"
"_Ayme! ah!_ Well, listen, young lovers; and see what grisly things walk
in these pines! There was a man named Brereton; they call him Bruington
here, where their noses are twisted and their chins weak. He came from
old Lewes, off to the east by Cape Henlopen, and of a stout family, in
which was a grain of evil ever smoking through the blood. Do you
sometimes feel it, Hulda?"
"No, not evil like that."
"He was apprenticed to a blacksmith, and held the iron while the master
struck. One day a man came in the shop, whose horse had thrown a shoe,
to have a shoeing, and, when he paid for it, he took a handful of money
from his pocket, and one piece--a dollar--fell in the soft soot of the
shop, unperceived but by the boy: _chis!_ he covered it with his foot."
Van Dorn's whip-lash firmly covered a huge fly on the horse's ear, and
laid it dead.
"When the man departed, the boy raised his foot and uncovered the
dollar; his master said, 'Smart boy!' They divided the stolen dollar."
"Jimmy Phoebus says the fust step is half of a journey," Levin noted.
"The blacksmith's boy looked avariciously on travellers ever after, who
might possess a dollar. He took the empty shop of Patty Cannon's first
husband, years after that saint died, and worked on hobbles, clevises,
and chains to hold the kidnapped articles of commerce. Naturally he
kidnapped, too, and, while she was yet a child, Patty's daughter became
Brereton's wife, bestowed by the fond, appreciative mother.
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