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She appeared to be dazzled by the sudden blaze of light, and after dropping a curtsey, she stood blinking at us with her bleared eyes and fumbling in her pocket with nervous, shaky fingers. I glanced at my companion, and his face had assumed such a disconsolate expression that it was all I could do to keep my countenance. The old crone drew out an evening paper, and pointed at our advertisement.
Absurd details rise in the dream. An old crone is selling roasted chestnuts in the shadow of the temple of Castor and Pollux; a tipsy soldier is reeling to his quarters with his helmet stuck on wrong side foremost; a knot of Hebrew money-changers, with long curls and high caps, are talking eagerly in their own language, clutching the little bags they hide in the sleeves of their yellow Eastern gowns the men who mourned for Cæsar and for Augustus, whose descendants were to burn Rienzi's body among the thistles by Augustus's tomb, whose offspring were to breed the Pierleoni; a bright-eyed, skinny woman of the people boxes her daughter's ears for having smiled at one of the rich men's parasites, and the girl, already crying, still looks after the fashionable good-for-nothing, under her mother's upraised arm.
It was during this period of convalescence that an incident occurred which is closely connected with my story. Among the most assiduous of the negresses who had watched my couch during my illness there was one old crone who appeared to exert considerable authority over the others.
I do not propose to convey to the reader the idea that I was naturally better than other boys, on the contrary, I frequently deserved the rod when I did not get it, but more frequently received a cruel drubbing when I did not deserve it, that, too, at the hands of the old negro crone who was exceedingly violent as well as unjust.
About the outskirts loafed a dozen or so of the less socially eligible of Newbern. Above a fire at the camp centre a kettle simmered on its pothook, being stirred at this moment by a brown and aged crone in frivolous-patterned calico, who wore gold hoops in her ears and bangles at her neck and bracelets of silver on her arms bejewelled, indeed, most unbecomingly for a person of her years.
And a vigorous arm pulled the lad abruptly through the opening. "Ef she sees yo', she can strike yo' dead, foh suah!" The crone could no longer distinguish Mauville her eyes were nearly sightless but she continued to look in the direction he had taken, sobbing as before: "Fo'ebber and ebber! Fo'ebber and ebber!"
It was now the morning in which Eugene Aram was to be married to Madeline Lester. "Them flowers look but poor things, after all," muttered an old crone, whom our readers will recognize as Dame Darkmans, placing a bowl of exotics on the table. "They does not look nigh so cheerful as them as grows in the open air." "Tush! Goody Darkmans," said the second gossip.
Is it from the Intendant?" "No, my Lady, it is from a woman." Caroline blushed and trembled as she took it from the old crone. A woman! It flashed upon the mind of Caroline that the letter was important. She opened it with trembling fingers, anticipating she knew not what direful tidings when her eyes ran over the clear handwriting.
All of these, with the exception of an old crone who was tending the pot, and a little boy who was feeding the fire with sundry fragments of stolen wood, started to their feet upon the entrance of the stranger.
It was with considerable difficulty and after repeated efforts, that she at length impressed the dulled sense of the crone with the nature of their alarm, and the expediency of refusing admittance to the Stranger. Meanwhile, the bell had rung again, again, and the third time with a prolonged violence which testified the impatience of the applicant.
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