After, in short, recounting in a clear narrative, the events which our readers must now be able to connect, he proceeded to make a fair and exact statement of the sums left in his care by Colonel Effingham.
A devise of his whole estate to certain responsible trustees followed; to hold the same for the benefit, in equal moieties, of his daughter, on one part, and of Oliver Effingham, formerly a major in the army of Great Britain, and of his son Ed ward Effingham, and of his son Edward Oliver Effingham, or to the survivor of them, and the descendants of such survivor, forever, on the other part.
The trust was to endure until 1810, when, if no person appeared, or could be found, after sufficient notice, to claim the moiety so devised, then a certain sum, calculating the principal and interest of his debt to Colonel Effingham, was to be paid to the heirs-at-law of the Effingham family, and the bulk of his estate was to be conveyed in fee to his daughter, or her heirs.
The tears fell from the eyes of the young man, as he read this undeniable testimony of the good faith of Marmaduke, and his bewildered gaze was still fastened on the paper, when a voice, that thrilled on every nerve, spoke near him, saying:
“Do you yet doubt us, Oliver?”
“I have never doubted you!” cried the youth, recovering his recollection and his voice, as he sprang to seize the hand of Elizabeth; “no, not one moment has my faith in you wavered.”
“And my father—”
“God bless him!”
“I thank thee, my son,” said the Judge, exchanging a warm pressure of the hand with the youth; “but we have both erred: thou hast been too hasty, and I have been too slow.
One-half of my estates shall be thine as soon as they can be conveyed to thee; and, if what my suspicions tell me be true, I suppose the other must follow speedily.”
He took the hand which he held, and united it with that of his daughter, and motioned toward the door to the Major.
“I telt you vat, gal!” said the old German, good-humoredly; “if I vas as I vas ven I servit mit his grand-fader on ter lakes, ter lazy tog shouldn’t vin ter prize as for nottin’.”
“Come, come, old Fritz,” said the Judge; “you are seventy, not seventeen; Richard waits for you with a bowl of eggnog, in the hall.”
“Richart! ter duyvel!” exclaimed the other, hastening out of the room; “he makes ter nog as for ter horse vilt show ter sheriff mit my own hants!
Ter duyvel!
I pelieve he sweetens mit ter Yankee melasses!”
Marmaduke smiled and nodded affectionately at the young couple, and closed the door after them.
If any of our readers expect that we are going to open it again, for their gratification, they are mistaken.
The tete-a-tete continued for a very unreasonable time—how long we shall not say; but it was ended by six o’clock in the evening, for at that hour Monsieur Le Quoi made his appearance agreeably to the appointment of the preceding day, and claimed the ear of Miss Temple.
He was admitted; when he made an offer of his hand, with much suavity, together with his “amis beeg and leet’, his pere, his mere and his sucreboosh.”
Elizabeth might, possibly, have previously entered into some embarrassing and binding engagements with Oliver, for she declined the tender of all, in terms as polite, though perhaps a little more decided, than those in which they were made.
The Frenchman soon joined the German and the sheriff in the hall, who compelled him to take a seat with them at the table, where, by the aid of punch, wine, and egg nog, they soon extracted from the complaisant Monsieur Le Quoi the nature of his visit, it was evident that he had made the offer, as a duty which a well-bred man owed to a lady in such a retired place, before he had left the country, and that his feelings were but very little, if at all, interested in the matter.
After a few potations, the waggish pair persuaded the exhilarated Frenchman that there was an inexcusable partiality in offering to one lady, and not extending a similar courtesy to another.
Consequently, about nine, Monsieur Le Quoi sallied forth to the rectory, on a similar mission to Miss Grant, which proved as successful as his first effort in love.
When he returned to the mansion-house, at ten, Richard and the Major were still seated at the table.
They at tempted to persuade the Gaul, as the sheriff called him, that he should next try Remarkable Pettibone. But, though stimulated by mental excitement and wine, two hours of abstruse logic were thrown away on this subject; for he declined their advice, with a pertinacity truly astonishing in so polite a man.
When Benjamin lighted Monsieur Le Quoi from the door, he said, at parting:
“If-so-be, Mounsheer, you’d run alongside Mistress Pettybones, as the Squire Dickens was bidding ye, ‘tis my notion you’d have been grappled; in which case, d’ye see, you mought have been troubled in swinging clear agin in a handsome manner; for thof Miss Lizzy and the parson’s young ‘un be tidy little vessels, that shoot by a body on a wind, Mistress Remarkable is summat of a galliot fashion: when you once takes ‘em in tow, they doesn’t like to be cast off agin.”
CHAPTER XLI.
“Yes, sweep ye on!—
We will not leave,
For them who triumph those who grieve.
With that armada gay
Be laughter loud, and jocund shout—
But with that skill Abides the minstrel tale.”
—Lord of the Isles.
The events of our tale carry us through the summer; and after making nearly the circle of the year, we must conclude our labors in the delightful month of October.
Many important incidents had, however, occurred in the intervening period; a few of which it may be necessary to recount.
The two principal were the marriage of Oliver and Elizabeth, and the death of Major Effingham.
They both took place early in September; and the former preceded the latter only a few days.
The old man passed away like the last glimmering of a taper; and, though his death cast a melancholy over the family, grief could not follow such an end.
One of the chief concerns of Marmaduke was to reconcile the even conduct of a magistrate with the course that his feelings dictated to the criminals.
The day succeeding the discovery at the cave, however, Natty and Benjamin re-entered the jail peaceably, where they continued, well fed and comfortable, until the return of an express to Albany, who brought the governor’s pardon to the Leather-Stocking.
In the mean time, proper means were employed to satisfy Hiram for the assaults on his person; and on the same day the two comrades issued together into society again, with their characters not at all affected by the imprisonment.
Mr. Doolittle began to discover that neither architecture nor his law was quite suitable to the growing wealth and intelligence of the settlement; and after exacting the last cent that was attainable in his compromise, to use the language of the country he “pulled up stakes,” and proceeded farther west, scattering his professional science and legal learning through the land; vestiges of both of which are to be discovered there even to the present hour.
Poor Jotham, whose life paid the forfeiture of his folly, acknowledged, before he died, that his reasons for believing in a mine were extracted from the lips of a sibyl, who, by looking in a magic glass, was enabled to discover the hidden treasures of the earth.
Such superstition was frequent in the new settlements; and, after the first surprise was over, the better part of the community forgot the subject.
But, at the same time that it removed from the breast of Richard a lingering suspicion of the acts of the three hunter, it conveyed a mortifying lesson to him, which brought many quiet hours, in future, to his cousin Marmaduke.
It may be remembered that the sheriff confidently pronounced this to be no “visionary” scheme, and that word was enough to shut his lips, at any time within the next ten years.
Monsieur Le Quoi, who has been introduced to our readers because no picture of that country would be faithful without some such character, found the island of Martinique, and his “sucreboosh,” in possession of the English but Marmaduke and his family were much gratified in soon hearing that he had returned to his bureau, in Paris; where he afterward issued yearly bulletins of his happiness, and of his gratitude to his friends in America.