Long after midnight, Dover was in bed, except at one large house on the Capitol green, where light shone through the chinks and cracks of curtains and shutters, and some watch-dog, perhaps, ran along curiously to see why.
The stars and clouds in the somewhat troubled sky looked down through the leafless trees upon the pretty town and St. Jones's Creek circling past it, and hardly noticed a long band of creeping men and animals steal up from the Meeting House branch, past the tannery and the academy, and plunge into the back streets of the place, avoiding the public square.
One file turned down to the creek and crossed it, to return farther above, cutting off all escape by the northern road, while a second file slipped silently through and around the compact little hamlet and waited for the other to arrive, when both encompassed an old brick dwelling standing back from the roadside in a green and venerable yard, nearly half a mile from the settled parts of Dover.
This house was brilliantly lighted, and the rose-bushes and shade trees were all defined as they stood above the swells of green verdure and the ornamental paths and flower-beds.
One majestic tulip-tree extended its long branches nearly to the portal of the quaint dwelling, and a luxuriant growth of ivy, starting between the cellar windows, clambered to the corniced carpentry of the eaves, and made almost solid panels of vine of the spaces between the four large, keystoned windows in two stories, which stood to the right of the broad, dumpy door.
This door, at the top of a flight of steps, was placed so near the gable angle of the house that it gave the impression of but one wing of a mansion originally designed to be twice its length and size.
Between this gable--which faced the road, and had four lines of windows in it, besides a basement row--and the back or town door, as described, was one squarish, roomy window, out of relation to all the rest, and perhaps twelve feet above the ground. This, as might be guessed, was on the landing of the stairs within; for the great door and front of the residence being at the opposite side, the whole of the space at the townward gable, to the width of seventeen feet, was a noble hall about forty feet long, lofty, and with pilasters in architectural style, and lighted by two great windows in the gable and the square window on the stairway.
The stairway itself was a beautiful piece of work and proportion, rising from the floor in ten railed steps to the landing at the square window, where a space several feet square commanded both the great front door and the windows in the gable, and also the yard behind; thence, at right angles, the flight of steps rose along the back wall to a second landing over the dumpy back-door, and, by a third leap, returned at right angles, to the floor above, making what is called the well of the stairway to be exceedingly spacious, and it opened to the garret floor.
No doubt this cool, great hall was designed to be the centre of a large mansion, yet it had lost nothing in agreeableness by becoming, instead, the largest room in the house, receiving abundant daylight, and it was large enough for either a feast or public worship, and such was its frequent use.
Built by a tyrannical, eccentric man at the beginning of the century, it had passed through several families until a Quaker named Cowgill, who afterwards became a Methodist, and who held no slaves and was kind to black people, made it his property, and superintended a tannery and mill within sight of it.
He was frequently absent for weeks, especially in the bilious autumn season, and allowed his domestics to assemble their friends and the general race, at odd times, in the great hallway, for such rational enjoyments as they might select.
In truth, the owner of the house desired it to get a more cheerful reputation; for the negroes, in particular, considered it haunted.
The first owner, it was said, had amused himself in the great hall-room by making his own children stand on their toes, switching their feet with a whip when they dropped upon their soles from pain or fatigue; and his own son finally shot at him through the great northern door with a rifle or pistol, leaving the mark to this day, to be seen by a small panel set in the original pine. The third owner, a lawyer, often entertained travelling clergymen here; and, on one occasion, the eccentric Reverend Lorenzo Dow met on the stairs a stranger and bowed to him, and afterwards frightened the host's family by telling it, since they were not aware of any stranger in the house. The room over the great door had always been considered the haunt of peculiar people, who molested nobody living, but appeared there in some quiet avocation, and vanished when pressed upon.
This main door itself had a church-like character, and was battened or built in half, so that the upper part could be thrown open like a window, and yet the lock on this upper part was a foot and a half long, and the key weighed a pound.
This ponderous door, in elaborate carpentry, opened upon a flight of steps and on a flower-yard surrounded by elms, firs, and Paulownia trees, the latter of a beany odor and nature. A lower servants' part of the dwelling, in two stories, stretched to the fields, and had a veranda-covered rear.
Van Dorn called to a negro:
"Buck Ransom!"
"Politely, Captain," the negro's insinuating voice answered.
"Go to the front door and knock. As you enter, see that it is clear to fly open. Then, as you pass along the hall, throw the windows up."
"Politely, Captain;" the negro bowed and departed.
"Owen Daw!"
"Yer honor!"
"Climb into the big tulip-tree softly and take this musket I shall reach you. Train it on the staircase window, and fire only if you see resistance there."
The boy went up the tree with all his vicious instincts full of fight.
"Melson!"
"Ay yi!"
"Milman!"
"Ah! boy."
"Get yourselves beneath the two large windows on the hall and serve as mounting-blocks to Sorden's party. I shall storm the main door. As we enter there, Sorden, order your men right over Melson and Milman into the windows Ransom has lifted."
"I love him," muttered Sorden, admiringly, "as I never loved A male," and collected his party.
"Whitecar, you and your brother hold the back door with your staves. If it is forced, Miles Tindel--"
"Tackle 'em, Cap'n Van!"
"Will throw his red-pepper dust into the eyes of any that come out."
"Oh, tackle 'em, Cap'n Van!"
"Derrick Molleston!"
"See me, O see me!" the powerful negro muttered.
"Take Herron and Vincent, and two more, and guard the kitchen and the front of the main dwelling. Knock any creature stiff, except--ayme! ay!--the young damsels, whose fears will soon trip them to the ground."
"See me, see me!" the negro hoarsely said.
"As we enter the door, I shall cry, 'Patty Cannon has come!' Then spring in the windows and beat opposition down. Relampaguea! Ransom is slow."
The knocker on the great door sounded, and it sprang open and quickly slammed again, and a stifled, strange sound followed, as of a scuffle.
Van Dorn, agile as a panther, sprang on Milman's back and looked into a window in the gable, drawing his face away, so as to be unseen in the night.
The bright interior was full of people, sitting back against the wainscoting, as if listening to a sermon, while down the middle of the stately hall stretched a table lighted by whale-oil lamps and many little candles, and filled with the remnants of a feast. The stairway in the corner Van Dorn could not see, and there the dusky audience was all facing, as if towards the preacher. There seemed a something out of the common in the kind of attention the inmates were paying, but Van Dorn's eyes were absorbed in the sight of several drooping and yet almost startled dove-eyed quadroon maids, and he only noticed that the spy, Ransom, could not be seen.
"Sorden," Van Dorn said, slipping down, "can Ransom have betrayed us? Chis! they all look as if a death-warrant was being read."
"My skin! No, Captain. Air they all there?"
"All," said Van Dorn; "I see thirty thousand dollars of flesh in sight."
"Come on then," said Van Dorn, softly; "if the windows are not lifted, break them in."
He twisted, by main strength, a panel out of the palings near the house, and led the way to the great front door. A dozen desperate hands seized the heavy panel and ran with it. The door flew open, but at that moment every light in Cowgill House went out.
"Dar's ghosts in dar," the hoarse voice of Derrick Molleston was heard to say, and the negro element stopped and shrank.
"Tindel, your torch!" Van Dorn exclaimed, and, after a moment's delay--the old house and shady yard meantime illumined by lightning, and sounds of thunder rolling in the sky--a blazing pine-knot, all prepared, was procured, and Van Dorn, holding it in his left hand, and with nothing but his rude whip in his right, bounded in the door, shouting:
"Patty Cannon has come!"
At that dreaded name there were a few suppressed shrieks, and the great windows at the gable side fell inwards with a crash as the kidnappers came pouring over.
Van Dorn's quick eye took in the situation as he waved his torch, and it lighted ceiling and pilaster, the close-fastened doors on the left and the great stairway-well beyond, filled with black forms in the attitude of defence.
"Patty Cannon has come!" he shouted again; "follow me!"
An instant only brought him to the base of the staircase, and the lightning flashing in the gaping windows and fallen door revealed him to his followers, with his yellow hair waving, and his long, silken mustache like golden flame.
A mighty yell rose from the emboldened gang as they formed behind him, with bludgeons and iron knuckles, billies and slings, and whatever would disable but fail to kill.
Van Dorn, far ahead, made three murderous slashes of his whip across the human objects above, and, with a toss of that formidable weapon, clubbed it and darted on.
At the moment loud explosions and smoke and cries filled the echoing place, as a volley of firearms burst from the landing, sweeping the line of the windows and raking the hall. The band on the floor below stopped, and some were down, groaning and cursing.
"They're armed; it's treachery," a voice, in panic, cried, and the cowardly assailants ran to places of refuge, some crawling out at the portal, some dropping from the windows, and others getting behind the stairway, out of fire, and seeking desperately to draw the bolts of the smaller door there.
"Patty Cannon has come!" Van Dorn repeated, throwing himself into the body of the defenders, who, terrified at his bravery, began to retreat upward around the angles of the stairs.
One man, however, did not retreat, neither did he strike, but wrapped Van Dorn around the body in a pair of long and powerful arms, and lifted him from the landing by main strength, saying:
"High doings, friend! I'm concerned for thee."
Van Dorn felt at the grip that he was overcome. He tried to reach for his knife, but his arms were enclosed in the unknown stranger's, who, having seized him from behind, sought to push him through the square window on the landing into the grass yard below, where the rain was falling and the lightning making brilliant play among the herbs and ferns.
As the kidnapper prepared himself to fall, with all his joints and muscles relaxed, the boy, Owen Daw, lying bloodthirstily along the limb of the old tulip-tree, aimed his musket, according to Van Dorn's instructions, at the forms contending there, and greedily pulled the trigger.
The Quaker's arms, as they enclosed Van Dorn, presented, upon the cuff of his coat, a large steel or metal button, and the ball from the tree, striking this, glanced, and entered Van Dorn's throat.
"Ayme Guay!" Van Dorn muttered, and was thrown out of the window to the earth, all limp and huddled together, till John Sorden bore him off, muttering,
"I loved him as I never loved A male."
The desperate party beneath the stairs at last broke open the back door there and rushed forth, only to receive handfuls of red pepper dust thrown by Miles Tindel, as he cried,
"Tackle 'em, Cap'n Van!"
They screamed with anguish, and rolled in the wet grass, and yet, with fears stronger than pain, sought the road in blindness, and some way to leave the town.
Young Owen O'Day, or Daw, crept down the tree, and, seeing Van Dorn in Sorden's arms at the wagon, contemptuously said, as he mounted his mule and vanished:
"I reckon he'll never discipline me no mo'."
Derrick Molleston, regretting the loss of his loping horse, bore out to the wagon an object he had found striving to escape from the veranda at the kitchen side, though with a gag in his mouth, and a skewer between his elbows and his back.
"See me, see me!" the negro kidnapper spoke, hoarsely. "He's mine an' Devil Jim Clark's. I tuk him."
"Why, it's Buck Ransom," Sorden said.
"An' I'm gwyn to sell him, too," the negro muttered, seizing the reins. "You see me now! Maybe he cheated us. Any way, he's tuk."
The old wagon started at a run through the driving rain, the black victim lying helpless on his back, and Van Dorn bleeding in Sorden's arms, who continued to moan,
"I loved him as I never loved A male!"
Van Dorn made several efforts to talk, and often coughed painfully, and finally, as they reached a lane gate, he articulated:'
"The Chancellor's?"
"Yes, dis is it," Derrick Molleston said. "See me, Cap'n Van. I's all heah."
As they advanced up a shady lane, fire from somewhere began to make a certain illumination in spite of the loud storm.
"It's Bill Greenley. He's set de jail afire," the negro exclaimed. "See me, O see me!"
The conflagration gave a vapory red light to a secluded dwelling they now approached, upon a bowery lawn, and Sorden saw a woman of a severe aspect looking out of a window at the fire.
"What is the meaning of this trespass so late at night?" she called. "Are you robbers? My aged husband is asleep."
"Madam," answered Sorden, "here is the husband of Mrs. Patty Cannon. She was your brother's mother-in-law. I love this man as I never loved A male. He is wounded, and we want him taken in till he can have a doctor."
"Take him to the jail, then, if that is not it burning yonder," the woman exclaimed, scornfully. "Shall I make the home of the Chancellor of Delaware a hospital for Patty Cannon's men as a reward for her sending my brother to the gallows?"
She closed the window and the blind, and left them alone in the storm.
"Drive, Derrick, to your den at Cooper's Corners, quick, then," Sorden said.
As they left the lane a flash of lightning, so near, so white, that they seemed to be within the volume and crater of it, enveloped the wagon. One horse sank down on his haunches, and the other reared back and tore from his harness, while the wagon was overset.
The negro picked up his helpless fellow-African and lifted him on his back, starting off in mingled avarice and terror, and saying,
"Derrick's gwyn home, sho'. See me, see me!"
Van Dorn put his finger at his throat, where blood was all the while trickling, and, with a gentle cough, extorted the sounds:
"Leave me--under a bush--to--die."
"No," cried Sorden, raising Van Dorn also upon his back; "I love him as I never loved A male."
The fire of the burning jail lighted their return into the outskirts of Dover and to the gallows' hill, where stood the scaffold, split with the lightning from cross-beam to the death-trap. As they halted opposite it to rest, a horse and rider came stumbling past, and Molleston, dropping his burden, shouted:
"Bill Greenley, dat's our hoss. We want it."
"His is the hoss that's on him," cried the escaped horse-thief, looking scornfully up at his own gallows as he lashed his blinded animal along in the rain.
"Cheer up, Captain Van," John Sorden said, soaked through with the rain; "'t'ain't fur now to Cooper's Corners."
