[figure description] Page 213.[end figure description]

We have already said, that the customs of
America leave the remains of the dead but a short
time in the sight of the mourners; and the necessity
of providing for his own safety compelled the
pedlar to abridge even this brief space. In the
confusion and agitation produced by the events
we have recorded, the death of the elder Birch
had occurred unnoticed; but a sufficient number
of the immediate neighbours were hastily collected,
and the ordinary rites of sepulture were
paid to the deceased; it was the approach of this
humble procession that arrested the movements of
the trooper and his comrade. Four of the men
supported the body on a rude bier; and four
others walked in advance, ready to relieve their
friends occasionally from their burden. The pedlar
walked next the coffin, and by his side moved
Katy Haynes with a most determined aspect of
woe, and next to the mourners came Mr. Wharton
and the English captain. Two or three old
men and women, with a few straggling boys,
brought up the rear. Captain Lawton sat in his

[figure description] Page 214.[end figure description]

saddle in rigid silence until the bearers came opposite
to his position, and then, for the first time.
Harvey raised his eyes from the ground, and saw
the enemy that he dreaded so near him. The
first impulse of the pedlar was certainly flight;
but recovering his recollection, he fixed his eye
on the coffin of his parent, and passed the dragoon
with a firm step, but swelling heart. The trooper
slowly lifted his cap from his head, and continued
uncovered until Mr. Wharton and his son had
moved by him, when, accompanied by the surgeon,
he rode leisurely in the rear, maintaining
an inflexible silence. Cæsar emerged from the
cellar kitchen of the cottage, and with a face of
settled solemnity, added himself to the number of
the followers of the funeral, though with a humble
mien, and at a most respectful distance from the
horseman; the first feeling was owing to the colour
of his skin; and the latter circumstance, to
certain emotions of dread that prevailed in the
bosom of the black, whenever Captain Lawton
prevented his organs of vision, from resting on
more agreeable objects. Cæsar had placed
around his arm, a little above the elbow, a napkin
of unsullied whiteness, it being the only time
since his departure from the city, that the black
had an opportunity of exhibiting himself in the
garniture of servile mourning. He was a great
lover of propriety, and had been a little stimulated
to this display by a desire to show his sable
friend from Georgia all the decencies of a New-York
funeral; and the ebullition of his zeal went
off very well, producing no other result, than a
mild lecture from Miss Peyton at his return, on the
fitness of things. The attendance of the black
was thought well enough in itself; but the napkin
was deemed a superfluous exhibition of ceremony,
at the funeral of a man, who had performed all

[figure description] Page 215.[end figure description]

the menial offices in his own person. The graveyard
was an enclosure on the grounds of Mr.
Wharton, which had been fenced with stone, and
set apart for the purpose by that gentleman some
years before. It was not, however, intended as a
burial place for any of his own family. Until the
fire, which raged as the British troops took possession
of New-York, had laid Trinity in ashes, a
goodly gilded tablet graced its walls, that spoke
the virtues of his deceased parents, and beneath a
flag of marble in one of the aisles of the church,
their bones were left to moulder with becoming
dignity. Captain Lawton made a movement, as
if he was disposed to follow the procession when it
left the highway, to enter the field which contained
the graves of the humble dead, but he was
recalled to his recollection by a hint from his
companion, that he was taking the wrong road.

“Of all the various methods which have been
adopted by man for the disposal of his earthly remains,
which do you prefer, Captain Lawton?”
said the surgeon with great deliberation, as they
separated from their line of march: “now in
some countries the body is exposed to be devoured
by wild beasts; in others, it is suspended in the
air to exhale its substance in the manner of decomposition;
in some countries it is consumed on
the funeral pile, and then, again, it is inhumed in
the bowels of the earth; every people have their
own particular fashion, and to which do you give
the preference?”

“All are very agreeable,” said the trooper, disregarding
the harangue of the other, and following
the group they had left with his eyes; “which do
you most admire?”

“The last as practised by ourselves,” said the
operator promptly; “for the other three are destructive
to the opportunities for dissection; but

[figure description] Page 216.[end figure description]

in the last, the coffin can lie in peaceful decency,
while the remains are made to subserve the useful
purposes of science. Ah! Captain Lawton,
I enjoy comparatively but few opportunities of
such a nature, to what I expected to meet on entering
the army.”

“To what may these pleasures amount in a
year, numerically?” said the captain drily, and
withdrawing his gaze from the grave-yard.

“Within a dozen, upon my honour,” said the
surgeon piteously; “my best picking is when the
corps is detached; for when we are with the
main army, there are so many boys to be satisfied,
that I seldom get a good subject. Those youngsters
are dreadfully wasteful, and as greedy as vultures.”

“A dozen!” echoed the trooper in surprise,
“why I furnish you more than that number with
my own hands.”

“Ah! Jack,” returned the doctor, approaching
the subject with great tenderness of manner, “it
is seldom I can do any thing with your patients,
you disfigure them wofully; believe me, John,
when I tell you as a friend—merely as a friend,
that your system is all wrong; for you unnecessarily
destroy life, and then you injure the body so
that it is unfit for the only use that can be made
of a dead man.”

The trooper maintained a silence which he
thought would be the most probable means of
preserving peace between them; and the surgeon,
turning his head from taking a last look at the
burial, as they rode round the foot of the hill that
shut the valley from their sight, continued with a
kind of suppressed sigh—

“A body might get a natural death from that
grave-yard to night, if there was but time and

[figure description] Page 217.[end figure description]

opportunity; the patient must be the father of the
lady we saw this morning.”

“The bitch-doctor; she with the sky-blue complexion,”
said the trooper, with a shrewd smile,
that began to cause uneasiness to his companion;
“but the lady was not the gentleman's daughter,
only his medico-petticoat attendant; and the Harvey,
whose name was made to rhyme with every
word in her song, is the renowned pedlar-spy.”

“What!” cried the astonished surgeon; “he
who unhorsed you.”

“No man ever unhorsed me, Doctor Sitgreaves,”
said the dragoon with abundant gravity; “I fell
by a mischance of Roanoke; we kissed the earth
together.”

“A warm embrace from the love spots it left
on your cuticle,” returned the surgeon with some
of the other's archness; “but 'tis a thousand
pities that you cannot find where the tattling rascal
lies hid.”

“He followed his father's body,” said the
trooper composedly.

What! and you let him pass,” cried the surgeon
with extraordinary animation, checking his
horse instantly; “let us return immediately and
take him, to-morrow you have him hung, Jack,
and damn him, I'll dissect him.”

“Softly, softly, my dear Archibald,” said the
trooper soothingly; “would you arrest a man
while paying the last offices to a dead father;
leave him to me, and I pledge myself he shall have
justice.”

The doctor muttered his dissatisfation at any
postponement of his vengeance, but was compelled
to acquiesce from a regard to his reputation
for propriety, and they continued their ride to
the quarters of the corps, engaged in various

[figure description] Page 218.[end figure description]

discussions concerning the welfare of the human
body.

Birch supported the grave and collected
manner, that was thought becoming in a male
mourner on such occasions, and to Katy was left
the part of exhibiting the tenderness of the softer
sex. There are some people, whose feelings are
of such a nature, that they cannot weep unless
it be in proper company, and the spinster was
a good deal addicted to all congregational virtues;
after turning her head round the small assemblage,
the housekeeper found the eyes of the
few females who were present fixed on her in solemn
expectation, and the effect was instantaneous;
the maiden really wept, and gained no inconsiderable
sympathy and reputation for a tender
heart from the spectators. The muscles of
the pedlar's face were seen to move, and as the
first clod of earth fell on the tenement of his father,
sending up that dull, hollow, sound, that
speaks so eloquently the mortality of man, his
whole frame was for an instant convulsed; he
bent his body down as if in pain, his fingers worked
as his hands hung lifeless by his side, and there
was an expression in his countenance that seemed
to announce a writhing of the soul; but it was not
unresisted, and it was transient: he stood erect,
drew a long breath, and looked around him with
an elevated face, that even seemed to smile with
a consciousness of having obtained the mastery.
The grave was soon filled; a rough stone, placed
at either extremity, marked its position, and the
turf, with a faded vegetation that was adapted to
the fortunes of the deceased, covered the little
hillock with the last office of seemliness. The
task ended, the neighbours, who had each officiously
tendered his services in performing this duty,
paused, and lifting their hats, stood looking

[figure description] Page 219.[end figure description]

toward the mourner, who now felt himself to
be really alone in the world: removing his hat
also, the pedlar hesitated a moment to gather
energy, and spoke—

“My friends and neighbours, I thank you for
assisting me to bury my dead out of my sight.”

A solemn pause succeeded the brief and customary
conclusion, and the group dispersed in silence,
some few walking with the mourners back
to their own habitation, but respectfully leaving
them at its entrance. The pedlar and Katy were
followed into the building by one man, however,
who was well known to the surrounding country
by the significant term of “speculator.” Katy saw
him enter with a heart that palpitated with dreadful
forebodings, but Harvey civilly handed him a
chair, and evidently was prepared for the visit.

The pedlar went to the door, and taking a cautious
glance round the valley, quickly returned
and commenced the following dialogue—

“The sun has just left the top of the eastern
hill; my time presses me; here is the deed for the
house and lot, every thing done according to law.”

The stranger took the paper, and conned its
contents with a deliberation that proceeded partly
from his caution, and partly from the unlucky circumstance
of his education having been sadly neglected
when a youth. The time occupied in
this tedious examination was employed by Harvey
in gathering together certain articles, which he
intended to include in the stores that were to
leave the habitation with himself. Katy had already
inquired of the pedlar, whether the deceased
had left a will, and saw the Bible placed in the
bottom of a new pack, which she had made for
his accommodation, with a most stoical indifference;
but as the six silver spoons were laid carefully
by its side, a sudden twinge of her conscience

[figure description] Page 220.[end figure description]

objected to such a palpable waste of property,
and she broke silence by saying somewhat abruptly—

“When you marry, Harvey, you may miss
them spoons.”

“I never shall marry,” said the pedlar laconically.

“Well if you don't, there's no occasion to be
short. I'm sure no one asked you. I should like
to know, though, of what use so many spoons can
be to a single man: for my part, I think it's a duty
for every man who is so well provided, to have a
wife and family to maintain.”

At the time when Katy expressed this sentiment,
the fortune of women in her class of life
consisted of a cow, a bed, the labours of their own
hands in the shape of divers pillow cases, blankets,
and sheets, with, where fortune was unusually
kind, a half dozen of silver spoons. The spinster
herself had obtained all the other necessaries to
completing her store, by her own industry and
prudence, and it can easily be imagined saw the
articles, she had long counted her own, vanish in
the enormous pack with a very natural dissatisfaction,
that was in no degree diminished by the
declaration that had preceded the act. Harvey,
however, disregarded her opinions and feelings,
and continued his employment of filling the pack,
which soon grew to a size something like the ordinary
burden of the pedlar.

“I'm rather timoursome about this conveyance,”
said the purchaser, having at length concluded his
task.”

“Why so?” said Harvey quickly.

“I'm afeard it won't stand good in law; I know
that two of the neighbours leave home to-morrow
morning, to have the place entered for confistication,
and if I should go now and give forty pounds

[figure description] Page 221.[end figure description]

and lose it all, 'twould be a dead pull back to
me.”

“They can only take my right,” said the pedlar,
coolly; “pay me two hundred dollars, and the
house is your's; you are a well known whig, and
you at least they won't trouble;” as Harvey spoke,
there was a strange mixture of bitterness with the
care he expressed concerning the sale of his property.

“Say one hundred, and it is a bargain,” returned
the man, with something that he meant for
a good-natured smile.

“A bargain!” echoed the pedlar in surprise,
“I thought the bargain already made.”

“Nothing is a bargain,” said the purchaser with
a gratulating chuckle, “until papers are delivered,
and the money paid in hand.”

“You have the paper,” returned the pedlar
quickly.

“Aye, and will keep it, if you will excuse the
money,” replied the speculator with a sneer;
“come, say one hundred and fifty, and I won't be
hard; here—here is just the money.”

The pedlar looked from the window, and saw
with dismay that the evening was fast advancing,
and knew well that he endangered his life by remaining
in the dwelling after dark; yet he could
not tolerate the idea of being defrauded in this
manner, in a bargain that had already been fairly
made; he hesitated—

“Well,” said the purchaser, rising; “mayhap
you can find another man to trade with between
this and morning; but if you don't, your title won't
be worth much afterward.”

“Take it, Harvey,” said Katy, who felt it impossible
to resist a tender like the one before her,
all in English guineas: her voice roused the pedlar,
and a new idea seemed to strike him.

[figure description] Page 222.[end figure description]

“I agree to the price,” he said, and turning to
the spinster, placed part of the money in her
hand, as he continued—“had I other means to
pay you, I would have lost all, rather than have
suffered myself to have been defrauded of part.”

“You may lose all yet,” muttered the stranger
with a sneer, as he rose and left the building.

“Yes,” said Katy, following him with her eyes;
“he knows your failing, Harvey; he thinks with
me, now the old gentleman is gone, you will want
a careful body to take care of your concerns.”

The pedlar was busied in arranging things for
his departure, and took no notice of this insinuation,
while the spinster returned again to the attack.
She had lived so many years in expectation
of a different result from that which now seemed
likely to occur, that the idea of separation began
to give her more uneasiness, than she had thought
herself capable of feeling, about a man so destitute
and friendless as the pedlar.

“Have you another house to go to?” inquired
Katy, with unusual pathos in her manner.

“Providence will provide me with a home,”
said Harvey, with a perceptible tremor in his
voice.

“Yes,” said the housekeeper quickly; “but
maybe 'twill not be to your liking.”

“The poor must not be difficult,” returned the
pedlar gravely.

“I'm sure I'm every thing but a difficult body,”
cried the spinster very hastily; “but I love to
see things becoming, and in their places; yet I
wouldn't be hard to persuade to leave this place
myself. I can't say I altogether like the ways of
the people.”

“The valley is lovely,” said the pedlar with
fervor, “and the people like all the race of man;
but to me it matters nothing; all places are now

[figure description] Page 223.[end figure description]

alike, and all faces equally strange,” as he spoke,
he dropt the article he was packing from his hand,
and seated himself on a chest with a look of vacant
misery.

“Not so, not so,” said Katy, instinctively shoving
her chair nearer to the place where the pedlar
sat; “not so, Harvey, you must know me at least;
my face cannot be strange to you certainly.”

Birch turned his eyes slowly on her countenance,
which exhibited more of feeling, and less
of self, than he had ever seen there before; he
took her hand kindly, and his own features lost
some of their painful expression as he said—

“Yes, good woman, you, at least, are not a
stranger to me; you may do me partial justice;
when others revile me, possibly your feelings may
lead you to say something in my defence.”

“That I will—that I would!” said Katy eagerly,
“I will defend you, Harvey, to the last drop—let
me hear them that dare revile you! you say true,
Harvey, I am partial and just to you—what if you
do like the king, I have often heard say he was at
the bottom a good man; but there's no religion in
the old country; for every body allows the ministers
are desperate bad.”

The pedlar paced the floor in evident distress
of mind; his eye had a look of wildness that Katy
had never witnessed before, and his step was
measured with a dignity that appalled the maiden.

“While he lived,” cried Harvey, unable to
smother his feelings, “there was one who read my
heart, and oh! what a consolation to return from
my secret marches of danger, and the insult and
wrongs that I suffered, to receive his blessing and
his praise; but he is gone,” he continued stopping
and gazing wildly towards the corner that
used to hold the figure of his parent, “and who is
there to do me justice?”

[figure description] Page 224.[end figure description]

“Why Harvey, Harvey,” Katy ventured to say
imploringly, when the pedlar added, as a smile
stole over his haggard features—

“Yes, there is one who will—who must know
me before I die. Oh! it is dreadful to die and
leave such a name behind me.”

“Don't talk of dying, Harvey,” said the spinster,
glancing her eye around the room, and pushing
the wood in the fire to obtain a light from the
blaze.

But the ebullition of feeling in the pedlar was
over; it had been excited by the events of the
past day, and a vivid perception of his sufferings;
it was not long that passion maintained an ascendancy
over the reason of the trader, and perceiving
that the night had already thrown an obscurity
around the objects without doors, he hastily
threw his pack over his shoulders, and taking
Katy kindly by the hand, made his parting speech—

“It is painful to part with even you, good woman,
but the hour has come, and I must go: what
is left in the house is freely yours; to me it could
be of no use, and it may serve to make you more
comfortable—farewell—we meet hereafter.”

“Yes, in the regions of darkness,” cried a voice
that caused the pedlar to sink on the chest he had
risen from, in despair.

“What! another pack, Mr. Birch, and so well
stuffed so soon.”

“Have you not yet done evil enough?” cried
the pedlar, regaining his firmness, and springing
on his feet with energy; “is it not enough to harrass
the last moments of a dying man—to impoverish
me—what more would you have?”

“Your blood,” said the skinner with cool malignity.

“And for money,” cried Harvey bitterly; “like
the ancient Judas, you would grow rich with the
price of blood.”

[figure description] Page 225.[end figure description]

“Ay! and a fair price it is my gentleman: fifty
guineas—nearly the weight of that scare-crow
carcass of your's in gold.”

“Here,” said Katy promptly, “here are fifteen
guineas, and these drawers, and this bed are all
mine—if you will give Harvey but one hour's start
from the door, they shall be your's.”

“One hour,” said the skinner, showing his teeth,
and looking with a longing eye at the money.

“Yes, but one hour—here, take the money.”

“Hold!” cried Harvey, “put no faith in the
miscreants.”

“She may do what she pleases with her faith,”
said the skinner with malignant pleasure; “but I
have the money in good keeping; as for you, Mr.
Birch, we will bear your insolence, for the fifty
guineas that are to pay for your gallows.”

“Go on,” said the pedlar proudly; “take me to
Major Dunwoodie; he, at least, may be kind, although
he may be just.”

“I can do better than by marching so far in
such disgraceful company,” replied the other very
coolly; “this Mr. Dunwoodie has let one or two
tories go at large; but the troop of Captain Lawton
is quartered some half mile nearer, and his
receipt will get me the reward as soon as his major's:
how relish you the idea of supping with
Captain Lawton this evening, Mr. Birch?”

“Give me my money, or set Harvey free,”
cried the spinster in alarm.

“Your bribe was not enough, good woman,
unless there is money in this bed,” thrusting his
bayonet through the ticking, and ripping it for
some distance, he took a malicious satisfaction in
scattering its contents around the room.

“If,” cried the housekeeper, losing sight of her
personal danger in care for her newly acquired
property, “there is law in the land, I will be
righted.”

[figure description] Page 226.[end figure description]

“The law of the neutral ground is the law of
the strongest,” said the skinner with a malignant
laugh; “but your tongue is not as long as my
bayonet; you had, therefore, best not set them at
loggerheads, or you might be the loser.”

A figure stood in the shadow of the door as if
afraid to be seen in the group of skinners, but a
blaze of light raised by some articles thrown in
the fire by his persecutors, showed the pedlar the
face of the purchaser of his little domain: occasionally
there was some whispering between this
man and the skinner nearest him, that induced
Harvey to suspect he had been the dupe of a contrivance,
in which that wretch had participated:
it was, however, too late to repme, and he followed
the party from the house with a firm and
collected tread, as if marching to a triumph and
not to a gallows. In passing through the yard the
leader of the band fell over a billet of wood, and
received a momentary hurt from the fall; exasperated
at the accident, the fellow sprung on his
feet, and exclaimed—

“The curse of heaven light on the log; the
night is too dark for us to move in; throw that
brand of fire in you pile of tow, to lighten up the
scene.”

“Hold!” roared the horror-struck speculator,
“you'll fire the house.”

“And see the farther,” said the other, hurling
the fire in the midst of the combustibles; in an instant
the building was in flames; “come on, let
us move towards the heights while we have light
to pick our road.”

“Villain!” cried the exasperated purchaser,
“is this your friendship, this my reward for kidnapping
the pedlar?”

“'Twould be wise to move more from the
light, if you mean to entertain us with abuse, or we

[figure description] Page 227.[end figure description]

may see too well to let a bullet miss you,” cried
the leader of the gang; the next instant he was
as good as his threat, but happily missed the terrified
speculator, and equally appalled spinster,
who saw herself again reduced from comparative
wealth to poverty, by the blow. Prudence dictated
to the pair a speedy retreat, and the next morning,
the only remains of the dwelling of the pedlar was
the huge chimney we have already mentioned.

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