Balaam and His Master, and Other Sketches and Stories. Joel Chandler Harris
that the lodge was to meet on the very night that Berrien was put into jail. After supper the jailer, as had been his habit for years, smoked his pipe, and then went down to the village and lighted the lamps in the masonic hall. His wife and daughter, full of the subject of Berrien Cozart’s imprisonment, went to a neighbor’s not far away for the purpose of discussing the matter. As they passed out of the gate they heard the jailer blowing the tin trumpet which was the signal for the masons to assemble.
It was nearly eleven o’clock when the jailer returned, but he found his wife and daughter waiting for him. Both had a troubled air, and they lost no time in declaring that they had heard weeping and sobbing upstairs in the dungeon. The jailer himself was very sympathetic, having known Berrien for many years, and he took another turn at his pipe by way of consolation. Then, as was his custom, he took his lantern and went around the jail on a tour of inspection to see that everything was safe.
He did not go far. First he stumbled over a pile of bricks, and then his shoulder struck a ladder. He uttered a little cry and looked upward, and there, dim as his lantern was, he could see a black and gaping hole in the wall of the dungeon. He ran into the house as fast as his rheumatic legs could carry him, and he screamed to his wife and daughter:—
“Raise the alarm! Cozart has escaped! We are ruined!”
Then he ran to the dungeon door, flung it open, and then fell back with a cry of terror. What did he see, and what did the others who joined him there see? On the floor lay Berrien Cozart dead, and crouching beside him was Balaam. How the negro had managed to make his way through the masonry of the dungeon without discovery is still one of the mysteries of Billville. But, prompt as he was, he was too late. His master had escaped through a wider door. He had made his way to a higher court. Death, coming to him in that dark dungeon, must have visited him in the similitude of a happy dream, for there under the light of the lanterns he lay smiling sweetly as a little child that nestles on its mother’s breast; and on the floor near him, where it had dropped from his nerveless hand, was a golden locket, from which smiled the lovely face of Sally Carter.
A CONSCRIPT’S CHRISTMAS.
On a Sunday afternoon in December, 1863, two horsemen were making their way across Big Corn Valley in the direction of Sugar Mountain. They had started from the little town of Jasper early in the morning, and it was apparent at a glance that they had not enjoyed the journey. They sat listlessly in their saddles, with their carbines across their laps, and whatever conversation they carried on was desultory.
To tell the truth, the journey from Jasper to the top of Sugar Mountain was not a pleasant one even in the best of weather, and now, with the wind pushing before it a bitterly cold mist, its disagreeableness was irritating. And it was not by any means a short journey. Big Corn Valley was fifteen miles across as the crow flies, and the meanderings of the road added five more. Then there was the barrier of the foothills, and finally Sugar Mountain itself, which when the weather was clear lifted itself above all the other mountains of that region.
Nor was this all. Occasionally, when the wind blew aside the oilskin overcoats of the riders, the gray uniform of the Confederacy showed beneath, and they wore cavalry boots, and there were tell-tale trimmings on their felt hats. With these accoutrements to advertise them, they were not in a friendly region. There were bushwhackers in the mountains, and, for aught the horsemen knew, the fodder stacks in the valley, that rose like huge and ominous ghosts out of the mist on every side, might conceal dozens of guerrillas. They had that day ridden past the house of the only member of the Georgia State convention who had refused to affix his signature to the ordinance of secession, and the woods, to use the provincial phrase, were full of Union men.
Suddenly, and with a fierce and ripping oath, one of the horsemen drew rein. “I wish I may die,” he exclaimed, his voice trembling with long pent up irritation, “if I ain’t a great mind to turn around in my tracks an’ go back. Where does this cussed road lead to anyhow?”
“To the mountain—straight to the mountain,” grimly remarked the other, who had stopped to see what was the matter with his companion.
“Great Jerusalem! straight? Do you see that fodder stack yonder with the hawk on the top of the pole? Well, we’ve passed it four times, and we ain’t no further away from it now than we was at fust.”
“Well, we’ve no time to stand here. In an hour we’ll be at the foot of the mountain, and a quarter of a mile further we’ll find shelter. We must attend to business and talk it over afterwards.”
“An’ it’s a mighty nice business, too,” said the man who had first spoken. He was slender in build, and his thin and straggling mustache failed to relieve his effeminate appearance. He had evidently never seen hard service. “I never have believed in this conscriptin’ business,” he went on in a complaining tone. “It won’t pan out. It has turned more men agin the Confederacy than it has turned fer it, or else my daddy’s name ain’t Bill Chadwick, nor mine neither.”
“Well,” said the other curtly, “it’s the law, Bill Chadwick, and it must be carried out. We’ve got our orders.”
“Oh, yes! You are the commander, Cap’n Moseley, an’ I’m the army. Ain’t I the gayest army you ever had under you? I’ll tell you what, Cap’n Moseley (I’d call you Dick, like I useter, if we wasn’t in the ranks), when I j’ined the army I thought I was goin’ to fight the Yankees, but they slapped me in the camp of instruction over there at Adairsville, an’ now here we are fightin’ our own folks. If we ain’t fightin’ ’em, we are pursuin’ after ’em, an’ runnin’ ’em into the woods an’ up the mountains. Now what kind of a soldier will one of these conscripts make? You needn’t tell me, Cap’n! The law won’t pan out.”
“But it’s the law,” said Captain Moseley. The captain had been wounded in Virginia, and was entitled to a discharge, but he accepted the position of conscript officer. He had the grit and discipline of a veteran, and a persistence in carrying out his purposes that gave him the name of “Hardhead” in the army. He was tall and muscular, but his drooping left shoulder showed where a Federal bullet had found lodgment. His closely cropped beard was slightly streaked with gray, and his face would have been handsome had not determination left its rude handwriting there.
The two rode on together in silence a little space, the cold mists, driven by the wind, tingling in their faces. Presently Private Chadwick, who had evidently been ruminating over the matter, resumed the thread of his complaints.
“They tell me,” he said, “that it’s a heap easier to make a bad law than it is to make a good one. It takes a lot of smart men a long time to make a good one, but a passel of blunderbusses can patch a bad one up in a little or no time. That’s the way I look at it.
“What’s the name of this chap we are after? Israel Spurlock? I’d like to know, by George, what’s the matter with him! What makes him so plague-taked important that two men have to be sent on a wild-goose chase after him? They yerked him into army, an’ he yerked himself out, an’ now the word is that the war can’t go on unless Israel Spurlock is on hand to fling down his gun an’ run when he hears a bung-shell playin’ a tune in the air.”
Captain Moseley coughed to hide a smile.
“It’s jest like I tell you, Cap’n. The news is that we had a terrible victory at Chattanooga, but I notice in the Atlanta papers that the Yankees ain’t no further north than they was before the fight; an’ what makes it wuss, they are warmin’ themselves in Chattanooga, whilst we are shiverin’ outside. I reckon if Israel Spurlock had been on hand at the right time an’ in the right place, we’d a drove the Yanks plumb back to Nashville. Lord! I hope we’ll have him on the skirmish line the next time we surround the enemy an’ drive him into a town as big as Chattanooga.”
Private Chadwick kept up his complaints for some time, but they failed to disturb the serenity of the captain, who urged his horse