The Last of the Foresters Part 4

"Did they laugh?"

"They laughed."

"Did he come away singing?"

Verty hesitated, then said, with an overshadowed brow--

"No, no, _ma mere_--I really believe he did not."

The old woman pressed his hand between her own.

"Speak," she said, "the dove is not sick?"

Verty sighed.

"No; but she is going away," he said, "and Miss Lavinia would not tell me where. What a hawk she is--oh! she shall not harm my dove!"

And Verty betook himself to gazing with shadowy eyes upon the sky. The old Indian was silent for some time. Then she said--

"Trust in the Good Spirit, my son. We are not enough for ourselves.

We think we are strong and mighty, and can do everything; but a wind blows us away. Listen, there is the wind in the pines, and look how it is scattering the leaves. Men are like leaves--the breath of the Great Spirit is the wind which scatters them."

And the old Indian woman gazed with much affection on the boy.

"What you say is worthy to be written on bark, mother," he said, returning her affectionate glance; "the Great Spirit holds everything in the hollow of his hand, and we are nothing. Going away!" added Verty after a pause--"Going away!"

And he sighed.

"What did my son say?" asked the old woman.

"Nothing, _ma mere. Ah le bon temp que ce triste jour_!" he murmured.

The old woman's head drooped.

"My son does not speak with a straight tongue," she said; "his words are crooked."

"_Non non_" said Verty, smiling; "but I am a little unwell, _ma mere_.

All the way coming along, I felt my breast weighed down--my heart was oppressed. Look! even Longears knows I'm not the Verty of the old time."

Longears, who was standing at the door in a contemplative att.i.tude, fancied that his master called him, and, coming up, licked Verty's hand affectionately.

"Good Longears!" said. Verty, caressing him, "lie down at my feet."

Longears obeyed with much dignity, and was soon basking in the sunlight before the door.

"Now, _ma mere_" Verty said, with his habitual smile, "we have been calling for the clouds to come up, and shut out the sun; let us call for the sunlight next. You know I am your Verty, and every day as I grow, I get able to do more for you. I shall, some day, make a number of pistoles--who knows?--and then think how much I could buy for you.

Good mother!--happy Verty!"

And taking the old woman's hand, Verty kissed it.

Then, leaning back, he reached through the window, and took down a rude violin, and began to play an old air of the border, accompanying the tune with a low chant, in the Indian fas.h.i.+on.

The old woman looked at him for some moments with great affection, a sad smile lighting up her aged features; then saying in a low tone, as if to herself, "good Verty!" went into the house.

Verty played for some time longer. Tired at last of his violin, he laid it down, and with his eyes fixed upon the sand at his feet, began to dream. As he mused, his large twilight eyes slowly drooped their long lashes, which rested finally on the ruddy cheek.

For some moments, Verty amused himself tracing figures on the sand near Longears' nose, causing that intelligent animal to growl in his sleep, and fight imaginary foes with his paws.

From the window, the old Indian woman watched the young man with great affection, her lips moving, and her eyes, at times, raised toward the sky.

Verty reclined more and more in his wicker seat; the scenes and images of the day were mingled together in his mind, and became a dim wrack of cloud; his tangled hair shaded his face from the sun; and, overcome by weariness, the boy sank back, smiling even in his sleep. As he did so, the long-stemmed Indian pipe fell from his hand across Longears'

nose, half covering the letters he had traced with it on the sand.

Those letters were, in rude tracing:

REDBUD.

And to these Verty had added, with melancholy and listless smiles, the further letters:

GOING TO--

Unfortunately he was compelled to leave the remainder of the sentence unwritten.

CHAPTER V.

WINCHESTER.

Having followed the Indian boy from Apple Orchard to his lodge in the wilderness, and shown how he pa.s.sed many of his hours in the hills, it is proper now that we should mount--in a figurative and metaphorical sense--behind Mr. Rushton, and see whither that gentleman also bends his steps. We shall thus arrive at the real theatre of our brief history--we mean at the old town of Winchester,

Every body knows, or ought to know, all about Winchester. It is not a borough of yesterday, where the hum of commerce and the echo of the pioneer's axe mingle together, as in many of our great western cities of the Arabian Nights:--Winchester has recollections about it, and holds to the past--to its Indian combats, and strange experiences of clas.h.i.+ng arms, and border revelries, and various scenes of wild frontier life, which live for us now only in the chronicles;--to its memories of Colonel Was.h.i.+ngton, the n.o.ble young soldier, who afterwards became, as we all have heard, so distinguished upon a larger field;--to Thomas Lord Fairfax, Baron of Cameron, who came there often when the deer and the wolves of his vast possessions would permit him--and to Daniel Morgan, who emptied many fair cups on Loudoun-street, and one day pa.s.sed, with trumpets sounding, going to Quebec; again on his way to debate questions of importance with Tarleton, at the Cowpens--lastly, to crush the Tory rising on Lost River, about the time when "it pleased heaven so to order things, that the large army of Cornwallis should be entrapped and captured at Yorktown, in Virginia," as the chronicles inform us. All these men of the past has Winchester looked upon, and many more--on strange, wild pictures, and on many histories. For you walk on history there and drink the chronicle:--Was.h.i.+ngton's old fort is crumbling, but still visible;--Morgan, the strong soldier, sleeps there, after all his storms;--and grim, eccentric Fairfax lies where he fell, on hearing of the Yorktown ending.

When we enter the town with Mr. Rushton, these men are elsewhere, it is true; but none the less present. They are there forever.

The lawyer's office was on Loudoun-street, and cantering briskly along the rough highway past the fort, he soon reached the rack before his door, and dismounted. The rack was crooked and quailed--the house was old and dingy--the very knocker on the door frowned grimly at the wayfarer who paused before it. One would have said that Mr. Rushton's manners, house, and general surrounding, would have repelled the community, and made him a thousand enemies, so grim were they. Not at all. No lawyer in the town was nearly so popular--none had as much business of importance entrusted to them. It had happened in his case as in a thousand others, which every one's experience must have furnished. His neighbors had discovered that his rude and surly manners concealed a powerful intellect and an excellent heart--and even this rudeness had grown interesting from the cynical dry humor not unfrequently mingled with it.

A huge table, littered with old dingy volumes, and with dusty rolls of papers tied with red tape--a tall desk, with a faded and ink-bespattered covering of brown cloth--a lofty set of "pigeon holes," nearly filled with doc.u.ments of every description--and a set of chairs and stools in every state of dilapidation:--there was the ante-room of Joseph Rushton, Esq., Attorney-at-Law and Solicitor in Chancery.

No window panes ever had been seen so dirty as those which graced the windows--no rag-carpet so nearly resolved into its component elements, had ever decorated human dwelling--and perhaps no legal den, from the commencement of the world to that time, had ever diffused so unmistakeable an odor of parchment, law-calf, and ancient dust!

The apartment within the first was much smaller, and here Mr. Rushton held his more confidential interviews. Few persons entered it, however; and even Roundjacket would tap at the door before entering, and generally content himself with thrusting his head through the opening, and then retiring. Such was the lawyer's office.