"_Chis! chito! Es posible?_ A spy, perhaps. Now you will love Van Dorn,
or Grandma Cannon shall hear your letter read!"
"Give it to me, Captain," Hulda pleaded; "she will kill me if she reads
it."
"If it were sent, _pomarosa_, we all might die. No, you are too
dangerous."
He looked, without his blush, at the shilling she was putting back in
her bosom, and his eye was cold and fierce. Hulda's heart sank down.
"Brother Isaac," cried Jacob Cannon, to a man of fine, lean height, who
was at the desk--a man a little shorter than Jacob, and not so much of a
king in appearance but with the same whitish eyes dancing around the
bridge of his nose, and a more covert and thoughtful brow--"Brother
Isaac, Captain Van Dorn is chicken-hearted, and wants to settle the debt
of the Widow O'Day, otherwise Daw."
"By cash or judgment-note, captain?"
"Cash," answered Van Dorn, modestly; "take it out of this double-eagle,
with Madam Cannon's rent for your farm."
"There's a tree--a bee-tree, Brother Jacob, I think you said--cut down
from Mrs. Cannon's field?"
"Yes, actionable under statute made and provided, wilfully to spoil or
destroy any timber or other trees, roots, shrubs, or plants; value of
said bee-tree three dollars; _levari facias!_ The quotient is
unsatisfactory to Isaac and Jacob Cannon."
The eyes of the elder and smaller brother endeavored to have an
introduction to each other through the bridge of his nose.
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