Once the author awoke to a painful reflection that he knew no place well, though his occupation had taken him to many, and that, after twenty-five years of describing localities and society, he would be identified with none.
"Where shall I begin to rove within confines?" he asked, feeling the vacant spaces in his nature: the want of all those birds, forest trees, household habits, weeds, instincts of the brooks, and tints and tones of the local species which lie in some neighborhood's compass, and complete the pastoral mind.
Numerous districts rose up and contended together, each attractive from some striking scene, or bold contrast, or lovely face; and wiser policy might have led his inclinations to one of these, redundant, perhaps, in wealth or literary appreciation; yet the heart began to turn, as in first love, or vagrancy almost as sweet, to the little, lowly region where his short childhood was lived, and where the unknown generations of his people darkened the sand--the peninsula between the Chesapeake and the Delaware.
Far down this peninsula lies the old town of Snow Hill, on the border of Virginia; there the pilgrim entered the court-house, and asked to see an early book of wills, and in it he turned to the name of a maternal ancestor, of whom grand tales had been told him by an aged relative. His breath was almost taken by finding the following provisions, dated February 12, 1800:
"I give and bequeath to my son, Ralph Milbourn, MY BEST HAT, TO HIM AND HIS ASSIGNEES FOREVER, and no more of my estate.
"I give to Thomas Milbourn my small iron kettle, my brandy still, all my hand-irons, my pot-rack, and fifteen pounds bond that he gave to my daughter, Grace Milbourn."
The next day a doctor took the author on his rounds through "the Forest," as a neighboring tract was almost too invidiously called, and through a deserted iron-furnace; village almost of the date of these wills.
Everywhere he went the Entailed Hat seemed, to the stranger in the land of his forefathers, to appear in the vistas, as if some odd, reverend, avoided being was wearing it down the defiles of time. Now like Hester Prynne wearing her Scarlet Letter, and now like Gaston in his Iron Mask, this being took both sexes and different characters, as the author weighed the probabilities of its existence. At last he began to know it, and started to portray it in a little tale.
The story broke from its confines as his own family generation had broken from that forest, and sought a larger hemisphere; yet, wherever the mystic Hat proceeded, his truant fancy had also been led by his mother's hand.
Often had she told him of old Patty Cannon and her kidnapper's den, and her death in the jail of his native town. He found the legend of that dreaded woman had strengthened instead of having faded with time, and her haunts preserved, and eye-witnesses of her deeds to be still living.
Hence, this romance has much local truth in it, and is not only the narration of an episode, but the story of a large region comprehending three state jurisdictions, and also of that period when modern life arose upon the ruins of old colonial caste.
CONTENTS.
I. TWO HAT WEARERS 1 II. JUDGE AND DAUGHTER 6 III. THE FORESTERS 15 IV. DISCOVERY OF THE HEIRLOOM 19 V. THE BOG-ORE TRACT 25 VI. THE CUSTISES RUINED 32 VII. JACK-O'-LANTERN IRON 40 VIII. THE HAT FINDS A RACK 45 IX. HA! HA! THE WOOING ON'T 69 X. MASTER IN THE KITCHEN 83 XI. DYING PRIDE 89 XII. PRINCESS ANNE FOLKS 100 XIII. SHADOW OF THE TILE 121 XIV. MESHACH'S HOME 129 XV. THE KIDNAPPER 154 XVI. BELL-CROWN MAN 164 XVII. SABBATH AND CANOE 179 XVIII. UNDER AN OLD BONNET 192 XIX. THE DUSKY LEVELS 210 XX. CASTE WITHOUT TONE 218 XXI. LONG SEPARATIONS 239 XXII. NANTICOKE PEOPLE 261 XXIII. TWIFORD'S ISLAND 269 XXIV. OLD CHIMNEYS 285 XXV. PATTY CANNON'S 298 XXVI. VAN DORN 318 XXVII. CANNON'S FERRY 335 XXVIII. PACIFICATION 357 XXIX. BEGINNING OF THE RAID 360 XXX. AFRICA 365 XXXI. PEACH BLUSH 373 XXXII. GARTER-SNAKES 391 XXXIII. HONEYMOON 405 XXXIV. THE ORDEAL 411 XXXV. COWGILL HOUSE 424 XXXVI. TWO WHIGS 433 XXXVII. SPIRIT OF THE PAST 441 XXXVIII. VIRGIE'S FLIGHT 456 XXXIX. VIRGIE'S FLIGHT--CONTINUED 468 XL. HULDA BELEAGUERED 486 XLI. AUNT PATTY'S LAST TRICK 496 XLII. BEAKS 510 XLIII. PLEASURE DRAINED 515 XLIV. THE DEATH OF PATTY CANNON 524 XLV. THE JUDGE REMARRIED 542 XLVI. THE CURSE OF THE HAT 554 XLVII. FAILURE AND RESTITUTION 558
A picture of Joe Johnson's Kidnapper's Tavern, as it stood in the year 1883, is given on the title-page.
