"Let me straighten out the difficulties here;
go, and come back when all is done, and you can be yourself again."
"I shall do it, Vesta. Brother Allan gets to Cambridge to-morrow
afternoon; I will go as far as Salisbury this day, and either meet him
on the road to-morrow or find him at Cambridge. Oh, what a house is
Teackle Hall--full of male and female foresters, abolitionists,
runaways, and radicals! All made crazy by the bog ores and the fool's
hat!"
Descending to the yard, Vesta found Turk lying in his blood, his mastiff
jaws and shaggy sides clotted red, and, as it seemed, the howl in which
he died still lingering in the air. The Virginia spirit rose in Vesta's
eyes:
"Whoever killed this dog only wanted the courage to kill men!" she
exclaimed. "James Phoebus, look here!"
The pungy captain had been abroad for hours, and the masts of his
vessel were just visible across the marshy neck in the rear of Teackle
Hall. He touched his hat and came in.
"Early mornin', Miss Vesty! Hallo! Turk dead? By smoke, yer's
pangymonum!"
"He's stabbed, Jimmy!" Samson Hat remarked, coming out of the kitchen;
"see whar de dagger struck him right over de heart! Dat made him howl
and fall dead. His froat was not cut dat sudden; it's gashed as if wid
somethin' blunt."
"Right you are, nigger! The throat-cuttin' was a make believe; the stab
will tell the tale. But who's this yer, lurkin' aroun' the kitchen do';
if it ain't Jack Wonnell, I hope I may die! Sic!"
With this, active as the dog had been but yesterday, Jimmy rushed on
Jack Wonnell, chased him to the fence, and brought him back by the neck.
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