Since his appointment to the office of sheriff and his consequent absences from home, he had employed Benjamin to make memoranda on a slate, of whatever might be thought worth remembering, which, on his return, were regularly transferred to the journal with proper notations of the time, manner, and other little particulars.
There was, to be sure, one material objection to the clerkship of Benjamin, which the ingenuity of no one but Richard could have overcome.
The steward read nothing but his prayer-book, and that only in particular parts, and by the aid of a good deal of spelling, and some misnomers; but he could not form a single letter with a pen.
This would have been an insuperable bar to journalizing with most men; but Richard invented a kind of hieroglyphical character, which was intended to note all the ordinary occurrences of a day, such as how the wind blew, whether the sun shone, or whether it rained, the hours, etc.; and for the extraordinary, after giving certain elementary lectures on the subject, the sheriff was obliged to trust to the ingenuity of the major-domo.
The reader will at once perceive, that it was to this chronicle that Benjamin pointed, instead of directly answering the sheriff’s interrogatory.
When Mr. Jones had drunk a glass of toddy, he brought forth from its secret place his proper journal, and, seating himself by the table, he prepared to transfer the contents of the slate to the paper, at the same time that he appeased his curiosity.
Benjamin laid one hand on the back of the sheriff’s chair, in a familiar manner, while he kept the other at liberty to make use of a forefinger, that was bent like some of his own characters, as an index to point out his meaning.
The first thing referred to by the sheriff was the diagram of a compass, cut in one corner of the slate for permanent use.
The cardinal points were plainly marked on it, and all the usual divisions were indicated in such a manner that no man who had ever steered a ship could mistake them.
“Oh!” said the sheriff, seating himself down comfort ably in his chair, “you’d the wind southeast, I see, all last night I thought it would have blown up rain.”
“Devil the drop, sir,” said Benjamin;
“I believe that the scuttle-butt up aloft is emptied, for there hasn’t so much water fell in the country for the last three weeks as would float Indian John’s canoe, and that draws just one inch nothing, light.”
“Well but didn’t the wind change here this morning? there was a change where I was.”
“To be sure it did, squire; and haven’t I logged it as a shift of wind?”
“I don’t see where, Benjamin—”
“Don’t see!” interrupted the steward, a little crustily; “ain’t there a mark agin’ east-and-by-nothe-half-nothe, with summat like a rising sun at the end of it, to show ‘twas in the morning watch?”
“Yes, yes, that is very legible; but where is the change noted?”
“Where! why doesn’t it see this here tea-kettle, with a mark run from the spout straight, or mayhap a little crooked or so, into west-and-by-southe-half-southe? now I call this a shift of wind, squire.
Well, do you see this here boar’s head that you made for me, alongside of the compass—”
“Ay, ay—Boreas——-I see.
Why, you’ve drawn lines from its mouth, extending from one of your marks to the other.”
“It’s no fault of mine, Squire Dickens; ‘tis your d——d climate.
The wind has been at all them there marks this very day, and that’s all round the compass, except a little matter of an Irishman’s hurricane at meridium, which you’ll find marked right up and down.
Now, I’ve known a sow-wester blow for three weeks, in the channel, with a clean drizzle, in which you might wash your face and hands without the trouble of hauling in water from alongside.”
“Very well, Benjamin,” said the sheriff, writing in his journal;
“I believe I have caught the idea.
Oh! here’s a cloud over the rising sun—so you had it hazy in the morning?”
“Ay, ay, sir,” said Benjamin.
“Ah it’s Sunday, and here are the marks for the length of the sermon—one, two, three, four—what! did Mr. Grant preach forty minutes?”
“Ay, summat like it; it was a good half-hour by my own glass, and then there was the time lost in turning it, and some little allowance for leeway in not being over-smart about it.”
“Benjamin, this is as long as a Presbyterian; you never could have been ten minutes in turning the glass!”
“Why, do you see, Squire, the parson was very solemn, and I just closed my eyes in order to think the better with myself, just the same as you’d put in the dead-lights to make all snug, and when I opened them agin I found the congregation were getting under way for home, so I calculated the ten minutes would cover the leeway after the glass was out. It was only some such matter as a cat’s nap.”
“Oh, ho! Master Benjamin, you were asleep, were you? but I’ll set down no such slander against an orthodox divine.”
Richard wrote twenty-nine minutes in his journal, and continued:
“Why, what’s this you’ve got opposite ten o’clock A.M.? A full moon! had you a moon visible by day?
I have heard of such portents before now, but—eh! what’s this alongside of it? an hour-glass?”
“That!” said Benjamin, looking coolly over the sheriff’s shoulder, and rolling the tobacco about in his mouth with a jocular air; “why, that’s a small matter of my own.
It’s no moon, squire, but only Betty Hollister’s face; for, dye see, sir, hearing all the same as if she had got up a new cargo of Jamaiky from the river, I called in as I was going to the church this morning—ten A.M. was it?—just the time—and tried a glass; and so I logged it, to put me in mind of calling to pay her like an honest man.”
“That was it, was it?” said the sheriff, with some displeasure at this innovation on his memoranda; “and could you not make a better glass than this? it looks like a death’s-head and an hour-glass.”
“Why, as I liked the stuff, squire,” returned the steward, “I turned in, homeward bound, and took t’other glass, which I set down at the bottom of the first, and that gives the thing the shape it has.
But as I was there again to-night, and paid for the three at once, your honor may as well run the sponge over the whole business.”
“I will buy you a slate for your own affairs, Benjamin,” said the sheriff;
“I don’t like to have the journal marked over in this manner.”
“You needn’t—you needn’t, squire; for, seeing that I was likely to trade often with the woman while this barrel lasted. I’ve opened a fair account with Betty, and she keeps her marks on the back of her bar-door, and I keeps the tally on this here bit of a stick.”
As Benjamin concluded he produced a piece of wood, on which five very large, honest notches were apparent.
The sheriff cast his eyes on this new ledger for a moment, and continued:
“What have we here! Saturday, two P.M.—Why here’s a whole family piece! two wine-glasses upside-down!”
“That’s two women; the one this a-way is Miss ‘Lizzy, and t’other is the parson’s young’un.”
“Cousin Bess and Miss Grant!” exclaimed the sheriff, in amazement; “what have they to do with my journal?”
“They’d enough to do to get out of the jaws of that there painter or panther,” said the immovable steward.