This attachment was exhibited in the first words that he uttered.
“Squire Doolittle! Squire Doolittle!
I am ashamed to see a man of your character and office forget himself so much as to disturb the peace, insult the court, and beat poor Benjamin in this manner!”
At the sound of Mr. Jones’ voice, the steward ceased his employment, and Hiram had an opportunity of raising his discomfited visage toward the mediator.
Emboldened by the sight of the sheriff, Mr. Doolittle again had recourse to his lungs.
“I’ll have law on you for this,” he cried desperately;
“I’ll have the law on you for this.
I call on you, Mr. Sheriff, to seize this man, and I demand that you take his body into custody.”
By this time Richard was master of the true state of the case, and, turning to the steward, he said reproach fully:
“Benjamin, how came you in the stocks?
I always thought you were mild and docile as a lamb.
It was for your docility that I most esteemed you.
Benjamin! Benjamin! you have not only disgraced yourself, but your friends, by this shameless conduct, Bless me! bless me!
Mr. Doolittle, he seems to have knocked your face all of one side.”
Hiram by this time had got on his feet again, and with out the reach of the steward, when he broke forth in violent appeals for vengeance.
The offence was too apparent to be passed over, and the sheriff, mindful of the impartiality exhibited by his cousin in the recent trial of the Leather-Stocking, came to the painful conclusion that it was necessary to commit his major-domo to prison.
As the time of Natty’s punishment was expired, and Benjamin found that they were to be confined, for that night at least, in the same apartment, he made no very strong objection to the measure, nor spoke of bail, though, as the sheriff preceded the party of constables that conducted them to the jail, he uttered the following remonstrance:
“As to being berthed with Master Bump-ho for a night or so, it’s but little I think of it, Squire Dickens, seeing that I calls him an honest man, and one as has a handy way with boat-hooks and rifles; but as for owning that a man desarves anything worse than a double allowance, for knocking that carpenters face a-one-side, as you call it, I’ll maintain it’s agin’ reason and Christianity.
If there’s a bloodsucker in this ‘ere county, it’s that very chap.
Ay! I know him! and if he hasn’t got all the same as dead wood in his headworks, he knows summat of me.
Where’s the mighty harm, squire, that you take it so much to heart?
It’s all the same as any other battle, d’ye see sir, being broadside to broadside, only that it was foot at anchor, which was what we did in Port Pray a roads, when Suff’ring came in among us; and a suff’ring time he had of it before he got out again.”
Richard thought it unworthy of him to make any reply to this speech, but when his prisoners were safely lodged in an outer dungeon, ordering the bolts to be drawn and the key turned, he withdrew.
Benjamin held frequent and friendly dialogues with different people, through the iron gratings, during the afternoon; but his companion paced their narrow’ limits, in his moccasins, with quick, impatient treads, his face hanging on his breast in dejection, or when lifted, at moments, to the idlers at the window, lighted, perhaps, for an instant, with the childish aspect of aged forgetfulness, which would vanish directly in an expression of deep and obvious anxiety.
At the close of the day, Edwards was seen at the window, in earnest dialogue with his friend; and after he de parted it was thought that he had communicated words of comfort to the hunter, who threw himself on his pallet and was soon in a deep sleep.
The curious spectators had exhausted the conversation of the steward, who had drunk good fellowship with half of his acquaintance, and, as Natty was no longer in motion, by eight o’clock, Billy Kirby, who was the last lounger at the window, retired into the “Templeton Coffee-house,” when Natty rose and hung a blanket before the opening, and the prisoners apparently retired for the night.
CHAPTER XXXV.
“And to avoid the foe’s pursuit,
With spurring put their cattle to’t;
And till all four were out of wind,
And danger too, neer looked behind.”
—Hudibras.
As the shades of evening approached, the jurors, wit nesses, and other attendants on the court began to disperse, and before nine o’clock the village was quiet, and its streets nearly deserted.
At that hour Judge Temple and his daughter, followed at a short distance by Louisa Grant, walked slowly down the avenue, under the slight shadows of the young poplars, holding the following discourse:
“You can best soothe his wounded spirit, my child,” said Marmaduke; “but it will be dangerous to touch on the nature of his offence; the sanctity of the laws must be respected.”
“Surely, sir,” cried the impatient Elizabeth, “those laws that condemn a man like the Leather-Stocking to so severe a punishment, for an offence that even I must think very venial, cannot be perfect in themselves.”
“Thou talkest of what thou dost not understand, Elizabeth,” returned her father.
“Society cannot exist without wholesome restraints.
Those restraints cannot be inflicted without security and respect to the persons of those who administer them; and it would sound ill indeed to report that a judge had extended favor to a convicted criminal, because he had saved the life of his child.”
“I see—I see the difficulty of your situation, dear sir,” cried the daughter; “but, in appreciating the offence of poor Natty, I cannot separate the minister of the law from the man.”
“There thou talkest as a woman, child; it is not for an assault on Hiram Doolittle, but for threatening the life of a constable, who was in the performance of—”
“It is immaterial whether it be one or the other,” interrupted Miss Temple, with a logic that contained more feeling than reason;
“I know Natty to be innocent, and thinking so I must think all wrong who oppress him.”
“His judge among the number! thy father, Elizabeth?”
“Nay, nay, nay; do not put such questions to me; give me my commission, father, and let me proceed to execute it.”
The Judge paused a moment, smiling fondly on his child, and then dropped his hand affectionately on her shoulder, as he answered:
“Thou hast reason, Bess, and much of it, too, but thy heart lies too near thy head, But listen; in this pocketbook are two hundred dollars.
Go to the prison—there are none in this pace to harm thee—give this note to the jailer, and, when thou seest Bumppo, say what thou wilt to the poor old man; give scope to the feeling of thy warm heart; but try to remember, Elizabeth, that the laws alone remove us from the condition of the savages; that he has been criminal, and that his judge was thy father.”
Miss Temple made no reply, but she pressed the hand that held the pocket-book to her bosom, and, taking her friend by the arm, they issued together from the inclosure into the principal street of the village.
As they pursued their walk in silence, under the row of houses, where the deeper gloom of the evening effectually concealed their persons, no sound reached them, excepting the slow tread of a yoke of oxen, with the rattling of a cart, that were moving along the street in the same direction with themselves.