“That ar was a tolable fair stroke of business,”
said Sam.
“The gal ’s got seven devils in her, I
believe!” said Haley. “How like a
wildcat she jumped!”
“Wal, now,” said Sam, scratching his head,
“I hope Mas’r’ll ’scuse us
trying dat ar road. Don’t think I feel spry
enough for dat ar, no way!” and Sam gave a hoarse
chuckle.
“You laugh!” said the trader, with
a growl.
“Lord bless you, Mas’r, I couldn’t
help it now,” said Sam, giving way to the long
pent-up delight of his soul. “She looked
so curi’s, a leapin’ and springin’—ice
a crackin’—and only to hear her,—plump!
ker chunk! ker splash! Spring! Lord! how
she goes it!” and Sam and Andy laughed till
the tears rolled down their cheeks.
“I’ll make ye laugh t’ other side
yer mouths!” said the trader, laying about their
heads with his riding-whip.
Both ducked, and ran shouting up the bank, and were
on their horses before he was up.
“Good-evening, Mas’r!” said Sam,
with much gravity. “I berry much spect
Missis be anxious ’bout Jerry. Mas’r
Haley won’t want us no longer. Missis wouldn’t
hear of our ridin’ the critters over Lizy’s
bridge tonight;” and, with a facetious poke
into Andy’s ribs, he started off, followed by
the latter, at full speed,—their shouts
of laughter coming faintly on the wind.
Eliza’s Escape
Eliza made her desperate retreat across the river
just in the dusk of twilight. The gray mist of
evening, rising slowly from the river, enveloped her
as she disappeared up the bank, and the swollen current
and floundering masses of ice presented a hopeless
barrier between her and her pursuer. Haley therefore
slowly and discontentedly returned to the little tavern,
to ponder further what was to be done. The woman
opened to him the door of a little parlor, covered
with a rag carpet, where stood a table with a very
shining black oil-cloth, sundry lank, high-backed
wood chairs, with some plaster images in resplendent
colors on the mantel-shelf, above a very dimly-smoking
grate; a long hard-wood settle extended its uneasy
length by the chimney, and here Haley sat him down
to meditate on the instability of human hopes and happiness
in general.
“What did I want with the little cuss, now,”
he said to himself, “that I should have got
myself treed like a coon, as I am, this yer way?”
and Haley relieved himself by repeating over a not
very select litany of imprecations on himself, which,
though there was the best possible reason to consider
them as true, we shall, as a matter of taste, omit.
He was startled by the loud and dissonant voice of
a man who was apparently dismounting at the door.
He hurried to the window.
“By the land! if this yer an’t the nearest,
now, to what I’ve heard folks call Providence,”
said Haley. “I do b’lieve that ar’s
Tom Loker.”
