarity, a
thorough gentleman.
How rare they were then, and are now! rare
as great poets, great painters, great seers, great
doers. The fingers of my right hand seem toq
many when I begin to number off the thorough
gentlemen of my own day. But were I ten
times Briareus, did another hand sprout whenever I wanted a new tally, I never could count




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          37
the thorough blackguards among my contemporaries. So much shade does it take to make
sunshine!
The Colonial world gave attention when it
heard a young Brothertoft was about to descend
into the arena and wrestle for life.
"So that is he!" was the cry.  "How
handsome! how graceful! how chivalrous! how
brilliant! what a bow he makes! his manners
disarm every antagonist! He will not take advantages, they say. He is generous, and has
visionary notions. about fair play. He thinks a
beaten foe should not be trampled on or scalped.
He thinks enemies ought to be forgiven, and
friends to be sustained, through thick and thin.
Well, well! such fancies are venial errors in a
young aristocrat."
The city received him as kindly as it does the
same manner of youth now, when its population
has increased one hundred-fold.
The chief lawyer said, " Come into my office
and copy papers, at a pound a week, and in a
year you will be a Hortensius."
The chief merchant said, "If you like the
smell of rum, codfish, and beaver-skins, take a
place in my counting-house, at a hundred pounds
a year, and correct the spelling of my letters.
I promise nothing; but I may want a partner
by and by."




38          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
The Governor of the Province and Mayor of
the town, dullards, as officials are wont to be,
each took the young gentleman aside, and said,
"Here is a proclamation of mine! Now punctuate
it, and put in some fine writing, -about Greece
and Rome, you know, and Magna Charta, with
a Latin quotation or two, - and I will find you
a fat job and plenty of pickings!"
The Livingston party proposed to him to go
to the Assembly on their votes and fight the
De Lanceys. The De Lanceys, in turn, said,
" Represent us, and talk those radical Livingstons down."
Lord Loudon, Commander-in-Chief, swore that
Brothertoft was the only gentleman he had seen
among the dashed Provincials. " And," says he,
" you speak Iroquois and French, and all that
sort of thing. Be my secretary, and I'11 get you
a commission in the army, - dashed if I don't! "
King's College, just established, to increase the
baker's dozen of educated men in the Colony,
offered the young Oxonian a professorship, Metaphysics, Mathematics, Languages, Belles-Lettres,
— in fact whatever he pleased; none of the
Trustees knew them apart.
Indeed, the Provincial world prostrated itself
before this fortunate youth and prayed him, —
"Be the representative Young American!
Convince our unappreciative Mother England:




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          39
"That we do not talk through our noses;
"That our language is not lingo;
"That we are not slaves of the Almighty
Wampum;
" That we can produce the Finest Gentlemen,
as well as the Biggest Lakes, the Longest Rivers,
the Vastest Antres, and the Widest Wildernesses
in the World."
What an oyster-bed, indeed, surrounded our
hero!
Alas for him! HIe presently found a Pearl.




VI.
HANDSOME Jane Billop wanted a husband.
She looked into the glass, and saw Beauty.
Into the schedules of her father's will, and saw
Heiress.
She determined to throw her handkerchief, as
soon as she could discover the right person to
pick it up.
" He must belong to a great family," thought
the young lady. "He must promise me to be
a great man. He must love me to distraction.
I hate the name of Billop! I should look lovely
in a wedding-dress.!"
She was very young, very premature, motherless, the daughter and companion of a coarse
man who had basely made a great fortune. Rich
rogues always fancy that their children will inherit only the wealth, and none of the sin. They
are shlcked when the paternal base metal crops
out at some new vein in their progeny. Better
not embezzle and oppress, papa, if you wish
your daughters to be pure and your sons honest!
Colonel Billop did not live to know'what kind




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          41
of an heiress he and his merciless avarice had
fathered.
" I must see this young Brothertoft," Jane's
revery continued. "Poor fellow, I have got all
his property! Mr. Skaats says he is a very distinguished young gentleman, and will be one of
the first men of the Province. Handsome too,
and knows lords and ladies in England! Let
me see! I cannot meet him anywhere so soon
after the funeral. But he might call on me,
about business.  I feel so lonely and solemn!
And I do not seem to have any friends. Everybody courts me for my money, and yet they look
down upon me too, because my father made his
own fortune."
Colonel Billop had taken much pains to teach
his daughter business habits, and instruct her in
all the details of management of property.
She sat down at her desk, and in a bold round
hand indited the following note: —"Mr. Skaats, Miss Billop's agent, begs that
Mr. Brothertoft will do him the favor to call at
the house in Wall Street to-morrow at eleven.
Mr. Skaats is informed that there is a picture at
the Manor-House which Mr. Brothertoft vSes,
and he would be pleased to make an arrangement for the late owner's retaining it."
Skilful Jane! to whom a Vandyck was less
worth than its length and breadth in brocade.




42          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
She sealed this note with Colonel Billop's frank
motto, " Per omnia ad opes," and despatched it.
Edwin was delighted at the prospect of recovering his ancestor. It is a mighty influence
when the portrait of a noble forefather puts its
eye on one who wears his name, and says, by the
language of an unchanging look: " I was a Radical in my day; be thou the same in thine! I
turned my back upon the old tyrannies and
heresies, and struck for the new liberties and
beliefs; my liberty and belief are doubtless already tyranny and heresy to thine age; strike
thou for the new! I worshipped the purest God
of my generation, -it may be that a purer God
is revealed to thine; worship him with thy whole
heart."
Such a monitor is priceless. Edwin was in a
very grateful mood when he knocked at the door
in Wall Street.
A bank now rests upon the site of the Billop
mansion. Ponderous, grim, granite, stand the
two columns of its propylon. A swinging door
squeaks "' Hail!" to the prosperous lender, and
"Avaunt! " to the borrower unindorsed. Within,
paying tellers, old and crusty, or young and
jaunty, stand, up to their elbows in gold, and
smile at the, offended dignity of personages not
identified presenting checks, and in vain requiring payment. Farther back depositors are feed



EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.           43
ing money, soft and hard, into the maw of the
receiving teller. Behind him, book-keepers wield
prodigious ledgers, and run up and down their
columns, agile as the lizards of Pestum. And
in the innermost penetralia of that temple of
Plutus, the High-Priests, old Dons of Directors
worth billions, sit and fancy that they brew crisis
or credit.
So stand things now where Edwin Brothertoft
once stood contemplating a brass knocker.
The door, opened, and he was presently introduced into a parlor, upholstered to the uppermost of its era.
But where is Mr. Skervey Skaats?
Instead of that mean and meagre agent, here
is the principal, - a singularly handsome, bold,
resolute young woman, her exuberant beauty
repressed and her carnations toned down by
mourning.
Both the young people were embarrassed for a
moment.
He wa's embarrassed at this unlooked-for substitution of a beautiful girl for an ugly reptile of
a Skaats; and she to find how fair a spirit she
had conjured up. He with a sudden compunction for the prejudice he. had had against the
unknown heir, his disinheritor; and she with her
instant conviction that here was the person to
pick up her handkerchief, if he would.




44           EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
Shall the talk of these children be here re.
peated? It might fill a pleasant page; but this
history cannot deal with the details of their immature lives. It only makes ready, in this First
Act, for the rapid business of a riper period.
When Edwin Brothertoft left the heiress's parlor, after sixty minutes of delight, she seated
herself at the desk where she, under the alias
Skaats, had indited his invitation, took a fresh
sheet of paper and a virgin quill, and wrote:Jane Brothertoft.
Then the same in backhand, with flourishes and
without. Then she printed, in big text:LADY JANE BROTHERTOFT, OF BROTHERTOFT HALL.
Then, with a conscious, defiant look, she carried
her prophetic autograph to the fire, and watched
it burn.
Over the fireplace was a mirror, districted into three parts by gilded mullions. Above was
perched a gilt eagle, a very rampant high-flier
indeed. Two wreaths of onions, in the disguise
of pomegranates, were festooned from his beak,
and hung in alluring masses on either side of
the frame.  Quite a regiment of plump little
cherubs, clad in gilding, tight as it could fit,
clung in the wreaths, and sniffed at their fragrance. Jane looked up and saw herself in the
mirror. A blush deepened her somewhat carnal




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.           45
carnations. Every cherub seemed to be laughing significantly. She made a face at the merry
imps. As she did so, she caught sight of the reflection of her father's portrait, also regarding
her. He was such a father as a child would
have been quite justified in disowning and utterly cutting, if a stranger had asked, "' Who is
that horrid person with the red face, the coarse
jowl, the permanent leer, and cruel look  " An
artist, cunning in red for the face and white for
the ruffles, had made this personage more butcherly even than Nature intended.
Jane Billop marched up to the portrait, and
turned it with its face toward the wall.
"He need n'to look at me, and tell me I am
courting Mr. Edwin Brothertoft," she said to
herself. "I know I am, and I mean to have
him.' He is lovely; but I almost hate him. He
makes me feel ignorant and coarse and mean.
I don't want to be the kind of woman he has
been talking to with that deferential address.
But I suppose this elegant manner is all put on,
and he is really just like other people. He seems
to be pretty confident of carrying the world before him. We shall be the great people of the
Province. Here comes the distinguished Sir Edwin Brothertoft, and Lady Jane, his magnificent
wife! People shall not pretend to look down
upon me any more, because my father knew how




46           EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
to make money, when fools threw it away. I've
got a Manor, too, Miss Mary Phillipse; and I'm
handsomer than you, and not almost an old maid.
That little chit of a Mayor Cruger's daughter's
had better not try to patronize me again, nor
Julia Peartree Smith turn up her poor pug nose.
They'll all want invitations to Mrs. Brotllertoft's
ball on going out of mourning. How they will
envy me my Edwin! What a beautiful bow he
makes! What a beautiful voice he has! June is
a lovely month for a wedding."
There is never joy in Wall Street now such as
filled the heart of Edwin Brothertoft on that
morning of a bygone century. The Billops of
our time live a league up town,-and plot on Murray Hill for lovers of good family.
Edwin had found his Pearl;- a glorious, flashing Ruby rather.  Its gleam  exhilarated him.
His heart and his heels were so light, that he felt
as if he could easily spring to the top of the spire
of Old Trinity, which was at least a hundred feet
lower than the crocketty structure now pointing
the moral of Wall Street. He walked away from
Miss Billop's door in a maze of delight, too much
bewildered by this sudden bliss to think of analyzing it.
So the young payee, whose papa's liberal check
for his quarter's allowance has just been cashed,
may climb from the bank on the site of the Billop




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.           47
house, as far as Broadway, content with the joy
of having tin, without desiring to tinkle it.
But at the corner Edwin's heart began to speak
to him with sentiments and style quite different
from the lady's.
"H ow she startled me with her brilliant beauty! How kind it was to think of my valuing the
portrait! How generously and how delicately
she offered it! And I had done her the injustice
of a prejudice! That wrong I will redress by
thinking of her henceforth all the more highly
and tenderly.
"Poor child! a lonely orphan like myself.
She showed in all our interview how much she
yearned for friendship.  Mine she shall have.
My love? yes, yes, my love!  But that must
stay within my secret heart, and never find a
voice until I have fully assured my future.
"And this warm consciousness of a growing
true love shall keep me strong and pure and
brave. Thank God and her for this beautiful
influence! With all the kindness I have met,
I was still lonely, still desponding. Now I am
jubilant; everything is my friend and my comrade. Yes; ring out, gay bells of Trinity! What
is it you are ringing?  A marriage?  Al, happy
husband! happy bride! I too am of the brotherhood of Love. Ring, merry bells! Your songs
shall be of blissful omen to my heart."




VII.
SUCH soliloquies as those of the last chapter
presently led to dialogue of the same cllaracter.
The lady continued to scribble that brief romance, or rather that title of a romance.
" Lady Jane Brothertoft of Brothertoft Hall."
The lover for his part was not a dunce. He
soon perceived that it was his business to supply
the situations and the talk under this title, and
help the plot to grow.
It grew with alarming rapidity.
Tulips were thrusting  their green thumbs
through the ground in the Dutch gardens of the
town when the young people first met. Tulips
had flaunted their day and gone to green seedvessels with a little ruffle at the top, and cabbageroses were in young bud, when the first act of
the drama ended.
The lady was hardly as coy as Galatea in the
eclogue.  The lover might have been repelled
by the large share she took in the courtship.
But he was a true, blind, eager young lover,
utterly absorbed in a fanaticism of affection.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.           49
Indeed, if in the tumult of his own bliss he had
perceived that the lady was reaching beyond
her line to beckon him, this would have seemed
another proof that she and.he were both obeying
a Divine mandate. What young lover disputes
his mistress's right to share the passion?
"I knew it," he said to her, by and by,-" I
knew from the first moment we met, that we
must love one another. We are perfect counterparts, - the halves of a perfect whole. But you
the nobler. I felt from the moment that pleasant incident of the portrait had brought us together, that we were to be united.  I hardly
dared give my hope words. But I knew in my
heart that the benign powers would not let me
love so earnestly and yet desperately."
These fine fervors seemed to her a little ridiculous, but very pretty. She looked in the glass,
where the little Cupids in the onion-wreaths were
listening, amused with Edwin's rhapsodies, smiled
to herself, then smiled to him, and said, " Matches
are made in heaven."'" I told you," he said, " that I had erased the
word Perhaps from my future. Now that I am
in the way to prosperity and distinction for myself, and that you smile, success offers itself to
me drolly. The Great Lawyer proposes to me a
quadruple salary, and quarters the time in which
I am to become a Hortensius. The Great Mer3                       D




50           EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
chant offers me three hundred a year at once,
a certain partnership, and promises to abandon
codfish and go into more fragrant business."
They laughed merrily over this. Small wit
wakes lovers' glee.
"I like you better in public life," she said.
" You must be a great man immediately."." Love me, and I will be what you love."
"I am  so glad I am rich. Such fine things
can be done with money."
"I should be terribly afraid of your wealth,
if I was not sure of success on my side. As it
is, we have the power of a larger usefulness."
" Yes," she said, carelessly.
He did not notice her indifferent manner, for
he had dashed into a declamation of his high
hopes for his country and his time. Those were
the days when ardent youths were foreseeing
Revolution and Independence.
She did not seem much interested in this
rhapsody.
"I love to hear you talk of England and tile
great people you knew there," said she. "Is
not Brothertoft Manor-House very much like an
English country-seat?"
"Yes; but if it were well kept up, there
would be no place so beautiful in England, —
none so grand by nature, I mean."
Here followed another rhapsody from this




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          51
poetic youth on the Manor and its people, the
river and the Highlands.
She was proud of her lover's eloquence, although she did not sympathize much in his
enthusiasms. She had heard rivers talked of as
water-power or roads for water-carriage. Mountains had been generally abused in the Billop
establishment as ungainly squatters on good soil.
Forests were so many feet of timber. Tenants
were serfs, who could be squeezed to pay higher
rents, and ought to be the slaves of their landlords.
But she listened, and felt complimented while
Edwin painted the scenery of her new piece
of property with glowing fancy, and while he
made each of the tenants the hero of a pastoral
idyl. A manor that could be so commended
must be worth more money than she had supposed.
"I begin to long to see it," she said, with real
interest. "And that dear old fat Sam  Galsworthy, who lent you the horse, I must thank
him."
"Why not go up, as soon as June is fairly
begun?"
"Mr.'Skaats would not know all the pretty
places."
They looked at each other an instant, - she
bold and imperious, he still timidly tender.




.52         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
"If I only dared!" he said.
"Men always dare, do they not?" she rejoined,
without flinching.
"Are you lonely here? " he asked.
"Bitterly, except when  you come.  Are
you?"
"Sadly, except when I am with you."
Another exchange of looks, - she a little softened, and oppressed with the remembrance of
the sudden, voiceless, unconscious death of her
father, -he softened too, measuring her loss by
his, tenderer for her than before, but not quite
so timid.
" Both very lonely," he continued, with a
smile. "Two negatives make an affirmative.
Do you love me?"
"I am afraid I am already committed on that
subject."
" Why should we not put our two solitudes
together, and make society?"
"Why not? "
"Mr. Skaats would be a poor guide to Brothertoft Manor."
"Mr. Skaats! " she said impatiently, as if she
were dismissing a feline intruder. "We were
not talking of him."
"No. I was merely thinking I could recommend you a better cicerone."
"Who can you possibly mean?"




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          53' Myself."
" Ah! "
"Brothertoft Manor would be a lovely place
to spend a honeymoon in."' I long to see it, after your description."
"June there is perfection."
"June! and this is May!"
"Will you go there with me in June, my
dearest love? "
" Yes, Edwin."
It was agreed among all the gossips of the
Province —and the gossips were right —that
this was not a mercenary match. Youth and
beauty on both sides, what could be more natural than love and marriage? And then the
gossips went on to weigh the Brothertoft name
against the Billop fortune, and to pronounce -
for New York in those days loved blood more
than wampum —that the pounds hardly balanced the pedigree. Both parties were in deep
mourning. Of course there could be no great
wedding. But all the female quality of the
Province crowded to Trinity Church to see the
ceremony. The little boys cheered lustily when
the Billop coach, one of the. three or four in
town, brought its broadside to bear against the
church porch, and, opening its door, inscribed
with the Billop motto, "Per omnia ad opes,"




54          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
discharged the blushing bridegroom and his
bride.
The beadle  for beadles have strutted on our
soil — quelled the boys, and ushered the happy
pair to the chancel-rail. It is pleasant to know
that the furniture of the altar, reading-desk, and
pulpit, which met their eyes, was crimson damask of the " richest and costliest kind," and cost
in England forty-two pounds eleven shillings and
threepence.
Venerable Rector Barclay read the service,
with a slight Mohawk accent. He had been for
some years missionary among that respectable
tribe, - not, be it observed, the unworthy offshoot known as Mohocks and colonized in London, - and had generally persuaded his disciples
to cut themselves down from polygamy to bigamy. Reverend Samuel Auchmuty assisted the
Rector with occasional interjections of Amen.
The great officials of the Province could not:quit business at this hour; but the Patroons who
happened to be in town mustered strong in
honor of their order. Of pretty girls there came
galore. Pages would fail to name them and
their charms. There was the espi~egle Miss Jay,
of that fine old. Huguenot Protestant stock,
which still protests pertinaciously against iniquity in Church and State. There was the sensible Miss Schuyler, the buxom Miss Beekman,




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.           55
high-bred Miss Van Rensselaer, Miss Winthrop,
faultless in toilette and temper, Miss Morris,
wearing the imperious nose of her family, popular Miss Stuyvesant, that Amazonian filly Miss
Livingston, handsome Mary Phillipse with her
determined chin, Julia Peartree Smith, nez en
l'air as usual, and a score of others, equally
fair, and equally worthy of a place in a fashionable chronicle.
" Poor Edwin Brothertoft! " said the Peartree
Smith, as the young ladies filed out after the ceremony. " Did you hear that bold creature make
her responses,'I Jane take thee Edwin,' as if
she were hailing the organ loft. These vulgar
girls understand the policy of short engagements.
They don't wish to be found out. But company
manners will not last forever. Poor Mr. Brothertoft! why could he not find a mature woman? "
(Julia had this virtue, perhaps, to an exaggerated degree, and had been suspected of designs
upon the bridegroom.)  " Girls as young as she
is have had no chance to correct their ideal.
She will correct it at his expense. She will presently find out he is not perfect, and then will
fancy some other man would have suited her better. Women should have a few years of flirtation before they settle in life. These pantalette
marriages never turn out well. An engagement
of a few weeks to that purse-proud baby, her




56           EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
father's daughter!  Poor Edwin Brothertoft!
He will come to disappointment and grief."
With this, Miss Julia, striving to look Cassandra, marches off the stage.
But Edwin Brothertoft had no misgivings. If
he had fancied any fault of temper in his betrothed, or perceived any divergence in principle,
he had said to himself, "My faithful love shall
gently name the fault, or point the error, and
her love shall faithfully correct them."
The Billop coach rumbled away on its little
journey down Wall Street.  Parson Barclay
bagged his neat fee and glowed with good wishes.
The world buzzed admiration. The little boys
huzzaed. The bell-ringer tugged heartily at the
bell-rope. And at every tug of his, down on the
noisy earth, the musical bells, up in the serene
air, responded, " Go, happy pair! All bliss, no
bale! All bliss, no bale! "
The rumble of the " leathern conveniency,"
the applause of Young New  York, and the
jubilation of the bells were so loud, that Edwin
was forced to lean very close to his wife's cheek
while he whispered:" We were alone, and God has given us each
a beloved companion. We are orphans; we
shall be all in all to one another. Long, long,
and always brightening years of thorough trust
and love, dearer than ever was dreamed, lie




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          57
before us. How happy we shall be in our
glowing hopes! how happy in our generous ambitions! how happy in our earnest life! Ah,
my love! how can I love you enough for the gift
of this beautiful moment, for the promise of the
fairer time to come!'
3*




VIII.
CASSANDRA was right.  The marriage went
wrong.
It was the old, old, young, young story.
But which of those old young stories?
Ah, yes! there are so many of them. And
yet all human tragedies belong to one Trilogy.
There are but three kinds of wrongs in our lives.
The wrongs a man does to his own soul or
body, or suffers in either.
The wrongs of man against his brother man.
The wrongs between man and woman.
This is one of the old young stories of the
wrong between man and woman.
It might be made a very long and very painful story. Chapter after chapter might describe
the gradual vanishing of illusions, the slight
divergence, the widening of estrangement, the
death of trust, the deceit on one side, the wearing misery of doubt on the other, the dragginlg
march step by step, day by day, to the final
wrong, the halt on the hither edge, and the
careless, the desperate, the irremediable plunge
at last.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          59
But the statement of the result is sad enough.
Let all these dreary chapters be condensed into
one!
A fatality preceded the wrong. It was this -
The woman was coarse, and the man was fine.
No gentle influences had received her in the
facile days of childhood, and trained her nobler
nature to the masterhood. Her eyes had been
familiar with vulgar people and their vulgar
ways. Her ears had heard their coarse talk.
Her mind had narrowed to their ignoble methods of judgment. Her heart's desire had been
taught to be for the cheap and mundane possessions, money, show, titles, place, notoriety; and
not for the priceless and immortal wages of an
earnest life, Peace, Joy, and Love.  She could
not comprehend a great soul unless its body
were dubbed My Lord or Sir Edwin, and wore
some gaud of a star at the breast, or a ribbon
at the knee.
Poor child! She was young enough to be
docile.  But after the blind happiness of that
honeymoon at Brothertoft Manor, the old feeling of her first interview  with her lover revived and exasperated.
" I believe he wants to make me feel ignorant and vulgar," she thought, "so that he
can govern me.  But he shall not.  I intend
to be mistress. I'm sick of his meek sugges



60           EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
tions. No sir; my way is my way, and I mean
to have it."
And so, rebuked by contact with a delicacy she
could not understand, she resolutely coarsened
herself, sometimes for spite, sometimes for sorry
consolation.  Her unsensitive nature trampled
roughly on his scruples.
"'My dear Jane," he said to her at Brothertoft,' could you lnot instruct Mr. Skaats to be a little
more indulgent with the Manor tenants?"
"6 Mr. Skaats's business is to get the rents, for
us to spend."
" But these people have been used to gentler
treatment."
1"Yes; they have been allowed to delay and
shirk as they pleased. My property must not be
wasted as yours was."
" It is a hard summer for them, with this
drought."
" It is an expensive summer for us, with these
repairs."
Again, when they were re-established in New
York, other causes of dispute came up.
" I wish, my dear Jane," he said, " that you
would be a little more civil with my patriot
friends from Boston."
"' I don't like people who talk through their
noses."
" Forgive the twang for the sake of the good
sense."




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          61
" Good sense! It seems to me tiresome grumbling. I hate the word'Grievance.' I despise
the name Patriot."
" Remember, my dear child, that I think with
these gentlemen!"
" Yes; and you are injuring your reputation
and your chances by it. A Brothertoft should
be conservative, and stand by his order."
" I try to be conservative of Right. I stand
by the Order of Wortk, Courage, and Loyalty to
Freedom."
" O, there you go again into your foggy metaphysics! "
Again, he came one day, and said, with much
concern: "My dear, I was distressed to know
from Skaats that your father's estate owned a
third of the' Red Rover.'"
" Why? " she asked, with no concern.
" I was sure you did not know, or you would
be as much shocked as I am. She is in the
slave-trade!"
" Well. And I have often heard my father
call her a'tidy bit of property,' and say she had
paid for herself a dozen times."
He could not make her comprehend his hatred
of this vile business, and his contempt, as a genw
tleman, for all the base subterfuges by which
base people tried to defend it.
The Red Rover fortunately did not remain a




62          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
subject of discussion. On that very trip the Negroes rose and broiled the captain and crew, —
and served them right. Then, being used only
to the navigation of dug-outs, they omitted to
pump the vessel, whereupon she sunk, and the
sharks had a festival.
With such divergences of opinion the first
year of this propitious marriage passed miserably
enough. Yet there was a time when it seemed
to the disappointed husband and the defiant wife
that their love might revive.
In 1758, Edwin Brothertoft, rich, aristocratic,
and a liberal, the pride of the Colony as its foremost young man, was selected as the mouthpiece
of a commission to present at home a petition
and remonstrance.  Such papers were flying
freely across the water at that time. Reams of
paper must be fired before the time comes for
firing lead.
So to England went the envoy with his gorgeous wife. They were received with much
distinction, as worthy young Americans from
Benicia and elsewhere still are.
" Huzzay!" was the rapturous acclaim. "They
do not talk through rebel noses! "
"Huzzay! It is English they speak, not
Wigwamee!"
" Huzzay! The squaw is as beautiful as our
Fairest, and painted -red and white by cunning




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          63
Nature, not daubed with ochres. Huzzay! the
young sagamore is an Adonis. He beats Chesterfield at a bow and Selwyn at a mot."
Mrs. Brothertoft grew proud of her husband,
and grateful to him that he had chastened her
Billop manners.
What a brilliant visit that was!
All the liberal statesmen - Pitt, Henry Fox,
Conway, mellifluous Murray — were glad to do
the young American honor.
Rugged Dr. Sam Johnson belabored him with
sesquipedalian words, but in a friendly way and
without bullying. He could be a good old boy,
if he pleased, with good young ones.
Young Mr. Burke was gratified that his friend
from a sublime and beautiful hemisphere appreciated the new treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful.
Young Mr. Joshua Reynolds was flattered that
the distinguished stranger consented to sit to
him, and in return tried to flatter the portrait.
Young Dr. Oliver Goldsmith, a poor Bollemian, smattered in music and medicine, came
to inquire whether a clever man, out of place,.
could find his niche in America.
Mr. Garrick, playing Ranger, quite lost his selfpossession whenr  Mrs. Brothertoft first brought
her flashing black eyes and glowing cheeks into
the theatre, and only recovered when the audi



64          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
ence perceived the emotion and cheered it and
the lady together.
That great dilettante, Mr. Horace Walpole,
made the pair a charming dejeuner at Strawberry Hill, upon which occasion he read aloud,
with much cadence, — as dilettante gentlemen
continue to do in our own time, - his friend Mr.
Gray's elaborate Elegy in a Country Churchyard,
just printed. After this literary treat, Mr. Horace said: " Tell me something about that clever
young aide-de-camp, Washington, who got Iroquois Braddock the privilege of dying in his
scalp. A brave fellow that! an honor to your
country, sir." Mr. George Selwyn, the wit, was
also a guest. He looked maliciously out of his
" demure eyes," and said: "You forget, Horry,
that you used to name Major Washington' a fanfaron,' and laugh at him for calling the whiz
of cannon-balls' a delightful sound.'"  Whereupon the host, a little abashed, laughed, and
said: " I wish such' fanfarons' were more
plenty in the army." And the sparkling gossip
did not relate how he had put this nickname
in black and white in a letter to Sir Horace
Mann, in whose correspondence it may still be
read, with abundance of other second-hand jokes.
What a gay visit it was of the young pair in
that brilliant moment of England!
While Brothertoft, in the intervals of urging




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.           65
his Petition and Remonstrance, discussed all.the
sublime and beautiful things that are dreamt. of
in philosophy with Mr. Burke, - while he talked
Art with Mr. Reynolds, poetry with Dr. Goldsmith, and de omnibus rebus with Dr. Johnson,
— his wife was holding a little court of her own.
She was a new sensation, with her bold, wilful
beauty and her imperious Americanism. A new
sensation, and quite annihilated all the traditions of Mary Wortley Montagu and her Turkish
dress, when she appeared at a masquerade as
Pocahontas, in a fringed and quilled buckskin
robe, moccasons, and otter coronet with an eagle's
plume.
" I suppose that's a scalping-knife she's playing with," said the Duke of Gurgoyle, inspecting her in this attire. "And, by George, she
looks as if she could use it."
Then the ugly old monster, and the other
blase men, surrounded the Colonial beauty, and
fooled her with flattery.
Was she spoilt by this adulation?
"Dear Edwin," she schemed, in a little visit
they made to Lincolnshire and the ruins of old
Brothertoft Manor, "let us buy back this estate
and never return to that raw America. You
can go into Parliament, make one or two of your
beautiful speeches, and presently be a Peer, with
stars and garters."
E




66           EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
" Does a garter straighten a leg? does a star
ennoble a heart? Listen, my love, do you not
hear Great Tom of Lincoln warning me, as he
long ago warned my ancestor,'Go home again,
Brothertoft, Liberty is in danger'?"
" No," she rejoined, petulantly; " a loyal bell
would not utter such treasonable notes. This
is what I -hear:' Come again, Brothertoft, Lord
of the old Manor!' Liberty! Liberty!  You
tire me with your idle fancies. Why will you
throw away name and fame? "
"I will try to gain them, since they are precious to you; but they must come in the way
of duty."
There was peril in these ambitions of hers;
but the visionary husband thought, " How can I
wonder that her head is a little turned with
adulation? She merits it all, my beautiful wife!
But she will presently get the court glare out
of her eyes. When our child is born, a pledge
of our restored affection, she will recognize
deeper and tenderer duties."
The Brothertoft embassy was a social success,
but a political failure.
The lewd old dolt of a King sulkily pooh-poohed Remonstrance and Petition.
"You ought to have redress," says Pitt, " but
I am hardly warm in my seat of Prime Minister.
I can only be a tacit friend at present."




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          67
"Go home and wait," says Ben Franklin, a
shrewd old Boston-boy, - fond of tricks with kites,
keys, and kerchiefs,- who was at that time resident in London. "Wait awhile! I have not
been fingering thunderbolts so long, without
learning that people may pooh-pooh at the clouds,
and say the flashes are only heat-lightning; but
by and by they'11 be calling upon the cellars to
take'em in, and the feather-beds to cover'em."
The Brothertofts went home. England forgot
them, and relapsed into its belief,That on the new continent the English colonists could not remain even half-civilized Yengeese, but sank to absolute Yankees,
Whose bows were contortions, and smiles
grimaces;
Whose language was a nasal whoop of AngloIroquois;
And who needed to be bolused with Stamp
Acts and drenched with Tea Duties, while Tom
Gage and Jack Burgoyne pried open their teeth
with the sword.
There was one visible, tangible, ponderable result of the Brothertofts' visit to England.
Lucy Brothertoft, an only child, was born, —
a token of love revived, - alas! a monument of
love revived to die and be dismissed among
memories.
If the wife had been a true wife, how sweetly




68           EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
her affection for her husband would have redoubled for him in his new relation of father.
Here was a cradle for rendezvous. Why not clasp
hands and renew vows across it? This smiling,
sinless child, - why could it not recall to either
parent's face a smile of trust and love?
But this bliss was not to be.
Ring sadly, bells of Trinity! It is the christening day. Alas! the chimes that welcome the
daughter to the bosom of the church are tolling the knell of love in the household where
she will grow to womanhood.
The harmonious interlude ended. The old,
old story went on. Slowly, slowly, slowly, the
wife grew to hate her husband. Sadly, sadly,
sadly, he learned to only pity her.
The visit to England.had only more completely  enamored  her of worldliness.  She
missed the adulation of My Lord and Sir Harry.
Her husband's love and approval ceased to be
sufficient for her. And when this is said, all is
said.
It was a refinement of cruelty in the torture
days to bind a living man to a corpse. Dead
lips on living lips. Lumpish heart at throbbing
heart.  Glazed eyes so close that their stare
could be felt, not seen, by eyes set in horror.
Death grappling, and Life wrestling itself to
Death. Have we never seen this, now that the




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.           69
days of bodily torture are over? Have we seen
no delicate spirit of a woman quelled by the embraces of a brute? Have we seen no high and
gentle-hearted man bound to a coarse, base wife,
and slain by that body of death?
The world, the oyster, sulked when the young
man it had so generously gaped for quite lost his
appetite for fat things.
" Shame!"  said the  indignant Province.
" We had unanimously voted Edwin Brothertoft
our representative gentleman. He was ardent
and visionary, and we forgave him. He was
mellifluous, grammatical, ornamental, and we
petted him.  We were a little plebeian, and
needed an utterly brave young aristocrat to
carry our oriflamme, and we thrust the staff
into his hand. Shame, Brothertoft! you have
gulled us. It is the old story, - premature blos.
som, premature decay. The hare sleeps. The
tortoise swallows the prize! To the front, ye
plodders, slow, but sure! And you, brokendown Brothertoft, retire to the back streets!
wear the old clothes! and thank your stars, if we
consent to pay you even a starvation salary!"
"Poor Jane Billop!" said Julia Peartree
Smith, who was now very intimate with that
lady. "I always said it would be so. I knew
she would come to disappointment and grief.
The Brothertofts were always weak as water.




70           EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
And this mercenary fellow hurried her into a
marriage, a mere child, after an engagement of
a few weeks. No wonder she despises him. I
do, heartily.  What lovely lace this is. I wonder if she couldn't give me another yard!
Ileigh ho! Nobody smuggles for me!"
Brother patriots, too, had their opinion on
the subject of Brothertoft's withdrawal into obscurity.
"'These delicate, poetical natures," said our
old friend, Patroon Livingston, " feel very
keenly the blight of political enslavement.
Well may a leader droop, when his comrades
skulk! I tell you, gentlemen, that it is our
non-committal policy which has disheartened
our friend. When we dare to stand by him,
and say,'Liberty or death!' the man will be
a man again, — yes, a better man than the best
of us. I long to see his eye kindle, and hear his
voice ring again. I love a gentleman, when he
is man enough to be free."
But whoever could have looked into this
weary heart would have read there a sadder
story than premature decay, a deadlier blight
than political enslavement, a crueller and closer
wrong than the desertion of comrades.
Wrong! it had  come to that, —the final
wrong between man and woman, - the catastrophe of the first act of the old, old tragedy.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.            71
These pages do not tolerate the details of
this bitter wrong.
The mere facts of guilt are of little value
except to the gossip and the tipstaff; but how
the wounded and the wounding soul bear themselves after the crime, that is one of the needful
lessons of life.




IX.
RED.
That was the color now master in Mrs. Brothertoft's houses, town and country.
Supercilious officers,-in red coats, who were
addressed as General or My Lord, insolent officers, in red coats, hight Colonel or Sir Harry, arranged their laced cravats at the mirror
under the rampant eagle, or lounged on the
sofas.
There were plenty of such personages now in
New York, and Mrs. Brothertoft's house made
them all welcome. Regimental talk, the dullest
and thinnest of all the shop talks talked among
men, was the staple of conversation over ler
Madeira at her dinners, grand, or en famille, bien
entendu.
Now and then a nasal patriot from Down East,
or a patriot Thee-and-Thouer from Philadelphia,
knocked at the door and inquired for Mr; Brothertoft.
"Out of town, Sir," was the reply of the wiggy
negro.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          7i3
" When do you expect him back?"
"Don't know, Sir," the porter replied, rather
sadly.
The patriot retired, and the negro closed the
door with a sigh, - the pompous sigh of an old
family servant.
"~ No," muttered he, " I don't know when he'll
be back. He never would come back if he knew
about the goings on in this house.  He never
would anyhow, if it wasn't to look after Miss
Lucy. There she comes down stairs, I'll ask
her. Miss Lucy!"
A gentle, graceful little girl, of the Brothertoft type, turned at the foot of the stairs and
answered, "' What, Voltaire? "
"Do you know, Miss, where your father is,
now? "
"No," she replied, half sadly, half coldly.
" A gentleman was just asking when he would'
be back."
" He does not inform us of his motions."
She seemed to shrink from the subject, as if
there were guilt inll touching it.
Voltaire looked forlornly after her, as she
passed into the parlor. Then he shook his fist
indignantly at a great palmated pair of moosehorns, mounted as a hat-stand in the hall. On
the right-brow antler hung a military cocked
4




74           EDWIN BROTILERTOFT.
hat. On the left bezantler, a pert little fatigue
cap was suspended.
"It's too bad," Voltaire began.
Black babble has become rather a bore in literature. Voltaire, therefore, will try not to talk
Tombigbee.
"It's too bad," muttered the negro, in futile
protest, " to see them fellows hanging up their
hats here, and the real master —the real gentleman -shamed out of house and home.
"It's too bad," he continued despondingly,
"to see Miss Lucy, as sweet a little lady as ever
stepped, taught to think her father a good-fornothing spendthrift and idler, if not worse. The
madam will never let her see him alone. The
poor child is one of the kind that believes what is
told to'em. No wonder she is solemn as Sunday
all the time. I don't see anything to be done.
But I'11 go down and ask Sappho."
Again he shook his fist at those enormous
excrescences from the brow of a bold Cervus
alces, —a moose that once walked the Highlands near Brothertoft Manor. Then he shambled down stairs to his wife Sappho's boudoir,
the kitchen.
Blacker than Sappho of Lesbos ever looked
when Phaon cried, Avaunt! was this namesake
of the female Sam  Patch of Leucadia.  But
through her eyes and mouth good-humor shone,




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.           75
as the jolly fire shines through the chinks of the
black furnace-doors under a boiler.
"Things goes wrong in this house, all but
your cooking department, Sappho, and my butler department," says Voltaire. " The master is
shamed away, and is off properogating liberty.
The mistress, - I suppose we'd better not say
nothing about her."
Sappho shook her head, and stirred her soup.
"' But Miss Lucy is going to be a big girl pretty
soon. - Her mother is making her mistrust her
*father. She's got no friends. What will come
of her? "
Sappho tasted her soup. It was savory.
" Voltaire," says she, striving to talk a dialect
worthy of her name, and hitting half-way to
English, " Voltaire, Faith is what you wants.
You is not got the Faith of a free colored gentleman, member of one of de oldest families in
all Westchester. You is got no more Faith than
them Mumbo Jumbo Billop niggers-what immigrated in the Red Rover. You jess let de Lord
look after Miss Lucy. She is one after de Lord's
own heart."'But the Devil has put his huf into this
house."
" If you was a cook, you'd have more Faith.
Jest you taste that soup now. How is it? "
"Prime," says Voltaire, blowing and sipping.




76           EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
"You taste it, Plato," she repeated, dipping
another ladle from the pot, and offering to her
son, heir of his father's philosophic dignity, and
his mother's Socratic visage. "How is it?"
"Prime! " says this second connoisseur.
"Now, what you guess is the most importantest thing in this soup? "
" Conundrums is vulgar, particular for ladies,"
says Voltaire, loftily.
"That's because you can't guess."
"Poh! it's easy enough," says he. "Beef! "
"No. You guess, Plato."
"B'ilin' water," cries he, sure of his solution.
Sappho shook her head.
" Turkey carcasses," propounded Voltaire, with
excitement.
"Onions," offered Plato, with eagerness.
"No," says Sappho, "it's Faith! "
"I was jest a goin' to say Faith,"' Plato unblushingly asserted.
"You see,' Sappho explained, "I takes beef,
- bery well! and b'ilin' water,- bery well! and
turkey carcasses, and onions, and heaps of things,
and puts'em into a pot on the fire. Then I has
Faith."
"Poh!" cried Voltaire. "'T was n't a fair
conundrum; you has the Faith into yourself."
"Then I takes Faith," repeated Sappho, without noticing this interruption, " Faith, that these




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          77'gredients which is not soup is comin' soup in
de Lord's time, an dey alluz comes soup."
"And the primest kind! " Plato interjected,
authoritatively.
"So," continued Sappho, improving the lesson, "soup and roast geese, and pies and pancakes risin' over night, has taught me disyer
proverb,'Wait, and things comes out right at
last.' So it's boun' to be with Miss Lucy."
This logic convinced the two namesakes of
philosophers, and they carried up dinner, in a
perplexed but patient mood.
My Lord and Sir Harry were both dining there
that day.
" Do you know what has become of our hostess's husband? " asked My Lord, as they lounged
off after dinner.
" He's going about the Provinces, stirring up
rebellion after a feeble fashion," said Sir Harry.
"I believe that fellow Gaine pays him  a few
shillings a week for editing his'Mercury,' when
he is in New York."
" If I was Governor Tryon I'd have that dirty
sheet stopped. He's a new broom. He ought
to make a clean sweep of all these Freedom
Shriekers."
Such then was the condition of things in the
Brothertoft family at the beginning of Tryon's
administration.




78          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
Edwin Brothertoft had not become an absolute
stranger to his old home, for two reasons. He
pitied his guilty wife.  He loved his innocent
daughter. He could not quite give up the hope
that his wife might need his pardon, by and by,
when sin soured to her taste. He must never
totally abandon his child to the debasing influences about her, though he had no power or influence to rescue her now, — that disheartened
and broken-down man, contemned by the world
as a purposeless idler,
Matters had net; reached this pass in one year
nor until many years, - dreary to imagine, far
too dreary to describe.
Who shall enumerate the daily miseries in that
hapless house?  Who shall count the cruel little
scratches of the poniard, with which the wife
practised for her final stab?  What Recording
Angel kept tally of the method she took to murder his peace, that he might know it was murdered, dead, dead, dead, and not exasperate her
with his patient hope that it might recover?
HIer fortune gave her one weapon, - a savage
one in those vulgar hands. She used this power
iilsolently, as baser spirits may. She would have
been happy to believe, what she pretended, that
her husband married her for money. Often she
told him so. Often she reproached him with her
own disappointment.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          79
" Did I marry you," she would say, " to be inefficient and obscure, — a mere nobody in the
world?  You were to be a great man, — that
was your part of the bargain. You knew I was
ambitious. I had a right to be. You have had
everything to give you success,- everything! "
" Not quite everything," he said sadly. "Not
Love!"
Ah miserable woman! as she grew practised
in deceit and wrong, she hated her husband more
and more.
She maddened herself against him.  She
blamed him as the cause of her evil choices.
" It is his fault, not mine," she said to herself.
"He ought to have controlled me, and then I
should not have done what makes me ashamed
to face his puny face. He ought to have said,'You shall and you shall not,' instead of his
feeble,' Is this wise, Jane? Is this delicate? Is
this according to your nobler nature?' I don't
likb to be pleaded with. A despot was what I
needed, If he was half a man, he would take a
whip to me, — yes, beat me, and kick all my
friends out of doors and be master in the house.
That I could understand."
She maddened herself against him more and
more. She so yielded to an insolent hate, that
she was no better than a mad woman while he
was by to enrage her with his patient, crushed,




80          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
and yet always courteous demeanor, - a sorrowful shadow of the ardent, chivalric Edwin Brothertoft of yore.
"Why not kill the craven-spirited wretch? "
she thought, " or have him killed? He would
be better dead, than living and scorned? Once
rid of him, and I could take my beauty and my
wealth to England, and be a grand lady after all.
Lady Brothertoft of Brothertoft Hall! that was
what I had a right to expect. He could have
given it to me. The fool was capable enough.
Everybody said he might be what he pleased.
Why could he not love real things? a splendid
house, plenty of slaves, a name, a title, instead
of this ridiculous dream of Liberty. Liberty! if
he and his weak-minded friends only dared strike
a blow, - if they only would rebel, - he might be
got rid of. Then I should be free. Ah, I will
have my triumphs yet!  Kings have loved women not half so handsome! "
And with red, unblushing cheeks she looked
at herself in the mirror, and hated that obstruction, her husband, more and more.
A' mad hate, which she would gladly have
gratified with murder. The air often seemed to
her full of Furies, scourging her on to do the
deed. Furies flitted before her, proffering palpable weapons,- weapons always of strange and
antique fashion, such as she had seen and hall



EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          81
dled in old museums in England.  She remembered now with what pleasure she used to
play with them, while she listened quietly to
some sinister legend, and knew how the stain
came on the blade.
" Kill him! " the Furies cried to her. It was
a sound like the faint, distant cry one hears in
a benighted forest, and wonders whether the
creature be beast or man.
"Not yet," she answered, aloud, to this hail
in the far background of her purposes.
The postponement seemed to imply a promise,
and she perceived the circle of shadowy Furies
draw a little step nearer, and shout to each
other in triumph, "'Not yet'; she says,' Not
yet.' 
So her hate grew more and more akin to a
madness, as every cruel or base passion, even
the silliest and most trifling, will, if fondled.
Shoe found, by and by, that the cruellest stab
she could give to the man she had wronged was
through his daughter.
" Lucy is all Brothertoft, and no Billop," Julia
Peartree Smith often said. " It's all wrong; she
ought to take after her strong parent, not her
weak one."
There was a kind of strength incomprehensible
to the old tabby. Nor did she know the law of
the transmission of spiritual traits, - with what
4*     * 




82           EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
fine subtlety they get themselves propagated, and
prevail over coarser and cruder forces.
Lucy was all Brothertoft. In her early days
she did not show one atom of the maternal character. That made the mother's influence more
commanding. The child loved the mother with
a modification of the same passion that the father
had felt for a nature he deemed his nobler counterpart. The father was so much like his daughter that she could not comprehend him, until
she was ripe enough to comprehend herself.
Crude contrasts are earliest perceived, earliest
appreciated, and earliest admired, in character
as in art.
So without any resistance Mrs. Brothertoft
wielded Lucy. She let the child love her and
confide in her exclusivefy. But she hated her.
She hated Edwin Brothertoft's daughter. There
was the girl growing more and more like him,
day by day. There were the father's smile, the
father's manner, the father's voice, even the
father's very expressions of endearment, forever
reproaching the mother with old memories revived.
Alh this miserable woman! She learnt to fear
her daughter, - to dread the inevitable day when
that pure nature would recoil from hers. She
watched the gentle face covertly. When would
that look of almost lover-like admiration depart?




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.           83
When would disgust be visible?  When would
the mild hazel eyes perceive that the bold black
eyes could not meet them? When would the
fair cheeks burn with an agonizing blush of
shame?
"When will the girl dare to pity me, as that
poor wretch her father does?" she thought.
This gentle, yielding, timid creature became
her mother's angel of vengeance. Mrs. Brothertoft never met her after an hour of separation
without a wild emotion of terror.
"Has she discovered? Does she know what
I am? Did some tattler whisper it to her in
the street? The winds are always uttering a
name to me. Has she heard it, too? Did she
dream last night?  Has her dream told her what
her mother is? If she kisses me, I am safe."
Yes. Sweet Lucy always had the same eager
caress ready.  She so overflowed with love to
those she trusted, that she was content with her
own emotion, and did not measure the temperature of the answering caress.
Ah this miserable mother! as false to maternal as to marital love. It became her task to
poison the daughter against her father. If these
two should ever understand each other, if there
should ever be one little whisper of confidence
between them, if she should ever have to face
the thought of their contempt, - what then?




84           EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
Agony would not let her think, "What then?"
She must prevent the understanding, make the
confidence impossible; it must be her business
to educate and aim the contempt.
How perseveringly, craftily, ably she accomplished this! iHow slowly she instilled into her
child's mind the cumulative poison of distrust.
Often the innocent lips shrank from the bitter
potion. One day she might reject it. But the
next, there was the skilful poisoner,- her
mother.
"You cannot doubt me, Lucy," the woman
would say, looking aside as she commended her
chalice.  "If it distresses you to hear such
things of your father, how much bitterer must
it be for me to say them!"
These pages again refiuse to tolerate the details of this second crime.  Let that too pass
behind the curtain.
Closed doors then! for the mother is at last
saying that her husband has grown baser and
baser, - so utterly lost to all sense of honor that
she must exclude him fiom her house, and that
her daughter must herself tell him that she will
never see him again.
Closed doors, while the innocent girl flings
herself into the guilty woman's arms, and, weeping, promises to obey.
Closed doors, and only God to see and listen,




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.           85
while Lucy, alone in her chamber, prays forgiveness for her father, and pity for his desolate
and heart-weary child.
Closed doors upon the picture of this fair girl,
worn out with agony and asleep. And walking
through her dreams that grisly spectre Sin, who
haunts and harms the nights and days of those
who repel, hardly less cruelly than he haunts
and harms them who embrace him.
It was a tearful April morning of 1775, when
this final interview took place.
" Let me understand this," said Edwin Brothllertoft, with the calmness of a practised sufferer.
" My daughter has made up her mind never to
see me again?"
" She has," said Mrs. Brothertoft.
With what quiet, cruel exultation she spoke
these words! Exultation mixed with terror for
the thought, " I have schooled the girl. But she
may still rebel. She may spring to him, and
throw herself into his arms, and then the two
will turn upon me, and point with their fingers,
and triumph."
" I cannot take my answer from you, madam,"
he said.
" I have no other answer to give," said Lucy.
"None?" he asked again.
" None," she replied.




86           EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
Her coldness was the result of utter bewilderment and exhaustion. It seemed to him irreme —
diable hardness and coarseness of heart.
" She is her bad mother's base daughter," he
thought. "I will think of her no more."
Does this seem unnatural? Remember how
easily a lesser faith is slain, when the first great
faith has perished. The person trusted with the
whole heart proves a Lie; then for a time all
persons seem liars; then for a time the deceived,
if they are selfish, go cynical; if they are generous, they give their faith to great causes,
to great ideas, and to impersonal multitudes.
Household treachery keeps the great army of
Reform recruited.
"This girl," thought Edwin Brothertoft, "' cannot be so blind as not to know why her mother
and I are separated. And yet she chooses her,
and discards me. I knew that the woman once
my wife could never be my wife again. I knew
that our lips could never meet, our hands never
touch. But I hoped - yes, I was weak enough
to hope - that, when sin and sorrow had taught
us their lessons, and the day for repentance and
pardon came, we might approach each other in
the person of our daughter, beloved by both
alike. I was father and my wife mother in the
honorable days gone by. Our child might teach
the father and the mother a different love, not of




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          87
the flesh, but of the spirit. This was my hope.
I let it go. Why should I longer keep up this
feeble struggle with these base people, who have
ruined my life?  I have no daughter. I never
had a wife. I forget the past. God forgive me
if I abandon a duty! God give me opportunity,
if he wills that I ever resume it again! "
As he walked up Wall Street, moodily reflecting after this fashion, he heard a voice call.
him.
" Mr. Brothertoft!"
This hail came from the nose of a hurried
person who had just turned the corner of Smith
— now  William- Street, and was making for
the wife's house, when he saw the husband.
"Mr. Brothertoft!" twanged sharp after the
retreating figure. There was an odd mixture
of alarm and triumph in these nasal notes.
" Call me by some other name! " said the one
addressed, turning.    What you please, but
never that again."
" Waal! " says tlie other, speaking Bostonee,
through a nose high Boston, " you might n't like
my taste in baptism, so I'11 call you Cap'n, —
that's safe. Cap'n," he continued in a thrilling
whisper, through that hautboy he played on,
" Cap'n, we've shed and drawed the fust blood
fur Independence.  Aperel 19 wuz the day.
Lexington wuz wher we shed.  Corncud wuz




88           EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
wher we drawed. Naow, if you'll jest pint and
poot fur Bosting, you'11 pint and poot fur a locality whler considdable phlebotomy is ter be
expected baout these times, and wher Patriots
is wanted jest as fast as they can pile in."
Clang out your alarums, bells of Trinity!
others may need awakening. Not he who was
named Edwin Brothertoft. He is gone already to
fight in the old, old battle -forever old, forever
new-of freedom  against tyranny, of the new
thoughts against the old facts.
" So your husband's on his way to get himself
shot or hung. And a good riddance, I suppose,
Madam B.," said coarse Sir Harry.
"The beautiful widow will not cry her eyes
out," said My Lord with his usual sneer.
Mrs. Brothertoft writhed a little under this
familiarity.
Like many another, who says, "lDeteriora sequar," she wished to go to the bad with a stately
step and queenly mien. That is not permitted
by the eternal laws. Ah, miserable woman! she
was taught to feel how much the gentleman
she had betrayed was above the coarse associates she had chosen.
She missed him, now that he was gone irrevocably.
Had there been then in her heart any relics of
the old love? Had she cherished some vague




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.           89
purpose of repentance, some thought of tears,
some hope of pardon?
Had her torture of her husband been only a
penance for herself? Was it the hate which is
so akin to love? Could this be a self-hatred for
a self that has wasted the power of loving, -a
hate that is forever wreaking vengeance for this
sad loss upon' the object the heart most longs to
love,-the only one that can remind that heart
of its impotency? Hlad-:sie been acting unconsciously by the laws of s`uch a passion?
And this exasperating influence banished,
would she have peace at last?  Would the
Furies let her alone? Would the hints of murder vanish and be still? Would she be a free
woman, now, to follow out her purposes.?
Edwin Brothertoft had disappeared. Deserters
from the rebel army could give no news of such
a person.
Julia Peartree Smith often suggested to her
friend the welcome thought that he was dead.
Mrs. Brothertoft could not believe it. Something whispered her' that there would be another
act in the drama of her married life.








PART II








BUFF and Blue.
Dear, faithful old colors! They never appeared
more brave and trusty than in Major Skerrett's
coat, -a coat of 1777.
"White at the seams of the blue, soiled at the
edges of the buff," said the Major, inspecting
himself in a'triangular bit of looking-glass.  "I
must have a new one, if I can find a tailor who
will take an order on the Goddess of Liberty in
pay. Good morning, Mrs. Birdsell."
This salutation he gave as he passed out of the
little house in Fishkill where he had been quartered last night.
"Good mornin', Sir,:' returned Mrs. Birdsell,
rushing out of her kitchen, with a rolling-pin in
hand, and leaving her pie-crust flat on its back,
all dotted with dabs of butter, as an ermine cape
is with little black tails.
She looked after him, as he stepped out into the
village street.  Her first emotion was feminine
admiration,- her second, feminine curiosity.




94          ED-WIN BROTHERTOFT.
"What a beautiful young man! " she said to
her respectable self. "Sech legs!  Sech hair,
-jest the color of ripe chesnut burrs, — only I
don't like that streak of it on his upper lip.
I've olluz understood from  Deacons that the
baird of a man cum in with Adam's fall and waz
to be shaved off.  Naow I'd give a hul pie to
know what Gineral Washington's sent him on
here for. It's the greatest kind of a pity he
did n't come a.few days before. That old granny,
Gineral Putnam, would n't hevy let Sirr Henery
Clinton grab them forts down to the Highlands,
if he'd hed sech a young man as this to look
arter him and spry him up."
Before he continued his walk, Major Skerrett
paused a moment for a long hearty draught of
new October, -new American, a finer tipple than
old English October.
Finer and cheaper! In fact it was' on free tap.
No cask to bore.  No spigot to turn.  No
pewter pot to fill.  Major Skerrett had but to
open his mouth and breathe. He inhaled, and
he had swallowed Science knows how many
quarts of that mellow golden nectar, the air of
an American October morning. It was the perfection of potables,-as much so then in 1777,
as it is now in 1860.
" I have seen the lands of many men, and
drained their taps," soliloquized the Major, paro



EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          95
dying the Odyssey; "but never, in the bottle
or out of the bottle, tasted I such divine stuff
as this. O lilies and roses, what a bouquet! O
peaches and pippins, what a flavor! 0 hickorynuts and chinkapins, what an aroma! More,
Hebe, more! Let me swig! -forgive the word!
But one drinks pints; and I want gallons, puncheons."
While he is indulging in this harmless debauch, let Mrs. Birdsell's question, "What did
General Washington send him  on for?" be
answered.
" Peter," said Washington familiarly to Major
Skerrett, his aide-de-camp, "I have written peremptorily several times to General Putnam to
send me reinforcements. They do not come."
The chief was evidently somewhat in the dumps
there at his camp, near Pennibecker's Mill, on
the Perkiomy Creek, twenty miles from Philadelphia, at the end of September, 1777.
"I suppose," the Major suggested, " that Putnam cannot get out of his head his idle scheme
for the recapture of New York, - that' suicidal
parade,' as Aleck Hamilton calls it."
" I must have the men. Our miserable busi-,iss of the Brandywine must be done over."
"Yes; Sir William  Howe is bored enough
in Philadelphia by this time. Everybody always
is there. It would be only the courtesy of war




96           EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
to challenge him out, and then beat him away
to jollier quarters."
"I do not like to challenge him unless I have
a couple of thousand more men.  You must
take a little ride, Major, up to Old Put at Peekskill, and see that they start."
"The soldier obeys.  But he sighs that he
may miss a battle or an adventure."
"Adventures sprout under the heels of knightserrant like you, Peter. Peekskill is not many
miles away from the spot of one of my young
romances."
The noble old boy paused an instant, sentimental with the recollection of handsome Mary
Phillipse and nineteen years ago.
"The men will come like drawing teeth,"
he resumed. " Old Put is - what was that Latin
phrase you used about him to Lafayette the other
day? "
"Tenax propositi," Skerrett replied.' Anglice, obstinate as a mule. Ah, Skerrett!
we poor land-surveyors, that had to lug levels
and compasses through the woods, know little
Latin and less Greek. But there was more of
your quotation, to express the valuable side of
Putnam's character."
"Nec vultus instantis tyranni, Mente quatit
solida," quoted the Major; and then translated
impromptu, "Never a -scowl, o'er tyrant's jowl,
His stiff old heart can shake."




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.           97
Washington laughed. Skerrett laughed louder. He was at that ebullient age when life is
letting off its overcharge of laughter. Young
fellows at that period are a bore or an exhilaration; -a bore, to say the least, if their animal
spirits are brutal spirits, - no bore, even if not
quite the ripest company, provided their glee
does not degenerate into uproar.' I don't know what I should do, Peter, in these
dark times, without your irrepressible good spirits," said the chief. "My boys - you and Hamiltoll and Lafayette and Harry Lee - keep me up.
I get tired to death of the despondencies and
prejudices and jealousies of some of these old women inl breeches who wear swords or cast votes."
" Perhaps you cannot spare me then to go to
Peekskill," the Major said, slyly.
His Countriy's Father smiled. "Be off, my
boy; but don't stay too long. Your head will
be worth more to Old Put than a regiment.
HIe's growing old.  He shows the effects of
tough campaigning in his youth. Besides, keeping a tavern was not the best business for a man
of his convivial habits."
" We youngsters found that out at the siege
of Boston, when you, General, were keeping your
head cool on baked apples and milk."
"I ate'em because I liked'em, my boy. My
head keeps itself cool. By the way, you will be
5                       G




98           EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
able to help General Putnam with that hot-tempered La Radidre. The old gentleman never
can forget how the Frenchmen and their Indians
mangled him in Canada in'58."
"He never can let anybody else forget it. I
would give odds that he'11 offer to tell that story
before I've been with him fifteen minutes."'"Well, good bye! Hurry on the regulars!
Let him call in the militia in their places! Tell
him he must hold the Highlands! If he cannot
keep Sir Henry Clinton back until Gates takes
Jack Burgoyne, you and I, Peter, will have to
paint ourselves vermilion and join the Tuscaroras."
After such a talk with our chief, - who was
not the stilted prig that modern muffs have made
llim,- Major Skerrett departed on his mission.
He left head-quarters a few days before that hitand-miss battle of Germantown.
Skerrett was young and a hard rider. He
lamed his horse the first day. He lost time in
getting another. It was the evening of October
eighth, when, as lie approached the North River
to cross to Peekskill, the country people warned
him back with the news that on the sixth Sir
Hellry Clinton had taken the Highland forts,
and Pttnam  had run away to Fishkill.
" Black news!" thought Skerrett.'" General
Washington will turn Tuscarora now, if ever."




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          99
Skerrett made a circuit northward, crossed the
Hudson at Newburgh, and reported to General
Putnam, October 9, sunset, at the Van Wyck
farm-house, on the plain, half a mile north of the
Fishkill Mountains. The heights rose in front, a
rampart a thousand feet high.
Old Put limped out to meet Washington's
aide-de-camp. He was a battered veteran, lame
with a fractured thigh, stiff with coming paralysis and now despondent after recent blunders.
"Dusky times, Skerrett," says he, forlornly.
"I suppose the Chief sent you for men. He's
a cannibal after human flesh. But don't worry
me to-night. To-morrow we're to have a Council of War, and I'll see what can be done. I
suppose you know what's happened."
"Yes, - generally."
" Well; it's all clear for Clinton to go up and
join that mountebank, Jack Burgoyne. I might
just as well go home, and set up tahvern again to
Pomfret for anything I can do here. God save
the King is going to make Yankee Doodle sing
small from yesterday on. It was all the fault of
that cursed fog, —we had a fog, thick as mush,
all day on the sixth.  I believe them British
ships brought it with'em in bags, from the Channel. They chocked up the river with their fog,
and while I was waitin' for'em over to Peekskill,
they crep across and took the forts.  Darn it
all!"




100          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
Putiiam  paused to take an indignant breath.
Skerrett sniled at the old hero's manner. When
he was excited, the Yankeeisms of his youth
came back to him.  His lisp also grew more
decided. Nobody knows whether the lisp was
natural, or artificial, and caused by a jaw-breaker
with the butt of a musket lie got from all uncivil
Gaul at Fort Ti in'58.  His Yankeeisms, his
lisp, his drollery, his muddy schemes, made the
jolly old boy the chief comic character of our
early Revolutionary days.
" How Jack Burgoyne will stick out that great
under-lip of his, - the ugly pelican c " continued
old Put, "when he hears of this. He'11 stop
fightin', while he goes at his proper trade, and
writes a farce with a Yankee in it, who'11 never
say anything but,'I veouw!  By dollars, we're
chawed up!'"
"Don't you remember, General," says Skerrett, "how Bunker Hill interrupted the acting
of a farce of his? Perhaps Gates will make him
pout his lip, as he did when he saw you pointing
the old mortar Congress at him and Boston from
Prospect Hill. Donl't you recollect? We saw
him with a spy-glass, and you said he looked like
a pelican with a mullet in his pouch. By the
way, where did you ever see pelicans?"
" When I was down to take Cuba in'62, and
we didn't take it. I'11 tell you the story when




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         101
I -feel brighter. We were wrecked, and had not
a thing but pelicans to eat for two days, —and
fishy grub they are! "
" Well, we must not despair," says Skerrett,
cheerily, seeing that the old brave began to
brighten.
" Dethpair? " lisped Putnam, " who's a goin'
to despair?  I tell you, my boy, you'll eat a
Connecticut punkin-pie with me, yet, in peace
and Pomfret. I wish we had one now, for
supper."
" There's raw material enough about," Skerrett said, glancing at the piles of that pomaceous
berry which wallowed among the corn shocks
and smiled at the sugary sunset.
"-Yes; but this is York State, and punkinpies off their native Connecticut soil are always
a mushy mess, or else tough as buckskin. Never
mind, my boy, we'11 sit every man under his own
corn-stalk, on his own squash, and whistle Yankee Doodle and call it macaroni, yet. It don't
look half so dark to me now as it did in the Ticonderogy times. Did I ever tell you the story
how the Frenchmen and their cussed Indians
mauled me there? "
It's coming.  I knew it would," thought
Peter, at the beginning of this sentence, " and I
did not bring any cotton to plug my ears! "
"Well," continued Put, without waiting for




102          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
his companion's answer, " I shall have to tell my
tale another time, for here comes my orderly,
with papers to sign.  You remember Sergeant
Lincoln, don't you, Skerrett?"
" I should not remember much in this world,
if lie had not saved my life and my memory for
me. Shall I tell you my story, short?  Scene I.
Bunker Hill. A British beggar with a baggonet
makes a point at Peter Skerrett's rebel buttons
on his left breast. Rebel Sergeant Lincoln twigs,
describes a circle with a musket's butt.  Scene
II. Bunker Hill. A British. beggar on his back
sees stars and points upward with his baggonet
at those brass buttons on the blue sky. In the
distance two pairs of heels are seen, - these,"
says Peter, lifting his own, " and yours, Sergeant
Lincoln. And that's what I call a model story."
" Ne quid nimis, certainly. Not a word to
spare, Sir," says the Sergeant, taking Peter's
proffered hand.
He was a slender, quiet, elderly man. Perhaps prematurely aged by care or campaigning
or a wound, rather than old. He handed his
papers to the General, and withdrew.
" I guess I've got the only orderly in the Continental Army that can talk Latin," says Put,
proud as if this possession made a Julius Cxesar
of himself. " Lincoln must have been a schoolmaster before he'listed."




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         103
"There's no flavor of birch about him," Skerrett rejoined. " Perhaps he stepped out of a
pulpit to take the sword."
"HIHe don't handle the sword very kindly.
He e's brave enough."'
"But not bloody," interjected Peter.
" No. There's men enough that can squint
along a barrel, and drop a redcoat, and sing out,'Hooray! another bully gone!' — but not many,
like my orderly, that can tell y.ou why a redcoat
has got to be a bully, and why we're doing our
duty to God and man by a droppin' on'em. I
tell you, he in the ranks to keep up the men's
sperits is wuth more than generals I could name
with big appleettes on their backs."
"Is that the reason why lie stays in the ranks,
and does not'ask for epaulettes? "
" He might have had them long ago; but he's
shy of standing up for himself.  I guess he's
some time or other ben wownded in his mind; and
all the impudence has run out at the wownd."
" Llerty, preserve me from  such phlebotomy! " devoutly ejaculated Peter.'" But has the
Sergeant been with you all this time? "
" With my division. But I did not have him
with me in Westclhester. I stationed him here
to look after the stores, and put recruits through
the motions. Now, Major, I must look at these
papers. Come to the Council of War to-morrow,




104         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
and give us a good word. We shall want all we
can get. The news gets worse and worse. This
very morning General Tryon —spiteful doghas been marauding this side of Peekskill, and
burning up a poor devil of a village at the lower
edge of the Highlands."
"Arson is shabby warfare," said Peter, taking
leave.




II.
IT was in the Skerrett blood to come out red
at a pinch.
"Things do look a little dusky for the good
cause," thought Skerrett, as, wearing his buff
and blue coat, - far too dull a coat for so bright
a fellow, - he stood drinking October next morning, as we have seen him, before Mrs. Birdsell's
cottage.
"The Liberty-tree is a little nipped," he continnied. "I suppose all the worm-eaten people
will drop off now. Let'em go! and be food for
pigs!  We sound chestnuts will stick to the
boughs, and wear our burrs till Thanksgiving.
"Fine figure that! quite poetic! Who would
n't be a poet in such a poem of a morning? 0
Lucullus, you base old glutton, with your feasts
and your emetics! see here, how I breathe and
blow, breathe and blow,- that's a dodge you
were not up to!
"Hooray! now I'm full of gold air and goahead spirits."
He marched off-, the gallant, buoyant young
5*




106          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
brave. No finer figure of a Rebel walked the
Continental soil unhung.  On his nut-brown
face his blonde moustache lay lovingly curling.
The Marquis de Chastellux, the chief, if not
the only, authority on the Revolutionary moustache, does not specify Skerrett's in his "Travels in America."  The distinction might have
been invidious.  But it was understood that,
take it "by and large," color and curl, Skerrett's was the Moustache (with a big M) of its
era. Many brother officers shaved in despair
when they beheld it. Hence, perhaps, the number of shorn lips in the portraits of our heroes
of that time.
" Something is going to happen to-day,"
thought the Major. "I bubble. I shall boil
over, and make a fool of myself before night.
I am in that ridiculous mood when a man loves
his neighbor as himself, believes in success, wants
to tilt at windmills.  0 October! you have intoxicated me! I challenge the world.  Hold
me, somebody, or I shall jump over the Highlands and take Sir Henry Clinton by the hair,
then up to Saratoga and pick up Jack Butrgoyne, knock their pates together, and fling them
over the Atlantic."
A man's legs gallop when his blood and spirits
are boiling after such a fashion. It did not take
the Major any considerable portion of eternity




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         107
to measure off the furlongs of cultivated plain
between Fishkill village and Putnam's head-quarters. In fact, he had need to despatch. He had
slept late after his journey. The Council would
be assembled, and already muddling their brains
over the situation.
The Van Wyck farm-house stood, and still
stands, with its flank to the road and its front to
the Highlands.
"Not much clank and pomp and pageantry
in this army of Israel Putnam," thought Skerrett. " No tents! Men are barracked in barns,
I suppose, or sleep under corn-stalks, with pumpkins for pillows. No sentinels! But probably
every man keeps his eyes peeled and his ears
pricked up for the tramp of British brogans or
Hessian boots on the soil."
There was, however, a sentry standing at the
unhinged gate in the decimated paling of the
farm-yard.
He turned his back, and paced to the end of
his beat, as Major Skerrett approached.
"Aha! " thought the latter, " Jierck Dewitt
is as quick-sighted as ever. He wants to dodge
me. Poor fellow! Bottle has got him again, I
fear. Why can't man be satisfied with atmosphere, and cut alcohol?"
Skerrett entered the gate, and hailed, "Jierck!"
The sentinel turned and saluted.




108          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
A clear case of Bottle! The Colony of Jamaica was a more important ally to Great
Britain in the Revolution than is generally
known. Ah! if people would only take their
rum latent in its molasses, and pour out their
undistilled toddies on their buckwheat cakes!
"Jierck,'" said the Major kindly, " you promised me you would not touch it."
"So I did," says the man, inflicting on himself the capital punishment of hanging his head;
"and I kep stiff as the Lord Chancellor, till I
got back home to Peekskill below here. There
I found my wife had gone wrong."
The poor fellow choked. A bad wife is a
black dose.
"We grew up together, sir, on the Brothertoft
Manor lands. She was a Bilsby, one of the old
families, —as brisk and bright a gal as ever
stepped. We were married, and travelled just
right, she alongside of me, and I alongside of
her, pullin' well and keepir' everything drawin'.
Well, when I shouldered arms, Lady Brothertoft - that's the Patroon's widow - got my wife
to go down to York and be her maid. It was
lettin' down for Squire Dewitt's son's wife to
eat in anybody's kitchen.  But that's nothing. The harm is that Lady Brothertoft's house
is unlucky. Women don't go into it and stay
straight. There's too much red in the parlors, -




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         109
too many redcoats round. They say that's why
the Patroon cleared out, and got himself killed,
if he is killed. That's what spoilt my wife."
Skerrett's supernatural spirits sank a little at
this. There was an undeveloped true lover in
the young man,- developed enough to show him
what misery may come from  such a wrong as
Jierck's.
"That's why I took to rum," continued the
mlan, dismally.  "When my company was ordered to join Old Put at Peekskill, and I saw all
the old places where my wife and I used to do
our courtin', ahd saw my sister Kate smilin' at
her sweetheart and makin' comforters for him, I
couldn't stand it.  They all told me to keep
away from the woman. But I did n't quite believe it, you know.  So I went down to the
Manor-House and saw her. She did n't dare to
look me in the face. That had to be drownded
somehow. I drownded it in rum. I can't get
drunk like a beast, - that is n't into me, - but I
haven't been sober one hour since until we
came up here to Fishkill."
"Stop it now, Jierck, and try to forget."
a' What's the use? "
"The use is this. We were all proud of you,
as a crack man. We cannot spare you. You
know as well as I do what we are fighting for.
The Cause cannot spare you. Stand to your




110          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
guns now, like a man, against King George and
Old Jamaica."
The sentinel was manned by these hearty
words and tones.
"I'11 try," said he, "to please you, Major
Skerrett."
Up went his head and his courage.
"That's right," says the Major; " and we'11
have a fling at the enemy together before I go,
and spike a gun for him."
"'I must take another sip of October, after
that," thought Skerrett, as he walked on toward
the farm-house.
He halted on the steps, and inspected the
scene.
October was quite as gorgeous to see, as it was
glorious to tipple. It was in the Skerrett blood
to love color.
" Color! 0 blazes, what a conflagration of a
landscape!" thought the Major; "0 rainbows,
what delicious blending! V. I. B. G. Y. O. R.
Violet hills far away, indigo zenith, blue sky on
the hill-tops, green pastures, yellow elms, chestnuts, and ashes, orange pumpkins, red maples!
Flames! Rainbows! Splendors! Take my blood,
O my dear country! and cheap, too, for such a
pageant!"
There were two parts to the scene he was regarding with this exhilaration, — a flat part and




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          111
an upright part. All around was a great scope
of fertile plain, gerrymandered into farms. Half
a mile away in front, the sudden mountains set
up their backs to show their many-colored gaberdines, crimson, purple, and gold at the bottom
flounce, belted with diffirent shades of the same
in regular gradation above, and sprigged all over
with pines and cedars, green as May.
The morning sun winked at the Major over
the summits, saying, as plain as a wink can speak,
"Beat this, my Skerrett, in ally clime, on any
continent, if you can!"
The Major, with both his eyes, blinked back
ecstatically, " It can't be beat! 0 Sol! It can't
be beat! "
When he opened his dazzled eyes, and glanced
again about him, he seemed to see thousands of
little suns rollicking over the fields, and congeries
of suns piling themselves like golden bombs here
and there. They were not suns, but pumpkins,
rollicking in the furrows, and every congeries was
a heap of the same, putting their plump cheeks
together and playing "sugar my neighbor."
"We must keep war out of this," thought the
Major. " Nerve my good right arm, 0 Liberty,
to protect this pie-patch!"
His earnest prayer was disturbed by the sound
of voices close at hand.
Immediately Sergeant Lincoln appeared at the




112          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
corner of the house. A wondrously wiggy negro
accompanied him.
"Make way for the Lord Chancellor!" says
Skerrett to himself, as this gray-headed, dusky
dignitary loomed up.  "If I am  ever elected
Judge, I shall take that old fellow's scalp for a
wig. And his manners, too! He seems to be
laying down the law to the Sergeant, so flat that
it will never stir again. Mysterious fellow, this
orderly who quotes Latin! I'd like to solve him,
and offer him sympathy, if he has had the' wownd'
old Put talks of. I owe him a cure for saving
me from a kill."
The two passed by, in eager conversation.
Skerrett turned, and entered the farm-house,
where the officers of Putnam's army were sighing over blunders past, and elaborating schenes
for the future.
Peter's seedy coat was freshness and elegance
compared to the scarecrow uniforms it now
encountered. Our Revolutionary officers were
braves at heart, but mostly Guys in costume.




III.
"Ah mon camarade! ma belle Moustache!
My Petare! " cried Colonel La Radiere, as Skerrett entered. "Soyez le bienvenu'!"
The ardent Parisian officer of engineers rushed
forward, and embraced his young friend with effusion.
"Glad to see you, Peter! " says Captain Livingston, a dry fellow, son of the Patroon. " Now,
Radiere, there's a second man who talks French,
to'fire back your sacrebleus. Moi et Anthony's
Nose sommes fatigues a vous faire echo."
"Come, boys," says old Put, "talk Continental!"
The other officers in turn made Skerrett
welcome, and the business of brewing blunders
went on.
Does any one want a historic account of that
Council of War, and what it did not do?
The want is easily supplied. Rap for the spirit
of Colonel Humphreys, then late of Derby, Connecticut, late of Yale College, late tutor at Phillipse-Manor. He was Putnam's aide, and wrote
H




114         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
his biography. He was an inexorable poetaster.
He was afterwards pompous gold-stick to Mr.
President Washington. He went as Plenipo to
Madrid, returned, became a model of deportment,
and was known to his countrymen as the Ambassador from Derby.
(Raps are heard. Enter the Ghost of Humphreys.
" Now then, Ghost, talk short and sharp, not,
as you used to, —to borrow two favorite words
of yours, - sesquipedalian and stentorophonic!
Tell us what was done at that council, and be
spry about it!";" Young Sir, I shall report your impertinence
to George Washington and Christopher Columbus
in Elysium. Christopher will say,' Founder the
continent!' George will say,'Perish the country!' if its youth have drawn in and absorbed
their bump of reverence."
"O, belay that, old boy! Tell us what you
did at the Council! "
" Nothing, your nineteenth-centuryship!" responds Ghost, quelled and humble. "We pondered, and propounded, and finally concluded to
do nothing, and let the enemy make the next
move."
"Which lie proceeded to do by sending up
General Vaughan to burn Kingston. That's
enough! Avaunt, Ghost!"




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          115
Exit Humphreys to tell Chris and George
that America is going to the dogs.)
"Well," said Putnam at last, " we've discussed
and discussed, and I don't see that there's any
way of getting a crack at the enemy, unless one
of you boys wants to swim down the river, with
a torch in his teeth, and set one of those frigates
below the Highllands on fire. Who speaks?"
"-Cold weather for swimming!" says Livingston.
" Well, boys, you must contrive something to
keep our spirits up," Putnam resumed. "' When
I was up to Fort Ti in'58, and fighting was dull,
we used to go out alone and bushwhack for a
private particular Indian."' Perhaps I can offer a suggestion," said MaJor
Scrammel, Putnam's other aide, re-entering the
room after a brief absence.
Scrammlel was a handsomish man with a baddish face. A man with his cut of jib and shape
of beak hardly ever weathers the lee shore of
perdition. For want of a moustache to twirl, he
had a trick of pulling his nose. Perhaps he was
training that feature for tweaks to come.
"Blaze away, Scrammel!" said his General;
" you always have some ambush or other in your
head."
"Lady Brothertoft's nigger, the butler, is up
here with the latest news from below. I have
just been out to speak to him."




116          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
" What, Scrammel!" says Livingston, sotto
voce. "A billet-doux from the fair Lucy?"
" La plus belle personne en Amerique!" RadiEre sighs.
"You don't except the mother? "  Livingston inquired; " that mature, magnificent Amazonl! "
" No," replied the Frenchman, laboriously
building, brick by brick, a Gallo-American sentence.  "The mother of the daughtare is too
much in the Ladie Macquebeth. I figure to myself a poniard, enormous sharpe, in her fine
ouhite hand, and at my heart. I seem to see
her poot ze-pardon! the poison in the basin —
the bowl —the gobbelit. I say,'Radiere, care
thyself! It is a dame who knows to stab.' Mais,
Mees Lucie! Ah, c'est autre chose! "' Come, Scrammel!"  Putnam  said, impatiently; " we are waiting for your news."
"The nigger stole away on some business of
his own, which he is mysterious about; but he
tells me that his mistress consoled herself at
once for our retirement from Peekskill after we
lost the forts. She had some of her friends
from the British ships and Clinton's army at her
house as soon as we were gone."
"I believe she is as dangerous a Tory as lives
in all Westchester," said the General.  "She
ought to be put in security."




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          117
"What! after all those dinners of hers we
have eaten, General?" says Livingston.
" I wish the dinners were out of me, and had
never been in me," Old Put rejoined, sheepishly.
"I'm afraid we used to talk too much after her
Madeira."
The Council was evidently of that opinion, as
a look whisking about the circle testified.
A very significant look, with a great basis of
facts behind it. Suppose we dig into the brain of
one of these officers, -say that keen Livingston's,- and unearth a few facts about Mrs.
Brothertoft, as she is at the beginning of Part
II. of this history.
Now, then, off with Livingston's scalp, and the
top of his skull! and here we go rummaging
among the convolutions of his brain for impressions branded,' "BROTHERTOFT, MRS."  We strike
a lead. We find a pocket. How compact this
brain stows its thoughts! It must, for it has
the millions on millions of a lifetime to contain.
We have read of a thousand leagues of lace
packed into a nut-shell.  We have seen the Declaratioll of Independence photographed within
the periphery of a picayune.  Here's closer
stowage, - a packet of thoughts of actual material dimensions, but so infinitesimal that we shall
have to bring a microscope to bear before we
can apply the micrometer. Come, Sirius, near



118          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
est neighbor among the suns of eternity, pour
thy beams through our lens and magnify this
record!  Thanks, Sirius!  Quite plain now!
That little black point has taken length and
breadth, and here's the whole damnation in
large pica, — Heaven save us from the like!
Livingston Junior on Mrs. Brothertoft.  Abstract of Record:
"By scalps and tomahawks, what a splendid
virago! She must be, this summer of 1777,
some thirty-five or thirty-six, and in her primest
prime. Heart's as black as her hair, some say.
Crushed her husband's spirit, and he took himself off to kingdom come. Ambitious? I should
think so. Tory, and peaches to the enemy? Of
course. She uses her womanhood as a blind,
and her beauty as a snare. Very well for her to
say,' My business is to protect my property, and
establish my daughter.  Women don't understand politics, and hate bloodshed.'  Ball! she
understands her kind of politics, like a Catherine
de' Medici. Bloodshed! She could stab a man
and see him writhe. But she gives capital dinners, -more like England than any others in
America. Poor old Put, honest, frank, simplehearted fellow! look at him  on the sofa there
with her, and a pint too much of her Madeira
under his belt! She knows just how near to let
his blue sleeve and buff cuff come to that shoul



EDWIN BROTHERTOUT.          119
der of hers. He'11 tell all his plans to her, she'11 whisper'em to a little bird, and pounce! one
of these fine days the redcoats will be upon us.
Upon us and on her sofa! Yes, and a good
many inches nearer than Old Put is allowed
to sit. For they do whisper scandal about Madainm   When she dropped Julia Peartree Smith,
the old tabby talked as old cats always talk about
their ex-friends. Scandal! Yes, by the acre;
but it's splendid to see how she walks right over
it. And several of us fine fellows will not hear
or speak scandal of a house where that lovely
Lucy lives, -the sweet, pure, innocent angel.
They say the mother means to trade her off to
a redcoat as soon as she can find one to suit.
Mamma wants a son-in-law who will give her,
scandal and all, a fodting among stars and garters in England, when she has seen her estates
safe through the war. It's too bad. I'd go
down and kidnap that guileless, trustful victim
myself, if I was n't so desperately lazy. There's
Scrammel too, - he would play one of his meanest tricks to get her. Scrammel was almost the
only one of us boys in buff and blue that was
not taboo from Miss Lucy's side. Mamma was
not over cordial to our color unless it was buttoned over breasts that held secrets. I-Ier black
eyes very likely saw scoundrel in Scrammel's
face, and used him. Poor Lucy! It looks dark




120          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
for her. And yet her love will never let her see
what her mother is."
Enough, Livingston! Thanks for this bit of
character! Here's your dot of a record, labelled
" Brothertoft, Mrs."! Now trepan your self with
your own skull, clap your scalp back again on
your sinciput, and listen to what Scrammel is
saying!
"The old nigger tells me," he was saying,' that Sir Henry Clinton and his Adjutant spent
the night after Forts Clinton and Montgomery
were taken quietly at Brothertoft Manor-House."
"Well," said the General,'  then they had a
better night than we had, running away through
the Highlands. We can't protect our friends.
If the enemy have only made themselves welcome at the Manor-House, instead of burning it
for its hospitality to us, Madam is lucky."
"She seems to have made her new guests
welcome.  The nigger thinks she knew  they
were coming."
"By George! — by Congress! I mean," says
Put, wincing, " if I ever get back to Peekskill - "
"She seems to think, according to her butler's
story, that you are never to come back," Scrammel struck in.
"If that is all the news you have to tell; by
way of keeping our spirits up, you might as well
have been silent, sir! " growls Putnam.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         121
"It's not all," Scrammel resumed. "The
nigger thinks they are getting up some new
expedition. But whether they do or not, the
adjutant don't go. He is to stay some days at
the 1Ianor."
"Lord Rawdon, is n't it?" Put asked. "Well,
he is a gentleman and a fine fellow, -— not one of
those arrogant, insolent dogs that rile u~ so."
" Not Rawdon. He was to be. But Major
Kerr got the appointment by family influence."
"Kurr! c'est chien, n'est ce pas?" whispered
Radiere to Livingston.' Yes," returned the Captain; " and this Kerr
is a sad dog. He bit Scrammel once badly at
cards in New York, before the war. Scrammel
don't forgive. He hates Kerr, and means to bite
back. Hear him snarl now!"
" The Honorable Major Kerr," Scrammel continued, " third son of the Earl of Bendigh, Adjutant-General to Clinton's forces, a fellow who
hates us and abuses us and maltreats our prisoners, but an'officer of importance, is staying and
to stay several days, the only guest, at Brothertoft Manor-House.  Let me see; it can't be
more than twenty miles away."
He marked his words, and glanced about the
circle. His eyes rested upon Livingston last.
" Oho!" says that gentleman. "I begin to
comprehend. You mean to use the Brother6




122          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
toft majordomo as Colonel Barton did his man
Prince at Newport. Woolly-head's skull is to
butt through Kerr's bedroom door, at dead of
night. Then, enter Scrammel, puts a pistol to
his captive's temple and marches him off to Fishkill.  Bravo!  Belle idea, n'est cc pas, mon
Colonel?"
" Maguifique! " rejoined Radiere. "I felicit
thee of it, my Scaramlelle."
" Now, boys!"  says Put,'"this begins to
sound like business. We need some important
fellow, like Kerr, taken prisoner and brought
here, to keep our spirits up. The thing's easy
enough and safe enough. If I was twenty years
younger, general or no general, I'd make a dash
to cut him out. Who volunteers to capture the
Adjutant?"
"I remember myself," said Radidre, gravely,
" of a billet, very short, very sharp, which our
Chief wrote to Sir Clinton, lately. It was of
one Edmund Palmer, taken - so this billet said —
as one espy, condemned as one espy, and hangged as espy. Sir Clinton waits to answer that
little billet. But I do not wish to read in his
response the name of one of my young friends,
taken as espy and hang-ged."
" Why does not Scrammel execute Scrammel's
plan?" asked Livingston.
"I cannot be spared," the aide-de-camp responded.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.             123
" 0 yes! never mind me!" cried the General.
"Skerrett, here, can fill your place.  Or Humphreys can stop writing doggerel and do double
duty."
Scrammel evidently was not eager to leave a
vacancy, or to gag his brother aide-de-camp's
muse.
"Why don't you volunteer yourself, Livingston? " he said.  "You know the country and
the house, and seemed to be well up in the
method of Prescott's capture at Newport."
"I have not my reputation to make," said the
other, haughtily. Indeed, his reckless pluck was
well known.  "But I'm desperately lazy," which
was equally a notorious fact.
No other spoke, and presently all eyes were
making focus upon that blonde Moustache, which
the Marquis de Chastellux does not, and these
pages do, endow with a big M, and make historic.
It was only the other day that the wearer of
that decoration had become the hero of a famous
ballad, beginning, -
"'T was night, rain poured; when British blades,
In number twelve or more,
As they sat tippling apple-jack,
Heard some one at the door.
"'Arise,' he cried, -'t was Skerrett spoke, -' And trudge, or will or nill,
Twelve miles to General Washington,
At Pennibecker's Mill."




124         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
Then the ballad went on to state, in stanzas
many and melodious, how it happened that the
" blades" of his Majesty's great knife, the Army,
were sheathed in a carouse, at an outpost near
Philadelphia, without sentries. Apple-jack, too,
— why they condescended to apple-jack, — that
required explanation: " And apple-jack, that tipple base, Why did these heroes drain? 0, where
were nobler taps that night, - Port, sherry, and
champagne?"'Then the forced march of the unlucky captives was depicted: " It rained.  The
red coats on their backs Their skins did purple,
blue; The powder on their heads grew paste;
Each toe its boot wore through."  The poem
closed with Washington's verdict on the exploit:
" Skerrett, my lad, thou art a Trump, The ace of
all the pack; Come into Pennibecker's Mill, And
share my apple-jack! "
Hero once, hero always! When a man has
fairly compromised himself to heroism, there is
no let-up for him. The world looks to him at
once, when it wants its " deus ex machina."
In the present quandary, all eyes turned to
Peter Skerrett, Captor of Captives and Washington's Ace of Trumps.
" General," said he, "I seem to be the only
unattached officer present. Nothing can be done
now about my mission. I do not love to be idle.
Allow me to volunteer in this service, if you
think it important."




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         125
Old Put began to look grave. " You risk your
life. If they catch you in their lines, it is hanging business."
" I knew this morning," thought the Major,
"that I should make a fool of myself before
night. I have!"
"No danger, General! " he said aloud. "I've
got the knack of this work. I like it better than
the decapitation part of my trade."
" Ah, Skerrett! "  Livingston says, " that ballad will be the death of you. You will be adding
Fitte after Fitte, until you get yourself discomfitted at last. Pun! "
Mark this! It was the Continental Pun at its
point of development reached one year after the
Declaration of Independence. 0 let us be joyful! Let us cry aloud with joy at our progress
since. Puns like the above are now deemed
senile, and tolerated only in the weekly newspapers.
No doggerel had been written about Scrammel. No lyric named him hero. " Your friend
seems to have a taste for the office of kidnapper,"
he caitiffly sneered to Livingston, under cover of
his own hand, which tweaked the Scrammel nose
as he spoke.
"He has a taste for doing what no one else
dares," rejoined the other. " Your nose is safe
from  him, even if he overhears you. I say,




126          EDWIN BROTLIERTOFT.
Skerrett, I don't feel so lazy as I did. Take
me with you. I know this country by leagues
and by inches."
"No, Harry; General Putnam cannot spare
his Punster. One officer is enough.  I shall
take Jierck Dewitt for my aide-de-camp. He
knows the Brothertoft-Manor country."
" Empty Jierck of rum, cork him and greenseal him, mouth and nose, and there cannot be
a better man."
" Since you will go, you must," says Put. " By
the way, if you want a stanch, steady man, take
Sergeant Lincoln. He somehow knows this
country as if he had crept over it from the
cradle. Where is that negro of Lady Brothertoft's, Scrammel?"
"I left him talking to Lincoln. Major Skerrett will easily find him."
"He was my wiggy friehd," thought Skerrett.
"Don't fail to bag Kerr," says Livingston.
"He wants a Yankee education, —so does all
England."
"Yes," says Radidre, "'we must have these
Kurr at school. We must teach to them civility
through our noses of rebels.  We must fiogge
them with roddes from the Libert6-Tree. They
shall partake our pork and bean.  Yankee
Doodle shall play itself to them on our two
whistles and a tambour.  Go, my Skerrett!




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         127
Liberty despatch thee!  Be the good, lucky
boy!"
All the officers gave him Good speed! and
Humphreys, Poetaster-General, began to bang
the two lobes of his brain together, like a pair
of cymbals, to strike out rhymes in advance
for a paean on the conquering hero's return.
"You won't stay  to  dinner," cries Put.
"There's corned beef and apple-sauce, and a
York- State buckskin pumpkin-pie, —I wish it
was a Connecticut one!"
" Yes," says Livingston, " and I watched the
cook this morning coursing that dumb rooster
of yours, General, until he breathed his last."
"Ah, my Skerrett!" sighed Radiere. "Will
posterity appreciate our sacrifices? Will they remember themselves — these oblivious posterity
- of the Frenchmen who abandoned the cuisines of Paris to feed upon the swine and the
bean d' discretion, to swallow  the mush sans
melasse, to drink the Appel Jacque? Will they
build the marble mausoleum, inscribed,' CIGIT LA RADIhRE, COLONEL. H-E WAS A GOOD
HEART AND A BAD STOMACH, AND HE SHED HIS
DIGESTION FOR LIBERTY?' "
Skerrett laughed. " I will mention it to posterity, Colonel," he said, — and this page redeems his promise.
Then, lest weeds might sprout under his feet,




128         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
the Major turned his back upon dinner, - that
moment announced, - and'launched himself
upon the current of his new adventure.
" Down! " lie soliloquized; " down, my longings for buckskin pie, and for rooster dead of
congestion of the lungs from over coursing!
Tempt me not, ye banquets of Sybaris, until
my train is laid and waiting for the fusee."




IV.
MAJOR SKERRETT paused on the farm-house
steps.
" Jierck Dewitt, I want," he thought. "And
there he is on guard, looking every inch a soldier
again. My good word has quite set him up.
Mem. — A word of cheer costs little, and may
help much. Now for Sergeant Lincoln and the
negro! "
Just at the edge of the bank, in front of
the farm-house, Skerrett perceived the Sergeant
sitting.
His head was resting on his hands. The physiognomy of his back revealed despondency. An
old well-sweep bent over him, and seemed to
long to comfort him with a douse of balm from
its bucket.
The landscape glowed, as before. The jolly
pumpkins grinned, as before. The Major's spirits
were still at bubble and boil. "Every prospect
was pleasing, and only man" -that is only
Sergeant - seemed woe-begone.
" He is feeling his wound, - the' wownd' Put
6*                   I




130          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
talked of, —I fear," thought Skerrett. " I must
cheer him. Unhappy people are not allowed in
the Skerrett precinct."
"Why, Orderly!" says the Major, approaching, and laying his hand on the other's shoulder;
"you must not be down-hearted, man! What
has happened? What can I do for you?"
The Sergeant raised his head, and shook it
despairingly.
" Thank you," said he. " Nothing! It is too
late! "
"Too late! That is a point of time my time.
piece has not learnt how to mark."
Indeed, the Skerrett movement was too elastic
in springs, and too regular with its balance-wheel,
to strike any hour but "Just in time! "
The Sergeant thanked him, with a smile and
manner of singular grace, and repeated, sorrowfully, "It is too late."
" Too late is suicide," says Peter. " We will
not cut our throats till after Indian summer.
Presently you shall tell me what is and is not
too late. First, I have a question or two to
ask. The General tells me you know this country thoroughly."
"I do by heart,-by sad heart."
"I have undertaken to cut in, and cut'out,
where the enemy is, twenty miles below QC the
river."




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         131
The Orderly at once seemed greatly interested.
" Twenty miles below? No one can know that
region better than I."
"' Was it there his heart was wounded?"
thought the Major.
"Ah, then! you're just my man," Skerrett
continued, ignoring the other's depression. "' I
have volunteered on a wild-goose chase. I may
need to know every fox-track through all the
Highlands to get away safe with my goose, if
I catch him."
Major Skerrett, surprised at a sudden air of
eager attention and almost excitement in the
older man, paused a moment.
" Go on! " said the other authoritatively, with
a voice and manner more of Commander-inChief than Sergeant.
Skerrett felt, as he had done before, the peculiar magnetism of this mysterious Orderly, who
quoted Latin and bowed like a courtier.
" I have taken upon myself," said he, "to cut
out a British officer of distinction, now staying
at a country house twenty miles below. I may
want you of my party.  General Putnam  recommends you."
The Orderly sprang up and grasped Major
Skerrett's arm with both his hands.
" Who.is the man?  Name! Name!" he
gasped.




132          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
" Major Kerr," replied Skerrett, coolly.
"Wait! wait a moment!" cried the other,
in wild excitement.
He rushed to the edge of the bank, where a
path plunged off, leading to the Highland road,
and was lost among the glowing recesses of a
wood skirting the base of the heights.  He
halted there, and screamed, in a frantic voice,
"Voltaire! Voltaire! "
And neither the original destructive thinker
thus entitled, nor any American namesake of his
answering the call, the Orderly raced down the
slope, with hat gone and gray cue bobbing
against his coat-collar.
He disappeared in the grove, and the Major
could hear his feet upon the dry leaves, and his
voice still crying loudly, " Voltaire! Voltaire! "
"Has the old man gone mad? " thought Skerrett. " Voltaire the Great is getting too ancient
to travel. It is hardly fair to disturb him. He
is a soldier'emeritus' of our Good Cause. He
waked France up. We have to thank him
largely that France has an appetite for freedom, and sends her sons over to help us fight
for it. But he cannot hear this hullaballoo at
Ferney; Lafayette, Radidre, and the others, represent their master, with such heart and stomach as they can.
" I must not lose sight of my runaway," con



EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         133
tinued he to himself. " The name of Kerr struck
him like a shot. He may have a grudge there.
Some private vendetta in the case. And yet this
mild old man always seemed to me to have entirely merged his personality in patriotism. I
fancied that he had forgotten all his likes, dislikes, loves, and hates, and given up all ties except his allegiance to an idea."
Major Skerrett walked rapidly to the edge of
the bank, where Sergeant Lincoln had first given
tongue for an absent philosopher.
As he was abouPto follow the path, he heard
steps again in the wood. In a moment the Orderly reappeared, and ran up the slope, panting.
He was followed by a person who moved slower,
and blew harder, the same old wiggy negro
whom Major Skerrett had observed laying down
the law to his companion.
"So that is Voltaire!" thought the Major.
" Well, it is the first time I have ever found the
devil blacker than he is painted."
The Orderly sank, agitated and out of breath,
on the ground.
Voltaire came up the hill, and, being hatless,
pulled hard at his gray wig, by way of salute.
The wig was rooted to the scalp. Voltaire left
it in situ, and bowed as grandly as a black
dignitary may when he is blown by a good
run.




134          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
" I was in despair just now," said Sergeant
Lincoln. "In despair when I said it was too
late to help me. Perhaps it is not so. I trust
God sends you, Major Skerrett, to show us the
way out of our troubles."
"This is sound Gospel," thought Skerrett.
"This black Voltaire may be the Evangelist;
but the Gospel is unimpeachable."
" Come, Sergeant," continued he aloud, " tell
me what all this means, my friend. We must
despatch.  My bird down the river may take
wing, if I waste time."
"I am pained, my dear young friend," said
the senior, rising, "to acknowledge to you an
unwilling deceit of mine. But I must do so.
You have known me always under a false name.
I am not Lincoln, but Brothertoft, — Edwin
Brothertoft."
"My father's friend!" said Skerrett, taking
the other's hand. " Mr. Brothertoft, so missed,
so desired by the Good Cause. Why      "
Here Major Skerrett interrupted himself, and
went to rummaging in his brain for the disconnected strips of record stamped, "Brothertofts,
The family." The strips pasted themselves together, and hle ran his mind's eye rapidly along,
as one might read a mile or so of telegram in
cipher.
As he read with one eye introverted and gal



EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         135
loping over the record, while it whirled by like
a belt on a drum making a million revolutions in
a breath, he kept the other eye fixed upon Mr.
Brothertoft, alias IEnllcoln, before him.
This sad, worn, patient, gentle face supplied a
vivid flash of interpretation. It shed light upon
all the dusky places in Major Skerrett's knowledge of the family.  The eye looking outward
helped the eye looking inward. Instantly, by
this new method of utilizing strabismus, he saw
what he remembered faintly become distinct. He
could now understand why this quiet gentleman
had dropped his tools, — forceful mallet and keen
chisel,- and let the syllables of his unfinished
mark on the world wear out.
"I have heard and read of these blighting
hurts," thought Peter, " and I trifled with their
existence, and was merry as before,- God forgive
me!  Now I touch the wounded man, and it
chills me. I lose heart and hope. But strangely,
too, this man who first teaches me to feel the pain,
teaches me also that the sufferer needs my love.
Seems to me I am more in earnest than I was
two minutes ago. I feel older and gentler. I
wish I was his son!"
"Why?" said Edwin Brothertoft, answering
slowly and sadly, while the other's brain read
records and forged thoughts at this furious speed.
"Would you ask me why my life is what it is,




136         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
and not what men would- say it might have been?
Ah, my friend, the story is long and dreary, -too
dreary to darken the heart of youth."
Sadly as he spoke, there was no complaint in
his tone. He seemed to regard his facts a little
dreamily, as if he were mentioning some other
man's experience.
"But the past is dead," he continued, "and
here are present troubles alive and upon me."
" Troubles alive!" says the Major, feeling
brave, buoyant Peter Skerrett still stirring under
the buff and blue.  "Those I can help floor,
perhaps. Name them!"
He looked so victorious, and the Moustache,
albeit unknown to the pages of De Chastellux,
so underscored his meaning nose, and so drew
the cartouche of a hero about his firm mouth,
that Brothertoft thrilled with admiration through
his sadness.
Everybody has seen the phantasmagoric shopsign. " VINEGAR," you read upon it, as you approach down the street. You don't want Vinegar,
and you gaze reproachfully at the sign.  But
what is this? As you advance, a blur crosses
your eyes.'T was Vinegar surely!'Tis SUGAR
now. And that you do want; and proceed to
purchase a barrel of crushed, a keg of powdered,
and a box of loaves wearing foolscaps of Tyrian
purple on their conical bald pates.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         137
Edwin Brothertoft had seen only DESPAIR
written up before him. He advanced a step, at
Skerrett's words, lifted up his eyes, and Despair
shifted to HOPE.
"When you named Major Kerr," he said,
" you named one who is devising evil to me and
mine.  Capture him  and the harm is stayed.
My faithful old friend Voltaire and I will try to
tell you the story between us."
Voltaire considered this his introduction, and
bowed pompously.
" You are too juicy, Voltaire, and too shiny, and
not sardonic enough, to bear the name of the
weazened Headpiece of France," the Major said.
" When I made my pilgrimage to Ferney, I found
that Atropos of Bigotry in a night-cap and dressing-gown, looking as wrinkled, leathery, and
Great as one of Michael Angelo's Sibyls. I hope
you are as true to Freedom as he was, and a
more wholesome man."
Skerrett made this talk to give the old fellow
time to blow, as well as to stir up a smile to the
surface of Brothertoft's sad face.
"Yes sir," said the negro, bowing again.
"Voltaire, sir, omnorum gotherum of Brothertoft Manor-House.  Hannibal was my name;
but I leard Mr. Ben Franklin say that Mr. Voltaire was the greatest man he knowed, so I married to that name, and tuk it."




138          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
Here he paused and grinned. His white teeth
gleamed athwart his face, as the white stocking
flashes through, when one slits a varnished boot,
too tight across the instep.
" I have been here at Fishkill some months,"
said Brothertoft. "At first I did not allow myself to think of my family. Then neighborhood
had'its effect. I communicated my whereabouts
to this trusty friend. He got my message, and
comes to give me the first news I have had
since I left home at the news of Lexington."
" More than two years ago," Skerrett said.
"And in those two years," continued the
other, "my daughter has passed from child to
woman."
"Oho! " thought Peter.  "His daughter —
Radiere's la plus belle- is in this business.
My years in Europe had made me almost forget there was such a person. Is she like father,
or mother, I wonder?"
"From  child to woman, sir," says Voltaire,
"and there's not such another young lady in
the Province, — State, I mean."
Bravo, Voltaire! You refuse to talk "'nigger."  You still remember that Tombigbee is a
dialect taboo to you. Continue to recollect that
on these pages you are a type of a race ofi whose
qualities the world is asking information. Christy's Minstrels dance out their type negro, Jim




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         139
Crow, an impossible buffoon. La Beecher Stowe
presents hers, Uncle Tom, an exceptional saint.
Mr. Frederick Douglass introduces himself with
a courtier's bow and an orator's tongue.  The
ghost of John C. Calhoun rushes forward, and
points to a stuffed Gorilla.  Then souviens toi
Voltaire of thy representative position, and don't
lapse into lingo!
"When I abandoned home," Brothertoft resumed, "' I believed that I could be of no further
use to a daughter who had disowned me. But I
have found that a man cannot cease to love his
own flesh and blood."
"Nor his flesh and blood him," says the negro. "Other people may do the hating. Miss
Lucy only knows how to love."
Fort bien Voltaire! except the pronunciation
" lub."
"It was only a day or two before the capture
of the forts that my tardy message of good-will
reached my friend here," said the ex-Patroon.
"And just in time," that friend rejoined.
"I hope so," sighed Putnam's Orderly.
" Yes sir," the negro said, turning to Skerrett.
" It was now or never. So I left my great dinner-party. Sir Henry Clinton and his suite were
to dine with us to-day!"
" Grand company!" the Major said, seeing
that a tribute of respect was wanted.




140         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
"Sirr Henery Clinton!" repeated the butler
with pride. "I did n't like to leave. My wife
Sappho can cook prime. My boy Plato can pass
a plate prime. But where's the style to come
from when I'm away? Who's to give the signals?' Ground dishes! Handle covers! Draw
covers! Forrud march with covers to the pantry!' Who's to pull the corks and pour the
Madeira so it won't blob itself dreggy?"
He paused and sighed.
Edwin Brothertoft was silent. The thought
of Red dinner-parties at the Manor was evidently not agreeable to him.
" We are not getting on at a gallop," thought
Skerrett. " But we are on the trail. My guides
must take their own time. They know the way
and the dangers, and I do not. The facts will
all come out within five minutes."
" Well, Voltaire," he said, "a bad appetite
to'em all! Go on with your story. You make
me hungry with your dinner-parties."
"Ha, ha!" chuckled the butler, -his vision
of himself as Ganymede, serving Sir Clinton
Tonans with hypernectareous tipple, vanishing.
"Ha, ha!" and with his triumph he lapsed for
a moment into Tombigbee: "Dey tinks, down
ter de Manor, dat I'se lyin' sick abed wid de
colored mobbus."
And then the old fellow proceeded to relate




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         141
how he had shammed sick yesterday, dodged
away at evening, and tramped all night by bypaths through the Highlands; how British scouts
had challenged his steps and fired at his rustle;
how stumbling-blocks had affronted his shins,
and many a stub had met his toes; and how
at last, after manifold perils, he had found his
old master under the guise of an Orderly, and
announced to him a new wrong in the house
of Brothertoft, — a new wrong, the climax of an
old tyranny.
No wonder Mr. Brothertoft had been despondent so that even his back showed it, —so despondent, that the well-sweep longed to douse
him with a bucket of balm. No wonder that
he sadly said, "Too late!" and could see no
better hour than that, marked by the Skerrett
timepiece.
Now then for this new wrong! It shall be
told condensed, so that indignation can have it,
a tough nut to crack with its teeth.




V.
"IN  short," says Voltaire, winding up his
story, "Madarie Brothertoft is going to marry
off Miss Lucy to Major Kerr, day after to-morrow
evening."
" To marry off! Then it is. nilly the lady! "
Skerrett said.
"Nilly, sir! Yes, the nilliest kind!"
There, Sir Peter, is a tough nut for your Indignation to bite on!
Peter was an undeveloped True Lover. The
C vital spark of heavenly flame" was in him;
but it lay latent under his uniform, as fire
lurks in a quartz pebble, until the destined little
boy strikes another quartz pebble against it.
Now there is a little boy of Destiny whose trade
it is to go about knocking hearts together and
striking Love, - that pretty pink flash, that rosy
flash, which makes cheeks blush sweeter and
eyes gleam brighter than they knew how to
blush and- gleam before, - that potent flash
which takes hold of proper hearts and carbo



EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         143
nizes them into diamonds of gleam unquenchable, with myriad facets and a smile on every
one, —that keen flash which commands bad
hearts to burn away into ugly little heaps of
gray ashes. There is such an urchin, and Cupid,
alias Eros, is his name. He had tapped Peter
Skerrett's heart several times with hearts labelled,
"Anna's heart," "Belinda's heart," " Clara's
heart," " Delia's heart," and so on down the
alphabet.  No perceptible love had answered
these taps. Perhaps the urchin made the female
heart impinge upon the male, instead of clashing them together in mutual impact. Or perhaps he did not do his tapping in a dark place,
— for shadow is needful to show light, —love
wants sorrow for a background.
However this might be, Peter Skerrett was still
an undeveloped true lover. He had made no
mistakes in love, he had had no disappointments.
His illusions were not gone. He still believed
love was the one condition of marriage. Marriage without it this innocent youth deemed an
outrage.
The latent love in his heart cried, "' Shame!"
when he heard Voltaire's story. Indignant blood
rushed to his cheeks, to his eyes indignant fire,
and curl indignant to his moustache. He discharged a drop of ire by skimming a flat stone
at a chattering chipmunk, enthroned on a pump



144         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
kin hard by. Then he began to put in trenchant
queries.
" You are sure, Mr. Brothertoft, that your
daughter does not love Kerr."
"Sure. I have her word for it."
" Does he love her?"
" He wants her."' Why?"' She is a beauty and an heiress, - those are
the patent charms."
" AllM!. But does she know that Kerr is a fanfaron and a rake, - selfish, certainly, probably
base, and very likely cruel?"
"' She knows only what her mother tells her.
Friends are taboo in that house."
"But does she divine nothing? Nothing to
base a refusal on? Pardon me if my tone seems
to express a doubt of this young lady, but.-"
" But you have seen so many captivated by
rank and a red coat. My friend, I have done her
greater injustice than any you can imagine. I
believed my own child spoiled by bad influences.
We could not understand each other. An evilomened figure held a black curtain between us.
I was too sick at heart to see the truth. I had
lost my faith.  I thought that my daughter
had taken in poison with her mother's milk. I
fancied that she was a willing pupil when her
mother taught her to hate and despise me. I




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          145
abandoned her. Miserable error, — miserable!
And punished now! punished most cruelly! My
spleen, my haste, my intemperate despair, are
bitterly punished by my daughter's danger. How
fatally I misjudged her in my sore-wounded
heart! I know her better at last. Better now,
when I fear it is too late to save her. I know
her at list through this faithful servant and
friend. He stood by her when I forsook her.
God forgive me! God forgive me!"
He poured out this confession with passion
growing as he spoke.  Then lie turned and
grasped Major Skerrett by the shoulder.
"What is to be done?" he cried.
" Much!" said Skerrett, quietly, commanding his own eagerness roused by the other's
agony.  "Remember that this wedding is not
to be. before day after to-morrow. I have volunteered to present the intended bridegroom to
General Putnam here, by that time. Do you suppose I intend to break my engagement, whether
it forbids his banns or not? "
He assumed more confidence than he felt.
The enterprise was growing complicated. While
there was merely question of taking or not taking a prisoner, Skerrett could look at the matter
coolly. Success was only another laurel in his
corona triumphalis!  Failure was but a bay the
less. If he bagged his man, another canto of'
7                      J




146          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
doggerel. No bag, no poem. The attempt even
would keep Put and his paladins amused until
their general decadence of tail was corrected, and
their bosoms swelled with valor again, and that
was enough.
But here was a new character behind the
scenes.  The hero's pulse began to gallop and
his heart to prance.  A woman's happiness at
stake!
" Ah!"  reflected the Major, " I was cool
enough so long as I thought I was merely entertaining a circle of downcast braves, bushwhacking to steal an exchangeable Adjutant, and giving the enemy an unexpected dig in the ribs.
But the new portion of the adventure makes me
shaky. If I fail, I lose my laurel, all the same,
and a lady has to be bonneted with a wreath of
orange-flowers against her will. If I don't bag,
Beauty goes to the Kerrs; I miss'my canto and
the poem of her life becomes a dirge. I must
not think of it, or I shall lose my spirits."
" Prying into a maiden's heart is new business
to me," he resumed to the father, who stood
watching him anxiously. "I cannot quite comprehend this matter.  She does not love this
man. Her dislike has brought about a reconciliation between you. Where is her No? I have
heard that women carry such a weapon, - brandish it, too, and strike on much less provocation
than she has."




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          14T
"She is not a free agent," replied Brothertoft.
" Her mother dominates her. She forced her to
disown me. She will force her to this marriage.
Lucy has been quelled all her life. I hope and
believe that if she were released, or even supported for one moment in rebellion, her character
might find it had vigor.  But she is still willow in her mother's hands.  If the mother, for
whatever reasons, has made up her mind to this
marriage, she will crowd her daughter into it."
" What reasons are skufficient for such tyranny?"
" I divine metaphysical reasons, that I cannot
speak of. It pains me greatly, my dear young
friend, to talk harshly of my daughter's mother.
Perhaps after all she may mean kindly now.
She may be mistaken in Kerr."' No," said Peter. "No woman of the world
can mistake such a fellow."
"Still, he is a strong friend to have on the
other side."
" Yes; and this is a moment when the other
side is up and we are down. I can see how,
with these great estates, a Patrooness may be
willing to save herself a confiscation. She can
pretend to be neutral, with a leaning to Liberty,
and.leave her son-in-law to rescue the acres if
Liberty goes to the gallows."
"Such considerations have brought matters to




148          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
a crisis. Kerr is there on the spot. Clinton is
victor. So the poor child is hurried off without
giving her time to consider."
"We must make time for her. I will go at
my plans presently. But I should like to hear a
little more of Voltaire's story."
"You are very kind to take this interest in
the welfare of a desolate and disheartened man,
and those who are dear to him."
Peter's cheeks were too brown to show blushes,
and his cocked hat covered his white forehead;
but he noticed that his heart was brewing a crimson blush, whether it burst through the valves
and came to the surface or not. In-fact he begall to feel a lively sympathy for this weak girl,
into whose orbit he was presently to fling himself, like a yellow-haired comet, with spoil-sport
intent. The more he tried to cork in his blush,
the more it would n't be corked. And presently
bang it came to the surface. His white forehead
tingled at every pore, as the surface of a glass of
Clicquot may tingle with its own bursting bubbles. No such rosy flash had ever showed on his
countenance, when Anna's or Belinda's or Clara's
or Delia's cheeks challenged him to kindle up.
But the mere thought of a name much lower
down in the alphabet now made his heart eager
to do its share in striking fire and lighting this
sorrowful scene about the Lucy in question.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          149
The sad father was not in the way to observe
blushes; nor was Voltaire, who now proceeded
to finish his story.
For fear the worthy fellow might lapse into
brogue,-whereupon the ghost of John C. Calhoun would hurroo with triumph, and ventriloquize derisive niggerisms through the larynx of
his type negro, the stuffed Gorilla, - Voltaire's
tale shall be transposed into the third person.
Then the hiatuses can be filled up, and we shall
be able to peer a little into Lucy Brothertoft's
heart, and see whether the Heavenly Powers
have guarded her, as Sappho the cook long ago
prophesied they would.




VI.
No hag is a houri to her fille de chambre.
Mrs. Brothertoft, Handsome hag, was thoroughly comprehended by the Voltaire family.
That was no.doubt part of their compensation
for being black, and below stairs.
Sweet Lucy was also well understood in the
kitchen.
Many a pitiful colloquy went on about her
between those three faithful souls.
Sappho's conundrum, " What is de most importantest'gredient in soup? " was often propounded.  Voltaire  always protested against
such vulgar remarks.  Plato always guessed
"Faith!" and pretended he'd never heard the
riddle before.
" Faith is all very well," Voltaire would say,
in studied phrases as a model to his son. ", But
where is the Works? Where is the Works to
help Miss Lucy?"
"Jess you keep yer grip onto de Faith," his
wife would respond, "an' de Works will jussumfy, when de day of jussumfication comes."




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          151
So Lucy grew up a grave, sad, lonely young
girl. Her heart was undeveloped, for she had
no one but her mother to love. She loved there,
with little response. Her mother received, and
did not repel, her love. That was enough for
this affectionate nature. As to sympathy, they
were strangers.
" She seems to me bitterly cold, when I love
her so dearly," Lucy would say to herself; "' but
how can I wonder? My father's wrong-doing
has broken her heart. Her life must be mere
endurance. Mine would be, if I were so disappointed in one I loved. It is now."
And the poor child's heart would sink, and
her eyes fill, and thick darkness come over her
future.
She lived a sadly lonely life.  She could
never be merry as other girls.  There was a
miserable sense of guilt oppressing her soul.
The supposed crimes of her father- those unknown enormities —weighed upon her. These,
she thought, were what made many good people
a little shy of the Brothertoft household.  She
could not fail to perceive a vague something in
which her mother's house was different from
other houses she was permitted slightly to know.
Why were so many odious men familiar there?
When the family were in town, she could avoid
them, day and evening, and spend long hours




152          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
unnoticed and forgotten in her own chamber.
She could escape to books or needlework. But
why did her mother tolerate these coarse men
from the barracks, with their Tom, Dick, and
Harry talk? To be sure these were days of war,
and Mrs. Brothertoft was loyal in her sympathies,
though non-committal, and " She may think it
right," thought Lucy, "to show her loyalty in
the only way a woman can, by hospitality. But
I am glad she does not expect me to help her
entertain her guests.' I am glad I am a child
still. I hope I shall never be a woman."
Her life took a sombre cast. She sank into a
groove, and moved through the hours of her
days a forlorn and neglected creature.
"' Queer!" Julia Peartree Smith would say
of her. " A little weak here," and Julia touched
her forehead, just below her chestnut front.
" She is a Brothertoft, and they were always
feeble-minded folk, you  know.  But perhaps
it's just as well," - and Julia sank her voice
to a mean whisper,- " just as well she should n't
be too sharp-sighted in that house. I really believe the silly chit loves her mother, and thinks
her as good as anybody. I tried to give her a
half-hint once, but the little fool fired up redhot and said, I was a shameful old gossip, —'old,' indeed!"
So Lucy lived, utterly innocent of any dream




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         163
of the evil she was escaping. There is something
sadly beautiful and touching in this spectacle.
A moonlit cloud flitting over the streets of a
great wicked city, pausing above foul courts
where vice slinks and crime cowers, reflected
in the eddies of the tainted river, — the same
eddy that was cleft at solemn moonrise by a suicide, - this weft of gentle cloud is not more unconscious of all the sin and shame beneath it,
than Lucy of any wrong. The cloud beholds the
pure mnoon, and drifts along unsullied; Lucy
saw only her own white and virginal faith. It
was not a warming, cheering luminary; but it
shed over her world the gray, resigned light of
patience.
A touching sight! the more so, because we
know that the character will develop, and, when
it is ripe enough to bear maturer sorrows and to
perceive a darker shame, that the eyes will open
and the sorrow and shame will be revealed,
standing where they have so long stood unseen.
After this little glimpse of Lucy's life, monotonously patient for the want of love, Voltaire
takes up his narration again.
Voltaire thought Mrs. Brothertoft had determined to marry off Miss Lucy to Major Kerr as
long ago as last spring, before they left town.
She did not, however, announce her plans until
they were in the country. She probably knew
7 *




154          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
that this was a case where the betrothed had
better not see too much of each other.
" I remember the day," says the negro, " when
Miss Lucy began to mope. Roses was comin' in
strong.  She used to fill the house with'em.
Sometimes she'd sing a little, while she was
fixin''em. But from that day out, she's never
teched a flower nor sung a word.  She's just
moped."
By and by Voltaire had discovered the reason.
It was the wreath of mock orange-flowers
dangled over Lucy's head by a false Cupid,
Anteros himself, that had taught her to hate
roses and every summer bloom. Her faint songs
were still because her heart was sick. The bridegroom was coming, and her mother had notified
the bride to piut on her prettiest smile.  This
command was given in Mrs. Brothertoft's short,
despotic way. Neither side argued. Lucy prepared to obey, just as she would have thrust a
thorn in her foot, or swallowed a coal, upon
order. She was not so very happy. She could
be a little more unhappy without an unbearable
shock. Major Kerr did not disgust her so much
as some of her mother's intimates. Still the
prospect was not charming. The summer roses
lost color to her eyes. Color left the cheeks that
once rivalled the roses. The bride did not try to
smite. Smiles are smiles only when the heart




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         155
pulls the wires. It takes practice to work the
grimace out of a forced smile, so that it may pass
for genuine.
When was the bridegroom coming? That information the bridegroom himself, though Sir
Henry Clinton's Adjutant, could not yet precisely
give. " We are soon to make a blow at the
Highlands, — then you will see me," - so he
wrote, and sent the message in a silver bullet.
Silver bullets, walnuts split and glued together,
and stuffed with pithy notes instead of kernels,
and all manner of treacherous tokens, passed between Brothertoft Manor and the Red outposts.
Whether facts leaked out from leaky old Put
when glasses too many of the Brothertoft Yellowseal were under his belt; whatever true or false
intelligence Scrammel paid for his post on Miss
Lucy's sofa, - every such fact was presently
sneaking away southward in the pocket of young
Bilsby, or some other Tory tenant on the Manor.
"I saw Miss Lucy mopin' and mopin' worse
and worse," says Voltaire, " but I could n't do
nothin', and there I sot in the pantry, like a
dumb hoppertoad, watchin' a child walkin' up to
a rattlesnake."
Voltaire's Faith without Works was almost
dead.
Young Bilsby must have sneaked up to Brothertoft Manor with the news of Clinton's expedi



156          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
tion to the relief of Burgoyne, just at the time
that Mr. Brothertoft's announcement of his presence at Fishkill reached Voltaire.
"I did not dare tell Miss Lucy her father was
so near," says the major-domo, "until, all at
once, on the fourth of this month, we saw King
George's ships lying off King's Ferry; and by
and by up the hill comes Major Kerr to the
Manor-House, red as a beet."
Upon this arrival, Lucy first fully comprehended what misery the maternal fiat was to
bring upon her. Voltaire found her weeping
and utterly desolate. At once his Faith worked
out words. The dumb hoppertoad found voice
to croak, " Ware rattlesnake! "
" You are going to be married, Miss Lucy?"
he asked.
She wanted sympathy sadly, poor child! As
soon as he spoke, she made a tableau and a scene,
-both tragic. She laid her head on the old
fellow's shoulder, — Tableau.  She burst into
tears, - Scene.
Woolly wig and black phiz bent over fair hair
and pale face. Delicate lips of a fine old Lincolnshire stock murmured a plaint. Thick lips
of coarse old African stock muttered a vow of
devotion. A little, high-bred hand, veined with
sangre azul, yielded itself to the leathery pressure of a brown paw. Ah, poor child! she had




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         157
need of a friend, and was not critical as to
color.
"To be married?" Lucy responded, when
sobs would let her speak.  "Yes, Voltaire, in
three or four days."
" Time's short as Sappho's best pie-crust."
" Mother says," continued the'young lady,
"that I must have a protector. The Major is
here now, and may be ordered up or down any
day.  Mother says it is providential, and we
must take advantage of the opportunity, and be
married at once."
She looked very little like a bride, with her
sad, shrinking face.
" Don't you love Major Kerr?" asked Voltaire. " Lub " he always must pronounce this
liquid verb.
"'Do I love him, Voltaire?  I hope to when
we are married. Mother says I will. She says
the ceremony and the ring will make another
person of me. She says she has chosen me an
excellent match, and I must be satisfied.  O
Voltaire! it seems a sin to say it, but my mother
is cold and harsh with me. Perhaps I do not
understand her.  If I only had some other
friend! "
" You have," Voltaire announced.
"You —I know," she said, kindly.
"Closer- miles closer'n me!"




158         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
" Who? Do you mean any one of our loyalist neighbors?"
Lucy ran her thought over her short list of
friends. All the valued names had been expunged by her mother's strict censorship, or
pushed back among mere acquaintance.' "Have you forgotten your father?" the butler asked.
"Forgotten! I go every day, when no one
is by, and lift up the corner of the curtain over
the Vandyck. Our ancestor is my father himself. I look at him, and pray God to forgive
him for being so wicked, and breaking my mother's heart."
tc Poh!"
Lucy drew back in astonishment, as if a Paixhan blow-gun had exploded at her side.'Poll!" again burst out Voltaire's doublecorked indignation.   "If there was a wicked
one in that pair, it was n't him. If there's a
heart broke, it's his."
Lucy for a moment did not think of this as
an assault upon her mother.
"What, Voltaire!'" she cried. "He is not
dead! Not a bad man! Not a rebel!"
" Rebel!" says the French radical's namesake. "I Why should n't he be a rebel for Freedom? Bad! he ain't bad enough to marry off
his daughter only to git shet of her.  Dead!




EDWIVN BROTtERTOFT.         159
No, Miss Lucy; he's up to Fishkill, and sends
you his lub by me, if you want it."
Love — even disguised as " Lub "-it was
such a fair angel of light, that Lucy looked up
and greeted it with a smile. But this was not
a day for smiles. Storms were come after long
gray weather. Only tears now, - bitter tears!
They must flow, sweet sister! It is the old,
old story.
" Does he really love me? Is this true? Was
he true?  Was I deceived?  Wily did he and
my mother separate? Why did she drive him
out?  Whom  call I trust?  Is every one a
liar? What does this mean'? Answer me, Voltaire!  Answer me, or I shall die."
Voltaire looked, and did not answer. To answer was a terrible revelation to make to this
innocent girl. Faith was putting the old fellow
to very cruel Works.
" Speak! " said Lucy again, more passionately
than before, and her voice expressed the birth of
a new force within her.  " Speak! What have
you to say of my mother? I dread some new
sorrow. Tell me what it is, or I shall die."
Again these pages refuse to listen to the few
deplorable words of his reply. He whispered
the secret of her mother's disloyal life.
" I will not believe it," said the horror-stricken
girl.




160          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
She did believe it.
She had touched the clew. From this moment
she knew the past and the present, -vaguely, as
a pure soul may know the mystery of sin.
For the moment she felt herself crushed to a
deeper despair than before. She recognized the
great overpowering urgency of Fate. Slhe could
not know that this recognition marks to the soul
its first step into conscious immortality; and that
the inevitable struggle to conquer Fate must now
begin in her soul.
"What can I do? " she said; and she looked
guiltily about the chamber, as if every object in
that house were the accomplice of a sin.
"Run away with me to your father!" said
Voltaire.
She shook her head weakly. She was a great,
great way yet from any such exploit with her infant will.'No," she said; "I must obey my mother.
That is my plain duty. She is pledged and I
am pledged to this marriage. I must submit."
Tears again, poor child! The old habits are still
too strong for her.
"But suppose your father should tell you tc
obey him, and not submit," Voltaire propounded.
"Suppose he should help to run you off."
" How can he? "
"I will steal off to-night to Fishkill, and see
lim."




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          161
" You risk your life."
" Poh!"
"Poh! " is not a word to use to a young lady,
Mr. Voltaire. Yet perhaps nothing could express so well as that explosive syllable how
much and how little he valued life when the
lady's happiness was at stake.
" But I did n't want Miss Lucy to be frightened, of course," says he to Major Skerrett, "' so
I told her that I was safe enough in the Highlands, and when I got here I did n't believe Major
Scrammel would let me be shot for a spy."
Here he gave a monstrous sly look.
Peter Skerrett again felt his cheeks burn, and
his forehead tingle, and the stilled Muse of History reports that " he uttered a phrase indicative
of reprehension and distrust."
In short, he said to himself, " Scrammel! damn
the fellow!"
Certainly! Why not? But it must not be
forgotten, that it is Scrammel who suggested this
expedition. Voltaire told Scrammel of the marriage.  Scrammel, as our peep into friend Livingston's brain informed us, would do one of his
meanest tricks to be himself the bridegroom.
And his scheme seems to be in a fair way to forbid the banns.
And so guileless Lucy Brothertoft had consented to her first plot. Her accomplice was to
K




162          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
shift the burden of weakness from her shoulders,
and throw it upon her father. Meantime she
was to take her place at the great dinner-party,
and be a hypocrite for the first time.  How
guilty felt that innocent heart! iHow she dreaded lest some chance word or look might betray
her!  What torture was the burning blush in
her cheeks as she began to comprehend the woman she must name mother! How she trembled lest that woman's cruel eyes should pierce
her bosom, see the secret there, and consign her,
without even the appointed delay, to the ardent
bridegroom.  She knew that she should yield
and obey. Now that for the first time she was
eager to have a will of her own, she saw how
untrained and inefficient this will was. Horror
of her mother, and loathing of her betrothed,
each repelled her in turn. She seemed to see
herself praying for mercy to the woman, and she
coldly refusing to listen; then flying across the
stage, and supplicating the man to spare her,
and he, instead, triumphing with coarse fondness. Ah, unhappy lady! with no friend except
that stout-hearted old squire, shinning by night
through the Highlands, and dodging sentries at
risk of a shot,- a shot, that startling trochee,
sharp ictus, and faint whiz.
Except for the Majors, —Scrammel to plot,
Skerrett to execute, — Voltaire's evasion would




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         163
have been in vain. Edwin Brothertoft was paralyzed by the news of his daughter's danger.' What can I do? " he said to the old servant,
bitterly. "Nothing! Nothing! Is General Putnam, just defeated, likely to march down to rescue
my daughter? These are not the days of chivalry. Knights do not come at call, when damsels are in distress. No; I am impotent to help
her. If she cannot help herself, her heart must
break, as mine has broken. That base woman
will crush her life, as she crushed mine.'Why
did you come to me? You have brought me
news that I may love my daughter, only to make
the new love a cause of deeper misery. Why
did you tell me of this insult to her womanhood? I had enough to endure before. Go!
What can I say to her? She will not care for.a
futile message,'that I love her, but can do
nothing.' Some stronger head than mine might
devise a plan. Some stronger heart might dare.
But I have given up. I am a defeated man, -a
broken-hearted man, living from day to day,
and incom'petent to vigor.  I remember myself another person. I sometimes feel the old
fire stir and go out. But I can do nothing.
My fate and my daughter's fate are one. Go,
Voltaire, and leave me to my utter sorrow and
despair!"
He had but just dismissed the negro, and




164          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
turned a despondent back upon the world,
when lo! Peter Skerrett, as we saw him, comes
forth. Here comes the Captor of Captives, the
Hero of Ballads!  Here come chivalry, youth,
ardor, force, confidence, success, all in a body,
- a regiment of victor traits in one man, and
on that man's lip THE MOUSTACHE, the best
in the Continental army. Iere comes a man
whose timepiece has never learnt to mark " Too
late." Here he comes, and he has made it his
business to eliminate Kerr from the problem df
Brothertoft Manor; so that Kerr + Lucy = Bliss
will be for a time an impossible equation.
Take courage, then, Edwin Brothertoft, tender
of heart, sick at will, and thank Heaven that
you married your gunstock to the brainpan.of
that British beggar with a baggonet at Bunker
Hill, and so saved Skerrett to help you.
Voltaire's story, with additions and improvements, now ends, and business proceeds.




VII.
"AFTER this history, I want a little topography," said Skerrett.  " Can you sketch me
a ground plan of the house?"
That skeleton, Brothertoft could draw without much feeling. The house, as it stood, complete in the background of memory, he would
not allow himself to recall. Its walls and furniture were to hlim  the unshifted scenes and
properties of a tragedy.  If he painted them
before his mind's eye, all evil-omened figure of
a woman would step from behind the curtain,
threatening some final horror, to close the drama
of their lives.
"This wing to the right," Skerrett said, "seems
an addition."' It was built on by the present proprietress,"
coldly rejoined the former heir.
"Stables here!" continued the Major, tracing
the plan.  " Dining-room windows open toward
them. Shrubbery here, not too far off for an
ambush. Now, Voltaire, if we could get Major
Kerr alone in that dining-room  in the dusk




166          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
of the evening to-morrow, I could walk him off
easily."
"H o!" exclaims the butler.  " That's all
settled beforehand."
"Kerr sometimes makes late sittings there,
then? I fancied I knew his habits."
"He's a poor hand at courtin'," says Voltaire, with contempt. " Ladies likes dewotion, —
that's my'sperience. He's only dewoted to
fillin' hisself full of wine."
" A two-bottle man?"
" Every day, when the ladies leave table, he rubs
his hands," - Voltaire imitates, -" and says,'Now then, old boy, fresh bottle! Yellow-seal!
Don't shake him!' He drinks that prefty slow,
and gives me a glass and says,'Wooll, ead,
we'11 drink my pretty Lucy.   Lucky Kerr's
pretty bride!'"
Peter Skerrett here looked ferocious.
"Then," continued the old fellow, "he drops
off asleep at the table till four o'clock.  Then
he wakes up, sour, and sings out," - Voltaire imitates, -"' Hullo, you dam nigger! Look sharp!
Another bottle! If you shake him, I'11 cut your
black heart out.'  He drinks him, and then
byme-by he says,'Ole fel! Shmore wide, ole
fel.  Tuther boddle dow!  I aslikitspussonle
favor, ole fel!' Then he sings a little, and gets
generally accelerated."




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         167
"I would rather have him slowed, than accelerated," says Peter.
"Oho!" grinned the butler, and whispered
to himself, " If the Major thinks he ought to
be stupid-tipsy for the good of the cause and
Miiss Lucy, I can deteriorate him, into his Madeira, with a little drop of our French Gutter de
Rosy brandy. That will take the starch out of
his legs, and make him easy to handle. But that
is my business. I won't tell nobody my secrets.
The pantry and I must keep dark."
"I cannot help a grain of compunction in
this matter,"  Skerrett said.  "A  gentleman
does not like to interfere in another man's
courtship."
" Do you call this plot of a coarse man with
an unmotherly woman by the fair name of courtship? " Brothertoft said.
" No. And fortunately the lady has no illusions. I should not like to be the one to tell
Beauty she had loved Beast. But this Beauty,
it seems, has kept her heart too pure to have
lost her fine maidenly instinct of aversion to a
blackguard. Well, no more metaphysics! Scruples be hanged. Kerr don't deserve to be treated
like a gentleman. England should have kept
such fellows at home, if she wanted us to believe
good manners were possible under a monarchy.
Now, then, Mr. Brothertoft, suppose I do not




168          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
get myself'hanged as one espy,' and take my
prisoner, - does his capture protect your daughter enough?"
"I could wish, if it were possible, to have her
with me henceforth."
" We must make it possible, though it complicates matters. I could rush in, snatch Kerr,
and be off.  The blow  would be struck, the
enemy annoyed, our people amused; but in a
fortnight Clinton would offer some Yankee major
and a brace of captains to boot for his Adjutant,
the Honorable, &c. Then he would go down and
play Beast to Beauty again."
" Save my daughter, once for all; if it can be
done."
" I'11 try. Now, Voltaire, listen!"
Which he opened his mouth to do.
"' What people, besides the two ladies and
Major Kerr, will be at your house to-morrow
evenling,- the servants, I mean? "
" Oh! we live small at the Manor, now,ridiculous small. It's war times now. Rents
is n't paid. When we want a proper lot of servants, we takes clodhoppers."
"Lucky for my plans you do live small,"
Skerrett said. c' Never mind your family pride!
Name the household!"
"Me and Sappho and Plato, all patriots;
Jierck Dewitt's wife and her sister, Sally Bilsby,




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         169
both Tories, — that is, gals that likes redcoats
more than is good for'em."
" Could you manage to have the girls out of
the way to-morrow evening? "
" Easy enough. They'11 be glad to get away
for a frolic."
"Any horses in your stable, Voltaire?"
" Six, —all out of that Harriet Heriot mare
stock. You remember, Master Edwin."
Edwin Brothertoft did sadly remember the late
old Sam  Galsworthy's generous offer. He remembered sadly that ride, so many years ago,
and how the sweet south winds, laden with the
rustle of tropic palms, met him with fair omen,
- ah! long ago, when Faith was blind and Hope
was young!
" Six white horses," Voltaire continued; " the
four carriage-horses, Madam's horse, and Miss
Lucy's mare, - you ought to see Miss Lucy on
her!"
" Perhaps I shall. Tell Plato to give the mare
another oat to-morrow! Her mistress may want
a canter in the evening, - eh, Voltaire?"
Grin in response.
" Tell Miss Brothertoft, with her father's best
love," Skerrett resumed, "that he will be on
the lawn by the dining-room window to-morrow
evening at nine o'clock, waiting for her to ride
with him to Fishkill. Tell her to be brave, pru8




170          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
dent, and keep out of sight with a headache,
until she is called to start. And you, Voltaire,
as you love her, be cautious, be secret and be
wide awake!"
At " be cautious," the old fellow winked elaborately. At " be secret," he locked all four
eyelids tight.  At " be wide awake,"  snap!
eyelids flung open, and white of eye enough
appeared to dazzle a sharpshooter.
" Now, listen, Voltaire! "
Mouth agape, again, as if he had a tympanum
at each tonsil.
"Look at me, carefully! " continues Peter.
Pan shut and eyes d la saucer.
" Do you think you would know me disguised
in a red coat? "
Pan opened to explode, " Certain sure, sir! "
" And without my moustache?" the major
asked.
He gave that feature a tender twirl.  His
fingers wrapped the fair tendrils lovingly around
them.
" Must it go?" he sighed. "0  Chivalry!
0 Liberty! 0 my Country! what sacrifices you
demand!"
Voltaire was sure that he would know the,
Hero, even with an emasculated lip.
"' Well; about eight to-morrow evening, when
Major Kerr is' accelerated' with his second




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         171
bottle, I shall knock at your loyal door, - moustache off, and red coat on —and ask a night's
lodging for a benighted British sergeant."
"You shall have it," says the major-domo,
with a grand-seigneur manner.
" Nothing but apple-jack or Jersey champagne has passed these lips, since we lost the
Brandywine. You will naturally give me my
bottle of Yellow-seal, and my bite of supper,
in the dining-room with the Major."
" Oh!" cried Voltaire with  sudden panic.
"Don't risk it! Major Kerr's got a sword awful
long and awful sharp, and two pistols with gold
handles, plum full of bullets. Every day, when
he drinks, he puts'em on the sideboard, an' he
say,' Lookerhecyar, ole darkey! spose dam rebble cum, I stick him, so; an' I shoot him, so.'
Don't resk it, Mas'r Skerrett!"
(Ancient servitor, suppress thy terror and thy
Tombigbee together!)
"Slip off with the weapons, and hide'em in
your bed," says the Major.
"In my bed?" says Voltaire, in good Continental again. " In our feather bed? Suppose
Sappho goes to lie down, and touches cold iron,
wront she take on scollops, high?"
"The poetess must not be taught to strike
a jangling lyre. Give the tools to Plato. Set
him on guard at the dining-room door when




172          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
I come. Tell him he is serving a model Republic, - such as his ancient namesake never
dreamed."
Brothertoft smiled at these classical allusions.
Lively talk was encouraging him, as his junior
meant it should.
Neither foresaw what a ghastly mischief was
to follow this arming of Plato.




VIII.
"Now, Voltaire, the sooner you are on your
way back, to warn and comfort your young
lady, the better," said Skerrett.  "I'm sorry
for your shins among the Highlands by night."
"Never mind my shins," Voltaire replied
with a martyr air. "They belong to my country and Miss Lucy."
He passed his hand tenderly along their curvilinear edges, as if he were feeling a scymitar,
before a blow. They were sadly nicked, poor
things! They would be lacerated anew, as he
brandished them at the briers, and smote with
them the stumps along his twenty-mile anabasis.
"Farewell, my trump of trumps," said the
Major. "Remember; be cautious, be secret, be
wide awake!"
Same pantomime as before in reply.
" If Mrs. Brothertoft suspects anything, there
will be tragedy," Peter continued.
So all three knew, and shuddered to think.
"I will walk a little way with my friend,"




174         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
said Brothertoft, "I have a more hopeful message now to send to my dear child."
Peter watched the two contrasted figures until
they disappeared in the glow of the many-colored forest.
"Lovely old gentleman! " he thought. " Yes;'lovely' is the word. My first encounter with
a broken heart. It has stopped my glee for a
long time to come.  I have felt tears in my
eyes, all the while, and only kept them down
by talking low comedy with the serio-comic
black personage. Can a broken heart be mended?
That is always woman's work, I suppose. In
this case, too, woman broke, woman must repair. The daughter must make over what the
wife spoilt. She shall be saved for his sake and
her own, even if I come out of the business
an amputated torso. I don't quite comprehend
people that cannot help themselves. But here
I see the fact,-there are such.  And I suppose exuberant chaps, like myself, are put in
the world to help them.  I wonder whether
any woman will break my heart! I wonder
whether Miss Lucy liked any of our fellows,
and had a hero in her eye to make Kerr look
more caitiff than he is.  Could not be Scrammel,-he is a sneak. Could not be Radidre, —
he is too dyspeptic. Nor Humphreys, - too pompous. Nor Livingston, — he is not sentimental




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         175
enough.  Nor Skerrett, -him  she has never
seen and will see with his moustache off. Ah!
the Chief was right when he told me I should
put my foot into some adventure up here. And
now the thing is started, I must set it moving."
He walked toward Jierck Dewitt, still on
guard at the gate. His relief was just coming
up, and the sentry was at liberty.
"Did you know those two men I was talking
with, by the well, Jierck?" Peter asked.
" Yes, sir; Sergeant Lincoln and Lady Brothertoft's factotum. I'd like to know what old
Voltaire wanted here."
"  He does not recognize the ex-Patroon," Skerrett thought. " Then no one will. Jierek's eyes
always saw a little lighter in the dark, and a
little steadier in a glare, than the next man's.
Sorrow must have clapped a thick mask on my
friend's face."
"I suppose you know the Brothertoft Manor
country  and  the  Manor-House  thoroughly,
Jierck," the Major said.
"Know the Manor, sir! I should think so.
I began with chasing tumble-bugs and crickets
over it, and studied it inch by inch. Then I
trailed black-snakes and ran rabbits, and got to
know it rod by rod. I've fished in every brook,
and dumb every nut-tree, and poked into every
woodcock swamp or patridge brush from end




176         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
to end of it. I know it, woodland and clearing,
side-hill and swale, fields that grow stun and
fields that grow corn. I've run horses over it,
where horses is to be run, — and that's not
much, for its awful humpy country, and boulders won't stay put anywheres.  Deer, too,there ain't many pieces of woods on it where I
have n't routed out deers, and when they legged
for the Highlands, I legged too, and come to
know the Highlands just as well. I used to love,
when I was a boy, to go along on the heights
above the river, and pick out places where I was
going to live; but I sha'n't live in any of'em
now. What does a man care about home, or
living at all, when his woman is n't true? "
Major Skerrett did not interrupt this burst of
remembrances. " Jierck suffers as much in his
way," he thought, " as the ex-Patroon."  " And
the house," he said, "you know that as thoroughly?"
" Ay, from  garret to cellar.  My father,
Squire Dewitt, has been in England, and he
says it's more like an English house than any
he knows, in small. From garret to cellar, says
I. The cellar I ought to know pretty well. I
dodged in there once, when I was a boy, hangin'
round the house; and got into the wine-room,
and drank stuff that came near spoilin' my taste
for rum forever, - I. wish it had. They caught




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         177
me, and the Madam had me whipped till the
blood come. Mr. Brothertoft tried to beg off for
me. She'd got not to make much of him by
that time, and the more he begged, the harder
she had'em lay it on me. But I'm talkin' off,'
stiddy as the North River, and you've got something to say to me, Major, I know, by the way
you look.  What's up about Brothertoft Manor? "
" There's a British officer staying there, who
has never tasted pork and beans. I've promised General Putnam to bring him up here to
dinner."
"Hooray! that's right.  Give these militia
something to think about, or they get to believe
war's like general trainin'-day, and they can cut
for home when they're tired. You want volunteers. I'm one."
"I counted on you for my lieutenant. Sergeant Lincoln also goes. Now I want three men
more, and you shall choose them. Each man
must have the grit of a hundred; and they must
know the country as well as they know the way
to breakfast. Name three, Jierck!"
"That I'11 do, balg. There's Ike Van Wart,
for one. His junto, him and Jack Paulding and
Dave Williams, would just make the three. But
Jack's nabbed, and down to York in a prisonship. And Dave's off on furlough, sowing his




178          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
father's winter wheat for the Cowboys to tromp
next summer."
Only Isaac Van Wart, therefore, of that famous trio, whom the MIuse of Tradition shall
fondly nickname
MAJOR ANDRE'S BOOTJACK,
joined Skerrett on his perilous service.
" Ike for one," continued Dewitt.  " Well,
Galswortby, old Sam Galsworthy, for two. And
for three, I don't believe a better man lives
than Hendrecus Canady, the root-doctor's son.
They're all Brothertoft-Manor boys, built of
the best cast-steel, and strung with the wiriest
kind of wire. Shoot bullets into'em, stick baggonets into'em; they don't mind the bullets any
more than spit-balls at school, nor the baggonets
more than witches do pins."
" Well, Jierck, have them here in an hour. I
will join you, and talk the trip over, and we will
be ready to start at sunset."
Skerrett found himself a horse, trotted back
to Fishkill, wrote a farewell to his step-brother
and his mother, and scratched a few irrepressible lines to Washington, such as the hero loved
to get from his boys, and valued much more than
lumbering despatches marked Official. The despatches only announced facts, good or bad. The
brisk, gallant notes revealed spirits which black




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         179
facts could not darken, nor heavy facts depress.
"So long as I have lads like Peter Skerrett,"
thought Our George, by the grace of God Pater
Patriae, when he received this note, a fortnight
after that cup-lip-and-slip battle of Germantown,
" while I have such lads with me, I can leave my
red paint in my saddle-bags with my Tuscarora
grammar."
" Now," thought Peter, " I have made my will
and written my despatch, I must proceed to
change myself into a redcoat."
He unpacked a British sergeant's uniform,
which he had carried, if disguise should be
needed in his late solitary journey.
" There is a garment," said he, holding up the
coat with an air of respect, "' whose pockets have
felt the King's shilling.  But thy pockets, old
buff and blue! "-he stripped off his own coat,
— "never knew bullion, though often stuffed
with Continental paper at a pistareen the pound
avoirdupois."
His weather-beaten scarlets were much too
small for the tall champion.  By spasm  and
pause, and spasm again, however, he managed
to squeeze into them at last.
Then he took Mrs. Birdsell's little equilateral
triangle of mirror, three inches to a side, and,
holding it off at arm's length, surveyed himself
by sections.




180          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
"'The color don't suit my complexion," he
said, viewing his head and neck.  "The coat
will not button over my manly chest, and I shall
have to make it fast with a lanyard," -here he
took a view of the rib-region. "The tails are
simply ridiculous," - he twisted about to bring
the glass to bear upon them. "In short," - and
lie ran the bit of mirror up and down, -" I am
a scarecrow, cap d pie. Liberty herself would
not know me. Pretty costume to go and see a
lady in! Confound women! Why will wives
break husband's hearts?  Why will girls grow
up beauties and heiresses, and become baits for
brutes? Ah, Miss Lucy Brothertoft! You do
not know what an inglorious rig Peter Skerrett
is submitting to for your sake. And the worst
is to come. Alas! the worst must come!"
He hoisted the looking-glass and gazed for a
moment irresolutely at his face.
There, in its accustomed place, sat The Moustache, blonde in color, heroic in curl, underscoring his firm nose, pointing and adorning the
handsome visage.
Skerrett gazed, sighed, and was silent.
Nerve him, Liberty! Steel him, Chivalry!
A hard look crept over his countenance.
He clutched a short blade, pointless; but with
an edge trenchant as wit.
It was a razor.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         181
Slash! And one wing of The Moustache was
swept from the field.
Behold him, trophy in hand and miserable
that he has won it!
Will resolution carry him through a second
assault? Or will he go one-sided; under one
nostril a golden wreath, under the other, bristles,
for a six-month?
Slash! The assassination is complete.
His lip is scalped.  All is bald between his
nose and mouth.  The emphasis is subtracted
from his countenance. His upper lip, no longer
kept in place by its appropriate back-load, now
flies up and becomes seamed with wrinkles.
And there on the table lay The Moustache!
There they lay, -- the right flank and the left
flank, side by side in theiri old posture, —the
mere exuviae of a diminished hero.
Peter turned away weakly as a Samson
shorn.
"Ah, Liberty! Ah, Chivalry! i" he moaned.
" Will the good time to come make a sacred
relic of these yellow tufts?"
Tradition reports that his hostess found them,
and buried them, in an old tinder-box, in the
Fishkill village graveyard, where they sleep
among other exuvie, arms, legs, torsos, and
bodies of the heroes of that time.
And now it may be divined why De Chastel




182          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
lux does not immortalize the Skerrett Moustache. Perhaps Peter kept his lip in mourning
until after the surrender of Cornwallis.  Perhaps, alas! they never grew again.
" It will take gallons on gallons of this October to put me in good spirits again," says the
Major, as he rode away.
The mellow air, all sweetness, all sparkle, and
all perfume, flowed up to his lips, generously.
He breathed, and breathed, and breathed again
of that free tap, and by the time he reached the
rendezvous was buoyant as ever.
The Orderly, Brothertoft, was awaiting him,
and sat patient, but no longer despondent, looking through the bulky Highlands, as if they
were the mountains of a dream.
Jierck Dewitt and his Three were skylarking
in a pumpkin patch.  Twenty years ago we
saw the same three, straddling and spurring
tombstones in the Brothertoft Manor graveyard,
the day of the last Patroon's funeral,- the day
when Old Van Courtlandt made a Delphic
Apollo of him, and foretold, amid general clink
of glasses, that marriage of white promise and
black performance.
"'The child is father of the man"; and the
four boys have grown up as their fathers' children should.
Jierck Dewitt has already shown himself, and




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         183
related why he is not fully up to his mark of
manliness.
When he caught sight of Major Skerrett, he
dropped a yellow bomb, charged with possible
pumpkin-pies, which he was about to toss at
the head of one of his men, and marched the
file up to be reviewed by its leader.
" Number one is Ike Van Wart, Major," says
Jierck. "His eyes are peeled, if there's any
eyes got their bark off in the whole Thirteen."
Ike touched his cocked hat —it was his only
bit of uniform -and squared shoulders to be
looked at.
He was a lank personage, of shrewd, but rather
sanctimonious visage. War made him a scout.
Fate appointed him one prong of Major Andr6's
Bootjack. But Elder and Chorister were written on his face; and he died Elder and Chorister of the First Presbyterian Church of Greenburgh, in Westchester.
" Right about face, Ike! " says Jierck. " Forrud march, Old Sam Galsworthy! He's grit, if
grit grows.  His only fault is he's too goodnatured to live."
Old Sam stood forward, and laughed. As he
laughed, the last button flew off his uniform
coat. It was much too lean a coat for one of
his increasing diameter, and the exit of that
final button had long been merely a question




184          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
of time. Hearty Old Sam may be best described by pointing to his descendants, who in
our day are the identical Sam, repeated. Under
thirty, they drive high-stepping bays in the wagons of the great Express Companies. They wear
ruddy cheeks, chinny beards, natty clothes,
blue caps with a gilt button; and rattle their
drags through from Flatten Barrack, up Broadway and back, at 2 P. M., without hitting a
hub or cursing a carter. Everybody says Old
Sam is too good-natured to live! But he does
live and thrive, and puts flesh on his flesh, and
dollars on his pile. Over thirty, he marries,
as becomes a Galsworthy, buys acres up the
river, raises red-checked apples and children,
breeds high-stepping bays, and when he takes
his annual nag to the Bull's Head for sale,
the knowing men there make bets, and win
them, that Old Squire Sam weighs at least two
hundred and forty pounds with his coat off.
" Right about face, Sam! " says the fugleman.' Forrud march, He.ndrecus Canady! He looks.peaked, Major. His father's a root and Injun
doctor, and lie never had much but pills to eat,
until he ran off and joined the army. But I
stump the whole Thirteen to show me a wirier
boy, or a longer head. He'11 be in Congress before he says' Die' through that nose of his'n."
Hendrecus Canady in turn toed the mark for




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         185
inspection. He had a sallow, potticary face. A
meagre yellow down on his cheeks grew to a
point at his chifi. But he is neatly dressed in
half-uniform. He has a keen look, which will
say, "Stand and deliver your fact! " to every
phenomenon. He will, indeed, talk through his
nose, until his spirit passes by that exit to climes
where there are no noses to twang by. But wiry
men must be had when states need bracing.
And the root-doctor's runaway son was M. C.
long before his beak intoned his Nunc dinzittis.
" Now, boys," said Skerrett, " I like your looks,
and I like what Captain Jierck says of you. You
know what we've got to do, and know it must
be done. You'11 travel, scattering, according to
Jierck's orders, and rendezvous before moon-rise
at his father's barn on the Manor.  Sergeant
Lincoln goes with me. Jierck will name a place
where he'11 meet me at sunrise. We shall have
all day to-morrow to see how the land lies, and
the night to do our job in. Now, then, shake
hands round, and go ahead!"








PART  III.








FOR the first time in her life Lucy Brothertoft
failed to kiss her mother on the morning of the
dinner to Sir Henry Clinton.
A great pang went to the guilty woman's
heart.
She perceived that her daughter knew her at
last.
Ah, miserable woman! She did not dare turn
her great black eyes reproachfully upon Lucy,
and demand the omitted caress.
She did not dare say tenderly, "What, my
daughter, are you forgetting me?"
She did not dare go forward and press her
own unworthy lips to those virgin lips.
For one instant a great tumult of love and
remorse stirred within her. She longed to fling
herself on her knees before her daughter, to
bury her face in Lucy's lap, and there, with
tears and agony, cry out:"0 my child! pity me, do not hate me, for
the lie I have been. Ahll! you do not know the
misery of wearing an undetected falsehood in




190         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
the heart! You do not know the torture of
hypocrisy. You do not know how miserably
base it is to be loved for what you are not, —
to be trusted as a true and loyal heart, when
every moment of such false pretence is another
film of falsehood over the deep-seated lie. You
cannot know how we tacit liars long for betrayal, while we shrink and shudder when it
approaches!
"' And you, my gentle daughter, have been my
vengeance. Listen to me now! The old pride
breaks. The old horror passes. I confess. Before you, the very image of my husband in his
young and hopeful days, I confess my shameful
sin. I have been a foul wife and a false mother.
Do not scorn me, Lucy. I have suffered, and
shall suffer till I die.
"Ah! thank Heaven, my child, that you do
not feel and cannot divine half my degradation.
My agony you see, -let it be the lesson of your
life! Here I hide my face, and dare to recall
that brave and noble lover, your father. So
gentle he was, so tender, so utterly trustful!
And I was mean enough to think he triumphed
over me because his soul was fine, and mine was
coarse. So I took my coarse revenge.
"0 fool, fool! that I could not comprehend
that pure and lofty nature.  0 base! that I
must grovel and rank myself with the base. 0




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         191
cruel! that I must trample upon him. 0 dastardly! for the unwomanly sneers, for the studied insults, by which I bore him down, and broke
at last that high, chivalric heart. It seems to
me that I was not sane, but mad all those miserable years.
"But now, my daughter, see me weep! I
repent. My soul repents and loathes this guilty
woman here.  I have spoken, I have told you
fully what I am. I look up. I see your father's
patient, pitying glance upon your face. Speak,
with his voice, and say I may be slowly pardoned,
if my penitence endures. And kiss me, Lucy!
not my tainted lips; but kiss my forehead with
a kiss of peace!"
Such a wild agony of love and remorse stirred
within this wretched woman's heart.
But she battled it down, down, down.
The virago in her struck the woman to the
earth, and throttled her.  No yielding.  No
tears. No repentance. She scorned the medicine of shame.
Lucy's presence cowed her.  She did not
dare look at that gentle, earnest face, except
covertly, and as an assassin looks.
The Furies, her old companions, thickened
about her, like a mist pregnant with forms.
There was a whispering in the air. Did others
see those shadowy images?  Did others hear




192          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
their words? To her they were loud and
emphatic. "Stab the meek-faced girl! Be rid
of this spy!  Shall she sit there and shame
you? " - so the Furies whispered and shouted.
And the woman replied within herself: " Am
I not stabbing her? See, here is my hired
bravo, my future son-in-law, the very Honorable Major Kerr, —le bel homme! He will give
the puny thing troubles of her own to mind.
We will see whether she is always to stay so
meek and patient. We will see whether these
Brothertofts are so much better than other
people. She has learnt to suspect me at last.
I knew the time would come, and I have made
ready for it. Day after to-morrow they are to
be married, and then I shall be rid of Miss
Monitress."
With such passions at, work, breakfast at
Brothertoft, on the morning of Putnam's Council, and the dinner to Clinton, was not a very
cheerful meal. Mother and daughter were silent.
Kerr took his cue, and played knife and fork.




II.
Lucy left the room immediately after breakfast.
" My pretty Lucy seems to have the megrims,"
said Major Kerr. "Is that on the cards for a
blushing bride?"
" She sighs for the hour when Adonis shall
name her his," replied the mother, with a halfsneer.
" —Confound it, Madam!  I believe you are
laughing at me," the blowsy Adonis grumbled.
He lifted himself from the table, and swaggered
off to the fire, with a gorged movement. He
probably had never seen a turkey-buzzard lounging away from carrion; but he unconsciously
imitated that unattractive fowl.
The debris of his meal, the husks of what he
did eat, remained in an unpleasant huddle on
the table, proving that a great, gross feeder had
been there.
HIe stood before the fire, a big red object, the
type of many Englishmen who were sent over in
the Revolution to disenchant us with monarchy.
9                  M




194          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
The chances are nearly ten to one in favor of
an Englishman's being a gentleman. Our mother country seemed to have carefully decimated
her civil and military service of its brutes, to do
the dirty work of flogging the Continentals.
Kerr stood before the fire, making a picture of
himself.
A handsomish animal! Other women might
call him le bel homme without Mrs. Brothertoft's tone of contempt. He haa evidently given the artists of the alcoholic school - Brandy
and that-brotherhood - frequent sittings. They
paint rubicund, and had not been chary of carnations in his case.  His red uniform-jacket
gave him the air of an overgrown boy. But not
a frank, merry one; nor even an oafish, wellmeaning dolt of a chap. This great boy is a
bully. Smaller urchins would suffer under his
thumb. He would crush a butterfly, or, indeed,
anything gentle and tender, without much ceremony.
So Mrs. Brothertoft seemed to think, as she
surveyed him, posed there for inspection.
She smiled to herself, and thought, " This
sensual tyrant will presently give Miss Lucy
something else to do than insult'me with her
prudish airs."
" Dash it, Ma'am! " Kerr repeated, - his caste,
in his time, dashed freely, -" do you mean to
hint the girl is not fond of me? "




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         195
" Fond! she adores you. See how jealous she
is! She cannot leave you one moment."
" I'd have you to know, Madam, with your
sneers, that better blood than your daughter
have been fond of me."
" Why did n't Adonis stay in the home market,
then, instead of putting himself in the Provincial?"
"You know why! I don't make any secret
of my debts and my peccadillos. You know as
much about me as I do about you, my motherin-law."
She winced a little at this coarse familiarity.
It was part of her inevitable punishment to be so
treated. Ah! how bitterly she remembered, at
such words, the reverent courtesy of her husband! how bitterly, his pitying tenderness, even
when she had dishonored him, so far as his honor
was in her power! But she hardened herself
against these memories, and her vindictiveness
against that daughter of his grew more cruel.
"You must allow," continued Kerr, " that
you get me dem cheap."
" Cheap!" she rejoined.  " Cheap with the
debts and the peccadillos! Cheap, white feather
and all! "
" Who says I ever showed the white feather?"
roared Kerr.  " That's one of that muscadin,
Jack Andr6's lies. He wants my place as Adju



196          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
tant to Sir Henry. Bah! the shop-keeping, play.
acting, rhyme-writing milksop! he'd better keep
his Swiss jaws shut, and not slander a British
nobleman! "
" Nobleman! " says his hostess, evidently taking pleasure in galling her conspirator;  "I
thought you were only a peer's third son."
" There are but three lives between me and
the earldom, - an old gouty life, Tom's jockey
life, and Dick's drunken one. Your daughter
will be Countess of Bendigh one of these days,
and you'd both better be careful how you treat
me."
" DHow could I treat you better?"  I give you
the prettiest girl in the Province, with the prettiest portion."
" Have I got to tell you again, that not every
man would take your daughter? You need n't
look so fierce about it."
She did look fierce.  She looked- la belle
sauvage - as if she could handle a scalping-knife.
And no wonder!  This was not very pretty
talk on either side.
It was not very pretty work they had plotted.
Hate must have become very bitter in the mother's heart before she chose this brute and booby
for her daughter's husband. She did not even
perceive the dull spark of a better nature, not
utterly quenched in him, —gross, dissolute, over



EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          197
bearing, heavy, that he was. She wished to be
rid of Lucy Brotllertoft,- this was the first
thing. If, besides, she got an ally on the royalist
side, and a son-in-law who could help her to a
place in society in England, it was clear gain.
But enough of this conspiracy!
Will the father and that young rebel sans
moustache be bold and speedy enough to defeat it?




PLACE aux hgros!
To-day the lady of Brothertoft kLanor dines
Sir Henry Clinton and suite.
If General Putnam should ever march back,
and blame her that she gave aid and comfort
to the enemy, she will say that she was forced
to protect herself by a little sham hospitality.
It may be sham, but it is liberal.  Sappho
contributes her most faithful soup.  The river
gives a noble sturgeon, - and "Albany beef,"
treated as turbot, with sauce blanche, is fish
for anybody's fork.  The brooks supply trouts
by the bushel. The Highlands have provided
special venison for this festival. The Mjnor kills
its fatted calf, its sweetest mutton, its sprightliest young turkey, fed on honeydew grasshop-.
pers. There is a plum-pudding big as a pumpkin.
Alas that no patriot palate will vibrate to the
passing love-taps of these substantial good things!
All is ready, and Lady Brothertoft -so she
loves to be called — awaits her distinguished
guests, in her grandest attire.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          199
But, calm and stately as she sits, there is now
miserable panic and now cruel hate in her heart;
for all the time she is whispering to herself.
"Lucy did not kiss me. It is the first time
in all her life. Edwin Brothertoft's daughter
has discovered at last what I am. Did he come
in a dream and tell her?"
Then she would raise her eyes as far as those
fair hands lying in her daughter's lap, —no
higher, no higher, or the daughter would face
her, —and think of the wedding-ring that her
plot is presently to force upon one of those
locked fingers. She could hardly keep back a
scream of wild triumph at the thought.
So the mother sits, and holds her peace, such
as it is. The daughter waits, in a strange dream
of patience. Major Kerr swaggers about, admires
his legs, feels embarrassed before his mute betrothed, looks at his watch and grumbles, " It's
half past two.  Dinner's three, sharp.  The
soup will be spoiled if they don't show presently."
They begin to show now upon the quarterdecks of the three frigates in the river. The
guests, in full bloom of'scarlet and gold, come
up from cabin and ward-room of the Tartar, the
Preston, and the Mercury. Jack on the forecastle has his joke, as each new figure struts
forth, dodging whatever would stain or flavor




200          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
him  tarry.  The belated men call to their servants, " Bear a hand there, you lubber, with
the flour for my hair-powder! How the devil
did that spot come on my coat-sleeve! Why the
devil did n't you have these ruffles starched?"
The last man now struggles into his tightest
Hessians. The last man draws on his silk stockings. The last mallns his pumps. Sir Henry
Clinton comes out with Commodore Hotham.
The captain's gig has been swinging half an
hlour in the shade of the frigate's hull.  Present arms, sentry at the gangway! Here they
come, down the black side of the ship. Fire
and feathers, how splendid!.Take care of your
sword, Sir Henry, or you'11 trip and get a
ducking instead of a dinner! They scuttle into
the stern-sheets. The oarsmen, in their neatest
holiday rig, scoff in their hearts, and name
these great personages " lobsters" and " landlubbers."  The captain's coxswain, the prettiest
man of the whole ship's company, gives the
word, " Shove off! "  Boat-hook shoves, Jack on
deck peers through the port-holes. A topman,
aloft, accidentally drops a tarry bit of spunyarn
and hits Sir Henry on his biggish nose. " Back
starboard," the pretty coxswain orders. "Pull
port!"  " Give way all! "  And so we go to
dinner! And so from men-of-war in our time
heroes go to dinners ashore.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT          201
And now the gay party enters the diningroom at Brothertoft Manor.
How bright the sunbeams of the October afternoon, ricochetting from the smooth Hudson into
the windows, gleam on the epaulets and buttons of a dozen gorgeous officers! One special
ray is clearly detailed to signalize that star on
Sir Henry Clinton's left breast.  The room is
aflame with scarlet. Certainly these flamboyant
heroes will presently consume away every vestige of a rebel army. Surely, after a parry or
two against these dress swords, the champions
of freedom will drop their points and lield their
necks to the halter. Each elaborate fine gentleman, too, of all this bandboxy company, is
crowned with victor bays. They plucked them
only t' other day across the river on the ramparts of Forts Clinton and Montgomery. When
Jack Burgoyne sends down his bunch of laurel
fromn Saratoga, the whole are to be tied up in
one big. bouquet, and despatched to tickle the
nose and the heart of Farmer George at Windsor Castle.
Sir Henry Clinton - no less - Cesar ipse -
hands in the grand hostess, and takes his seat
at her right. How jolly he looks, the fat little
man! How his round face shines, and his protuberant nose begins to glow with inhaling the
steam of the feast!
9*




202          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
" I must have you on my left, Admiral," says
the hostess, to a hearty gentleman in naval uniform.
" Thank you for my promotion, Madam," rejoins Commodore Hotham, dropping into his
place.
At the head of her table, then, sits Lady
Brothertoft, proud and handsome, flanked by
the two chiefs. And down on either side the
guests dispose themselves in belaurelled vista.
Major Kerr takes the foot of the table. He
carves well for everybody, and best for himself.
Two spoonrful of sauce blanche float his choice
portion of the Albany beef. The liver of the
turkey he accepts as carver's perquisites. And
when he comes to cut the saddle of' venison,
plenty of delicate little scraps, quite too small to
offer to others, find their way to his plate.
Lucy is at his right.  What? in high spirits?
in gay colors? Has she so soon become a hypocrite and conspiratress? Why, the little dissembler laughs merrily, and flirts audaciously!
Laughs merrily!  All! there are bitter tears
just beneath that laugh! If you call tolerating compliments from that young Captain at
her right flirting, then she is flirting, and so conceals her disgust of hler betrothed.
And who is that young Captain?  He stole
into the chair at Lucy's right, and began to talk




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         203
sentiment before he had had his soup. Who is
this fine gentleman of twenty-six, -with the oval
face, the regular features, the slightly supercilious mouth, the dimpled chin, the hair so carefully powdered and queued? Who is this elegant petit maitre?  With what studied gesture
he airs his ruffles! How fluently he rattles!
How easily he improvises jingle! He quotes
French, as if it were his mother-tongue. He
smiles and sighs like an accomplished lady-killer.
Who is he?
Major Emerick, of the Hessian Chasseurs,
looks across the table at this gay rattle, and then
whispers to his own neighbor, Lord Rawdon,'Zee dat dab maggaroni, Chack Antr6; how
he bake lubb co de breddy Lucie! Bajor Gurr
will bide off his'ead breddy sood."
"' Kerr may glower and look like a cannibal,"
Rawdon returned, in a whisper, " but he will
not eat Jack Andr6's head so long as there's
any of that venison left."
"' I dinked Chack was id Bedsylvadia or Cherzey," says Emerick, wiping that enormous moustache of his, —a coarse Hessian article, planted
like a bushy abattis before his mouth.
"He was," replied Rawdon, "and I don't see
how he has been able to get here so soon, unless
that is his eidolon, his wraith, and moves like the
ghost in Hamlet. I suppose he heard that Kerr




204          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
was going to marry the heiress, and there would
be an Adjutancy looking for an Adjutant, and has
posted up to offer himself. He did n't know 1
was to have it. Jack is in too much hurry to
be a great man. His vanity will get him into a
scrape some of these days."
So this sentimental Captain is Jack Andre.
A pretty face; but there is gallows in it. A
pretty laced cravat; but the tie has slipped
ominously round under the left ear. All! Jack,
Rawdon is right; thy vanity will be the death of
thee.  Suppose thou hast been jilted by the
pretty Mrs. R. L. Edgeworth, ne'e Sneyd, do not
be over hasty to gain name and fame, that she
may be sorry she loved the respectable Ricllard,
and not thee, flippant Jack.  Sink thy shopkeeping days; nobody remembers them  against
thee. Do not try by unsoldierly tricks of bribery and treachery, and a correspondence after
the bagman model, to get for thyself the rank of
Brigadier and the title Sir John. And, Jack,
take warning that the latitude of Brothertoft
Manor is unhealthy for thee in the autumn.
Never come here again, or thy bootjack will
draw thy boots and find death in\them! Swinging by the neck is a sorry exit for a petit maitre,
and it must be annoying to know that, in punishment for a single shabby act, one's fame is standing forever in the pillory in Westminster Abbey.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         205
Captain Andr4 whispered soft nothings to Lucy.
And though Kerr glowered truculently, she listened, much to the amusement of Emerick and
Rawdon. Lucky, perhaps, for the daughter, that
mamma, at the head of the table, did not detect
this by-play!  She might have scented revolt,
and hastened the marriage.  An hour would
have brought the Tartar's chaplain; five minutes
would have clothed him in his limp surplice, and
in five more, Lucy, still quelled by the old tyranny, would have stammered, "love, honor, and
obey," - and " die."
She was not always very attentive to her butterfly companion.
Sometimes she bent forward, and looked at her
mother, sitting in all her glory between Army
and Navy, and the daughter's cheeks burned
with shame. She longed to fly away from all
this splendor, somewhither where she could dwell
innocently and weep away the infinite sorrow in
her gentle heart. If she had not been too bewildered by her throng of battling hopes and
fears within, by the clatter of the feast, and Jack
Andir6's mnischianza of gossip and compliment,
her notions of right and wrong, of crime and
punishment, would have become sadly confused.
Questions did indeed drift across her mind, -
"LHow can she sit there so proud and handsome? How can she be so calm and hard?




206          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
How can she bear the brunt of all these eyes,
and lead the talk so vigorously? She wields
and manages every one about her.  They applaud her wit. They listen to her suggestions.
She seems to comprehend these political matters better than any of them. Hear Sir Henry
Clinton,'Madam, if you were Queen of England, these rebel Colonies would soon be taught
subjection.' It is half compliment of guest to
hostess; but more than half truth. For she is
an imperious, potent woman. And has evil in her
soul given her this power and this knowledge?
Must women sin to be strong? How can she
sit there, knowing what she knows of herself,
knowing what is known of her?  She seems to
triumph. Triumph! alas! why is she not away
in silence and solitude, with a veil over her
bad beauty, praying to God to forgive her for
the harm she has done, and for the sin she is?
Is such hypocrisy possible? Or am I deceived?
May not she perhaps, perhaps, be worthy? May
she not be wise and good? Is it not I who
am the hypocrite?  May she not mean kindly
in providing me a man of rank and power as a
protector in these rude times? Are not my suspicions the ignorance of a child,- my plots the
wicked struggles of a rebellious heart against
duty?  0 God, pity and guide me!"
Lucy felt tears starting to her eyes at these




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         207
new and cruel thoughts, and forced herself again
to listen to- Jack Andr6's small-talk.
Jack was telling a clever story of a raid he
and some brother officers had made from Nesw
York on the poultry-yards of Staten Island.
An old lady with a broomstick had endeavored
to defend the Clove Road against these turkeysnatchers, and he gave her drawl to the life.
" Then," says Jack, " out came Captain Rambullet, with the rusty matchlock of Rambouillet
his Huguenot ancestor, and interposed a smell of
cornstalk whiskey between us and his hen-roost."
This scene, too, Jack gave with twang and
drawl to the life, amid roars of laughter, and
cries of " Coot! coot! " from Major Emerick.
Lucy did not laugh. She had all at once
discovered that her sympathies were with these
rebels, nasal twang and all. " My father is one
of them," she thought. "If I am to be saved
from marrying this coarse glutton, it must be
by a rebel.  Putnam and his officers were not
so showy as these men; but they seemed more
in earnest."
I do not succeed in entertaining you, fair
lady," says Andre, sotto voce.'"Your thoughts
are all for that happy fellow beside you," - and
he looked with a little sneer towards Kerr, who
was applying to Bottle for the boon of wit.
A feeling of utter despair came over poor




208          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
Lucy, as she turned involuntarily, and also
glanced at the animal. Then she drew away
indignantly from  the man who had put this
little stab into her heart.
" Are there no gentlemen in the world? " she
thought. " Do men dare to speak so and look
so at other young ladies?"
" Loog ad de breddy Meess," says Emerick,
holding a wine-glass before his bushy abattis,
as a cover.'Zhe is nod habbie wid Chack,
nor wid Gurr!"
" A dozen fellows," Rawdon rejoined, behind
his glass, " of better blood than Jack, and better
hearts than Kerr, would have cut in there long
ago. The daughter is as sweet and pure as
a lily. But who dares marry such a motherin-law? " - and he shrugged his shoulders expressively toward the hostess.
Do we talk so at dinner-tables in 1860? eh,
nous autres?
The hostess now rose, and beckoned her daughter.
"I leave you, gentlemen, to your toasts," she
said. " Major Kerr will be my representative."
She moved to the door. Army and Navy,
Albion and Hesse, all sprang to open for her.
A murmur of admiration for her beauty and
bearing applauded the exit.  Lady Brothertoft
seemed to be at her climax.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         209
Kerr of course did not let the toasts lag.
"The King, gentlemen!"
Cheers! Drank cyathis plenis.
Sir Henry Clinton rises, gleaming star, red
nose, and all, and proposes, "c Our hostess!"
Bumpers and uproar!
Then they load and fire, fast and furious.
Bottle can hardly gallop fast enough to supply
ammunition.
"The Army!"  "Hooray, hooray! Speech
from Lord Rawdon!"
"The Navy!" "Three cheers for Commodore Hotham! "
"The captured forts!"  Drank in silence to
the memory of Colonel Campbell and Count
Grabowski, killed there.
" Luck to Jack Burgoyne!" "Pouting Jack,"
Andr6 suggests.  "May he be a spiler to
Schuyler, and fling Gates over the hedge into
the ditch!"  Laughter and  cheers, and immense rattling of glasses on the table.
"Here's to General Vaughan and his trip
up the river to-morrow! May he add a moral
to the Esopus fables!"
" The Brandywine! and here's hoping Mr.
Washington may have another taste of the
same cup!"
Are modern toasts and dinner-table wit of this
same calibre?
N




210          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
Kerr rose and endeavored to offer the famous
sentiment known as Tile Four Rules of Arithmetic. He was muddled by this time, and the
toast got itself transposed. He gravely proposed, in a thick voice, and in words with no
syllables, — "Addition to the Whigs! Subtraction to the Tories! Multiplication to the King's
foes! Division to his friends! " And added
Kerr, out of his own head, — " Cuffushl'n t'
ev'ryborry!"
Ironical cheers from Jack Andrd. Whereupon good-natured Emerick, to cover the general serio-comic dismay, rose and said, -  Shettlemen, I kiv Bajor Gurr and his breddy bride."
Double bumpers.  Hoorayryrayryray!  Rattle
everybody, with glasses, forks, and nut-crackers.
One enthusiast flung his glass over his head, and
then blundered out a call for Captain Andre's
song, " The Lover's Lament." Lord Rawdon
was the only one to perceive the bad omen.
So Jack, without more solicitation, began, in a
pretty voice, -
" Return, enraptured hours,
When Delia's heart was mine," -
and so on through a dozen stanzas of Strephonics, -a most moving ditty, the words and music
his own.
Everybody felt a little maudlin when this Jack
of all airs and graces closed his lay with a dulcet




EDWIN BROTHIERTOFT.        211
quaver. There was a momentary pause in the
revel.
In such pauses young gentlemen who love
flirtation more than potation dodge off and join
the ladies.
Let us follow this good example. A revel,
with Major Kerr for its master, may easily grow
to an orgie; and meanwhile the mother and
daughter are sitting in the parlor alone




IV.
THE sun of October had gone down below the
golden forests on the golden hills. It was dusk,
and the two ladies sat in the parlor, dimly lit by
a glimmering fire.
They were alone; unless the spirit of the first
Edwin Brothertoft was looking at them from
Vandyck's portrait on the wall.
That wonderful picture hung in its old place.
More than a century, now, it had been silently
watching the fortunes of the family.
No Provincial daubs had ventured within sight
of this masterpiece. Each successive Brothertoft
was always proud to know that his face, at its
best, was his ancestor's repeated. Each descendant said, "Vandyck painted us, once for
all, in the person of our forefather. When there
is another Colonel Brothertoft, or a second Vandyck, it will be time to give the picture a companion."
So one perfect work had vetoed a whole gallery of wooden visages.
The present Mrs. Brothertoft had always dis



EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          213
liked the picture.  She had used it as a pretext for first summoning her husband to her
side. When she brought shame into the house,
she began to dread its tacit reproach. The eyes
of the Colonel, sad and stern, seemed forever to
follow her. His wife's gentle face grew merciless. Even the innocent child on tlihe canvas
read her secret heart.
By and by, to escape this inspection, she had
the portrait covered with a crimson silk curtain.
"' A Vandyck," she said, " is too rare and too
precious to be given up to flies."
For many years the ancestors had been left to
blush behind a screen of crimson silk.
To-day, before dinner, her guests had asked to
see this famous work of the famous master.
No one could detect the tremor in her heart at
this request. No one could see how white her
face grew as she fumbled with the cords, nor
how suddenly scarlet as she drew aside the curtain.
Every one exclaimed in genuine or conventional admiration.
The picture represented that meeting at Old
Brothertoft Manor, after the battle of Horncastle, in the time of the Great Rebellion. The
Colonel was in his corslet, buff and jackboots of
a trooper. His plumed hat, caught by a cord,
had fallen upon his shoulder. He wore his hair




214          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
long, and parted in the middle, like a Cavalier,
not like a crop-eared Roundhead. On one arm
rested the bridle of the grand white charger beside him. With the other he held his fair boy,
now pacified from his Astyanax fright, and smiling
at his father's nodding crest and glinting breastplate. The wife, the first Lucy Brothertoft,
stood by, regarding the two she loved best with
tender solicitude. It was, indeed, a sweet domestic group, and the gentleman's armor, his
impatient war-horse, and that hint in the background of the Manor-House, smoking and in
ruins, gave it a dramatic element of doubt and
danger, — a picture full of grace, heroism, and
affection, — one to dignify a house, to ennoble
and refine a household.
Lucy looked at her mother as the curtain
parted and revealed the three figures. To the
guests they were Art; to the ladies they were
mute personages in a tragedy. Lucy saw her
mother's glance, quick and covert, at these faces
she had so long evaded. The daughter could
understand now why, as Mrs. Brothertoft looked,
her countenance seemed resolutely to harden,
and grow more beautifully Gorgon than ever.
"Quite a chef-d'euvre!"  says Sir Henry
Clinton, looking through his hand, with a knowing air. -"What color! what chiar' oscuro!
what drapery!" Jack Andrd exclaimed. -" No




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         215
one has ever painted high-bred people as Vandyck," said Lord Rawdon. —" Breddy bicksher!"
was Major Emerick's verdict. — " You must be
proud, Madam," said honest Commodore Hotham, ignorant of scandal, " to bear this honored
and historic name."
While these murmurs of approval were going
on, Plato announced dinner. The guests filed
out, leaving the picture uncovered. It still remained so, now that the mother and daughter
sat in the dusky room, after dinner. The flashing and fading fire gave its figures movement
and unreal life.
Lucy glanced at her mother's face, now dim
and far away, and now, as the fire blazed up,
leaping forth from its lair of darkness.
"Certainly," she thought, " my mother was
never so terribly handsome."
It was true. She was an imperial woman,
face, form, and bearing.  How  majestic her
strong, straight nose, her full chin, her vigorous
color, her daring eyes, her brow of'command,
and her black hair dressed, after a mode of the
day, in a tower, and falling in masses on the
neck! More flesh and more color would have
made her coarse. Is it possible that the excitemen t of a bad conscience has refined her beauty?
Must the coarse take the poison of sin, as the
fine take the medicine of sorrow, to kill the




216          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
carnal element in their natures?  Is it needful
for some to wear, through life, a harsh dishonor
next the skin?
" How can this be? " thought Lucy. " Should
not the heart have peace, that the face may wear
beauty, the emblem of peace? Can there be
peace in her heart? "
Peace! As if in answer, at a flash of fireligllt,
the mother's face glared out fierce and cruel.
Sternness, but no peace there!
Lucy turned, and took refuge with the personages of the picture.
"You," she addressed them  in mute appeal,
" are a world nearer my heart than.this unmotherly woman beside me. O chivalric gentleman!
O benign lady! encourage and sustain me! My
heart will break with these doubts and plots and
perils."
The two ladies sat silent by the firelight.
The guests were noisy, two doors off.  They
were laughing  and  applauding  Kerr's tipsy
toasts, Andr6's song, Emerick's Hessian butchery of the King's English.
At a louder burst of revelry Lucy started,
shrank, and glanced at her mother's impassive
face, -a loyal mask to its mistress.
Mrs. Brothertoft also looked up, and caught
Lucy's eye.  For an instant the two gazed at
one another.  There was an instant's spiritual




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.           217
struggle, — the fine nature against the coarse,
the tainted being against the pure. Their two
souls stood at their eyes, and battled for a breath,
while the fire flashed like a waving of torches.
The flash sunk, the room  was dark again.
But before the light was gone the guilty eyes
wavered, the guilty spirit cowered. Mrs. Brothertoft looked away, seeking refuge from her
daughter, against whose innocent heart she was
devising an infamy.
As she turned, she caught sight of the picture.
It was steadily regarding her, -a judge, remote,
unsympathetic, Rhadamanthine.
At this sight, the perpetual inner battle in her
evil heart stormed to the surface. Her countenance was no longer an impassive mask.'
Lucy suddenly saw a bedlam look leap out
upon those beautiful features.
It seemed to Mrs. Brothertoft that the Furies,
whose companionship and hints she had so long
encouraged, now closed in upon her, and became
body of her body, soul of her soul.
She rose, and strode up to the uncovered portrait.
She stood a moment, surveying it in silence,
herself a picture in the fire-lit obscure.
How beautiful her white shoulders, her white
bosom above the dark silk, cut low and square in
front, after a fashion of the time! How won10




218          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
drously modelled her perfect arms! The diamond at her throat trembled like the unwinking
eye of a serpent.
She raised her white right arm, and pointed at
the figure of the Parliamentary Colonel.
By the firelight, it seemed as if he, thus summoned, still holding his eager white horse by the
bridle, stepped out before the canvas, ready for
this colloquy.
Lucy was terrified by her mother's wild expression and gesture. The gentleman in the
portrait had taken more than ever the semblance
of her father's very self. But he wore a sterner
look than she remembered on that desolate face.
The daughter shuddered at this strange meeting of her parents, — one in the flesh, one in the
spirit.
"Sir! " said Mrs. Brothertoft, still pointing at
the picture. There was scorn, veiling dread, in
her voice.
Lucy could not control herself. She burst into
tears.
At the sound of her first sob, the mother came
to herself. Bedlam tore itself out of her face
with a spasm. She let fall her round, white
arm. A tremor and a chill shook her. With
these, the Furies seemed to glide forth from her
being. They stood for an instant, dim  and rustling forms in the glimmer. Then they van



EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         219
ished to their place of call. Mrs. Brothertoft
dashed the curtain over the picture and moved
away.
She did not perceive -for she looked thither
no more- that by her violent movement she
had broken the cord, and let down one fall of
the curtain, at the top, so that there was space
for the heads of the soldier and his white horse
to appear.
There those heads wait, as if at a window.
There they seem, horse and man, to watch for
their moment to spring into that dusky room, lit
by the flashes of a dying fire.
Mrs. Brothertoft turned, and laid her hand on
her sobbing daughter's shoulder.
" You seem agitated and hysterical, my dear,"
she said, almost gently. " Perhaps you had better hide your tears inyour pillow. We shall not
see our noisy friends for some time."
Again their eyes met for an instant. But the
mother mistook Lucy's pleading expression.
She had lost her power of deciphering an innocent face. She fancied she read contempt
and triumph, where there was only pity and
love longing to revive. She turned away, and,
yielding to a brutal emotion, resumed, - " Yes,
go, Lucy, and keep out of sight for the evening!
mWe must not have red eyes and swollen cheeks
when Adonis comes from dinner with pretty
speeches for his fair bride."




220          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
Lucy rose, disappointed and indignant, and left
the parlor without " Good night."
Given two weeks instead of two days before
marriage, and this gentle spirit might emancipate
itself. But obedience is still a piety with Lucy.
Mute mental protests against injustice do not
train the will. It must win strength by struggles. Her will has sunk into chronic inertia.
She suffers now for her weakness, as if it were a
crime.
She fled by the noisy dining-room and up to
her chamber in the tower at the northwest corner of the house. In the mild, clear, star-lit
night she could see yellow autumn among the
woods around the mansion. Beyond, the white
river belted the world. The lights of the British frigates sparkled like jewels in this silver
cincture. Dunderberg, large and vague, hid the
spaces westward, where night was overflowing
twilight.. Northward, the Highlands closed the
view, dim as Lucy's hope.
Ah! why was there no clairvoyante Sister
Anne to cry that she saw "' somebody coming," —
to tell the desolate girl, staring from her window
into the unfriendly night, that succor was afoot,
and hastening in three detachments soutlhward,
as fast as the boulder, the bog, and the forest
would permit.
But there was no Sister Anne, no friend




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          221
within or without the house. And so, closed
doors! Weep, sob, pray, poor child. Suffer, suffer, young heart! Suffer and be strong!
Closed doors at last, and quiet at the Manor.
Songs silent. Revelry over. The guests have
gone, walking as men walk after too many
bumpers. Sentinels here and there have received the inarticulate countersign. The boats'
crews, chilly and sulky with long waiting, have
pulled the "lobsters" off to the frigates, and
boosted them up the sides. They have tumbled
into their berths in ward-room or cabin, -one,
alas! with his Hessians on! They must quickly
sleep off wassail, and be ready to stir with dawn,
for at sunrise General Vaughan starts with his
flotilla up the river. And most of the dinersout, whether their morning headaches like it or
not, must go with the General to commit arson
upon Esopus, alias Kingston, a most pestilent
nest of rebels.
Quiet then aboard the Tartar, the Preston, and
the Mercury, swinging to their anchors in the
calm river! Quiet at the Manor-House! but not
peaceful repose,- for in their dreams the spirits
of the mother and the daughter battle, and both
are worn and weary with that miserable war.




V.
THERE were three headaches next morning at
the breakfast-table at Brothertoft Manor.
Major Kerr carried an enormous ache in his
thick skull. His was the crapulous headache.
He knew it well. Every manner of cure, except
prevention, he had experimented upon. The
soda-water-cure did not reach his malady. The
water-cure, whether applied in the form of pump
or a wet turban, was equally futile.
"It couldn't have been t' other bottle that
has made me feel so queer," Kerr soliloquized.
"Must have been Jack Andr6's mawkish songs.
I never could stand poetry."
So he marched down to breakfast, more Rubens
in complexion than ever, and twice as surly.
Spending tears had given Lucy her headache.
She had wept enough to fill a brace of lacrymatories. The pangs sharpened when she. saw
Adonis appear, very red and very gruff.  He
seemed fairly loathsome to her now.
"Must such a beast — yes, I will say beast —
as that come near me? " thought she.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          223
Strong language for a young lady; but appropriate. It is well to have a few ugly epithets
in one's vocabulary. Hard words have their
virtue and their place, as well as soft ones.
Mrs. Brothertoft also had a headache.
She looked pale and ill this morning. This
will never do, Madam. Consider your beauty!
It will consume away, if you allow so much
fever in your brain.
Breakfast was move silent even than yesterday's. No headache cared to ask sympathy of
either of the others.
Lucy said not a word. She compelled herself
to be at table. She dreaded her mother's presence; but she dreaded her absence still more.
Lucy suffered under the uneasiness of a youfig
plotter. She knew that her plot was visible in
her face. She trembled at every look. And yet
she felt safer while she was facing her foes.
Poor'child! if she could have wept, as she
wished, freely and alone, a dozen of lacrymatories - magnums — would not have held her
tears.
Moody Mrs. Brothertoft is also silent.
She does not think it good policy to draw out
her son-in-law this morning. Only a wretchedly
low card, and no trump, will respond to the
attempt. T' other bottle rather drowns the power
of repartee.  Major Kerr was too inarticulate




224          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
last night to be very coherent this morning
A courtly bow and a fine manner are hardly
to be expected at levee from a hero lugged to
his couche'e by Plato and two clodhoppers, —
themselves a little out of line and step with
too many heeltaps. The hostess does not choose
by solicitous questions to get growls from the
future bridegroom, such as,Kerr loquitur.  "Yes, thank you; my tea is
mere milksop; my egg an addle; my toast a
chip; my butter lard; niy buckwheat cakes
dem'd flabby. Everything has a tipsy taste and
smells of corked Madeira. O, my head!"
Such talk would not make the lover more
captivating. He had better be left to himself,
to take his breakfast with what stomach he
may.
Nor does Mrs. Brothertoft think it wise to
remark upon yesterday's dinner and its distinguished guests to her daughter. Remark brings
rejoinder. This morning, again, Lucy had no
kiss for her mother. Instead of the warm, tender caress of other days, with warmth and tenderness for two, Lucy's manner was grave and
distant.
Mrs. Brothertoft divines incipient rebellion in
her daughter. She does not wish to let it cultivate itself with contradictions. If she should
propound, "It is a fine morning," Lucy might




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         225
say, "It seems to me cold as Greenland." If
she suggested, "My dear, have the horses saddled, and take Major Kerr to see the view from
Cedar Ridge," Lucy would probably respond,
"Major Kerr is not fond of nature, and I am
afraid of marauders."  If she remarked, " What
a grand, soldierly creature Major Emerick is!
What an amusing accent! and his moustache
how terribly charming!" Lucy might curl her
pretty lip, and reply, " Grand! soldierly! the
hirsute ogre!  As to his accent, — I do not
understand Hessian; and it does not amuse me
to hear good pronounced'coot,' and to have
pictures, flowers, soup, and the North River,
all classed together and complimented as'breddy.' And as to his moustache, - no moustache
is tolerable; and if any, certainly not that great
black thing." Nor would it do for the mother
to say, "I am sure you found Captain Andr6 an
Admirable Crichton," and to hear from  her
daughter in reply, " Don't speak of him! I am
still sick with his sentimentality of a Strephon.
He is a flippant coxcomb.  I do not wonder
Miss Honora Sneyd got tired of him, with his
little smile and his little sneer."
Such responses Lucy would probably have
made to her mother's attempts at breakfast-table
talk. Do these answers seem inconsistent with
the great sorrow and the great terror in the girl's
10*                 Q




226          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
heart?  Our passions, like our persons, are not
always en grande tenue. It is a sign that the
heart is not quite broken, when its owner has
life enough to be pettish. The popgun is the
father of the great gun.  Silly skirmish and
bandying of defiance precede the great battle
for life and death.
So Mrs. Brothertoft knew, and she was not
willing to give Lucy the chance to hear herself
say,'No.' If she were once publicly compromised as of the negative faction, she might, even
at this late hour, foster her little germ of independence. She might wake up to-morrow with
a Will of Her Own, grown in a single night as
big as Jack's bean-stalk. She might expand her
solitary, forlorn hope of a first No into a conquering army. No, N o, —only. a letter and a
cipher, — she might add ciphers, multiply it by
successive tens and make it No,ooo,ooo,ooo, —
and so on, until she was impregnable to the
appointed spouse.
This of course must not be.
The mother did not know that Lucy had hoisted a signal of distress, and that she was almost
ready to haul her flag up from half-mast, and fly
it at the masthead of defiance. This Mrs. Brothertoft did not suspect of her submissive and meek
child. She knew nothing of Voltaire's errand.
But she had grown suddenly apprehensive and




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          227
timorous, and hardly recognized her old intrepid
self this morning. She began to quail a little
more and more before her daughter's innocence.
For all reasons, she did not desire to provoke
discussion.
A grim, mute breakfast, therefore, at Brothertoft Manor.
Each headache looked into its tea-cup in
silence.  Major Kerr crunched a bit of dry
toast, instead of feeding omnivorously.
There is no conversation of this party to report, gay or glum.
But tableau is sometimes more dramatic than
talk.
A new-comer at the door glanced at this
unsociable trio, and deciphered the picture
pretty accurately.
It was old Voltaire, limping forward from
the kitchen.
Lucy sat with her face toward the pantry
door, and first saw him.
Flash! Lucy lightened and almost showered
tears at the rising of this black cloud, charged
with fresh electricity.
Flash back! from  the whites of Voltaire's
eyes and from his teeth.
It was a brief flash, but abiding enough to
show Lucy, through her gloom, one figure
stealing to her succor. Him she was sure of,




228          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
-her father. But one gleam from the whites
of a black could not reveal the other recruits
to her rebel army. So they must remain latent, with their names and faces latent, until
she can have an interview with her complotter.
But what a hot agony of hope blazed up
within her at Voltaire's look and cunning nod!
"I must not scream with joy," she thought.
"I must not shriek out this great, wicked, triumphant laugh I feel stirring in me. I must
not jump up and hug the dear old soul.
Thank Heaven, my tea is hot, and I can choke
myself and cry."
Which she proceeded to do; and under cover
of her napkin got her face into mask condition
again.
She was taking lessons - this fair novice - in
what a woman's face is made for; — namely, to
look cool when the heart is fiery; to look dull,
when the wits have just suffered the whetstone;
to look blank, when the soul's hieroglyphs will
stare out if a blush is only turned on; to look
tame, when the spirit is tiger; to look peace,
when there is no peace; to look mild as new
milk, when the blood boils and explosion butts
against the wired cork of self-control. A guileful world, guileless lady! and you must fight
your fight to-day with silence and secrecy, lest
mamma detect a flutter in your bosom, and your




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         229
fledgling purpose of flight get its pin-feathers
pulled, if not its neck wrung.
Voltaire limped forward with a plate of buckwheat cakes.  They were meal of the crop
which had whitened the slopes of Westchester
this summer, and purpled them this autumn.
They were round as a doubloon, or the moon at
its fullest. Their edges were sharp, and not
ragged and taggy. Their complexion was most
delicate mulatto. Their texture was bubbly as
the wake of a steamboat. Eyes never lighted on
higher art than the top cake, and even the one
next the plate utterly refused to be soggy. Indeed, each pancake was a poem, - a madrigal
of Sappho's most simply delicate confectioning,
round as a sonnet, and subtle in flavor as an
epigram.
These pearls Voltaire cast before the party.
Nobody partook. Nobody appreciated. Nobody
noticed. The three appetites of the three headaches were too dead to stir.
The old fellow was retiring, when Mrs. Brothertoft addressed him roughly.
"I shall promote Plato and break you, Voltaire, if you are taken sick at the wrong time
again."
"Sorry, missus.  Colored mobbas, missus.
No stoppin' him. Bery bad indeed!"
His appearance disarmed suspicion. He was




230          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
a weary and dismal object after his journey.
No one, to look at him, would have divined that
his pangs were of the motive powers, and not
the digestive, —that he suffered with the nicked
shin, the stubbed toe, and the strained calf, and
was utterly unconscious of a stomach, except as
a locality for colonizing a white lie in.




VI.
WHEN Pyramus and Thisbe, when Cceur de
Lion and Blondel, want speech of each other,
Wall will ever have " a cranny right and sinister "
for their whispers, will " show a chink to blink
through with their eyne."
Breakfast was over. Voltaire was in the pantry, clashing dish and pan for a signal. Lucy
waited her moment to dart in and get her hopes
of escape made into certainties.
" I am going up stairs, Lucy," said her mother,
" to give Dewitt her last hints about your wedding-dress. Come up presently and try it on."
She went out, leaving lover and lady together.
Kerr stood before the fire in his favorite posture. His face was red, his jacket was red. He
produced the effect of a great unmeaning daub
of scarlet in a genre - mauvais genre - picture.
The big booby grew embarrassed with himself.
The quiet presence of this young girl abashed
him. He knew that his suit was an insult to her.
He saw that she did not appreciate his feet and
inches. Neither his cheeks nor his shoulders




232          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
nor his calves touched her heart.  His vanity
had been hurt, and he felt a spiteful triumph
that she was in his power.
This morning he was ashamed of himself. It
is a grievous thing that men cannot go to bed
tipsy and wake up without headaches and with
self-respect. Perhaps it will be different when
Chaos comes again.
Kerr felt disgusted with himself, and embarrassed. He wanted to talk to cover his awkwardness. He did not know what to say. The
complaint is not uncommon.
"I suppose she knows it's a fine day, and
wont thank me for telling her," he thought.
"Vaughan's trip up the river, — that's talked
out. I made the pun about Esopus and Esop's
fables, that Rawdon got off last night, and she
did n't laugh. I wish I had Jack Andre's tongue.
I have half a mind to cut it out of him -the
dashed whipper-snapper - for trying to get her
to flirt with him yesterday. I suppose I ought
to be making love now. But she has never let
me come near enough to make what I call love.
Well, I must say something. Here goes! Ahem!
Lucy - Miss Lucy."
" Sir."
" It's a very fine day."
" Very."
" A most uncommonly fine day for this doosed
climate."




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         233
No reply.
"I'd box the dumb thing's ears if she was
Mrs. K.," thought the Major. "But she sha'n't
silence me. I'11 give her another chance. Ahem!
Miss Lucy! Would n't you like to stroll out and
take the air? "
"No, I thank you. Do not let me detain you."
"I say, you know, we're to be married tomorrow. You need n't be so infernally distant."
"My mother wishes me to join her with the
dressmakers."
"Well, if you wont come, you wont," says
Kerr, taking himself off in dudgeon.
He walked out upon the lawn. The air was
nine-oxygen azote of the purest proof. He swallowed it boozily, as if it were six-water grog.
Lucy hied to the trysting-place, where the
arch-plotter was waiting amid pans and dishes.
" 0 Voltaire, tell me!" she cried. And here
tears interrupted her, and gushed as if she intended to use the biggest pan for a lacrymatory.
" Don't cry, Miss Lucy," the old fellow says.
"It's good news!"
At which she only wept the more.
Without much knowledge of the chemistry of
tears, Voltaire saw that spending them relieved
and calmed the young lady. Meanwhile, to be
talking on indifferent subjects until her first
burst was over, he said, " I saw Major Scrammel




234         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
at Fishkill, Miss Lucy. He asked after your
health."
"I am obliged to him." The name seemed
to act like a dash of cold water. These Majors
fatigued her. Scrammel Yankee, Emerick Hessian, Kerr British, — she liked none of them.
She began to feel a disgust for the grade.
" My father! " she said, with her whole heart
in the word, " tell me of him. He has not forgotten me. He loves me. He will save me from
this — this —"   A sob drowned the epithet.
"He loves you dearly," Voltaire responded.
"Lub," he still pronounced the precious word.
He brought his two thick lips together to sound
the final "b," instead of lightly touching his
upper teeth against his lower lip and breathing
out " ve " final.
This great fact of love established, with all its
sequel, by a single word, Lucy, womanlike, desired to know that this dear new lover no longer
misunderstood her. She must be satisfied that
she stood right in his esteem before she could
take thought of her own dangers.
"You told him," she said, eagerly, "that I
was not an unnatural daughter, - only deceived
and deluded by this cruel woman?"
Tears had started again, as she thought of the
misery he must have suffered for her disloyalty.
But indignation at her mother burned them up,
and she closed her sentence sternly.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         235
" He sees through it all," the old ambassador
replied.
" How did he look? Not very sad, I hope?"
she said.
Womanlike again, she must have the person
before her eyes. She must see him, a visible
being, —that she could take to her heart with
infinite love and pity and hope, - before she
could listen to his message of comfort to her.
"' He looked pretty old, Miss Lucy. His hair's
grown gray. It ought n't to. He's a boy still,only a little better than forty. He could make
his life all over again yet. But he looked old
and settled down sad. He's got a sargeant's
coat on, instead of a general's; but he looks,
into his face, as if he know'd all generals know,
and a heap more."
" My dear father! " interjected Lucy in the
middle of Voltaire's description.   And she
thought what a beloved task it would be for
her to renew and restore that ruined life.
"And now, Voltaire," she said, "can he protect me?"
" We talked it all over. He did n't see anything he could do. He said he was too brokenhearted to plan for anybody."
Poor Lucy! all her hopes thus dashed down!
She could almost hear her own heart break.
But Voltaire continued: "He had guv"



236          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
(no Tombigbee, old boy!) —" given it all up,
and I was goin' off feelin' mighty low, - mighty
low, I tell you, Miss Lucy.  I started off for
the woods and sot down, lookin' for a squerril-hole to git into, and die like a fourlegs.
Jess then, jess before I'd found my dyin' bed,
I heerd somebody screech,'Voltaire, Voltaire!'
like mad.  Fust I thought't was the Holy
Angels. Then I thought praps't was the Black
Debbls, prowlin'. I looked round the woods,
pretty skeered, and heerd chestnuts drap. Then
come the yell again, and your father lighted
right down on me and dragged me back like
a go-cart. I did n't know what was comin'; but
he yanked me up the bank to the old well,
afront of Squire Van Wyck's farm-house, and
there I saw-"
At this point of his eager recital Voltaire's
ancient bellow had to pause and draw breath.
" Saw!" cried Lucy equally eager, peopling
this pause with a great legion of upstart hopes,
all in buff and blue, fine old Continentals complete from boots to queues; but strangers to
her, and therefore without faces.
" Saw Major Skerrett," gasped Voltaire.
All that legion of hopes in Lucy's brain suddenly condensed into a single heroic Continental
vision, with the name Skerrett for a face. She
was sure this new-comer meant HELP.  She




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.           237
could feel her just now breaking heart tie itself
together with a chain, each link a letter of the
name Skerrett.
" Another Major! " she said, half impatiently.
There was almost a shade of coquetry in her
little protest against this stranger personage.
The wonian was not dead in her yet.
" Anudder Major ob anudder stuff. De good
God, not de Debbl, -he make dis one."
"O Voltaire, don't talk so!"
Did she object to his fact in physiology, or.to his pronunciation?
Voltaire, with bellows rested, now began to
describe the new  hero with enthusiasm.  His
touches were crude, but picturesque, - a charcoal sketch.
" Major Skerrett, Miss Lucy.  O my! what a
beautiful moustache he had! jess the color of
ripe chestnut-leaves, and curling down on each
side, so."
The black forefinger described an ogee on
either black lip.
Lucy did not interrupt. She must have her
correct image of the new actor before she inquired his role.  She perceived already that he
was not to be a sicklied Hamlet.
Her first picture of the hero had been a figure
in a Continental uniform, with the name Skerrett instead of a face.




238          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
Second picture: Lucy sees the mere name
vanish. Two chestnut-leaves, fine gold as October can paint them, broad in the middle, blunt
at the but, taper toward the point, serrated
along the edges, dispose themselves to her mind's
eye in the air, and form a moustache.  She
looks at her vision of this isolated feature, and
thinks, " It is much prettier than Major Emerick's."
" A go-ahead nose," continues Voltaire, without pause.
Lucy inserts a go-ahead nose into the blank,
over and a little ahead of the moustache. Third
picture.
" No mumps round his cheeks and chin," the
describer went on.
Not a mump had ever disfigured the cheeks
Lucy hereupon balanced on either side of the
nose and the chin which she had located under
the two chestnut-leaves. Picture fourth.
" Eyes blue as that saucer," -Voltaire pointed
to a piece of delicate china, -" and they look
like the Holy Angels."
Into their sockets Lucy inserted a pair of
orbs, saucer in color not in shape, and gave
them a holy, angelic expression. She inspected
the growing portrait with her own sweet eyes,they were hazel, " an excellent thing in woman,"
-and began to think the illumined face very
charming.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         239
"Lots of tan on his bark," resumed the
painter in words.
Lucy dipped her pencil in umber and gave
the bark of cheeks, chin, and nose a nut-brown
tint, that bravely backed the gold of the moustache.
"Yaller hair under his cocked hat."
"Yellow! if you please, Voltaire," she protested, and with skilful thought she adjusted
the coiffure.
" No queue."
An imaginary queue, tied with a tumbled
black ribbon, had'been bobbing in the air near
the hero's cerebellum. Lucy docked it, and, with
a scornful gesture, sent it whirling off into the
Unseen.
"Now," says Voltaire, " you jess stick in Troot
(Truth), Wercher (Virtue), Kerridge (Courage), and all the other good things into that are
face: you jess clap on a smile that'11 make
a dough heart in a bosom turn into light gingerbread; and give him a look that can make
stubbed toes want to wheel about and turn about
and dance breakdowns, and is stickin' plaster
to every scratch on an old free colored gentleman's shins: you jess think you see a Major
what Liberty and all the Holy Angels is pullin'
caps for, and all the Debbls is shakin' huf away
from where he stands: you jess git all that




240          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
in your eye, Miss Lucy, and you've got Major
Skerrett."
The picture was complete. Truth, Virtue,
Courage, and the sister qualities, Lucy had dimpled into the bronzed cheeks, as a sailor pricks
all anchor, or Polly's name, into a brother tar's
arm with India ink.  She had given the hero's
face a smile, yeasty, sugary, and pungent enlough
to convert the dullest dough heart into light gingerbread. She had bestowed upon her ideal a
look that would be surgery to scarred shins and
light fantasy to the weariest toes.  Now  she
passed her finger over the chestnut-leaf moustache to smooth down its serrated edges. The
portrait was done. Lucy surveyed it an instant,
and blushed to think it was indeed a Major that
women and angels might pull caps for.
She blushed to herself —the simple maid —
and felt a slight shame at her longing to see if
the real man was identical with her ideal.
This child — remember she was but eighteen,
and had been kept by herself and her mother, a
complete child until just  ow — this child had
hitherto had no ideal of a hero except that he
must be Kerr's opposite. We know already her
verdict upon the British officers. Of Putnam's
family, Scrammel she distrusts; Radiere she
would like as a friend, if he were not so Gallic,
dyspeptic, and testy; Humphreys is ridiculous,




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          241
with his grand airs and his prosy poetasms; Livingston amuses her; - voila tout!
"And can this gentleman help?" she asked
earnestly, as soon as she had his person before
her eyes.
"Help!" says Voltaire; "he can't help helping. That's his business under this canopy."
The negro stated briefly the scheme for Kerr's
capture and her abduction.
Lucy comprehended the whole in a moment.
"1 Major Skerrett sent you a message, Miss
Lucy," says the successful envoy, closing  his
report.
"Me! "  she said. She massacred  a little
scruple, that Major Kerr's betrothed ought not
to be receiving messages from strange majors.' What is it? He is very kind to think of me."
" He said,'Tell Miss Brothertoft to be brave,
to be prudent, and to keep her room with a
headache, until we are ready to start.'"
" It makes me brave and prudent, now that I
have a strong friend to trust. But the headache
I had is all gone. I never felt so well and happy
in my life."
"Look at him!" Voltaire rejoined, pointing
to Kerr, through the pantry window. "That
will make you ache from your head to your heels."
She did look, and ached at once with fresh
resentment and disgust.
11                    r




242          EiWIN BROTHERTOFT.
Kerr was leaning limp against a tree, breathlling tipsily his nine-oxygen azote. The golden
hills, the blue river, and the mountains, blue and
gold, had no charms for him. He was thinking,
"Almost time to make it seven bells. I can't
touch anything stronger than six-water grog this
morning. 0 my head!"
" Pretty fellow fur a lubber to my young
lady!" says Voltaire.  His mispronunciation
revealed a truth.
This faithful blackamoor now proceeded to act
Othello relating his adventures. He had a tragicomic episode to impart of his "hair-breadth'scapes," " of being taken by the, insolent foe,"
of all " his portance in his travel's history "; and
what he suffered, shin and sole, in the "rough
quarries, rocks, and hills" back of Anthony's
Nose, while he dodged by night along the bypaths.
Lucy "gave him for his pains a world of
sighs," and " loved him for the dangers he had
passed" in her service.
"Now," said the loyal squire, in conclusion,
" I must set you something to do, Miss Lucy."
"What?" she asked, trembling a little at responsibility.
"Send Dewitt and  Sally Bilsby off home!
They'll want a frolic after working so hard on
your wedding-dress. We must have the house
to ourselves to-night."




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         243
" To-night! Lucy's heart bounded and sunk.
Yes, she must be free to-night, or to-morrow
would make her a slave.
"Miss Lucy," whispered Voltaire, "two of'em was here already before sunrise."
" Not the     "  She hesitated.
"Not the Major! No; old Sam Galsworthy
and IIendrecus Canady. You know'em. They
come to see how the land lay."
"Mother calls; I must go," said Lucy, in a
tremor.
She gave one look through the window at
Kerr, leaning limp against a chestnut-tree.
The Skerrett-moustache-colored leaves in myriad
pairs shook over him. She seemed to see a
myriad of faces, with go-ahead noses, no mumps,
angelic blue eyes, bronzed skins, and truth and
courage in every line, looking out of the tree,
and signalizing her, "Be brave! be prudent!"




VII.
PORTENTOUS all the morning was Voltaire to
Sappho.
Now cookery, like chemistry, must have peace
to perform its experiments in.
Poor Sappho, with her husband darting into the
kitchen, looking mysterious, exploding " Hush!"
and darting off again, was as much flustered
as a nervous chemical professor when his pupils
jeer his juggles with cabbage-liquor, and turn
up rebellious noses at his olefiant gas.
Sappho's great experiment of dinner suffered.
She put sugar in her soup and salt in her pudding. She sowed allspice for peppercorns, and
vice versa. She overdid the meat that should
have been underdone.  She roasted her goose
until its skin was plate armor. She baked her
piecrust hard as Westchester shale.  Yesterday's dinner was sublime; to-day's would be
ridiculous. Conspiracy upsets domestic economy, as it does political.
When Voltaire had deranged his wife with
dark hints, he proceeded to perplex his son.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         245
Plato was lord of the stables.  These were
times of war.  Westchester was beginning to
suffer for being neutral- ground for rebel and
tory to plunder. Rents came slow at Brothertoft
Manor, and when they came were short. Economy must be consulted. That crafty counsellor
suggested that Plato's helpers in the stable
should be discharged, and he do three men's
work.  He was allowed, however, Bilsby juvenissimus and another urchin from the Manor to
"chore" for him. They were unpaid attach6s.
They did free service as stable-boys, for the
honor and education of the thing, for the privilege of chewing straws among the horses, and
for the luxury of a daily bellyful of pork and
pudding, and a nightly bed in the loft.
Voltaire went out to the stable. The six white
horses of famous Lincolnshire stock stood, three
on this side, three on that. Their long tails occasionally switched to knock off the languid last
flies of summer.
Voltaire stoppQd at the coach-house door to
drive out a noisy regiment of chickens. A lumbering old coach, of the leathern conveniency
order, was shoved away in a corner. There is
always such a vehicle in every old family stable,a stranded ark, that no horse-power will ever stir
again.
" Nineteen year ago," thought the ancient




246          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
Brothertoft retainer, "nineteen year ago last
June, I drew Mister Edwin and that Billop gal,
in that conveniency, less than two hundred yards
from her house in Wall Street to Trinity Church,
to be married. I heerd the Trinity bells say,'Edwin  Brothertoft, don't marry a Billop!'
I felt it in my bones that she'd turn out mean.
Her money brought worse luck than we'd ever
had before. And the good luck has n't got holt
yet."
"Plato," says he, stepping into the great picturesque stable, half full of sunshine, half of
shade, and half of hay, fragrant as the Fourth
of July.
" Sir! " says Plato, drawing himself up, and
giving a military salute. He had seen much
soldiering going on of late, and liked to play at
it, —a relic, perhaps, of Gorilla imitativeness.
" Them boys don't look to me in good health."
Voltaire pointed to Bilsby and mate. They
were both chewing straws, — a pair of dull sharps,
like most young clodhoppers. They could tell a
calf from a colt with supernatural keenness; but
were of the class which gets itself well PeterFunked before its manhood learns the time of
day.
" Dey's fat, ragged, and sassy as ary boys dis'ihile ever seed," rejoined Plato.
" Bery weakly dey looks," continued the con



EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         247
spirator.  "Fallin' away horrible!  Neber see
sich sickly boys'n all my born days. Chestnuts
is what dey wants. Worms is de trouble. Boys
always gits worms onless dey eats suthin on to
a bushel of chestnuts in de fall."
The two ragamuffins dropped their straws,
turned pale, and began to feel snakes wake and
crawl within them.
" Now, boys," says Voltaire impressively, "' if
you want ter perwent dem varmint, jess you
put fur de woods an' fill yourselves plum full
ob chestnuts."
"But chestnuts has worms, too," objected
Bilsby.
" So much de better; dey'll eat yourn. Go'long now. Stay hum to-night, and don't come
roun' here fore to-morrow  noon.  Be keerfie
now!  Eat all to-day; and pick to-morrow to
keep. You don't look to me like boys who is
prepared to die."
The pair obeyed, and departed solemnly. Nothing but chestnuts could save them from the worm
that never dieth.  There were two very grave
and earnest lads that day cracking burrs in the
groves of Brothertoft Manor.
Plato stared in consternation as he saw his
regiment disbanded.
Voltaire winked with both eyes, and chuckled
enormously.




248         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
" Don't you ask me no questions, Plato," says
he, "an' you wont have no lies to complex yer
mind. I meant to clare de kitchen, ole fokes,
young fokes, an so I scared off dem boys, ho, ho!
Now I's gwine to gib you a conundrum, Plato."
Plato let go Volante's tail, which he was combing, and pricked up his ears.
" What does a young lady do when she don't
want to marry her fust husband?"
"' Marries her second," guessed Plato, cheerfully.
"Plato! I'se ashamed of you. Dat would
be bigamy."
The crestfallen groom gave it up.
" You gib it up," says the propounder.
" Well; she says to her coachman, -it's bery
mysterous dat de coachman's-name is Plato.
She says to him, Plato!"
" What?" interjected the other.
"Neber interrump de speaker!" chided Voltaire. " She says,'Plato, you know my mare.'
Says he,'Your mare Volanty, Mliss?' Says she, —
it's mysterous, but Volanty is her name, -' Now,
Plato,;you jess poot anudder oat in ler manger,
an groom her slick as a het griddle, and see
de girts and de bridle is right.' And says she,'Plato, don't you complex yer mind wedder de
answer to dat conundrum ain't suthin' about
runnin' away. But jess you wait till de sebben
seal is opened."




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         249
Here the namesake of him of Ferney gave
a wise binocular wink.
The other philosopher's namesake also eclipsed
his whites with a binocular wink. He divined
where his sire had been travelling in the past
thirty-six hours. He had nodded through the
watches of last night to let the senior in undiscovered. He knew of the interview with Old
Sam Galsworthy and Hendrecus Canady, an hour
before sunrise.  He comprehended enough of
the plot to enjoy it as a magnificent conundrum, which he could guess at all day, sure
that the seven seals of mystery would be opened,
by and by.
Voltaire limped back to the house and his
pantry. His butler countenance fell, as he contemplated the empty bottles of yesterday's banquet. He could almost have wept them full,
if he had known any chemistry to change salt
tears to wine.
"1 How those redcoats drink!" he muttered.
" Our cellar wont last many more such campaigns.  I must get up some fresh wine for
to-day, and a little brandy to deteriorate Major
Kerr."
Burns wrote poetry as he pleased, in Scotch,
in English, or in a United-Kingdom brogue.
Voltaire takes the same liberty, and talks now
rank Tombigbee, now severe Continental, and
11 *




250          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
now a lingo of his own. Most men are equally
inconsistent, and use one slang in the saloon
and another in the salon.
Voltaire lighted a candle, and descended into
the cellar.
" It's resky," thought he, " to bring a light,
without a lantern, among all this straw and
rubbish. Fire would n't let go, if it once cotched
here. But nobody ever comes except me."
A flaring dip, very free with sparks, was certainly dangerous in this den.  Who has not
seen such a tinder-box of a place under a careless old country-house? Capital but awesome
regions they offer for juvenile hide and seek!
How densely their black corners are populated
with Bugaboo! The hider and the seeker shudder alike in those gloomy caverns, and are glad
enough to find each other, touch hands and
bolt for daylight.
Habit, or possibly his complexion in harmony
with dusky hues, made Voltaire independent
of the terrors of the place. He marched along,
carefully sheltering his candle with a big paw,
brown on the back and red on the palm.
Combustibles were faintly visible in the glimmer. There were empty wine-boxes overflowing with the straw that once swaddled their
bottles. There was a barrel of curly shavings,
a barrel of rags quite limp and out of curl, a




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.           251
barrel of fine flour from the Phillipse Mills, a
barrel of apples very fragrant, one of onions
very odorous, a barrel of turnips white and
shapely, and a bin of potatoes, of the earth,
earthy, and amorphous as clods.  There were
the staves and hoops of a rotten old beer-cask,
leaning together, and trying to hold each other
up, like the decayed members of a dead faction. There was a ciderless cider-cask, beginning to gape at the seams, like a barge out
of water. Rubbish had certainly called a congress in this cellar, and the entire rubbish interest in all its departments had sent deputies.
Old furniture had a corner to itself, and it was
melancholy to see there the bottomless chairs
that people long dead had  sat through, the
posts of old bedsteads sleeping higgledy-piggledy,
and old tables that had seen too many revels in
their day, and were tipsily trying to tumble
under themselves.  Then there was a heap of
old clothes and ole clo', ghostly in their forlornness, lifting up arms and holding forth skirts in
vain signal for the ragman. It was a gloomy,
musty, cavernous place, and Voltaire's faint
candle only shed a little shady light around.
The butler unlocked the wine-room door.
Batteries of dusty bottles in their casemates
aimed at him, with flashes of yellow-seal at
their muzzles.




252          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
"Three bottles for Major Kerr, — his last,"
he said. " One, very particular, for Major Skerrett when he comes. One of our French Gutter
de Rosy brandy to qualify with.  Ranks looks
broken here since Major Kerr come.  I must
close'em  up to-morrow.  Bottles likes to lie
touchin', so the wine can ripen all alike."
The old fellow's hands were so full that he
could not lock his door conveniently. He left it
open for his next visit of reorganization.
He limped off, running the gauntlet of the
combustibles.  No spark flew, no cinder fell.
That masterful plaything, fire, could not be
allowed to sport with the old rubbish.
How Voltaire proceeded to carry on his private share of the plot by deteriorating Kerr's
allowance of Madeira withl Cognac, is a secret of
the butler's pantry. It shall not be here revealed. Why deteriorate the morals of 1860 by
recalling forgotten methods of cheating? Adulteration is a lost art, thank Bacchus! We drink
only pure juices now. Only honest wines for
our honest dollars in this honest age.
Now from the cellar we will mount to the
room  above stairs, where Penelope  and her
maids - no, not Penelope, for she was loyal and
disconsolate — where Mrs. Brothllertoft and her
maids are at work at the san-benito for tomorrow's auto-da-fe.




VIII.
IF there was a Dieden in 1777, she has gone
with the braves who lived before Agamemnon,
and like them is forgotten.
If there had been a Dieden in little New York
of those days, she would not have been called in
to make Miss Brothertoft's san-benito, her wedding-dress.
The resources of the Manor were sufficient.
Mrs. Brothertoft could plan the robe. Mrs. Dewitt could execute it. Sally Bilsby also lent a'prentice hand. The silk, white, stiff, and with a
distinct bridal rustle, had been bought to order
by Bilsby junior, on one of his traitorous trips
to New York.
Lucy, leaving Voltaire in the pantry, as was
described, ran up stairs and faced her weddingdress without flinching. It is not generally a
sight to blanch the cheeks of a young lady.
Indeed, one may fancy that a rose finer than
roses might bud in the heart, and bloom from
neck to forehead, when a bride first beheld the
lily-white drapery of her hour of immolation.




254          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
Lucy neither blanched nor blushed.
" Be brave! be prudent! " the warning of her
unseen protector was ringing in her ears. She
saw it, inscribed on a label, and hanging from
the lips of her vision of his face. The brave do
not blanch. The prudent do not blush. So she
quietly joined the busy circle, took a needle and
stabbed the wedding-dress without mercy.
It was a monstrous relief thus to kill time.
She did herself, for the hour, "' her quietus make
with a bare bodkin," and the other weapons of
a modiste.
"Stitch, stitch, stitch! Seam, and gusset, and band! "
"Alh!" she thought, " what a blessing is this
distraction of labor! I have shed my tears. If
I were to sit inactive, I might brood myself
into  despair. If I were  to think  over my
wrong, I might flame out too soon. If I look
at my mother, I begin to dread her again. I
know she could master me still. 0 my God!
sustain me through these last hours of my peril!
I never knew how great it was until now. I
foresaw a misery; but the degradation of giving
myself up to this man, I never even dreamed
of. I am ashamed, ashamed to recall that there
have been instants when I tolerated him,- when
I thought that he was not so very gross and
coarse, 1 pray God that the sacredness of my
soul is not spoilt."




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          255
A great agony stirred in her maidenly bosom
at this thought. She bent closer to her work.
She knew that her mother's eyes were upon her.
She heard, without marking, the tattle of the
maids.
"Fly, little needle!"  she said  to herself.
"Measure  off this pause in my life!  Every
stitch is a second. Sixty are a minute. Minutes make hours, and hours wear out the weary
day. Evening must come. If I can but be
brave and prudent, I shall see my father and his
noble friend, and be safe."
Her needle galloped at the excitement of the
thought.
Mrs. Brothertoft looked at her, and said to her
heart, with a sneer, -" Pretty creature! she consoles herself, it seems.  Our boozy, rubicund
bridegroom begins to look quite pale and interesting, seen through a bridal veil. The touch of
white silk cures her scruples easily. Ah! the
blushing bride will be resigned to her bliss.
Bah! that I —I should dread such a pretty,
silly trifler!  What a fool I was to think her
different from other simpering girls! So, this is
the meaning of all her coy little wiles and her
headaches. Headaches! she may have as many
as she pleases now, in her pensive bower. Ah!
I comprehend thee now, fair hypocrite.  The
slender fingers are impatient for the ring. Fly,




256          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
little bird, to the bosom of thy spouse. Perhaps
he will not quite crush thy poor, silly heart.
And I have been afraid of her! She is so tickled
with her wedding favors, that she will presently
be kissing me again for gratitude with more
fervor than ever. But I am  sick of her simplicity.  I am tired of her' Dearest mammas!'
I should strangle her, I dare say, if she were
not taken off. She grows more like that Edwin
Brothertoft lately."
" Your dress is ready to try on, Miss Lucy,"
said Mrs. Jierck Dewitt.
So there was a mighty rustle, and a headless,
armless torso of stiff white silk rose up and stood
on its skirt. It did Dewitt great credit. Ah!
if her character had only been equal to her skill!
But she was a brazen hussy, and Sally, her sister,
no better.  Tel vna'tre, tel valet. One positively
bad woman spoils many negatively bad ones.  It
would not seem at all unfair if Destiny took advantage of the harm done Jierck Dewitt's wife
in punishing the lady of the Manor through her
means.
Lucy still faced her wedding-dress without
flinching. She may even have thought that, if
the worst came, it was better to go to the guillotine in becoming array. It is perhaps woman
to say, " My heart is broken; but my bodice fits
without a fold."




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         257
It is woman, no doubt, but there are women
and Women. Lucy could safely admire the robe,
and tranquilly criticise it, because she knew that
she and it were not to see marriage together.
"Now shall I unlace you, Miss Lucy?" says
the abigail.
Yes, abigail; as soon as these masculine eyes,
whose business is with the young lady's soul,
not with her toilette, can take themselves decorously out of the room.




IX.
NOMBRE de Dieden! what a fit!
Unlacing and relacing concluded, these masculine eyes, again admitted to the maiden's bower,
are dazzled with unexpected loveliness.
There stands the lady, within the perfect
dress!!! beautiful to three points of admiration.
Sweet eighteen can bear low neck by broad daylight.
The struggle in her heart with all her wild
emotions of terror and hope was as great a
beautifier as the presence of critical weddingguests, the rustle of a surplice, the electric touch
of a gay gold ring, and the first clasp of the hand
of a husband.
And you, 0 Peter Skerrett! you have shaved
off your moustache and donned a coat much too
small,- you have made a guy of yourself for
your first interview with this angel!
Shall the personal impression she may already
have made be here revised and corrected? No;
for this is not real sunshine upon her. If she is
ever photographed, it shall be in her bright, not




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          259
in her dark day. Let her wait till fuller maturity for description!  It is easy to see the
Brothertoft in her. She blends the tender grace
of the lady in Vandyck's picture with the quiet
dignity of the gentleman. But is there not kindling in her face the vigor of another race, her
mother's? Perhaps a portrait now would belie
her final look.
" You are like an angel, Miss Lucy," said Mrs.
Dewitt.
She was. She stood there ill bridal robe, veil,
and wreath. Her hands were clasped firm to
control her insurgent heart.  Her lips were
parted, and she was whispering to herself, " Be
brave! Be prudent!" Her eyes overlooked the
present, and saw hope in the blue sky above the
golden Highlands through her window.
Yes; like an angel.
There was a hush for a moment. The three
bad women - the pert hoyden, the false wife, and
the proud mistress of the Manor -were silenced
and abashed.
Again the old pang stirred in the mother's bosom.
Again she longed to throw herself at her daughter's feet and pray forgiveness. But again she
gained that defeat of a victory over her womanliness. She trampled down the weakness of repentance. The bedlam look flickered over her
features, and she hardly restrained her furious




260         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
impulse to leap forward and rend the innocent
face and the maiden bosom that so shamed her.
" You do look just like an angel, Miss Lucy,"
Abby Dewitt asseverated, with the air of a connaisseuse in the article. "Don't she, Sally? "
The two thereupon gave tongue to voluble
flatteries.
"Your work does you great credit, Dewitt,"
Lucy said. " Mamma, cannot we spare Abby
and Sally to go home to the farm  to-night?
They deserve a holiday after this long confinement. And to-morrow will be a busy day again."
"' Of course, my dear, if they wish it." Mrs.
Brothertoft was glad to put her daughter under
obligation.
The women again gave tongue with thanks.
They were always, as Voltaire had said, ready to
get away for a frolic. Lucy smiled to herself at
the easy success of her stratagem. She had
packed off baggage and baggage, without suspicion.
"What a conspirator I am becoming!" she
thought. "Ah! silly Lucy, the child, the thing
to be flung away! She too can help baffle the
evil schemes against herself. When these coarse
women are gone, there will be not a soul but
friends within a mile of the house."
Dinner was tardy to-day, after the late breakfast following the revel.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          261
Nine-oxygen azote by the lung-full had given
tone to Major Kerr's system. His appetite for
meat and drink were in full force again, all the
stouter for this morning's respite.
"What a lucky dog I am," he said, " to dodge
that expedition of Vaughan's! I'm' the soldier
tired of war's alarms,' Miss Lucy."
" You do not care about laurels any more,"
Mrs. Brothertoft said, with her half-sneer.
" Not when I can get roses."
His look with this brought fire into Lucy's
cheeks.
" No," resumed he; " I should be glad enough
to help burn the dashed rebels' houses over their
heads, and them, too, in their beds. Here's confusion to'em, and luck to Jack Burgoyne! I
hate the vulgar'varmint.' But I don't want to
leave a good dinner to see bonfires. I know
where I'm well off, and going to be better.
Eh, Miss Lucy?"
Her heart began to throb and her head to
ache at once.
"This goose has got a bark on thick as an
oak-tree," continued the valiant trencherman,
making an incision. "Give me another cut of
beef, - the red, with plenty of fat and plenty of
gravy, if you please, my mamma that shall be.
I need support when the parson opens his batteries to-morrow. Eh, Miss Lucy?' With this




262          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
ring thee I wed, and with all my worldly -'
Hain't got any goods. I'11 endow you with all
my worldly debts, and tell the Jews to shift
the security. Haw, haw!"
He laughed boisterously.
This coarse paean stirred up echoes of repulsion in Lucy's heart.
How she longed to fling defiance at him!
Patience, - she almost bit the word in two, with
her teeth set hard upon it. One rash expression would be ruin; but great red-hot shot of
scorn burned within her. She discovered that
there was strong language in her vocabulary.
It grew significant to her now. She was beginning to half understand herself at last. When
the boiler grows hot, the water feels its latent
steam.
"Am I the same being?" she thought. "Am
I the meek Consent I have pitied and wept with
so long? No, I have ceased to be a spiritless nobody. I am almost sorry that help from without
is coming to me. I should like to stand up now
and say,' Madam, of you as a woman I will not
speak, — as a mother, you are a tyrant, and I
defy you. I defy you and this brute, not half so
base as you, whom you have dared to name by
the sacred name of lover, whom you have called
in to aid you in dishonoring your child.' Yes;
I could almost say that to her now. Is it pos



EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         263
sible? Is it possible that a woman can so hate a
woman? I never felt what the sanctity of my
womanhood was until now, - now that I perceive this miserable plot against it."
This defiant mood was strong within her.
But presently, as she looked at Kerr, growing
redder with too much dinner and too much
wine, laughing at his own coarse jokes and
throwing at her with great vulgar compliments;
and when all at once, in contrast, rose the figure
of the other Major as she had painted him, —
disgust so mastered her that she sprang up,
pleaded a headache, and fled to her chamber, to
wait and hope and doubt and pray alone.
"Megrims again," said the lover, sulkily, as
she disappeared. "I don't like it. She didn't
run away from Jack Andr6 yesterday."
" O, let her amuse herself with headaches, if
she pleases," said the Lady of the Manor. "I
understand the child. I saw her this morning
over her wedding-dress. She is as eager for
the happy moment as any lover could wish."
" So you think she shams coy? "
"Yes," said Mrs. Brothertoft; and she was
willing to believe it.
" Well, good night, pretty creature! Let it
go up stairs and think how sweet it will look
to-morrow in its silks and laces! What, are you
going too, my mamma? "




264         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
"Yes. Take your glass of wine quietly. We
will have sulper late. I am going to doze a
little in the parlor.  I dreamed troublesome
dreams last night."
"By George!" said Kerr, as she closed the
door. " Splendid woman! Twice as handsome
as the Duchess of Gurgoyle! I suppose she
thinks the Kerrs will take her up when she
goes to England. No, ma'am! We can't quite
stand that. You've got all you can expect out
of me when you've married off your daughter
on me. Now, then, it's going to be solemn business, drinking alone."




x.
PLOT and counterplot at Brothertoft Manor.
And meantime, what has counterplot without the
house been doing?
If Edwin Brothertoft and Peter Skerrett could
have travelled by daylight through the Highlands, then this narrative; marching with them,
might have seen what fine things they saw, and
told of them. But they went cautiously by
night. They saw little but the stars overhead
and the faint traces of their shy path. They
were not distracted by grand views. Nature is a
mere impertinence to men who are filled with a
purpose. Fortunately, these intense purposes do
not last a lifetime. Minds become disengaged,
and then they go back, and make apologies to
Nature for not admiring her. And she, minding
her own business, cares as little for the compliment as for the slight.
It is a bit of the world worth seeing, that
bossy belt of latitude between Fishkill and
Brothertoft Manor. There is a very splendid
pageant to behold there in the halcyon days of
12




266          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
October, the ruddy, the purple, the golden, when
every tree is a flame, or a blush, or a dash of
blood or deep winy crimson on the gray rocks of
the mountains. The Hudson Highlands do not
wrangle about height with the Alps; but they
content themselves with wearing a more gorgeous autumn on their backs than any mountains
on the globe. Go and see! Frost paints as
bravely now as it did in 1777, and it is safer to
travel. Bellona has decamped from the land,
and half-way from Fishkill down the pass, Minerva, fair-haired, contralto-voiced, and courteous, keeps school and presides over the sixtythird milestone from New York. Go and see
the Highlands for yourself! The business of
these pages is mainly with what hearts suffer and
become under pressure, little with what eyes
survey.
Danger is safety to the prudent. Major Skerrett and his guide made their perilous journey
without mishap. At the chilly dawn of day, we
find them at the rendezvous in the hills behind
Peekskill, trying to believe that there was warmth
in the warm colors of the woods, and waiting for
Jierck Dewitt.
Presently he appeared, in high spirits.
" We've come in the nick of time," said he.
"The redcoats have done all the harm they could
about here. They've drawed in every man, and




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         267
are off at sunrise up river for Kingston. They
allow, if they set a few towns afire, that General
Gates will turn his back to Burgoyne and take
to passin' bucketso"
" Bang! " here spoke the sunrise gun at Fort
Montgomery.
"Bang! bang! bang!" the -three frigates responded.
Dunderberg grumbled with loud echoes. He
was pleased to be awaked by the song of birds;
but the victorious noise of British cannon he
protested against, like a good American.
" The coast is clear for us," resumed Jierck.
"Clear almost as if these were peace times.
Now if you'll come along, I'll take you to a
safe dell in the woods, a mile from the ManorHouse, where you can stay all day, snug as a
chipmunk in a chestnut stump, and see how the
land lies.  I'11 tell you my other news as we
go."
They took up their guns and knatpsacks and
followed. The light of morning was fair and
tender. The autumn colors were exhilarating.
White frost shone upon the slopes and glimmered upon every leaf in the groves.
These were the Manor lands. Each spot Edwin Brothertoft remembered as a scene of his
childhood's discoveries of facts and mysteries
in Nature. They walked on for an hour, and




268          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
Brothertoft grew almost gay with memories of
his youth.
"Do you see that white shining through the
trees?" said Jierck, halting.  "It's the river.
Ten steps and you'11 see the house. Now, Major,
I'11 go and look after my boys, and come at noon
for your orders."
Jierck turned back into the wood.  Major
Skerrett stepped forward eagerly. He had an
eye for a landscape.  He had also a soldier's
eye for every new bit of possible battle-field.
Ten steps brought him to the edge of the
slope. A transcendent prospect suddenly flung
out its colors before him. First was a stripe of
undulating upland thoroughly Octobered. Then
a stripe of river, bending like a belt in a flag,
that a breeze is twisting between its fingers.
Then beyond, Highlands, not so glowing as the
foreground, nor so sparkling blue as the blue
water, nor so simple as the sky, softly combined
and repeated all the elements of beauty before
him.
He turned to give and take sympathy from his
companion. Mr. Brothertoft was not beside him.
He had seated himself within cover of the wood.
" Come out, sir! " called Skerrett *ith enthusiasm. " I am so bewildered with this beautiful
prospect that I need to hear another man's superlatives to satisfy me I am not in a dream.
Come out, sir! We are quite safe."




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         269
"My friend," said Brothertoft. " I was hesitating a moment before I risked the quenching
of my strange good spirits.  You are looking
upon a scene that has been very dear and very
sad to me. I cannot see it, as you do, with a
stranger's eye. It is to me the scenery of tragedy. I cannot tell yet whether I have outgrown
the wound enough to tolerate the place where
I first felt it."
He moved forward, and took his place by the
Major's side. The two stood silent a moment.
Thus far the younger, in his robust appetite for
the beauty of Nature, had felt " no need of the
remoter charm by thought supplied." Color and
form he took as a hungry child takes meat and
drink. Now for the first time there was history
in his picture, sorrow upon his scene.  He made
his friend's sadness his own, and looked through
this melancholy mist at the gold, the sheen, and
the bloom. His mere physical elation at this intoxicating revelry of color passed away. Beauty
left his head and went to his heart.
He turned to see how his companion was
affected.
" I find," said Brothertoft, " that I do not hate
these dear old scenes. Indeed, the flush and the
fervor of this resplendent season enter into me.
I am cheered enough to pardon myself all my
faults, and all who have wronged me for their




270          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
wrongs. It is grand to feel so young and brave
again."
For a moment there was bold light in his eyes
and vigor in his bearing. The light faded presently and the vigor drooped. He was again the
stricken man, aged prematurely by sorrow.
" But, my son," continued the elder, " I cannot
quite sustain myself in this cheerful mood. I
look at my forefathers' house, and think of my
dauglhter, and I doubt."
Skerrett followed the direction of his eyes and
studied the Manor-House.
It stood on a small plateau, half a mile from
the river, in the midst of its broad principality.
There was not such another house then in America. There are few enough now, town or country, cottage or palace, over whose doors may be
seen the unmistakable cartouche of a gentleman.
The first Edwin Brothertoft built his house
after the model of the dear old dilapidated seat
in Lincolnshire. It was only one fourth the size;
but it had kept the grand features of its prototype. Skerrett could see and admire the four
quaint gables, two front and two rear, the sturdy
stack of warm chimneys, and the corner tower
with its peaked hat, — such as towers built in
James the First's time wore. It bristled well in
the landscape.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         271
It was a century old. That must be a very
unsociable kind of house which will not make
itself at home in the space of a century. In a
hundred years the Manor-House and buildings
and their scenery had learnt perfect harmony
with each other. Wherever trees were wanted
for shade or show, they had had time to choose
their post and grow stately. Those stalks which
know nothing but to run up lank, for plank, had
long been felled and uprooted. There were no
awkward squads of bushes, stuck about where
they could not stand at ease; but orderly little
companies of shrubbery and evergreens had nestled wherever a shelter invited them, or wherever
a shoulder of lawn wanted an epaulet. Creepers had chosen those panels of wall which needed
sheltering from heat or cold, and had measured
precisely how much peering into windows and
drooping over doors could be permitted. The
little Dutch bricks of the sides and the freestone
of the quoins and trimmings, their coloring revised by the pencils of a hundred quartettes of
seasons, now were as much in tone with the
scene as the indigenous rocks of the soil. Absolute good taste had reigned at Brothertoft
Manor for a century. Its results justified the
government thoroughly.  The present proprietress had been educated out of her gaudy fancies
by this fine example of the success of a better




272          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
method. She had altered nothing, and made her
repairs and additions chime with the ancient
harmony.
At this moment, too, of Peter Skerrett's inspection, the landscape about the house wore
its wealthiest garniture.  Each maple in the
grounds had crimsoned its ruddiest, or purpled
its winiest, or gilded its leaves, every one with
a film of burnished gold. The elms were all at
their gayest yellow or their warmest brown, and
stiff masculine chestnuts beside them  rivalled
their tints, if they could not their grace. Here
and there was a great oak, resolute not to
adopt these new-fangled splendors of gaudy day,
and wearing still the well-kept coat of green
which had served him all summer. Younger
gentlemen of the same family, however, would
not be behind the times, and stood about their
ancestor in handsome new doublets of murrey
color. Every slash and epaulet of shrubbery
was gold on the green of the lawn, and creepers blazed on the walls and dropped their scarlet
trailers, like flames, before the windows.
" It is a dear old dignified place," said Peter
Skerrett, "and I wish I could go down and
make a quiet call there by daylight.  I will,
by and by, after the war, unless the rebels
punish it with fire for having dined Sir Henry
Clinton."




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          273
"It is a dear old place," said Brotlhertoft,
" and I love it most dearly as the school-house
of my education in sorrow. No man is convinced of his own immortality until his soul
has borne as murderous blows as can be struck,
and still, is not murdered. I come to the place
where the hardest hitting at my peace has been
done, and I feel a new sense of power because
I find that there is something in me that is
not quite devastated.  On the old battle-field,
I perceive that I am not wholly beaten, and
can never be."
He said this in a tone of soliloquy. Peter
Skerrett was too young to thoroughly understand his friend. Besides, he was conscious of
a frantic hunger, - an excellent thing in a hero.
" Come, sir," said he, " shall we breakfast? I
have remarked that swallowing dawn is an appetizer. Here goes at my knapsack, to see what
General Putnam's cook has done for us."
The cook had done as well as a rebel larder
allowed. They did well by the viands, and
then, under cover of the wood, they wore away
the morning watchfully.
They saw boats from the frigates land men to
be drilled ashore or to forage in the village of
Peekskill.  Here and there a farmer, braver
or stupider than his neighbors, was to be discerned, ploughing and sowing for next summer
12*                  R




274          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
as if war were a hundred miles away. Carts
appeared creeping timidly along the country
roads.  The cattle seemed to feed cautiously
and sniff about, lest Cowboys should catch them.
The whole scene wore a depressed and apprehensive air. Brothertoft Manor was willing to
be well with both sides, and was equally uncomfortable with both.  The tenants of the
Manor were generally trying to persuade themselves that British frigates in the river were
merely marts for their eggs and chickens. Men
that have not made up their minds are but
skulking creatures on God's earth.
" Seems to me," said Skerrett, "that I can
tell a Tory or a Neutral as far as I can see
him."
The day wore on, and in this pause of action
the two gentlemen opened their hearts to each
other.
It was the intercourse of father and son.
Each wanted what the other gave him.
The fatherless junior felt his mind grow deeper
with a man who had touched bottom in thought.
He was sobered aild softened by the spectacle
of one so faithful to the truth that was in him,
so gentle, so indulgent, weakened perhaps by
sorrow, but never soured.
The sonless senior said. " Al, Skerrett! you
are the young oak. If I had had you to lean upon,




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          275
I should not have lost force to climb and bloom.
Such a merry heart as yours makes the whole
world laugh,- not empty laughter, but hearty."
At noon Jierck Dewitt came to report. He
and the boys were safely hid in his father's
barn.
" Ike mostly sleeps," says Jierck, " Sam plays
old sledge with dummy, and Hendrecus is writin'
something in short lines all beginnin' with big
letters, poetry perhaps.  He's an awful great
scholar."
Their plans were again discussed, and orders
issued.
" Well," said Jierck, "at dusk I'11 have my
men, and father's runt pony for the prisoner to
straddle, down at the forks of the road waitin'
for you.  Nothing can stop us now but one
thing."
" And that?" asked the Major.
"Is Lady BrothBrtoft. If she suspicions anything before we're ready to run, it will be all
up with us, — halter round our necks and all
up among the acorns."
So Jierck, still " stiff as the Lord Chancellor,"
and yet limber as a snake in the grass, took
his departure.
Afternoon hours went slower than the morning hours.
" The sun always seems to me to hold back




276          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
in going down hill," Skerrett said.'"I wish
he would tumble to bed faster. I am impatient
to make our success sure."
"Your sturdy confidence reassures me," returned Brothertoft. "I am happy there is one
of us whose heart-beats will not unsteady him.
I lose hope when I think what failure means to
my daughter."
"I must keep myself the cool outsider, with
only a knight-errant's share in this adventure,"
Peter said.
A hard task he found this! The father so
charmed him that he felt himself, for his sake,
taking a very tender fraternal interest in the
young lady. It was so easy to picture her in
her chamber, not a mile away, looking tearfully
for help toward the hills.  It was so easy to
fancy her face,-her father's, with the bloom
of youth instead of the shades of sorrow; and
her character, — her father'si with all this gentleness that perhaps weakened him, in her but
sweet womanliness. Peter Skerrett perceived to
the full the romance of the adventure.  He
frequently felt the undeveloped true lover in
him  grow restive. Ie thought that he was all
the time putting down that turbulent personage.
Perhaps he was. But it must be avowed that
he often regretted his moustache, despised his
ill-fitting coat, and only consoled himself by re



EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         277
calling, " It will be night, and she will only half
see me." As evening approached, Peter Skerrett
perceived that his desire to redeem this fair
victim from among the bad and the base was
become a passion. He also noticed that its fervor
kept him cool and steady.
Silent sunset came.  The crisis drew near.
Doubts began to curdle in Edwin Brothertoft's
mind. He looked over the broad landscape, and
along the solemn horizon, and all his own past
spread before him, sad-colored and dreary.
"Ah my beautiful childhood!" he thought.
"Ah my ardent youth, my aspiring manhood,
my defeated prime!  My life utterly defeated,
as the world measures defeat, -and all through
her! All through her, the woman I loved with
my whole heart! Please God we may not meet
to-night! Please Heaven we may never meet
until her dark hour comes! Please Heaven- that
when the loneliness of sin comes upon her, and
the misery of a worse defeat than any I have felt
is hers, - that then at last I may be ready with
such words of pardon as she needs! "
"See!" said Skerrett, softly. "It is dark.
There is a light in your daughter's window. We
will gou:to her."
" In the name of God! " said the father.




XI.
SCENE, the interior of Squire Dewitt's barn.
Hay at the sides, hay at the back, and great
mountains of hay rise into the dusky regions of
the loft.
In the centre stands Jierck Dewitt, just returned from his noon interview with Major Skerrett.
At the left sits Ike Van Wart, asleep, with his
mouth open. Perhaps, like Voltaire, he hears
partially with his tonsils.
On the right, old Sam Galsworthy is killing
time with old sledge for a weapon.  His right
hand has just beaten his left and won the
stakes, - viz.: twelve oats.
Hendrecus Canady stealthily approaches the
gaping sleeper on the left. He holds a head
of timothy-grass, — in these times of war we
perceive that it is a good model fr a cannon
sponge. Hendrecus introduces timothy's head
into Van Wart's mouth, and begins to tickle the
tonsils and palate, so rosy.
To these enters pretty Katy Dewitt, blushing




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          279
and smiling. Fragrance comes with her; and
well it may, for she bears dinner,- a deep yellow dish of pork and beans and a pumpkin-pie
exquisitely varnished.
Tender-hearted Jierck Dewitt at once remembered the wife who in happier days crisped his
pork and sweetened his pie.
Hendrecus dropped his tickler into Van Wart,
and sprang up to help his sweetheart. Her
pretty smiles stirred happy smiles on his face, —
a bright and good-humored one, though still
of pill-fed complexion. His lover-like attentions
brought out a blush on her cheeks. That fair
color seemed to make the old barn glow and all
the hay-mow bloom with fresh heads of pink
clover.
Poor Jierck Dewitt recalled how there were
once smiles as gay and blushes as tender between
him and a damsel as buxom.
Poor fellow! his dinner did him no good. He
grew moodier and moodier. The little scene between his sister and Hendrecus had made him
miserable. He could not sleep like Van Wart,
nor play cards with Galsworthy, nor skylark with
Hendrecus.* He sat brooding over his sorrow.
His powers of self-control were weakened. He
could not throw off this weight of an old bitterness. A great vague misery oppressed him. He
began to fear his wits were going.




280          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
"If I could only get these ugly feelings into
shape," he thought, " I could grapple with them
and choke them down. I must do something,
or I shall go mad. I believe I'll steal round
through the woods to where I can see old Bilsby's house and the chestnut-tree where Abby
first said she'd have me. Looking at the places
may help me to drag this grief out of myself and
put it on them."
Now that the British troops were withdrawn
for VaLughan's expedition, Jierck felt quite secure
in dodging about the woods of the Manor. He
left his companions in the barn, and stole off
toward his father-in-law's old red farm-house.
He felt as if he were his own ghost, compelled
to haunt a spot where he had been murdered.
It was quiet sunset. The golden light of
evening was among the golden woods.  The
forest showered golden leaves upon the ground,
and melted away in golden motes across the
level sunbeams.
Jierck stole along until he came to a little
glade, crossed by a pathway. A great chestnuttree had made the glade its own. Lesser plants
were easily thrust back by its stout overshadowing branches, and its brethren of the forest had
willingly given place to see what their brother
would do with its chance of greatness. It had
done nobly. It was an example to trees and the




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          281
world, of the wisdom of standing by one's roots,
expanding to one's sunshine, and letting one's
self grow like a fine old vegetable.
This had been Jierck's trystin(g-tree in the
times when the pastoral poem of his life was
writing itself, a canto a day. Under this chestnut, one summer's eve, when the whole tree was
a great bouquet of flowery tassels, Jierck had
suddenly ventured to pop his shy question. Fullthroated robins up in those very branches had
shouted his sweetheart's " Yes," for all the birds
and breezes to repeat.
Jierck, hidden in the thicket, looked kindly at
the old tree. He smiled to recall the meetings
there when he was a timid, clumsy lover. For
a moment recollections, half comic and all pleasant, banished his agony of a man betrayed by
a disloyal woman.
But presently he heard sounds that were not
the light clash of falling leaf with fallen' leaf.
Footsteps and voices were coming. Jierck withdrew a little and watched. Two women appeared
up the pathway, following their long shadows.
They came out into the glade. It was his wife
and her sister, furloutghed for the evening, and
on their way homeward.
Jierck beheld the woman's story written on
her face, —the tablet where all stories of lives
are written for decipherers to read.  He saw




282          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
no wish there to expunge or revise the later
chapters. His wife was still an insolent, brazen
woman, the counterpart of her mistress on a
lower plane.
Poor Jierck! he had been drawn to this spot,
so he felt, to see his murderess and be stabbed
over again. The exceeding weight of his agony
came crushing down upon him. He shivered.
It seemed to him that snow must suddenly have
fallen with sunset. A moment ago it was not
spring, nor summer, but very tolerable autumn;
now winter had come, chilly and dreary. A
friendless place to him this traitor world! Jierck
felt smitten with degradation.  He was utterly
miserable, and the old chestnut-tree insulted him
with memories of his dead hopes of happiness.
"I must have comfort," thought Jierck.
When sorrow is too sharp to be borne, and
comfort must be had at once, men go to the
anodynes and stimulants.  Kosmos provides
these in great variety. The four of most universal application are,
Tobacco, Alcohol, Marriage, Death.
Poor Jierck Dewitt wanted comfort at once.
A whiff of smoke from his pipe was not concentrated enough, and he could not wait to
try what virtue there was in bigamy.
"Rum  or this!" he said wildly. The alternative " this " seemed to attract him for an




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          283
instant. HIe drew his knife from his belt, and
felt along the cold edge. Was he about to taste
that mighty narcotic, Death?
Death! He touched his knife-blade. Gloom
alighted upon the landscape. The golden woods
grew lurid. Silence, deeper than he had ever
known, deepened and deepened, until he fancied
that Nature was hushed and listening for his
death-moan.
An imagined picture grew before his eyes:Time, morning. Scene, this glade of the big
chestnut.  A man lies under the tree.  The
first sunbeams melt the frost that dabbles his
hair. He must be a sound sleeper, for a chipmunk has picked his pockets of their crumbs,
and now stands on his forehead, chuckling over
his breakfast.  Mrs. Jierck Dewitt enters the
glade.  She sees the sleeper. She starts, and
approaches cautiously.  She stares, and then
looks up with a great, bold smile of relief and
scorn.  For the Sleeper is her husband.  He
lies dead, with a knife in his breast.
"No!" hissed Jierck, dashing away this picture from his eyes. "I'11 not kill myself to
please her."
" Rum! I must have rum, or I shall go mad.
The old man's jug will be in the old place in the
kitchen cupboard," he continued.
He skulked along rapidly through the woods,




284         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
like a beast of prey.  The great dull agony
in his heart paused a moment. He could keep
it down from maddening him, while he thought
of his sorry consolation to come.
It was growing dusk now, and he was reckless. He stopped by the kitchen window of
his father's house and peered in.
The family were at supper. These were the
early years of the Revolution, and war had not
yet utterly desolated this region.  Squire Dewitt's'was still a prosperous household, and he,
a fine old patriarch, presided at a liberal board.
Opposite him sat the mild mother of the house.
The harmony of a lifetime of love and companion thinking on companion cares had made
her expression almost identical with her husband's. Pretty Kate, a daughter of her parents'
old age, bustled the meal along, and hoped her
lendrecus was not getting hungry.  Jierck's
other sister, a widow, was making two smiles
grow in the place of one, on'her boy Tommy's
round face, by cutting his gingerbread fatter
than usual. The cat, from a dresser, watched
every morsel and every sip, with a feline look,
which is a thief look.
This homely scene, instead of soothing poor
Jierck, was double bitterness to him.
" Curse the woman I made my wife! " he
thought. " She has spoilt my chance of home




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          285
and fireside, of a happy age and children to
love and reverence me. Curse her for making
me hate my life!"
He turned away, half mean, half fierce, and
stole in by the back-door to the cupboard.
Those were times, remember, before the demijohn and the spinning-wheel had given way to
Webster's Unabridged and the melodeon.  Ill
every farmer's pantry  stood a Dutch-bellied
stone jug. It was corked with a corn cob, and
looked arrogantly through the window at the
old oaken bucket. Was there molasses in that
jug? Not so; but rum fitzmolasses. The wellsweep grew  stiff for want of exercise, moss
covered the dry-rotten bucket, green slime in
the stagnant well was only broken by the
plunges of lonely old "Rigdumbonnimiddikaimo "; but the rum-jug was always alert and
jolly, and never had time to look vacuous before
it was a plenum again. It is hard to imagine
those ages; for we have changed our manners
now. Our brandy is dried up, our rum has
run away, and this is not a land flowing with
Monongahela.
Jierck stole, like a thief, into the pantry.
There sat the great jug, as of yore. It was of
gray stone-ware with blue splashes. Its spout
was fashioned into a face on the broad grin.
" Comfort here! " the grinning mask seemed to




286         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
wink, and did not reveal how short-lived and
bastard was the comfort it promised.  Jierck
heaved up its clumsy heft, balanced it upon
his lips, and swigged.
Yes, —not to be squeamish in terms, — this
Patriot of the Revolution swigged.  This was
not patriotic, nor under the circumstances honorable, nor in any way wise or prudent. And
of course, as his provocation is unknown to our
time, we cannot appreciate his reckless despair.
If he had only stopped when he had enough!
At the present day we never take too much of
our anodynes and our stimulants. One weed,
one toddy, one wife, one million, oiie Presidential term, —whenever wisdom  whispers, Satis,
we pause and echo, "Satis't is." Wisdom was
younger in Jierck's time. If her childish voice
did at all admonish him, the gurgle in his
throat made him deaf to the warning at his
tympanum.  He took too much, poor fellow!
Pardon him, and remember that an ill-omened
she-wolf had just crossed his path.
There is a sage and honorable law that limits
the robbing of orchards, -" Eat your fill; but
don't fill your pockets." Jierck was rash enough
to violate this also.  He pocketed a pint of
his sorry comforter. He found an empty bottle
labelled Hair-Oil.  There were nameless unguents before Macassar, and this bottle had held




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         287
one of them. Jierck filled it from the jug, and
made for the barn, just in time to evade pretty
Kate carrying supper to the others and her
Hendrecus.
Supper was done. Dusk was come. Jierck
set out with his party for the rendezvous. The
peril was considerable. Hanging was the penalty for being caught. So they sharpened their
eyes, pricked up their ears, trod softly, and
tried to persuade the runt pony to do the same.
Jierck brought up the rear, in a state of sullen
contempt.
At the cross-roads Major Skerrett and his
companion met them. It was night now in
the woods. A red belt of day behind Dunderberg stared watchfully at the party.
"I will go down to the house alone, as we arranged," whispered the Major. " The negro will
admit me to the dining-room. Do you be ready'
on the lawn by the window at half past eight!
It will be dark enough for safety by that time.
When I open the window and whistle, jump in
and take our man. That is my plan. If anything goes wrong, I will alter it. But nothing
will go wrong. Good-bye!"
He moved away through the darkness.
The party waited in the woods, listening to
the sounds of evening. It grew chilly. Jierck
Dewitt retired again and again, and sipped from




288         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
his bottle, labelled Hair-Oil. He was ashamed
of himself for violating his pledge to the Major.
But he soliloquized,'I am  only taking just
enough to keep my spirits up, -just enough to
make a man of me after my making a baby of
myself at sight of that woman."
Just enough! It is not pleasant to betray the
errors of the past; but it is a truth grave in this
history that the unhappy fellow had much more
than enough when, at half past eight, he halted
his party under cover of the shrubbery on the
lawn at Brothertoft Manor-House.




XII.
EIGHT o'clock, and Major Kerr sat sipping Madeira in the dining-room at Brothertoft Manor.
"What's the use of eight candles?" he said
to Voltaire.
"Only four, sir," says the butler, depositing
two branches on the table.
" I see eight, - no, sixteen.  Well, let'em
burn! Economy be hanged! I say, nigger!"
"What, sir?"   Voltaire perceived that his
deteriorating process had been effectual. Kerr
saw double and spoke thick.
-"I'm tired of sitting here alone. Can't you
sing me a song?"
" I used to sing like a boblink, sir; but since
I lost my front tooth the music all leaks out in
dribbles. There's a redcoat sargeant just come
into the kitchen.  He looks like a most a mighty
pbwerful singer. Shall I bring him in? "
"Yes. I ain't proud. A Kerr can associate
with anybody."
As Voltaire left the room, he picked up the
Major's sword and pistols from the sideboard.
13                  s




290          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
Plato was in the hall, stationed to watch the
door of the parlor where the lady of the Manor
was sitting solitary. His father handed him the
arms. The seven seals of mystery had been
opened, and Plato was deep in the plot.
"Take'em, boy," says Voltaire, "and be
ready! "
Ready for what? Neither divined. But Plato
took the weapons with dignity, and became a
generalissimo in his own estimation. He brandished the sword, and made a lunge at some
imaginary antagonist. Then he lifted a cocked
pistol, and took aim. It was comic in the dim
hall to see him going through his silent pantomime. He thrust, he parried, he dropped his
point, he bowed like an accomplished master of
fence. He raised a pistol, bowed graciously, as
if to say, " Apres vous, Monsieur," touched trigger, assumed a look half triumph, half concern, then laid his hand upon his heart and
smiled the smile of one whose wounded honor
is avenged. All this was done without so much
as a chuckle.
While Plato was at his noiseless gymnastics,
Voltaire, through the pantry, had conducted the
Sergeant into Major Kerr's presence.
Skerrett, with his moustache off, and in a disguise a world too shrunk for his shanks and
shoulders, looked much less the hero than when




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          291
he first stepped forth upon these pages. Indeed,
at this moment he did not feel very heroic.
He was sailing under false colors.  He was
acting a lie.  He did not like the business,
whatever tle motive was.  IIe took his seat
vis-d-vis the rival Major, and thought, " If fair
play is a jewel, I must give the effect of paste
set in pinchbeck at this moment."
", Glad to see you, Sargeant," says Kerr, speaking thick. " That's right," -to Voltaire. " Give
him some wine! Fine stuff they have in this
house. Better than regulation grog, Sargeant."
The new-comer nodded, and went at his supper
vigorously.
" Goshshave th' King, Sargn! Buppers! " says
Kerr, holding up his glass aslant and spilling a
little.
"Bumpers! " responded the other.
" Frustrate  their politics.  Confound their
knavish tricks," chanted Kerr.  "Rebblstricksh,
I mean, Sargn. Cuffoud'em. Buppers!"
"Bumpers!" Skerrett rejoined, still feeling
great compunction at the part he was playing.
" Sargeant," says Kerr, " I'm going to tell you
something."
Skerrett looked attention.
",I'm going to be married to-morrow,"
spoken confidentially.
" Ah! "




292          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
"Don't say,'Ah!' Sargeant. Ah expreshes
doubtsh. Say, Oh! Sargeant. I askitshpussonlefaver, Sargn. Say, Oh!"
"Oh!"
"That's right. Oh is congratulation."  He
made muddy work with the last word. "Yes,
Sargeant, doocid pretty girl, doocid pretty property. Want to see her, Sargeant?"
" No, I thank you."
"Yes, you do, Sargeant.  Don't tell me!
I'm a lucky fellow, Sargeant. Always was
with women. I'11 have her down in the parlor,
by and by, and you can look through the crack
of the door and see her. She loves me so much,
Sargeant, that she's gone up stairs to look at
her wedding-dress and wish for to-morrow."
This discourse, spoken thick, and the leer that
emphasized it, quite dissipated all Major Skerrett's scruples.
"Faugh! " thought he. " Everything is fair
play against such a beast. I never comprehended before what a horror to a delicate woman
must be marriage with such a creature. Life
would drag on one long indignity, and every
day fresh misery and fresh disgust.  Faugh!
sitting here and hearing him  talk gives me
qualms, —me, a man of the world, who have
certainly had time to outgrow my squeamishness. I could not tolerate the thought of giving




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         293
up any woman, even one with heart deflowered,
to the degradation of this fellow's society. He
shall not have Mr. Brothertoft's gentle daughter.
No, not if I have to shoot him where he sits.
No, not if I have to stab the lady."
Peter looked at his watch. Time was not up.
He was compelled to bottle his indignation and
listen civilly.
Kerr grew more and more confidential in his
cups. Faugh! the jokes he made! the staves
he trolled! the winks he winked! the imbecile
laughs he roared! the conquests he recounted
in love and war! Faugh, that such brutes have
sometimes dragged the pure and the gentle down
to their level! Faugh, that they still grovel on
our earth, so that the artist, compelled by the
conditions of his work to paint such a Silenus,
finds his unpleasant models thick about him,
and paints under the sharp spur of personal
disgust and personal harm!
The two Majors in the dining-room, the Lady
of the Manor in a drowsy revery over the parlor
fire, Lucy eager and trembling in her chamber, - for Voltaire has whispered that the hero
has come, — Volante saddled, Plato gesticulating with sword and pistols; - now let us see
what the plotters without the Manor-House are
doing.




XIII.
WHAT are the plotters without the ManorHouse doing?
All, except Jierck Dewitt, are standing at
ease, and waiting for their commander's signal.
Old Sam Galsworthy has his hand on the muzzle
of the runt pony, and at the faintest symptom
of a whinny in reply to Volante's whinnies in
the stable, Sam plugs the pony's nostrils with
his thumbs and holds his jaws together with
iron hand. Ike Van Wart leans on his gun,
and looks dull.  Hendrecus Canady stands to
his gun, and looks sharp. Sergeant LincolnBrothertoft keeps himself in a maze, - for to
think would be to doubt of success, and to
doubt is to fail.
This of course is the moment when Jierck
Dewitt should be " stiff as the Lord Chancellor," limber as the Lord Chief Acrobate, steady
as a steeple, and silent as a sexton.
But Jierck is at present a tipsy man, in happygo-lucky mood.  He begins to grow impatient
waiting in the cold and shamming sober. A




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         295
thought strikes him.  He can do something
more amusing than stand and handle a chilly
trigger.
"I'm going to take a turn about the house
to see all's safe, Orderly," whispered he to
Lincoln-Brothertoft. "I leave you in charge of
the party. Keep a sharp look-out. I will be
back in half a jiff."
Jierck stole off into the darkness.
Recollections of former exploits hereabouts
had revived in his muddled brain.
"' Hair-oil's all gone," he thought.  "Now
if I could only get into the cellar of the old
house, I should have my choice of liquors, just
as I did ten years ago, when Lady Brothertoft
had me caught and licked for breaking in.
By Congress, it's worth a try!  The cellar
window-bars used to be loose enough.  It
won't do any harm to give'em a pull all round.
If one gives, I can tumble in, get a drink to
keep my spirits up, and be back long before
the Major calls."
His fancy was hardly so coherent as this, but
he obeyed it.  He crept. about the house and
fumbled at the bars of the nearest window.
The windows opened on a level with the ground.
No go," said he; " try another! "  He did,
and another.
At the third window the solder was loose




296          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
and a bar shaky.  Jierck dug at the solder
with his knife and worked the bar about. It
still resisted, and he admonished it in a drunken
whisper, "I'm  ashamed of you, you dum  bit
of rusty iron, keepin' a patriot away from Tory
property. Give in now, like a good feller, before
I git mad and do something rash."
At this the bar joined the patriots, and gave
in. It came away in Jierck's hand. He laid
the cold iron on the frosty grass.  He could
now take out the stone into which the bar had
been set. HIe did so. That released the foot
of the next bar.  He bent this aside.  There
was room for him to' squeeze through.
He carefully backed into the cellar.
It was drunkard's luck. A sober man would
not have tried it. Moral: do not be too sober
in your head or your heart, if you would pluck
success among the nettles.
Jierck took a step forward in the Cimmerian darkness of the cellar. He fell plump into
a heap of that rubbish which Voltaire's flaring
dip revealed to us in the morning.
"This noise won't do," he thought.  "One
tumble will pass for rats. Another may bring
Lady B.  down stairs. I should n't like to see
her standing here with a candle in one hand
and a knife in the other.  She'd stick me,
like pork. No; I must strike a light. A flash
will do, to show me the way."




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          297
He unplugged his powder-horn with his teeth
and poured a charge on the stone floor.
" Old Brindle did n't know how many redcoats that horn of his was to be the means of
boring through," thought Jierck.  "Powder's
an istooshn."
In the dark his flint and steel tinkled together.
A spark flew. Fizz. Fiat lux! The powder
flashed.
Cimmerian corners, barrels of curly shavings
and rags out of curl, casks gone to hoops and
staves, shattered furniture, all the rubbishy
properties of a cellar scene, " started into light
and made the lighter start." Light gave them
a knowing look and was out again. The scenery
scuffled back into darkness.
Jierck afterward found that he had marked
every object in that black hole, as they flung
forward at the flash. He had marked the scene,
and it was to haunt him always. At present,
he was thinking of nothing but the wine-room.
His fireworks had shown him the way clear
to it. He saw also that the door was ajar, as
Voltaire had left it in the morning.
He moved forward now without stumble or
tumble.  He felt his way into the wine-room.
He touched the rough dusty backs of a battery
of recumbent bottles. He grasped one by the
13*




298          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
neck. With a skilful blow  against the shelf,
he knocked off the yellow-sealed muzzle.
" Fire away! " said he, presenting the weapon
at his lips.
Gurgle.
He stopped to take breath. He felt like a
boy again. The wine tasted as it did ten years
ago, when he first stole into the cellar, and
was punished for it.
"She can't have me whaled this time," he
muttered.  "Here goes again!  What stuff it
is!"
Gurgle a second time, and the cellar seems
to listen.
But while that amber stream was flowing
between the white stalactites in Jierck's upper
jaw, and the white stalagmites in his lower, and
rippling against that pink stalactite his palate,
before it leaped farther down the grotto, —
suddenly: -
A scream above, a rush, a shot, a scuffle.
For an instant Jierck was paralyzed. He
stood listening.  The bottle, for which he had
deserted his post, slipped through his alarmed
fingers and crashed on the floor. The sound
half recalled him to himself.
He turned and sprang for that dim parallelogram of lighter darkness, —the window where
he had entered.




EDWVIN BROTHERTOFT.         299
Awkwardly, drunkenly, trembling with haste
and shame, he clambered up upon the sill and
began to back out between the bars. His coat
caught against the bent iron.
As he stopped to disengage it, -he peered
suspiciously back into the cellar.
A little spot of red glow in the midst of
the blackness caught his eye.
" Aha!" he thought, " my powder lighted
something tindery in that heap of rubbish. It
will soon eat what it's got, and go out on the
stone floor. And if it don't go out, let it burn!
Blast the old house! it's a nest of Tories. Blast
it! the mistress had me thrashed like a dog.
Blast the house! my wife was spoilt here, and
that spoilt me. Blast it! let it burn, and show
us the way out of the country!"
Jierck tore his coat from the bar, backed
out, picked up his gun and skulked tipsily off
to join his party.




XIV.
JIERCK DEWITT'S companions waited, at first
silently, then anxiously, for his return.
Moments passed, and he was still gone.
" I hope he hain't played us a trick," whispered
Van Wart.
" Not he!" says honest Sam Galsworthy.
"I'11 tell you what it is, boys," whispers the
root-doctor's son. Jierck has got liquor aboard.
Taint mutiny to say so, now he's gone. I heard
him walk tipsy when we came from the barn.
When we got here, I saw he stood too ramrod
for a sober- man. You know how it is. Since
his wife went bad, he's lived on rum for stiddy
victuals. He swore off to Major Skerrett. But
he did n't swear strong enough, or else somethin' strange has drawed his cork."
" If that is so," said Lincoln-Brothertoft, " I
must follow, and see that he does not risk himself or us. Watch, men, for your lives!"
"They may call that man Orderly Lincoln,"
says Hendrecus Canady, as the other disappeared
about the house, " but I believe he's Tommy




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         301
Jefferson or some other Congressman in disguise. He talks powerful dictionary. And how
did he come to know this country like a hawk
and like a hoppertoad both?"
It seemed sad and sorry business to Edwin
Brothertoft to go prowling like a burglar about
the home of his forefathers.
He followed Jierck around the rear of the
house. All the familiar objects wore an unkindly, alienated look. The walls were grim,
the windows were dark, the whole building said
to him, " You are an exile and an intruder."
But he had no time for sentimental regrets.
He turned the northern side of the house. A
bright light burned in Lucy's chamber in the
tower. He could see a shadowy figure moving
behind the curtain.
" My child! in a few moments we shall meet,"
he thought.
Nothing to -be seen of Jierck Dewitt! The
sight of his daughter's form revived his anxiety.
Peering into the dark, he passed about the
corner of the turret.
He stopped opposite the parlor windows on
the front. A shutter stood open. A faint light,
as from a flickering wood-fire within, gleamed
out into the hazy night. The window-sill was
breast high to a man.




302          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
"There we used to sit," he murmured, "my
wife and I. There by the fire, in the evenings
of autumns long passed, I have watched her
love dying, and all my hopeful vigor dying, —
dying into ashes."
The mighty despotism of an old love mastered
him for a moment. There was little bitterness
in his heart. These scenes, once so dear, became dear to him again. He pardoned them for
their unconscious share in the tragedy of his life.
" I must have one glance into that room," he
thought.  " My memory of it will be a troublesome ghost in my brain, until I have laid the
ghost with a sight of the reality."
EIe stole forward softly over the crisp, frosty
grass, and looked cautiously in at the window.
Mrs. Brothertoft was seated alone before the
fire. Guilt must sit alone and dwell alone.
Loneliness is the necessity and the punishment
of guilty hearts. No friends are faithful but the
noble and the pure, and them guilt dreads and
rejects. Mrs. Brothertoft was sitting alone in
the fire-lit room. It was an instant before her
husband's eyes could distinguish objects within.
He drew close to the window. He perceived
her. A thrill of pity and pardon killed all his
old rancors. He felt that, though he must war
against her for his daughter's sake, he fought,
reserving an infinite tenderness for his foe.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         303
And she within, — had she heard that stealthy
step of his upon the stiffened grass and the dry
leaves? Had his faint sigh penetrated to her, as
she sat silent and moody? Did she feel the
magnetism of human presence, - the spiritual
touch of a spirit wounded by her wrong? Or
was it merely that in these days of alarm and
violence she kept her senses trained and alert?
He saw her cruel face turn suddenly, stare
into the night, and mark an intruder.
For one breath he stood motionless.
Then, as she sprang forward to the window and
shouted for help, he turned and ran around the
rear of the house to the spot where he had left
his comrades.




xv.
HALF past eight, and the two majors still sat
vis-d-vis in the dining-room.
"I am tired of this," thought Skerrett. "I
have had enough of swallowing bumpers to this
fellow's'buppers.' I have heard enough of his
foulness, his boasts, and his drivel. I could
never have been patient so long except for the
lady's sake. Every word and look of his is an
imperative command to me to make sure of her
safety. Yes, yes, Voltaire!  You needn't nod
and wink that she is ready and anxious. Ten
minutes more, to be positive that my men are
come, - and then, Major, please the Goddess of
Liberty, I'11 forbid your banns, and walk off
with your person. I'm sorry for you, brute as
you are. And you will not like your wineless
quarters with Old Put."
Monstrous long minutes, those final ten! At
the rate of a thousand a minute, shades of doubt
drifted across Peter's mind.
Who has not known suspense and its miseries? - something hanging over him by a hair,




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         305
or he hanging by a hair over nothing. Patience,
Peter Skerrett! The pendulum ticks. It checks
off the minutes, surely.
And while those minutes pass, tipsy Jierck
Dewitt is at work in the cellar, trying to drown
the misery that this guilty house has caused him.
The ten were almost ended, when Brothertoft
started to search for the stray leader, that other
victim of a woman's disloyalty.
It was in the very last of the ten that Mrs.
Brothertoft turned suddenly and saw. an unknown face staring in at her, as she sat in the
dusky parlor.
Time was up. Major Skerrett walked quietly
to the window, threw up the sash, opened the
shutters, and whistled in his men.
Three only came leaping in at the summons.




xvI.
ENTER through the dining-room window, Ike
Van Wart, old Sam Galsworthy, and Hendrecus
Canady;
At the same moment Mrs. Brothertoft's cry
for help rang through the house. Jierck Dewitt in the cellar heard it. Lucy in her turret
heard it. Plato in the hall could not. but hear
it, close at his ears.
Plato was still on guard, playing pantomime
with the weapons.  He stood, with pistol outstretched, pointing at an imaginary foe. It was
a duello he was fancying. He had received the
other party's fire unscathed. Now his turn was
come. He proudly covered his invisibleoantagonist with his pistol at full cock.
" Apologize, sir," whispered Plato, " or   "
Here came his mistress's loud scream for help.
Plato was petrified.
Mrs. Brothertoft rushed into the hall.
There was the negro, standing like a statue,
holding forth a weapon to her hand. She seized




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         807
it. Her sudden fright reacted into a sharp fury.
She was fearless enough, this cruel virago.
The touch of a deadly weapon made her long to
be dealing death. She heard the scuffle in the
dining-room.
"Come!" whispered her old comrades, the
Furies, closing in, and becoming again body of
her body, spirit of her spirit. " Come, take your
chance! Here are marauders, - rebels!  Shoot
one of them! Practise here! Then you will
get over any scruples against blood, and can kill
the people you hate, if they ever come in your
way. Now, madam!"
Such a command ran swiftly through her
brain. She opened the dining-room door.'Her scream  told the assaulting party they
were discovered. They were pinioning Major
Kerr in double-quick time. He sat in tipsy bewilderment, mumbling vain protests and vainer
threats.
Not one of the group about the captive observed the mistress of'the house, as she softly
opened the door.
But another did.
Edwin Brothertoft, tardily following his party,
was clambering through the window.
He saw his wife at the door. She must be
kept from the danger of any chance shot or
chance blow in the scuffle. This was his im



308          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
pulse.  He sprang forward to put her away
gently.
She instantly fired at the approaching figure.
He fell.
He staggered, and fell. His head struck the
claw-foot of the table, and he lay there motion
less, with face upturned and temple bleeding.
Her husband! She knew him at once.
His thin, gray hair drawn back from his mild,
dreamy face, with the old pardoning look she
remembered so well and hated so fiercely, —
there lay the man she had wronged and ruined,
dead; yes, as it seemed, dead at last by her
own hand.
" My husband! "
She said it with a strange, quiet satisfaction.
Every one paused an instant, while she stood
looking at her work, with a smile.
She had done well to wait. Those impalpable
weapons she used to see in the air had become
palpable at last. Yes; she had waited wisely.
This was self-defence, ndt murder. She had the
triumph without the name of crime.
" So you must come prowling about here, and
be shot," she said to him, As if they were alone
together.
And she spurned him with her foot.
As by this indignity she touched and broke
down the last limit of womanliness, she felt a




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         309
great exulting thrill of liberty, a mad sense of
power. Nothing could offer itself now that she
was not willing to do. Any future cruelty was a
trifle to this. Her joy in this homicide promoted
it to a murder.
She looked up. The group about Kerr were
all regarding her. She laughed triumphantly in
a dreadful bedlam tone, and flung her pistol at
Major Skerrett.
He caught the missile with his hand.
" Are you mad? " said he. " Do you know
that you have killed your husband? Take her
into the next room, men! "
" Come, madam," said Galsworthy, gently.
"You did not know it. We are sorry it was
not one of us. We are Manor men, come to
take this Britisher prisoner, not to harm anybody
or anything here."
" Curse you all!" she cried, and she made a
clutch at Sam's honest face. "I am not sorry,not I!  No; glad, glad, glad!  And I'll have
you all served so, - no, hung, hung for spies! "
"Take her away, men!" repeated Skerrett.
"We must confine her. But not here with this
dead man. Gently now, as gently as you can;
remember she's a woman! "'" Woman! " says Canady, holding her fingers
from his face. "No, by the Continental Congress! she's a hell-cat."




310          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
"'No hope for him with such a wound as
that," said the Major, kneeling over Brothertoft
and examining his bloody forehead. " He seems
to be quite dead. See to him, Sappho! Stand
by Major Kerr, Van Wart, while I dispose of the
woman.! "
" Sargn," mumbled Kerr, " I'm sashfied't's
all a mshtake."
The two men dragged Mrs. Brothertoft, struggling furiously, across into the parlor, and forced
her into an arm-chair before the fire.
Skerrett followed. Plato was in the hall, terrified at the mischief he had caused.
" Run, Plato," said the Major, " and have Miss
Lucy's mare out. And you, Voltaire, don't look
so frightened, man! We must make the best of
it. Bring the young lady down some back way!
She must not see her father or her mother.
Horrible, horrible, all! A dreadful end of all
this sorrow and sin!"
He passed into the parlor.
The flickering firelight gave a dim reality to
the objects there. They stirred, they advanced
and retreated. The rich old family furniture
seemed eager to take part in the tragic acts
now rehearsing.
Major Skerrett, in the dimness, marked the
Vandyck on the wall. The torn curtain had not
been repaired. It still fell away at the upper




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          311
corner, revealing the heads of Colonel Brothertoft and his white charger. A startling resemblance the portrait bore to him now lying dead
across the hall. It might almost seem as if the
spirit of the departed, with a bitter interest in
these scenes of old sorrow and joy, and in the
personages who still moved in them, had identified itself with the picture, and was stationed
there to watch events.
A single glance gave Major Skerrett these objects and impressions. He turned to the mistress of the house. She sat, baffled and glaring,
held in the arm-chair by the two men.
" Madam," said Skerrett gravely, "I regret
that I must confine you. You have shown your
power to do harm, and threatened more. I cannot take you with me for safety. If I left you
free, you could start pursuit, and we should be
caught and hung, as you desire. Boys, tie her
in the chair. So as not to hurt her now; but
carefully, so that she cannot stir hand or foot.
I hate to seem to maltreat a woman."
They belted her and corded her fast in the
chair.  She wrestled frantically, and cursed
them with unwomanly words, such as no woman should know.
" There you are, ma'am, fast!" says Galsworthy, drawing back. "You're tied so you
won't feel it, and so you can't hurt yourself or
anybody else."




312          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
Skerrett heaped up the fire to burn steadily
and slowly.  Then, with great tenderness of
manner, he laid a shawl over Mrs. Brothertoft's
shoulders.
"Madam," said he again, "I am  sincerely
sorry that I must imprison you. I have tried
to make you as comfortable as possible. The
night is fine. This fire will burn till morning.
I must take your people all away with me, for
safety; but they shall be despatched back, as
soon as we are out of danger, to release you,
and" - here his voice grew graver — " to bury
the husband whom you have killed, and in
whose death you triumph."
She made no answer. All the flickering of
the fire could not shake the cold look of defiance
now settled on her handsome face. The color
had faded from her cheeks. Her countenance
- rimmed with her black hair, disordered in
the struggle - was like the marble mask of a
Gorgon.
The Major paused a moment, listening if she
would speak.  "It seems brutal to leave her
so," he thought.  "But what else can I do?
She will grow calm by and by, and sleep. There
are worse places to pass the night in than a
comfortable arm-chair before a good fire."
" Good night, madam," he said, with no trace
of a taunt in his tone.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         313
The cold look gave place to an expression
of utter malignancy and rage, at her impotence
to do further harm.
"Move on, men," said the Major, and followed them.
At the door he turned to survey the scene
once more. Its tragedy terribly fascinated him.
There sat the lady, with the fire shining on
her determined profile. She was quiet now;
and, from the picture, the heads of the soldier
and his white horse as quietly regarded her.
Skerrett closed the door softly.
He listened an instant without. Would she
relent? Would he hear a sob, and then a great
outburst of penitent agony, when, left to herself,
she faced the thought of this ghastly accident,
which she had adopted as a crime?
He listened. Not a sound!
There was no time to lose, and the Major
hurried after his men.
14




XVII.
ALL this while Lucy had been waiting anxiously in her chamber in the turret.
As twilight faded, she took her farewell of
river, slopes, groves, and mountains. With dying day, all that beloved scene sank deeper into
her memory.
At last Voltaire came and whispered: " They
are come. Be ready when I call!"
She was ready; and now, in these few moments, before she blew out her light and departed, she studied the familiar objects about her
with new affection.
It seemed to her as if all the observation of
her past life had been half-conscious and dreamy.
The sudden ripening of her character, by this
struggle with evil, gave all her faculties force.
Commonplace objects were no longer commonplace. Everything in her room became invested
with a spiritual significance.
" Good bye, my dear old mirror! " she thought.
"You have given me much dumb sympathy
when I smiled or wept. You could not answer




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         315
my tearful questions, why my innocent life must
be so dreary. I begin to comprehend at last the
Myself you have helped me to study. Good bye,
my bedside! I had no mother's lap to rest my
head on when I prayed. But your cool, white
cushion never repelled me, whether I knelt in
doubt or in agony. Good bye, my pillow!
thanks for many a night of oblivion! thanks
for many an awakening with hope renewed!
Good bye, kind, sheltering walls of my refuge!
The child you have known so long is a woman.
Girlhood ends sharply here. The woman says,
Good bye."
As she stood waiting for the signal of flight,
suddenly her mother's cry of alarm broke the
silence.
At that ill-omened voice, Lucy trembled, and
for one moment despaired.
Then came the sharp crack of the pistol-shot.
The shock startled her into courage. This
note of battle joined awaked all the combatant in
her. "I cannot hide here," she thought, " while
they are in danger for my sake. I cannot fight,
but I may help, if any one is hurt."
One more glance about her chamber, and then
she closed the door, and shut herself out into the
wide world.
At the top of the staircase, the sound of a
struggle below met her. She paused, and shud



316          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
dered.  Not for fear.  Timidity seemed to be
expunged from the list of her possible emotions.
She shuddered for horror.
She recognized  her mother's voice.  She
heard those bedlam cries and curses. These
were the tones of a woman who had ejected the
woman, and was a wild beast. Feminine reserve had dropped at last, and the creature
appeared what her bad life had slowly made her.
" What final horror has done this?" thought
Lucy.
She leaned cautiously over the banisters, and
beheld the scene in the hall. A sickening sight
for a daughter to see! A strange scene in that
proud and orderly house! Outward decorum, at
least, had always reigned there. Evil had now,
at last, undergone its natural development into
violence.
Pale and shivering with excitement, but conscious of a new-born sense of justice and an inexorable hardness of heart against guilt, Lucy
leaned forward, and saw her mother struggling
with the two men. She saw the alarmed negr'oes. She saw the gentleman, whom she identified at a glance as the expected hero, and heard
his grave voice as he ordered Plato to make her
horse ready and Voltaire to seek herself.
"A dreadful end of all this sorrow and sin!"
she heard him say.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         317
Lucy repeated these words to herself in a
whisper.  "A dreadful end!  What does he
mean?  I do not see my father. Can it be?
Did she fire the shot?  Has she murdered the
body, as she has done her best to kill the soul? "
Lucy sprang down the stairs, by Voltaire, and
into the dining-room.
There sat Major Kerr, drivelling entreaties to
his impassive sentry.
And on the floor, with a stream of blood flowing over his temple and clotting his gray hair
lay a man, -her father!
Sappho was moaning over him.
Lucy flung her aside, almost fiercely. She
crushed her own great cry of anguish. She
knelt by him and lifted the reverend head with
her arms.
And so it happened that when Edwin Brothertoft, stunned by a sharp blow from a glanced
bullet and by his heavy fall, in a moment came
to himself and unclosed his eyes, he saw his
daughter's face hanging over him, and felt her
arms about his neck. Her tender arms embracing him,- -her lips at his.
Ah, moment of dear delight! when life renewed perceived that love was there to welcome
it and to baptize its birth with happy tears!
Here Jierck Dewitt reappeared upon the scene.
Alarm had fallen upon him, like water on a




818          EDWIN BROTIIERTOFT.
tipsy pate under a pump. He was sober enough
to perceive that he must justify his outsidership
and make his desertion forgotten. He looked
through the window, took his cue, and then bustled forward officiously. He spoke, to be sure,
with a burr, and trod as if the floor were undulating gayly beneath him; but why may not
haste and eagerness make tongue and feet trip?
"Hooray, Ike!" cries he; "I've made all
right outside. Plato's just bringing out your
horse, Miss. Thank you for looking after the
Sergeant, Miss," continued Jierck, blundering
down on his knees beside Mr. Brothertoft.
"How  do you find yourself, Sergeant?  O,
you'll do. Only a little love-tap the ball gave
you. A drop of rum, -capital thing rum, always, - a drop on a bit of brown paper, stuck on
the scratch, and you're all right. Feel a little
sick with thbe jar, don't you? Yes. Well, we
must get you outside into the air. Now, then,
make a lift. Thank you, Miss. Now, again.
Why, Sergeant, you're almost as steady on your
pins as I am. Now, Miss, you hold him on that
side, and here I am on this, stiff as the Lord
Chancellor. Think you can step over the window-sill, Sargeant? Well done! And here we
are, out in the fresh air! And here's the boy
with the horse. All right! All right, Major;
here we are, waiting for you! "




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         319
The last was said to Major Skerrett, who came
hurrying out after them.
"You are not badly hurt, thank God!" he
said, grasping his friend's hand.
"No," replied the other, still feeble with the
shock, "Heaven does not permit such horror.
What have you done with her?"
" I have left her confined in the parlor. We
bound her there, as tenderly as might be. She
cannot suffer in person at all."
"I suppose I had better take your word for
it."
" You must. We must not dally a moment.
Some straggler may have heard the pistol-shot
and be on our track. Now, boys, mount the
Major on his pony."
" My daughter, Skerrett; you will give her
your hand for good-will," said the father.
In the hazy night she could but faintly see
her paladin, and he her. There was no time
for thanks and compliments. No time for Lucy
to search for the one look with all the woman
in it, and the one word with all the spirit in it,
that might express her vast passion of gratitude.
She gave him her hand, containing at least one
lobe of her heart. He pressed it hastily, and as
certainly a portion of his heart also was in his
palm, there may have been an exchange of lobes
in the hurry.




320          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
" Hoist away, Sam! " said Hendrecus Canady,
buckling to one of Major Kerr's limp legs.
"Ay, ay!" rejoined Galsworthy, on his side
boosting bravely at the lubberly carcass of the
prisoner, while Ike Van Wart held the runt
pony's head. "Seems to me these Britishers
get drunker when they're drunk than we do."
" We're so full of the spirit of'76," rejoined
the root-doctor's son, " that no other kind of
spirit can please us.''
"' Cooducher take summuddy elsh, now,
boysh? " boosily entreated poor Kerr; " Shrenry
Clidn wantsh me."
Ah, Major! Sir Henry must continue to want
you. Nobody listens to your deteriorated King's
English and no more of it shall be here repeated.
"We have not a moment to lose," said Major
Skerrett. "We must not let our success grow
cold. I have my prisoner, Mr. Brothertoft, and
your daughter is with you. Each of us will take
care of his own. For the first ten miles we had
better separate.  I, with our friend the Major,
will make a dash along the straight road, and
you will take to the by-paths and the back
country, as we agreed. If there is any chase,
it will be after us, and we can all fight. I will
give you charge of all the non-combatants. Voltaire, you and your family will travel with your
master."




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         321
"Yes, sir," says Voltaire, "we never want to
see this house again, so long as she's there.
The women will come in the morning, and they
can cut her loose."
"Well, your master will settle that. Until
Miss Lucy is out of danger you must all stay
by her. Where's Jierck Dewitt?"
"Here, sir," says Jierck, from behind Volante.
"You've deceived me, and been drinking,
Jierck;."
"I have, Major," the repentant man replied.
" I saw my wife going by, and everything grew
so black that I had to fire up a little, or I should
have stuck a knife into me. But I'm all right
now. Trust me once more!"
" I must! Go with the lady! Bring her safe
through, and I will forget that you have forgotten
yourself."
The two parties separated with "Good bye!
God speed!"
Major Kerr made an attempt at " Au revoir,
Miss Lucy." But his vinous consonants could
not find their places among his vinous vowels,
and his civility was inarticulate.
Skerrett halted, and watched Volante among
the yellow trees, until there was not even a
whisk of her tail to be seen across the luminous
haze of the cool starlit night of October.
"Noble horse! lovely lady!" he thought.
14*                  U




322          EDWN BROTHERTOFT.
"' It is a sacrifice not to accompany and protect
her; but she will be safe, and my duty is with
my prisoner. Now, ought I not to go back and
tell the wife that she did not kill her husband?
Time is precious. She would only curse and say
she was sorry she missed.  No; I cannot bear
again to see a woman so dewomanized. I cannot
bear to think of that cruel virago as the mother
of this delicate girl.  No; let her stay there
alone, and think of herself as a murderess!
Perhaps remorse may visit her in the dead of
night, - perhaps repentance in the holy stillness
of dawn."
Peter took his last look at the mansion. It
stood dim and unsubstantial in the mist, and
silent as a cenotaph.
He overtook his men, and pushed rapidly and
safely along. But still a vague uneasiness beset
him, lest, in these days of violence, some disaster
might befall that deserted house and its helpless
tenant. Long after he was involved in the dusky
defiles of the Highlands, he found himself pausing and looking southward. Every sound in the
silent night seemed a cry for help from that
beautiful Fury he had left before the glimmering fire, with the portrait watching her, like a
ghost.
Poor Kerr! plaintive at first, then sullen, then
surly, then doleful. The runt pony set its legs




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         323
hard down on terra firma, and bumped the
bumptiousness all out of him.
All the good nature of his captors could not
better his case. He was sadly dejected in mind
and flaccid in person when the party issued
from the Highlands, a little after late moonrise.
Major Skerrett only waited till he saw the
pumpkins of the Fishkill plain, lying solitary or
social, and turning up their cheeks to the cool
salute of wan and waning Luna. Then he gave
his prisoner to Van Wart and Galsworthy, to be
put to bed at Putnam's quarters, and himself,
with Hendrecus, turned back to meet the fugitives.
Let us now trace them on their flight from
Brothertoft Manor.




XVIII.
THE other party of fugitives took a more circuitous route, to the east, through that scantily
peopled region.
Volante stepped proudly along, pricking up
her ears to recognize familiar bugbears, and to
question strange stocks and stones, whether they
were " miching-malicho" to horse-flesh.
Brothertoft walked by his daughter's side.
Only now and then in their hurried march
could he take her hand and speak and hear
some word of tender love. But the consciousness in each of the other's presence, and the
knowledge of the new birth of the holiest of all
the holy affections between them, was sufficient.
A vague bliss involved them as they hurried
through the dim night. And both evaded the
thought of that Hate they had left behind, —
that embodied Hate, helpless and alone, at
Brothertoft Manor.
The negroes trotted along, babbling comically
together.
Jierck Dewitt led the way in silence.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.           325
"I shall never dare to face Major Skerrett
again, if I don't bring these people straight
through," — so he thought.  "I am just sober
enough to walk my chalk if I pin my eyes to it.
If I look at anything else, or think of anything
else, this path'11 go to zigzagging, and splitting
up into squirrel-tracks, and climbing up trees.
Old Voltaire says he don't know these back
roads very well. If I lose the track, we shall
be nowhere."
The region a mile back from the river was
mostly forest then, with scattered clearings. Often the course of our fugitives was merely a
wood-road, or a cow-path, or an old trail. There
were giant boles stopping the way, and prone
trunks barricading it.  There were bogs and
thickets to avoid.
It is bewildering business to travel through a
forest in the dark. Jierck Dewitt knew this well.
He did not distract his attention with talk, or
recalling the events of the evening. He held
tight with all his eyes and all his wits to the
track, commanding it not to divide or meander.
This severe application steadied his brain. He
slowly sobered. The fine fumes of his potations
of Brothertoft Madeira, in the cellar, exhaled.
The coarser gases of rum from the paternal
jug split their exit through the sutures of his
skull.




326         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
It seemed a moment, it seemed a millennium,
it was an hour, when the party reached the foot
of Cedar Ridge, almost three miles from the
Manor-House.
Cedar Ridge is a famous look-out. "What
you cannot see from there is not worth seeing," say the neighbors. It rises some three
hundred feet above the level of the river, and
surveys highlands north, uplands and lowlands
south, with Janus-like vision.
Long before Hendrecus Hudson baptized the
North River, Cedar Ridge was a sacred mount
-a hill of Sion - to the Redskins. Fire had
disforested the summit, and laid bare two bosomy
mounds, stereoscopic counterparts, with a little
depression between. A single cedar, old as the
eldest hills, grew in this hollow.  Around it
had generations of frowzy Indian braves held
frantic powwows, and danced their bow-legged
minuets. Many a captive had suffered the fate
of Saint Sebastian against its trunk, and dabbled the roots with his copper-colored blood.
Savory fragments of roast Iroquois had fattened
the soil. Fed on this unwholesome diet, and
topped every winter by Boreas, the tree made
hard, red flesh, and. bloated into a stunted,
wicked-looking Dagon, as gnarled and knobby
as that old yew-tree of Fountains Abbey, which
— so goes the myth —was Joseph of Arima



EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         327
tlhea's staff, - planted by him there when he was
on his tour to- convert the hairy Britons from
Angli to Angeli.
A famous point of view was Cedar Ridge,
named after this little giant, this squat sovereign
among evergreens.
Such a landmark attained without error, Jierck
Dewitt began to feel secure.  He could relax
his strict attention to his duties as guide, and
let his thoughts confuse him again.
The moment he began to review the events
of the evening with a sobered brain, he grew
suddenly troubldd.
He halted where the forest ceased on the
ridge, and the two bare mounds with the low
cedar appeared against the sky.  He paused
there, and let Voltaire overtake him.
This was the third night of that old brave's
travels. The present pace was telling on him.
He was puffing loud and long, as he stopped at
Jierck's signal. The others passed on up the
ridge. The white mare became a spot of light
in the open.
"Voltaire," whispered Jierck, " I did n't see
the Mistress around when we left the Manor.
Do you know what was done with her?"
" Where was you, that you did n't see? " asks
Voltaire, taking and yielding air in great gasps
between every word.




328         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
" Never mind that! What became of her?"
" Why you know (puff) that she fired (gasp)
a pistol (explosion and sigh) at Master; and
everybody thought (wheeze) that she'd shot him
dead." Here Voltaire took in a gallon or so
of night air, and delivered it slowly back, by the
pint, in the form of a chain of clouds, as white
as if they came from the lungs of a pure Caucasian.
This speech explained half the mystery to
Jierck. His curiosity seemed to become more
troublesome. He continued anxiously: " Yes,
yes, I know," -which he did not until this
moment.  "But what was done with her afterwards. I was outside, doing my part there."
" You was outside, was you? " says Voltaire,
slowly recovering fluency. "Well, I guess they
wanted you inside."
" A man can't be in two places at once. What
did they want me for? "
" Them two boys - the root-doctor's son and
Samuel Galsworthy -is as spry as any two boys
I ever see. Mighty spry and strong and handy
boys they is; but they had a'most a orkud job
with Mistress, she tearing and scratching so.
They wanted another hand bad; but they got
through, and fixed her up right at last."
" Fixed her! How? "
"What you in such an orful hurry about?
Let a man take breff, won't you? "




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         329
"Yes; but speak quick! What did they do
with her? Is she left there? "
"' Leff thar! " says Voltaire, relapsing into full
patois. "Whar would dey leave her?  She's
done tied up in a big arm-cheer in de parlor.
An' dar she'11 stay all dis bressed night, jess
like a turkey truss up fur to be roast." And
he gave a little, triumphant chuckle, that seemed
to remember old cruelties he had suffered at her
hands.
Jierck made no answer. He seemed to need
breath as much as the negro. He gave a little
gasp, and sprang up the hill-side.
Puzzled, Voltaire followed slowly after.
While they talked, the others had climbed to
the top of the ridge, and halted to rest where
the old cedar stood barring the way.
Jierck Dewitt came panting up to the summit.
He turned and glanced hastily over the hazy
breadth of slumbering landscape below.
Belts of mist lay in the little valleys. Beyond
was the river, a broad white pathway, like a
void. And beyond again, the black heaps of
the mountains westward.  Here and there in
the vague, a dot of light marked a farm-house.
The lanterns of the British frigates were to be
seen twinkling like reflections of stars in water.
It may have been fancy, but in the silence
Lucy thought that she heard the far-away sound




330          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
of the Tartar's bell striking four bells, ten o'clock,
and her consQrts responding.
Jierck continued peering intently into the
dark.
His seeming alarm communicated itself to the
party.
"What is it? " said Brothertoft. "Do you
fear pursuit?"
" No," whispered Jierck.
His monosyllable sent a shiver to all their
hearts. There was a veiled scream in this single
word, - a revelation of some terrible panic awaiting them.
" I must see farther," resumed Dewitt, in the
same curdling tone; and he sprang up the
mound on the right.
Edwin Brothertoft, impressed by this strange
terror, followed.
He was within a dozen feet of the summit,
and its wider reach of view, when Jierck leaped
down and seized him tight by both shoulders.
Jierck caught breath. Then, with his face close
to the other's, -" My God i " he hissed, " I've
set the house on fire. We've left that woman
there, tied, to burn to death."




XIX.
EDWIN BROTHERTOFT shook off the man's clutch
of horror, and stared southward.
A dull glow, like the light of moonrise through
mist, was visible close to the dark line of the
horizon.
Instantly, as he looked, the glow deepened.
The black mass of the Manor-House appeared
against the light. The fire must be in the rear
and below. An alarm-gun from the frigate came
booming through the silence.
While they stood paralyzed, Edwin Brothertoft
sprang down from the mound, tore his daughter from the saddle, and was mounted himself
quick as thought.
" I must save her! " he cried, —'" your mother,
my wife!"
He was gone.
A moment they could see the white horse,
like a flash of light, as she flung down the
break-neck hill-side.
Then she leaped into the mist, and a moment
more they could hear her hoofs clattering.




332          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
They stood appalled and speechless.
Heart-beat by heart-beat it seemed that the
fire grew intenser. All the world was blotted
out for the gazers, except that one red spot,
like a displaced moonrise, far to the southward.
Fire was not master yet. Who could say?
Only three long miles.  He might save her.
Other succor might come.
Lucy gave one more look into that ocean
of mist where she knew her father was struggling. Then, quick but quiet, she seized poor
Jierck Dewitt's arm.
" Come," she said; " show me the way,the shortest way. I will follow my father."




xx.
BROTHERTOFT galloped down the hill-side. He
had no whip or spur, but the mare took in his
passion, made it her own, and dashed forward
madly. No winding by comfortable curves for
them! They bore straight for the house.' Three miles from Cedar Ridge,- three miles
to go! and broken country, all hill and gully!
No sane man could gallop it by day. A night
ride there might be the dream of a madman.
There were belts of forest, dense and dark, with
trees standing thick as palisades. There were
ravines crowded with thorny thickets. There
were stony brooks, and dry channels stonier.
There were high walls slanting up the sharp
slopes of the scattered clearings. Down was
steep, and up was steep, and it was all up and
down. But, though darkness trebled the danger, horse or rider never shrank. They bore
straight on. Three miles to go!
And while they galloped, the rider's thought
galloped. Sometimes it burst out into a cry of
encouragement for his horse; sometimes it was




334          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
unspoken; but all the while it went on wildly,
thus: -
" On, Volante! Straight for that light to the
south! Fires move fast; we must go faster. Only
three miles away, and there she sits bound, - and
the flames coming, - she I once loved, God knows
how faithfully! Gallop, gallop, Volante!
"Bravely! here we are down the ridge!
Now, stretch out over this smooth bit of clearing! Yes; that black line is a stone wall.
Measure it, Volante!  Not four feet!  Good
practice for our first leap! Easy now, steady!
Hurrah! Over and a foot to spare! Well done,
horse! And I have been a plodding foot-soldier!
But I can ride still, like a boy, side-saddle or no
saddle. A Brothertoft cannot lose the cavalier.
We shall win.
" What, Volante? Nothing to fear, - that
white strip in the dell! Only a brook. Barely
twelve feet to leap. Never mind the dark and
the bad start! Remember my wife, - she burns,
if we flinch. Now, together! Hurrah! Over,
thank God! Splashed, but safe over and away!
"A clearing again. Shame, Volante! Are
you a ploughman's horse, that you labor so
clumsily in these furrows? See that horrible
glow upon the sky! This wood hides it again.
Idle forest! why was it not burned clean from
the ground a century ago? Everything baffles.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         335
No, Volante! No turning aside for this windrow! Over, over! Through, through, and now
straight on! Yes; the hill is steep, but we
must gallop down it. No stumbling. What.!
another wall, and higher?  You shrink! No,you must. She shall not burn! Now, God
help us! Down? No; up and off! Hurrah!
"How  we have rattled through those two
miles! And here is the road. Easier travelling, if you can only take that worm fence!
The top bars are sure to be rotten. A fair start,
my good mare, and do your best!  Bravely
again! I knew we should crash over. Plain
sailing now! What, limping, flagging, Volante?
Shame! This is a road fit for a lady's summerevening canter. Shake out, Volante! Let me
see your stride! Show your Lincolnshire blood!
The winner in this race wins Life, —LIFE, do you
hear?  Wake up there, you farmers! Turn out
and help! Fire at Brothertoft Manor. FIRE!
" Faster, faster! Are we too late?  Never!
I see the glow brighten against the sky; but the
night is still as death; fire will move slow.
We shall see at the turn of the road. Faster
now! She must not burn, sitting there, where I
saw her by the dear fireside of the years gone
by, — sitting bound, and the flames snarling.
Ah! I so loved her! I so trusted her! We
were young. Life was so beautiful! God was




336         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
so good! It was miserable that she should
wound me, and more cruelly wound her own
soul. But I have forgiven her. 0, let me save
her, if only to speak peace and pardon!  She
shall not burn. A dozen strides, and we can see
the house. Perhaps this great light is the stables. No, —everything! Fire everywhere. Too
late! too late! Never! I can burn. She shall
not."
And they galloped up the lawn.




XXI.
" I AM FIRE, a new-comer on the scene at Brothertoft Manor-House.
"I was a spark from Jierck Dewitt's flint, a
flash of his powder, a feeble smoulder, a pretty,
graceful little flame, peering about for something
nutritious. I was weak. I get force as I go.
Let me once fairly touch fuel, and I will roar
you, roar you, - ay, and roast you too!
" What a grand pile of rubbish I see, now that
I can light up this dusky den of a cellar! Let
me burrow here! Let me scamper here! Aha,
I am warm and strong! A leap now! IIurrah!
I am so large and vigorous that I can multiply
myself. Go, little flames, rummage everywhere.
Blaze, my children, flash in the corners, find
what you like, eat and grow fierce. Grow fierce
and agile! I mean to exhibit you by and by.
You must presently run up stairs, make yourselves broad and slender, dance, exult, and devour everywhere.
"A drop of the famous Brothertoft Madeira,
now, for Fire and family! Here goes at the
15                   V




338          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
wine-room. I cannot stop to draw corks. Down
go the shelves! Crash go the bottles! Drink,
flames, drink! What nectar! How this black
hole of a cellar shines! Fine wine makes me
hungry for finer fare! I could eat titbits now.
Perhaps I shall find them up stairs. A cradle
with a fat bambino,- that would be a sweet
morsel! A maiden's bed with a white-limbed
maiden on it, — that I could take finely. Come
flames, my children, up stairs, and let us see
what we can find! Up, my strongest, my hungriest, my drunkest flames! up and follow!
" I am FIRE! This house and all that be in it
are mine."




XXII.
MRS. BROTHERTOFT sat in the parlor of the deserted mansion, bound, helpless, and alone.
She was exhausted and weak after her furious
struggle with her captors.  Mental frenzy had
wearied her mind.
As Major Skerrett closed the door, and she was
left solitary, a little brief sleep, like a faint, fell
upon her.
It could have lasted but a moment, for when
she suddenly awoke, the final footsteps of the retiring party were still sounding upon the gravel
road.
She listened  intently.  The sound  ceased.
Human presence had departed. Silence about
her, -except that the.fire on the hearth hissed
and muttered, as fire imprisoned is wont to do,
in feeble protest against its powerlessness.'
This moment of sleep seemed to draw a line
sharp as death between two eras in Mrs. Brothertoft's history.  From  the hither side of this emphatic interval of oblivion she could survey her
past life apart from the present. Violence, Force,




340          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
had at last intervened in her career, and made
their mark sharp as the sudden cleft of an earthquake in a plain.
She had now the opportunity, as she sat bound,
strictly but not harshly, before a comfortable fire,
to review her conduct and approve or condemn.
She could now ask herself why Force had come
in to baffle her plans, - what laws she had broken
to merit this inevitable penalty of failure and
insulting punishment.
There was a pause in her life, such as is given
to all erring and guilty lives many times in life,
and to all souls in death, to look at past ruin
quietly, and plan, if they will, with larger wisdom
for the time to come.
She rapidly put together her facts, and without
much difficulty comprehended the plot of Kerr's
capture and Lucy's evasion. It angered her to
be defeated by a " silly child," as she had named
her. But she put this aside for the moment.
A graver matter was to be considered.
She thought of her husband, lying in the
dining-room, slain, as she supposed, by her hand.
Then, in her soul, began a great and terrible
battle.  "You are free!" her old companion
Furies whispered her. " Free of that incubus,
your husband. Such triumph well repays you
for the insult of a few hours' bondage."
But then a low voice within her seemed to ask,




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         341
" Triumph! Can you name it triumph that you
have trampled on your womanhood, and done
murder to a man who gave you only love and
only pity when you wronged him?"
" Be proud of yourself, beautiful creature! "
whispered the Furies. " You are an imperial
woman, rich, masterly, and'skilful, with a brilliant career before you."
": Humble yourself before God and your own
soul, miserable woman!" the inner voice replied.  " Repent, or that murdered man will
take his stand at your side forever."
"1 He owed you this vengeance," her evil spirits hinted, " for your great disappointment. If
he had not been a nerveless dreamer, full of
feeble scruples and sham ambitions, you would
have had all your heart desired. He basely
cheated you. Hle promised everything, and performed nothing. He was the pride of the Province; he let himself sink into insignificance.
Poor-spirited nobody!  It was a kindness to
snuff out his mean and paltry life."
" Did you see his gentle face as he fell?" the
counter influence made answer.  "How gray
and old he was! Do you remember him? — it
seems but yesterday — a fair youth, kindling
with the hopes that to him were holy. You
loved him sometimes, — do you not recognize
those moments as your noblest?  Have not




342          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
yours been the false ambitions and the idle
dreams? Is not all this misery and failure the
result of your first trifling with sin, and then
choosing it? Disloyal woman, — if you are a
woman, and not a fiend, - your cruelty has
brought defeat and shame upon you! Profit by
this moment of quiet reflection! see how the
broken law revenges itself!"
"Yes, madam," the other voices here interrupted, " you cannot escape what your weakness
calls shame. You will never live down scandal.
The untempted people will never admit you to
their ranks.  Scorn them.  Do not yield to
feeble regrets. Be yourself, — your brave, defiant self!"
The Furies were getting the better.  The
virago was more and more overpowering the
woman.  Sometimes she sat patient.  Sometimes she raged and struggled impotently with
her bonds. It was terrible in the dim parlor to
watch her face, and mark the tokens of that mad
war within.
The fire in the chimney had been slowly heating the logs all this time. They were ripe to
blaze. Suddenly they burst into a bright flame.
Mrs. Brothertoft looked up and saw herself in
the mirror over the fireplace. There was hardly
time for a thrill of self-admiration. The same
flash that showed her her own face revealed also




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          343
the reflection of the portrait behind her. She
saw the heads of Colonel Brothertoft and his
white horse looking through the torn curtain.
She had not glanced that way since her scene of
yesterday evening with the picture. She had
evaded a sight that recalled her treason. Now it
forced itself upon her. Here she was bound;
and there, over lher own head in the mirror, was
a ghostly shadow of what?
What! was this the ghostlier image of her
husband's very ghost?  Was he there in the canvas? Had he stolen away out of that dead
thing once his body, lying only a few steps and
two doors off? Was he there watching her?
Why did he wear that triumphant smile? He
was not used to smile much in the dreary old
times; —never to sneer as this semblance was
doing. Even that beast, the white horse, shared
in his master's exultation over her captivity, —
his nostrils swelled, and he seemed to pant for
breath enough to neigh over a victory.
She stared an instant, fascinated by that faint
image.  There was a certain vague sense of
relief in its presence. This shadow of her husband murdered might be a terror; but he intervened a third party in the hostile parley
and the thickening war between her two selves.
This memento of remorse came to the succor
of the almost beaten relics of her better nature,




344          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
and commanded them to turn and make head
again against that reckless, triumphant, bedlam
creature, who was fast gaining the final mastery
and absorbing her total being.
Was it thus? Had this image of a ghost
come to say, " My wife, the old tie cannot break.
I come to plead with you not to annihilate the
womari, not to repel the medicine of remorse,
aMd make yourself an incurable, irreclaimable
fiend," -was this his errand of mercy?
Or did he stand there to hound on the Frenzies, spiritual essences, to her, to him visible
beings, whom she felt seducing her? Was he
smiling with delight to see her spirit zigzagging
across the line between madness and sanity, and
staggering farther, every turn, away from selfcontrol? Which was this shadow's office?
While she trembled between these questions,
still staring at those two reflections in the mirror,
- herself and that image of the portrait, - suddenly the flash of flame in the chimney went
out. A downward draught sent clouds of white
smoke drifting about the room.
Mrs. Brothertoft peered a moment into the
darkness. Her own reflection in the mirror was
just visible, as she stirred her head. She missed
the other. But there were strange sounds suddenly awakened, - a strange whispering through
the house.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         345
So long as her seeming, ghostly companion
was visible, she had kept down her terror. Now,
as she fancied it still present but unseen, a great
dread fell upon her. She writhed in her bonds
to turn and face that portrait on the wall. She
could, with all her pains, only move enough
to see a little corner of the curtain.
Did it move? Would something unearthly
presently put aside those dusky folds, and come
rustling to her side?
She listened a moment, and then screamed
aloud.
The sound of her own voice a little reassured
her. She laughed harshly, and her soliloquy
went on, but wilder, and without the mild entreaties of her better self.
"What a fool I am to disturb myself with
mere paint and canvas! But I will have that
picture burnt, - yes, burnt, to-morrow morning.
The man is gone, and every relic of him and
his name shall perish from  the earth.  How
plainly I seem to see him lying there dead,
with his face upturned! What? Do dead men
stir? I think he stirred. Do you dare to lift
your finger and point at me? I had a right to
shoot housebreakers.  Put down your finger,
sir! You will not?  Bah! Do what you please,
you cannot terrify me. You shall be burnt,
burnt,-do you hear?  I smell fire strangely.
15 




346          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
The smoke from that chimney, —yes, nothing
else. I am afraid I shall be cold before morning; but now I am feverish. The air seems hot
and dry. I suppose I have grown excited, tied
here. What is that low rustling all the while?
Sometimes it seems to come from the cellar,
then it is here. Any one in this room? Speak!
Dewitt, Sarah, is that you come home? No answer; and this whispering grows louder. Some
other chimney must be smoking. I can hardly
breathe. I must try to sleep, or I shall go mad
before morning with that dead man in the house.
Put down your finger, sir! Don't point at me
like a school-boy! *What! Is he coming? Is
that his step I hear in the hall? Let me see,
he has only two steps to make to the door, five
across the hall, then two more and he could lean
over and whisper what he thought of me."
She listened awhile to the strange sounds
below, and then went on: " If you come in here,
Edwin Brothertoft, and speak to me, I shall go
crazy. I cannot hear any of your meek talk.
Lie where you are till morning, and then, if
you wish, you shall be buried. Perhaps burning
was a little too harsh. Morning is not many
hours away.  It must be nearly ten o'clock.
But if this smoke grows any thicker, I shall certainly smother. These ghastly noises get louder
and louder. What can that crash be? Is the




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         347
dead man coming?  Help, help! Keep him
away! Mr. Brothertoft, Edwin, if you love me,
pray stop fumbling at that latch. You know
how indulgent you always were to my little
fancies; do not come in, if you please. I am
afraid, Edwin, afraid. I am so fevered, tied
here by those cursed brigands, that I shall go
mad. I am suffocating with this smoke. Will
some one bring me a little water? But when
you come, do not look into that room across
the hall. There is a gray-headed man lying
there. He may say I murdered him. Do not
take notice of him, he was always weak-minded.
He will say I insulted, wronged, dishonored him,
and made his life a burden and a shame. Do
not listen to scandal against a woman; but bring
me a drop, one drop of water to cool my throat,
for I am burning with a horrible fever. If these
strange noises underneath and all around do not
cease, I shall certainly go mad. What can it
mean? I hear sounds like an army. I would
rather not receive your friends at present, Mr.
Brothertoft, if it is their feet and voices I hear.
This smoke makes my eyes red, and you always
were proud of my beauty, you know. XVhat!
have they lighted their torches, those ghosts in
the hall? Or is this glow through the room the
moon?  No. My God! FIRE! I shall burn.
O Lucy, Lucy! O Edwin, help!"




XXIII.
IDWIN BROTHERTOFT came galloping up to the
flames. Had he won this race, with a life for
its prize?
The maddened mare tore forward, as if she
would leap in among the loud riot there.
Fire everywhere! A mob of arrogant, roaring, frenzied flames possessed the cellar and the
ground-floor. Each window, so long a peaceful
entrance for sunbeams, now glowed with light
within, or thrust out great cruel blades of fire,
striking at darkness. Fire sheathed the base of
the turret. Agile flames were climbing up its
sides, and little playful flashes seized the creepers that overhung Lucy's window, and, clinging
to these, peered in through the panes, looking
for such diet as they craved.
The husband turned the corner of the house,
and galloped up to the window,- that window
where an hour ago he had stood gazing at the
proud, hateful face of the woman he loved so
bitterly.
The white horse and its rider looked in at the




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.          349
window. And this is what the one quick, comprehensive glance of horror showed them, as a
draught of air dragged the smoke away.
Opposite, on the wall, the two heads of the
picture were just yielding to the flames around
them.  Little buds of flame were sprouting
through the floor, little tendrils wreathing the
doors, and drawing a closer circle about the figure at their centre. There she sat, as if this
scene was prepared to illuminate her beauty.
A gush of air lifted the smoke like a curtain,
and there she was sitting, her black hair towering above her pale forehead, her white arms
bound to the chair, and the red light of her
diamond resting upon her white bosom.
The smoke had half suffocated her. But she
was revived by the sudden flood of air, as a
burned door gave way. She turned her head
toward the window, - did her spirit tell her that
the heart she had wounded was there? She
lifted her feeble head as her husband dashed
forward, and it seemed to him that, amid all
the snarling and roaring of the flames, he could
hear her moan, "Help, Edwin! Help!"
The bulbs of flame through the floor shot up
and grew rank, the wreaths of flame reached
out and spread fast as the beautiful tendrils of
a magic vine, the smoke drifted together again,
and hid the room and the figure sitting there.




350         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
Over the carpet of flame, through the bower of
flame, where long streamers redder than autumn
hung and climbed, through the thick, blinding,
suffocating, baffling smoke, Edwin Brothertoft
sprang in to save his wife.
God help him, for his love is strong!
By this time, from the Tartar frigate and her
consorts, boats'-crews were making for the burning house. They hoped to handle and furl the
flames, as they would a flapping maintopsail in a
gale. By this time the Manor people were also
hurrying up, with neighborly intent to fling
looking-glasses and crockery from the windows,
and save them.
The Tartars were exhilarated by the splendid
spectacle of fire in revolt. It was indeed a wild
and passionate scene. From every window fingers of flame beckoned the world to behold it.
And now on Lucy's turret Fire had hoisted its
banner, as in a castle the flag goes up when the
master comes to hold holiday.
The sailors gained the foot of the lawn. This
pageant burst upon them. They sprang forward with a hurrah.  Suddenly the foremost
paused and huddled together. What is it?
A dark figure, bearing some heavy burden,
appeared at the only window of the front where
the flames were not overflowing in full streams
and fountaining upward.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         351
The figure  came  fighting forward.  Fire
shouted, and clutched at it. Smoke poured
around, to bewilder it. The figure —a man's
form - staggered and fell. Inward or outward
— inward into that fiery furnace, or outward
toward the quiet, frosty air of night - the sailors
could not see.
They rushed on more eagerly, but this time
without the cheer.
Only the bravest, with Commodore Hotham
himself at their head, dared face the flames, and
touch the scorching heat to seek for that escaping figure they had seen.
They found him lying without, under the
great window, — a man, and in his arms a
burned and blackened thing. It might be, they
thought, a woman.
They carried them away where the air was
cool, and the crisp frost was unmelted on the
grass. The man breathed, and moaned. No
one knew his face, masked with black smoke.
With the neighbors, Mrs. Dewitt now came
running up, and joined the group.
"See! " said she, with a shudder. "This was
my mistress. She always wore this diamond on
her neck in the evening. She is dead. No; she
breathes!"
Yes; there was the gem, showing red reflections of the flames. An hour ago the woman




352         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
had been a beauty, and the diamond a point of
admiration, saying, " Mark this white neck and
this fair bosom!"  Now it made the utter ruin
there more pitiful.
Some one led forward Volante, drooping and
all in a foam. There was evidently some mystery in this disaster. "Take these burned creatures to'the nearest house," said Hotham.
"And now, boys, some of you try to save the
stables. Some come with me at the house.
There were more people in it."
The sailors fought fire. The others carried
the two bodies to Bilsby's farm-house. The
flames showed them their path under the redleaved trees of October.
The same ruddy light was guiding Lucy
Brothertoft on her way to what a little while ago
was home.
Long before she reached the spot, the roar and
frenzy of the flames had subsided.
Nothing was left but the ragged walls and
the red ruins of the Manor-House. It had been
punished by fire for the misery and sin it had
sheltered.
A guard of sailors, under a lieutenant, protected what little property had been saved.
Lucy learned from them how an unknown man
had rescued her mother to die away from the
flames.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         353
She left Voltaire to make some plausible story
of the kidnapping, and to invent a release of
hers from the captors' hands, when the fire they
had accidentally kindled was discovered.
She hastened to help the father she loved and
the mother she pitied so deeply.
Jierck Dewitt followed her to Bilsby's door.
" Go, Jierck!"  she said. "It makes me
shudder to see you, and think of this dreadful
harm you have done. Go and tell the whole
to Major Skerrett."
"- Will you speak to my wife, Miss Lucy, and
show her how she is to blame, -how her wrong
sent me wrong? Tell her how she and I are
linked in with ruin here. Perhaps it will help
you to forgive me if you can better her."
Lucy promised.
She entered the farm-house to encounter her
holy duties with her parents.
Jierck hurried off to meet Major Skerrett, give
him the sorrowful history of the night, and warn
him away from a region that would be alive by
daylight, and bayonetting haystacks and hollow
trees for kidnappers.
The penitent fellow could get no farther on his
return than Cedar Ridge. There he saw the red
embers of the Manor-House watching him from
the edge of the horizon, like the eye of a Cyelops. He was fascinated, and sank down at the
w




354          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
foot of the uncanny old cedar, sick with horror
and fatigue.
Skerrett and Canady, pressing anxiously on,
found Jierck there at sunrise, asleep and half
dead with cold. They roused him, and heard
his story.
A little wreath of smoke alone marked the site
of the Manor-House. Here was the startingpoint, there was the goal of Edwin Brothertoft's
night gallop. It thrilled the Major to hear of
that wild ride, and to fancy he saw the white
horse dashing through the darkness on that
noble errand of mercy.
"Some men would have said,' Curse her! let
her burn! She's hurt me worse than fire'll
hurt her,' "says Hendrecus. " Some would have
took the turns of the road, and got to the house
when it was nothing but chimbleys. Some
would have been afeard of being known, and shot
for a rebel. I've heard say that the Patroon
was n't one of the strong kind; but he's done a
splendid thing here, and I'm proud of myself
that I was born on the same soil, and stand a
chance to have some of the same natural grit
into me."
Nothing further could be done,, and it was not
safe to loiter. The three returned over the
Highlands to Putnam's army. And that day,
and for many days, Peter Skerrett meditated on




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.        355
this terrible end of the sorrow and sin at Brothertoft Manor. He traced with ghastly interest
the different paths by which vengeance converged upon the guilty woman, and saw with
what careful method her crime had prepared its
own punishment. " God grant," said he, " that
she may live to know what love and pity did to
save her from the horror of her penalty! "




XXIV.
WOULD that marred and ruined being, once the
beautiful Mrs. Brothertoft, ever revive enough
to ask and receive forgiveness from her husband?
Lucy did not dare to hope it. She watched the
breathing corpse, and looked to see it any moment escape from its bodily torture into death.
Edwin Brothertoft was but little harmed by
the flames.  A single leap had carried him
through the fiery circle which was devouring his
wife, as she sat bound. In an instant he had
dragged her away over the falling floor, cut her
free, and was at the window struggling through.
He had been almost stifled by the smoke, but his
hurts were slight. In a few days he was at his
wife's bedside.
He alone could interpret the sad, sad language
of her suffering moans. Her soul, half dormant,
in a body robbed of all its senses, seemed to perceive his presence and his absence by some spiritual touch. Would she ever hear his words of
peace?




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         357
The red, ripe leaves grew over-ripe, and fell,
and buried October. Then came the first days
of November, with their clear, sharp sunshine,
and bold, blue sky, and massive white clouds,
sailing with the northwest wind a month before the snow-drifts. Sweet Indian summer followed. Its low southern breezes whispered the
dying refrain of the times of roses and passionate sunshine.
Edwin Brothertoft sat by his wife's window
one twilight of that pensive season.
A new phase in his life had begun from the
night of the rescue. By that one bold act of
heroism he had leaped out of the old feebleness.
He felt forgotten forces stir in him. His long
sorrow became to him as a sickness from which a
man rises fresh and purified.
In this mood, with the dim landscape before
him, a symbol of his own sombre history, and
the glowing sky of evening beyond, symbolizing
the clear and open regions of his mind's career
henceforth, - in this mood he grew tenderer for
his wife than ever before.
It was no earthly love he felt for her. That
had perished long ago. Deceit on her side
wounded it. Disloyalty killed it. The element
of passion was gone. There would have been a
deep sense of shame in recalling his lover fondness once for a woman since unfaithful. But




858          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
now he looked back upon her wrongs and his
errors as irremediable facts, and he could pity
both alike. The tendency of such a character as
hers, so trained as hers, to some great rebellion
against the eternal laws, some great trial of its
strength with God, and to some great and final
lesson of defeat, became plain to him. The law
of truth in love and faith in marriage is the
law a woman is likely to break if she is a lawbreaker.
She had broken it, and he divined the spiritual
warfare and the knowledge of defeat and degradation which had been her spiritual punishment,
bitterer to bear than this final corporeal vengeance.
Entering into her heart and reading the
thoughts there, he utterly forgave and pitied
her.
And for himself, - what harm had she done
him? None, —so he plainly saw. Except for
the disenchanting office of this great sorrow,
he would have lived and died a worldly man.
Whllen his poetic ardors passed with youth, he
would have dwindled away a prosperous gentleman, lost his heroic and martyr spirit, and
smiled or sneered or trembled at the shout for
freedom through the land. Except for this great
sorrow, his graceful gifts would have made him a
courtier, his refinement would have become fas



EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         359
tidieusness, he would have learned to idolize the
status quo, and then, when the moment came for
self-sacrifice, he would have been false to his
nobler self. That meanness and misery he had
escaped. That he had escaped it, and knew
himself to be a man wholly true, was victory.
The world might repeat its old refrain of disappointment in his career; it might say, "He
promised to be our brilliant leader, —he is nobody." But it could never say, " See, there is
Brothertoft! He was an ardent patriot; but
wealth spoiled him, the Court bought him, and
he left us meanly."
"My life," he thought, "has been somewhat a
negative. I have missed success. I have missed
the joy of household peace. And yet I bear no
grudge against my destiny. I have never for
one moment been false to the highest truth, and
that is a victory greater than success."
These last words he had spoken aloud.
In reply, he heard a stir and a murmur from
his wife.
He turned to her, and in the dusk he could
see that her life was recoiling from death to gain
strength to die. Voice and expression returned
to her.
"Edwin! " she called to him, feebly.
"Jane? " he answered.
In the pleading tone of her cry, in the sweet




360          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
affection of his one word of response, each read
the other's heart. There was no need of long
interpretation. To her yearning for pardon and
love, her name upon his lips gave full assurance
that both were granted.
She reached blindly for his hand. He took
hers tenderly. And there by the solemn twilight
they parted for a time. Death parted them.
She awoke in eternity. He stayed, to share a
little longer in the dreamy work of life.




XXV.
A WORD of farewell to Major Kerr.
He had a horrid, horrid time at Fishkill.
Little but pork and beans to eat, little but
apple-jack to drink, nothing but discomfiture to
think of.
He experienced shame.
A letter was conveyed to him from Lucy
Brothertoft. She wrote, as kindly as might be,
what her real feelings had been toward him.
She also described the sad tragedy of the night
of his capture.
The conviction that he was a shabby fellow
had by this time pierced Kerr's pachyderm. He
was grateful to Lucy that she felt no contempt
for him. But her gentle dignity reproached his
unmanliness to her, and he became a very dejected penitent.
General Burgoyne has been an important
character behind the scenes of this drama. He
was a clever amateur playwright, and while our
personages have been doing and suffering, the
General has been at work at a historical play,
16




362         EDVIN BROTHERT6FT.
which he meant to name, " Saratoga, or the Last
of the Rebels." There was some able acting in
it, and all the world watched for the catastrophe
quite breathless and agape. A brilliant pageant
of a surrender closed the play, in which, to the
general surprise, it was Jack Burgoyne, and not
Horatio Gates, who gave up the sword and
yielded the palm.
This news came flying down to Fishkill within
ten days after Major Kerr's capture.
The unlucky fellow heard of the great take of
British and Hessian officers. He began to fear
prisoners were a drug in the market, and he
must eat Continental fare till his stomach was
quite gone.
" Write to Sir Henry Clinton," said Old Put,
good-naturedly, "that I'll swap you for your
value in the Yankees he took with the Highland
forts."
Kerr indited a doleful account of his diet and
impending dyspepsia to his General.
"I must have him back," said Sir Henry.
"Anybody can be an Adjutant; but nobody in
His Majesty's army can carve a saddle of mutton,
or take out a sidebone, with Kerr."
The "swap" was arranged. The Major was
put on board the Tartar, opposite Brothertoft
Manor. He went off a sadder and a wiser man.
His capture had served its purpose of amusing




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         363
Putnam's desponding forces. The General had
been able to write to Washington, " We have lost
the Highland forts; but we have taken an Adjutant "; - and Humphreys had composed a
doggerel, beginning,- -' 0 Muse, inspire my
feeble pen, To sing a deed of merit, Performed
to daunt the enemy, By Major Peter Skerrett."
Poor Kerr! when he reached New York, he
was all the time haunted by regrets for his lost
bride. "Up again, and take another!" is the
only advice to be given under such circumstances. Some other flower of lower degree
must be a substitute for the rose.
Cap'n Baylor, late of a whaler, now the chief
oil man of New York, had a daughter Betty.
She was a dumpy little maid. Flippers were
her hands, fin-like were her feet. Nothing statuesque about her; but she tinkled with coin,
and that tintinnabulation often opens the eyes
of Pygmalion.
Her the Major wooed, and glibly won.
Cap'n Baylor oiled'out his son-in-law's debts.
Kerr resigned his Adjutancy, and took his wife
home.
Gout presently carried off the knobby old Earl
of Bendigh. The Bucephalus colt made Brother
Tom acephalous, by throwing him over a wall.
Brother Dick succumbed to Bacchus.  Harry
Kerr, our Kerr, became the sixth Earl of
Bendigh.




364         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
His dumpy Countess studied manners in England, and acquired the delicious languor of a
lady's-maid. She wore, morning, noon, and
night, white gloves tight as thumbikins. She
consumed perfume by the puncheon. But she.
was an honest, merry soul, who would stand no
bullying. She kept Kerr in order, and made
him quite a tolerably respectable fellow at last.
By and by, out of supreme gratitude to her
for his wedded bliss, he had the Baylor arms
looked up at the Herald's office. They were
found, and quartered with his own, and may
still be seen on the coat of the Kerrs, Bendigh
branch, as follows: " On a rolling sea vert, a
Leviathan rampant, sifflant proper.  Crest, a
hand grasping a harpoon. Motto, ILLIC SPIRAT,
THERE SHE BLOWS."




XXV I.
GENERAL VAUGHAN came down the river from
Kingston, smelling of arson. Sir Henry Clinton
destroyed the Highland forts and retired to New
York. The Continental outposts forthwith reoccupied Peekskill.
With them came Peter Skerrett, and there
were bristles on his upper lip a week or so old.
He hastened at once toward the Bilsby farm,
where the Brothertofts had found shelter. He
turned aside on the way to see the ruins of the
Manor-House.
It was still brilliant October. If the trees that
first put on crimsons and purples now were sere
and bare, later comers kept up the pageant.
Indeed, the great oaks had only just consented
to the change of season. It took sharp frosts to
scourge green summer out of them.
The woods seemed as splendid to Peter Skerrett as when he looked over them on the day
of his adventure here. Nothing was altered,
except in one forlorn spot.
There, instead of the fine old dignified Manor



366         EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
House, appeared only a dew-sodden heap of cinders and ashes, — the tragic monument of a
tragedy.
"It did well to perish," thought Skerrett.
"It had sheltered crime. Its moral atmosphere
was tainted. The pure had fled from it. Happiness never could dwell there."
Peter stood leaning against a great oak-tree,
and studying the scene. The autumn leaves
around him dallied and drifted, and fell into the
lap of earth. He lingered, he hesitated, and let
his looks dally with the vagrant leaves, as they
circled and floated in the quiet air, choosing the
spots where they would lay them down and die.
Just now he was in such eager haste; and
now he hesitated, he lingered, he shrank from an
interview he had ardently anticipated.
The fair girl he had aided to save from a miserable fate, - her face, seen for a moment dimly
by starlight, ever haunted himn., These heavy
sorrows, coming upon her young life, filled him
with infinite pity. As he thought of her, the
undeveloped true lover in him began to develop.
And now, standing in this place where he had
first seen her in a moment of peril, where he
had felt the grateful pressure of her hand, he
perceived how large and vigorous his passion had
grown from these small beginnings.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.         367
He feared the meeting he had yearned for.
It was to assure him whether this was really love
he felt, or but another passing fancy like the
others past.
And if it were the great, deep love he hoped, —
if, when he saw her face, and touched her hand,
and heard her voice again, his soul recognized
hers as the one companion soul, -this filled him
with another dread.
For if to know himself a lover, and half foresee
that, after long and thorough proof of worthiness,
he might be beloved, were the earliest thrill of
an immortal joy; so this meeting, if it named
him lover, and yet convinced him by sure tokens
that his love would never be returned, was the
first keen pang of a sorrow immeasurable.
No wonder that he waited, and traced the circuits of the falling leaves, and simulated to his
mind a hundred motives for delay.
It was so still in the warm, sunshiny afternoon
that he could hear the crumbling cinders fall in
the ruins, and all about him the ceaseless rustle
of the showering foliage.
But presently a noise more articulate sounded
on the dry carpet of the path behind him. A
light footstep was coming slowly toward this
desolated spot. It seemed to Skerrett that he
divined whose step would bring her hither to
read again the lesson of the ruins.




868          EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.
He walked forward a little, that his sudden
appearance against the oak might not startle
the new-comer. He would not turn. It was
new to the brave and ardent fellow to perceive
timidity in his heart, and to evade an encounter
with any danger.
The footstep quickened,- a woman's surely.
In a moment he heard a sweet voice call his
name.
A shy and timorous call, a gentle, trembling
tone, -it came through the sunshine and made
all the air music.
Her voice! It was the voice he had longed
and dreaded to hear.  But now he feared no
more. He believed that his immortal joy was
begun, and these tremors of his soul, in answer
to the trembles of her call, could never be the
earliest warnings of an agony.
He saw her face again, fairer than he had
dreamed, ill the happy sunlight. He felt again
the thankful pressure of her hand. He listened
to her earnest words of gratitude.
They spoke a little - he gravely, she tearfully - of the tragedy of her mother's life. This
shadow deepened the tenderness of the lover.
And she, perceiving this, drew closer to him,
giving tokens, faint but sure, as he fancied, of
the slow ripening happiness to grow henceforth.
Then she guided him to see his friend, her
father.




EDWIN BROTHERTOFT.           369
The level sunbeams of evening went before
them in the path. They disappeared amid the
wood. Golden sunshine flowed after them. The
trees showered all the air full of golden leaves
of good omen.
It seems the-fair beginning of a faithful love.
Will it end in doubt, sorrow, shame, and forgiveness; or in trust, joy, constancy, and peace?
THE END.
Cambridge: Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.