which fell to my lot last night, determines me to tell you
my history–for you will see Napoleon, Arkansas; and for my
sake you will stop there, and do a certain thing for me–
a thing which you will willingly undertake after you shall have
heard my narrative.
Let us shorten the story wherever we can, for it will need it, being long.
You already know how I came to go to America, and how I came to settle
in that lonely region in the South. But you do not know that I had a wife.
My wife was young, beautiful, loving, and oh, so divinely good and
blameless and gentle! And our little girl was her mother in miniature.
It was the happiest of happy households.
One night–it was toward the close of the war–I woke up
out of a sodden lethargy, and found myself bound and gagged,
and the air tainted with chloroform! I saw two men in the room,
and one was saying to the other, in a hoarse whisper, ‘I told
her I would, if she made a noise, and as for the child–‘
The other man interrupted in a low, half-crying voice–
‘You said we’d only gag them and rob them, not hurt them;
or I wouldn’t have come.’
‘Shut up your whining; had to change the plan when they waked up;
you done all you could to protect them, now let that satisfy you;
come, help rummage.’
Both men were masked, and wore coarse, ragged ‘nigger’ clothes;
they had a bull’s-eye lantern, and by its light I noticed
that the gentler robber had no thumb on his right hand.
They rummaged around my poor cabin for a moment; the head bandit
then said, in his stage whisper–
‘It’s a waste of time–he shall tell where it’s hid.
Undo his gag, and revive him up.’
The other said–
‘All right–provided no clubbing.’
‘No clubbing it is, then–provided he keeps still.’
They approached me; just then there was a sound outside;
a sound of voices and trampling hoofs; the robbers held their
breath and listened; the sounds came slowly nearer and nearer;
then came a shout–
‘HELLO, the house! Show a light, we want water.’
‘The captain’s voice, by G—-!’ said the stage-whispering ruffian,
and both robbers fled by the way of the back door, shutting off
their bull’s-eye as they ran.
The strangers shouted several times more, then rode by–
there seemed to be a dozen of the horses–and I heard nothing more.
I struggled, but could not free myself from my bonds.
I tried to speak, but the gag was effective; I could not make a sound.
I listened for my wife’s voice and my child’s–listened long and intently,
but no sound came from the other end of the room where their bed was.
This silence became more and more awful, more and more ominous,
every moment. Could you have endured an hour of it, do you think?
Pity me, then, who had to endure three. Three hours–? it was three ages!
Whenever the clock struck, it seemed as if years had gone by since I
had heard it last. All this time I was struggling in my bonds;
and at last, about dawn, I got myself free, and rose up and stretched
my stiff limbs. I was able to distinguish details pretty well.
The floor was littered with things thrown there by the robbers
during their search for my savings. The first object that caught
my particular attention was a document of mine which I had seen
the rougher of the two ruffians glance at and then cast away.
It had blood on it! I staggered to the other end of the room.
Oh, poor unoffending, helpless ones, there they lay, their troubles ended,
mine begun!
Did I appeal to the law–I? Does it quench the pauper’s thirst if the King
drink for him? Oh, no, no, no–I wanted no impertinent interference of
the law. Laws and the gallows could not pay the debt that was owing to me!
Let the laws leave the matter in my hands, and have no fears: I would
find the debtor and collect the debt. How accomplish this, do you say?