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Updated: June 2, 2025
Van Dorn stood blushing, pulling his long mustache of flax, and resting on his cowhide whip. "Dave," he called to a powerful negro, "get down from that mule; you're too drunk to go. Jump up in his place, Owen Daw!" The widow's son gladly vaulted on the animal. "Sorden," continued Van Dorn, "you know all the roads: lead the way! Whitecar, go with him! We rendezvous at Punch Hall at eight o'clock.
Taking a single look at the miserable band of whites and blacks collected in the barn, and revealed by a lantern's light in the excitement of drink and avarice, or the familiarity of fear and vice some inspecting gags of corn-cob and bucks of hickory, others trimming clubs of blackjack with the roots attached; others loading their horse-pistols and greasing the dagger-slides thereon; some whetting their hog-killing knives upon harness, others cutting rope and cord into the lengths to bind men's feet Levin was set on the loping horse he had been already riding, by Clark, the host, and soon met Sorden on the road.
"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." "Goy!
As they rode to the rear of the house a little dormer window, like a snail, crawled low along the roof, and a light was shining from it. "Devil Jim's business-office," nodded Sorden. "What's his business?" asked Levin, freshly. "Niggers. He keeps 'em up thar between the garret and the roof sometimes in the cellar." "Does he want a business-office for that?"
Little money was raised in that crowd, since there was little to give, and, addressing the two distinguished strangers, Sorden, the crier, exclaimed: "What, gentlemen, will you let the Hunn brothers and Tommy Garrett and the Motts give three hundred dollars for a woman they never saw, and we, who see her always doing good, give nothing?" "Pity! pity!" sobbed the blind man.
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."
Levin's horse, at his easy gait, soon left Sorden far behind, and the strange events of the night, and his wonder what to do next, kept Levin's brain whirling till he saw the form of a few houses rise among the trees, and a line of arborage indicate a main road from north to south. The scent as of cold, wide waters and marshes filled the night. "Here is Camden," Levin thought; "where shall I go?
"Derrick Molleston?" spoke Van Dorn. "See me! see me!" "Get down and ride with me. Levin, are you awake?" "Yes, Captain." "Take this man's horse and ride him. John Sorden is ahead. It will stretch your chilled limbs." "May I go with him?" asked Owen Daw, in his Celtic accent, quite cringing now. "Not unless he wants you." "Come, then," Levin obligingly said.
The whole pack meekly sneaked back to the house, whining low, and a few blows of a switch and short howls within completed the excitement. "What place is this?" asked Owen Daw. "Devil Jim Clark's," said Sorden.
None thought to look at Van Dorn, nor ask what had become of him, and his friend Sorden removed his body, unseen, to a spot in the pine woods, where his unmarked grave was dug, and standing round it were three mourners only, and Sorden said the final words with homely tears: "I loved him as I never loved A male."
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