Julian Hawthorne

“ I am sorry for you."
"Keep your sorrow," said Corvin, setting his jaws, "I can do without it. If the boy's dead, he's dead, and that's the end of him. You and your partner here won't get the land any the more for that. I'll make a will and leave it to the first beggar I find in the street, sooner than Nancy Billop, or anyone she's plotting with, shall have as much of it as would bury 'em." ”

“ Nancy sat back in her chair with her stout arms folded across her ample waist. Never was there an old maid who looked the conventional type less than she. She was rosy, dimpled, plump, and cheery; yet she was not only a spinster of near fifty, but she had met with nothing but misfortune all her life. It is a marvel what some folks can thrive on! ”

“ It was recalled that, during the lifetime of Matthew, the Billop house was believed to be haunted. Matthew's spirit, instead of adding to the supernatural crew, however, had apparently taken the existent ghosts away with it; at all events, the manifestations had come to a stop with his disappearance. But it was plausibly argued that a house which has once been haunted is likely to be haunted again: indulgence in spirits clings to a house just as it does to a man. ”

“ The acclivity on which the house stood—the site had been chosen with an eye to its defensibility in Indian times—sloped gently down in front, but fell away quite abruptly behind and at the sides. On the right side, almost beneath the roots of the butternut-tree, a small natural cave entered the rocky soil; it had been artificially enlarged so as to shelter the farm wagons and tools when the barn was over-full of produce. ”

“ If I'd had Tom, maybe I wouldn't have minded so much."
"Are you afraid of ghosts, Nellie?"
"Not when they really come, as they did last night. I am a little afraid sometimes, when Mammy tells stories about 'em before we go to bed. But, really, I think ghosts are fairies, don't you?"
"I should think likely. So this is the Robber Cave? Let's go in. I have wax matches, so it won't be dark."
The cave as a mere natural phenomenon was certainly not interesting. It was much in need of a boyish imagination to liven it up. ”

“ I see your game. You think you can get some pickings by working up some idiotic conspiracy or other with that fool of a woman, to cheat me or frighten me out of my property; but you've got hold of the wrong man. If you don't want to get into trouble, and bad trouble, let me alone."
"Do you know your son's address, Mr. Corvin?" asked Morford very quietly. "If not, I have reason to think you may find it in that letter."
"We'll see how much you know," said the lawyer with a sneer, and he tore open the envelope and ran his eye over the enclosure. ”

“ It must be painful for one who has carefully abstained from doing any good in the world while he lived in it to be almost compelled to appear as a benefactor after his decease. Why does not civilisation provide openings for posthumous investments more adapted to the temper and predilections of persons of Lawyer Corvin's kind?
Mr. Morford walked into the sitting-room holding Nellie by one hand, and in the other the folded paper which they had found in the tree. ”

“ Perhaps the fairies put it there, or a squirrel, or a magpie, or something."
She gave him the paper, which bore signs of age, though, considering its position, it was in remarkably good preservation. He opened it, glanced it over, and then said quietly—
"Yes, Nellie, it is important. I think it will interest Miss Billop very much—and Mr. Corvin too. We will show it to them. Let us get down before he gets away."
"Must we get down so soon?" said Nellie regretfully.
"Never you mind," said Morford cheerfully. "We'll come back as often as we like." ”

“ As Tom approached the landing, with obvious designs on Peter's person, the latter took to flight; Tom pursued him as far as his own undraped plight made decorous, and then came back with an expression significant of vengeance to come. ”

“ Instead of forfeiting his estate to the Billops, he presently found himself in a position to add some of the Billop acres to his own. Nancy, being so unexpectedly reduced in circumstances, and having no more head for business than a hen, was thankful to exchange parcels of land for a little cash. The neighbours shook their heads; but what could they do?—or say, even, above their breaths? Corvin was a lawyer, and a hard one; he would have been down on every one of them to whom he could trace an insinuation against his perfect integrity. They might think what they liked ”

“ I visited the tree again and found everything just as before; and I noticed among the things up there an old broken-down accordion and a sort of speaking-trumpet, that puzzled me at first until I concluded that they must have been used by Uncle Matt to make his ghost manifestations with, by way, I suppose, of additional security against having his hiding-place disturbed. That gave me an idea, and I bought a new accordion. I had learned that Corvin was going to foreclose his mortgage. ”

“ It cannot be said that anybody was greatly grieved over the unhappy man's death: those who want friends in this world must take them—they do not exist spontaneously. Corvin had, during his life, busied himself about many things, but had neglected the friend-making industry. ”

“ Corvin stop troubling us."
Nancy shook her head. "Ghosts is ghosts, lovey; they may be good or bad, but I never heard as they was able to pay folks' debts for 'em. Ef they could do that, I don't say but what I—— Sakes alive!"
The cause of this ejaculation was not supernatural but material. There was a heavy thump on the hearth and the wood ashes flew out into the room. Some heavy object had fallen down the chimney and struck among the smouldering embers. The next instant a light blaze broke out, burnt actively for a minute or so, and then died down. ”

“ VI. The death of Lawyer Corvin and the events attending it were matters of absorbing interest to all the inhabitants of Fenbrook, and rendered the little village famous for a time, far beyond its boundaries. Some curious circumstances were brought to light in connection with the affair.
To begin with, of course, an inquest was held upon Corvin's body, and an autopsy made; the proximate occasion of death was found to be heart failure. ”

“ That can't be right, can it?" said Nancy, appealing to Mr. Morford.
"Mr. Corvin is a lawyer," replied the latter. "He must know about such things. If he owns the land, and you are buying it of him with money you found on the land, he may have the law of you. Of course, if he merely holds a mortgage on the property, he has no more right to make such a demand than I have."
"This is none of your affair, Sir," said Corvin harshly.
"It's his affair to answer a question ef I ask him, Mr. Corvin," interposed Nancy, whose spirit was evidently rising. ”

“ Morford, I don't jest like you should talk that way," said Nancy to her visitor the next morning. "It's a real mir'cle; and real mir'cles is like religion—I think they be. So I don't like you should poke fun at it. You city folks don't never want to be serious ef you can help it, I know; but there 'tis. It dropped right down out of Heaven through our chimney, an' jest at' the very time we needed it the worst, too; and then there was my poor brother Matt's voice a-sayin' he'd sent it a purpose to pay off Mr. Corvin, an' free the mortgage. ”

“ The land within that radius got to be known as Billop's Farm, and it contained the finest land—upland pasture, forest, and meadow—to be found in the neighbourhood. Early in the century, about half of this farm was sold to a man by the name of Corvin. We have business with some of his posterity in the present narrative.
The house which Corvin built stood halfway between the old Billop homestead and the village of Ken brook (which had been in gradual course of materialisation since before the Revolutionary War) . Corvin was a lawyer. He had brought money with him and made more. ”

“ Higgins's part to put the two boys together. One boy is slippery enough, but there is no place that two boys, working together, cannot get out of. It may be that Mr. Higgins thought of this, but chose not to act upon the knowledge.
But, as people afterwards said, if he meant to give Tom a chance, he only succeeded in fixing his doom.
The next morning, when the constable opened the door to give his prisoners their breakfast, he found a hole in the roof hardly big enough for a cat to get through, but no boys. ”

“ Well, jest you ask Nellie. Ef there's a square foot of space inside this house or outside of it that she ain't poked that little nose of hers into, I don't know. An' there ain't no trace of nothin' nor nobody not nowheres. An' then, as for the music and the voice, I don't know how you'd get around them."
"Is what I heard in the village true—that Matthew Billop disappeared mysteriously? That his manner of death was never known?"
"Yes; but he's dead, poor Matt, I guess," said Nancy, with a sigh. "Ef he warn't, I'd a heard from him before this ”

“ I need some cash to put into a new investment,' he says, an' than he went on to tell about a man had come to town with a new invention, some way of makin' crops grow with 'lectricity, but I didn' understand how 'twas. Mr. Corvin, he wanted to buy the stock of the invention, and had to have cash. So he said ef I wouldn't marry him, and didn't have the money for the mortgage to-morrow, why he'd be sorry, but he'd jest be obliged to sell up the farm an' fixin's. So I said, 'Well, ef you have to do it, sell away, Mr. Corvin,' I says, 'an' don't you bother 'bout Nellie an me,' I says ”

“ Corvin might have sold me up. An' I don't bear him no grudge 'bout not payin' the money he owed Matt, 'cause the paper that showed the debt was lost with Matt, an' men o' business nat'rally don't pay mor'n they have to; but when I think of my darlin' Tom drowned jest because they found money in his pockets that he'd never in this earth put there himself—well, Mr. Morford, I don't know what you'll think of an old woman like me to be cryin' 'bout it after these nine years, but I love my Tom jest the same as cf I'd seen him yesterday. ”

“ Ef it's your affair to make out what's mine by rights ain't mine, but yours—jest because you're a lawyer, and I ain't—then, I say, it's a poor affair for a man to be in! There's your money, Sir, to take or leave ”

“ Corvin calls here this day; an' my sakes! won't that man jest be surprised. I guess he won't b'lieve where we got it, no more 'n you do, maybe less."
Mr. Morford, it should be said, was the young man with the patent electrical invention, who was making the rounds of the neighbourhood to get subscribers to his stock. When he had knocked at the door that morning, Nancy had supposed that it must be Corvin, come for his mortgage money, and opened to him with her rosy face dimpling with pleasant anticipation. ”

“ Corvin. We have seen that Matthew was a wealthy man: his money was invested chiefly in real estate and railroads But it became known that, shortly before his disappearance, he had been calling in these investments, and turning them into hard cash, with the design of putting the money in certain Western enterprises that paid a higher interest. ”

“ I don't believe your stock is worth the paper it's printed on. I believe your invention is a swindle. As to my having no heir to leave my property to, we'll see about that. I'm not dead yet, to begin with, nor like to be; and I've got a son, though your informant forgot to tell you so. Folks may think I've cut him off with a dollar ”

“ I mention this episode merely to give you an idea what sort of stuff these Billops had in them. Be we democratic as we may, we cannot help liking our friends the better for descending from stock like that. ”