The Mystery of Metropolisville. Eggleston Edward
Esq., takes a Fatherly Interest
CHAPTER XI. About Several Things
CHAPTER XII. An Adventure
CHAPTER XIII. A Shelter
CHAPTER XIV. The Inhabitant
CHAPTER XV. An Episode
CHAPTER XVI. The Return
CHAPTER XVII. Sawney and his Old Love
CHAPTER XVIII. A Collision
CHAPTER XIX. Standing Guard in Vain
CHAPTER XX. Sawney and Westcott
CHAPTER XXI. Rowing
CHAPTER XXII. Sailing
CHAPTER XXIII. Sinking
CHAPTER XXIV. Dragging
CHAPTER XXV. Afterwards
CHAPTER XXVI. The Mystery
CHAPTER XXVII. The Arrest
CHAPTER XXVIII. The Tempter
CHAPTER XXIX. The Trial
CHAPTER XXX. The Penitentiary
CHAPTER XXXI. Mr. Lurton
CHAPTER XXXII. A Confession
CHAPTER XXXIII. Death
CHAPTER XXXIV. Mr. Lurton's Courtship
CHAPTER XXXV. Unbarred
CHAPTER XXXVI. Isabel
CHAPTER XXXVII. The Last
WORDS AFTERWARDS
ILLUSTRATIONS BY FRANK BEARD
The Superior Being
Mr. Minorkey and the Fat Gentleman
Plausaby sells Lots
"By George! He! he! he!"
Mrs. Plausaby
The Inhabitant
A Pinch of Snuff
Mrs. Ferret
One Savage Blow full in the Face
"What on Airth's the Matter?"
His Unselfish Love found a Melancholy Recompense
The Editor of "The Windmill"
"Git up and Foller!"
THE MYSTERY OF METROPOLISVILLE.
WORDS BEFOREHAND.
Metropolisville is nothing but a memory now. If Jonah's gourd had not been a little too much used already, it would serve an excellent turn just here in the way of an apt figure of speech illustrating the growth, the wilting, and the withering of Metropolisville. The last time I saw the place the grass grew green where once stood the City Hall, the corn-stalks waved their banners on the very site of the old store—I ask pardon, the "Emporium"—of Jackson, Jones & Co., and what had been the square, staring white court-house—not a Temple but a Barn of Justice—had long since fallen to base uses. The walls which had echoed with forensic grandiloquence were now forced to hear only the bleating of silly sheep. The church, the school-house, and the City Hotel had been moved away bodily. The village grew, as hundreds of other frontier villages had grown, in the flush times; it died, as so many others died, of the financial crash which was the inevitable sequel and retribution of speculative madness. Its history resembles the history of other Western towns of the sort so strongly, that I should not take the trouble to write about it, nor ask you to take the trouble to read about it, if the history of the town did not involve also the history of certain human lives—of a tragedy that touched deeply more than one soul. And what is history worth but for its human interest? The history of Athens is not of value on account of its temples and statues, but on account of its men and women. And though the "Main street" of Metropolisville is now a country road where the dog-fennel blooms almost undisturbed by comers and goers, though the plowshare remorselessly turns over the earth in places where corner lots were once sold for a hundred dollars the front foot, and though the lot once sacredly set apart (on the map) as "Depot Ground" is now nothing but a potato-patch, yet there are hearts on which the brief history of Metropolisville has left traces ineffaceable by sunshine or storm, in time or eternity.
CHAPTER I.
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE STAGECOACH.
"Git up!"
No leader of a cavalry charge ever put more authority into his tones than did Whisky Jim, as he drew the lines over his four bay horses in the streets of Red Owl Landing, a village two years old, boasting three thousand inhabitants, and a certain prospect of having four thousand a month later.
Even ministers, poets, and writers of unworldly romances are sometimes influenced by mercenary considerations. But stage-drivers are entirely consecrated to their high calling. Here was Whisky Jim, in the very streets of Red Owl, in the spring of the year 1856, when money was worth five and six per cent a month on bond and mortgage, when corner lots doubled in value over night, when everybody was frantically trying to swindle everybody else—here was Whisky Jim, with the infatuation of a life-long devotion to horse-flesh, utterly oblivious to the chances of robbing green emigrants which a season of speculation affords. He was secure from the infection. You might have shown him a gold-mine under the very feet of his wheel-horses, and he could not have worked it twenty-four hours. He had an itching palm, which could be satisfied with nothing but the "ribbons" drawn over the backs of a four-in-hand.
"Git up!"
The coach moved away—slowly at first—from the front door of the large, rectangular, unpainted Red Owl Hotel, dragging its wheels heavily through the soft turf of a Main street from which the cotton-wood trees had been cut down, but in which the stumps were still standing, and which remained as innocent of all pavement as when, three years before, the chief whose name it bore, loaded his worldly goods upon the back of his oldest and ugliest wife, slung his gun over his shoulder, and started mournfully away from the home of his fathers, which he, shiftless fellow, had bargained away to the white man for an annuity of powder and blankets, and a little money, to be quickly spent for whisky. And yet, I might add digressively, there is comfort in the saddest situations. Even the venerable Red Owl bidding adieu to the home of his ancestors found solace in the sweet hope of returning under favorable circumstances to scalp the white man's wife and children.
"Git up, thair! G'lang!" The long whip swung round and cracked threateningly over the haunches of the leaders, making them start suddenly as the coach went round a corner and dipped into a hole at the same instant, nearly throwing the driver, and the passenger who was enjoying the outride with him, from their seats.
"What a hole!" said the passenger, a studious-looking young man, with an entomologist's tin collecting-box slung over his shoulders.
The driver drew a long breath, moistened his lips, and said in a cool and aggravatingly deliberate fashion:
"That air blamed pollywog puddle sold las' week fer tew thaousand."
[Illustration: THE SUPERIOR BEING.]
"Dollars?"