"
"Is the cradle worth anything, constable?" asked the magnificent-looking
man with the gray silvery lights around his horsy nose; "if it's worth
taking, I want it. People who can't pay their debts must live single
like Jacob Cannon, and not be distrained."
A boy, with his face scratched, and dissipation settled in it, bounded
suddenly into the aghast group of spectators, and made a vicious dive to
recover the effects around Jacob Cannon's feet, but that mighty worthy
took him by the collar and, holding him up, dropped him over a fence
like a bug:
"Owen Daw, here be witnesses to an assault _insultus_, actionable as a
trespass _vi_, the quotient whereof is damages or the equivalent in
Georgetown jail. Take heed, good citizens, and especially I note you,
Captain Van Dorn."
"I'll kill him," shouted the young bully of Johnson's Cross-roads, and
late distrainer on the profile of Cyrus James, Esquire, seizing an ugly
stick.
"Justifiable as _son assault demesne_," remarked the creditor,
carelessly, as he wrenched the bobbin from the spinning-wheel and
knocked the boy down with it.
His commanding manner and the ready hand operated to abash the latter,
and, deeply pained with the scene, Levin Dennis fervently and
impulsively cried to Van Dorn:
"Oh, Captain! can't you pay her debts! I'll give all Joe's going to give
me, to pay you back. See how she lays on the bare floor! Hear her child
crying for her! Oh! I think I hear my mother's voice a-callin' of me
home as I listen to it.
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