"You have everything, Lloyd, but what you will lose."

To the last Quantrell saw that superb flower of woman, yet in the age of the bud, giving him her whole romantic soul through her great gray eyes. The train moved eastward under the mountaincrags and cast its lights in the sluggish canal which wound beside it. Quantrell was standing alone, between road, railroad, canal, and the rocky gridiron of the river. He saw, a little way in the direction of the retreating red lantern of the train, the bars of houses at Sandy Hook.

I'll wake my landlord up, and fill my flask, and tell him the news," Lloyd Quantrell said, carrying his gun and game-bag.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE SUCK.

"THEY'RE fighting at the Ferry," Lloyd said to the landlord, who arose half awake, and was not inquisitive.

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'Always fightin' thar," the landlord replied, giving him some new country whisky.

was

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Abolitionists have taken the Ferry," Lloyd explained.

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"Then they'll git tuk," the landlord observed, as if the Ferry "tuk every night. Harper's Ferry is an ole suck.” "Suck?" repeated Quantrell, struck with the word; "how a suck?"

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'That's the name of it. Injuns called it the Hole and the Suck. Nobody ever gits out that gits in thar. Railroad stuck thar for years. Gov'ment can't git out. It's the Suck."

“Yes; ole Bob Harper tuk it up from Pete Stevens over a hundered years ago. Pete had squatted thar years on Lord Fairfax and couldn't git out. Bob Harper left his bones thar. The floods gits it, the winds gits it, whisky gits it, and now, did you say, the abolitionists has got it? It'll be a suck."

"Old Isaac Smith and sons have took it," Lloyd said, falling into the syntax of the place. They and a band of abolitionists. They're killing people there."

"Isaac Smith?" the landlord said. "And sons? Is them abo

litionists? They stopped with me when they fust come yer. They come to Sandy Hook last July, an' said they was lookin' for minerals, an' sheep-lands an' farms. Well, well! Is them abolitionists? I thought they was Christians. They'll find Harper's Ferry a suck."

The landlord filled Quantrell's flask, put up his bottle, and went to bed. Having slept there two nights before, the gunner sought his own room mechanically, and stretching himself on the bed said, sleepily, "False to Katy!—not I"; and then, it seemed to him, the sun rose right into his eyes. He had fallen asleep, probably for hours.

Nobody was awake in the hotel. He strolled up the road leading from the river, and found himself in Pleasant Valley, between the two mountain-lines, in rugged farm-country. He retraced his road under Maryland Heights back toward Harper's Ferry, and soon saw that picturesque village standing like the nipple above The Suck." The sun was just rising up the shining lap of the Potomac, and shooting silver arrows at the little city, which stood out like a target.

Harper's Ferry appeared between the two rivers, rising like a great green mound, with a road dividing it over the top through a ravine, and another road around the base of the mound; and for a little way up its scarp hung or clung the picturesque little town, which also raveled along the upland road among borders of shadetrees till it disappeared over the summit. This hill was several hundred feet high, and three or four churches presented their gables from its grassy face, as if their pulpits had been buried in the earth. A spire or belfry or mountain graveyard added points of whiteness to the green background or clear gray sky, and some stone walls and terraces and bits of pasture-land where cows were quietly grazing in the airy tops gave a faint sense of inhabitancy. To the right over the Potomac the eastern portion of the mound terminated in a nearly perpendicular crag, out of which grew a pale-green thicket of trees and bushes, leaning almost horizontally. From near this abrupt headland to the low cape of the mound extended the stately line of low brick factories with high chimneys, and in the midst a lofty flagmast. These buildings in their continuation also turned the cape and extended a little way up the other river, and below the factory line ran railroads coming down the sides of the two rivers and meeting at a covered bridge of wood which spanned the Potomac on arches of stone to the Maryland shore.

In overlapping rows of irregular heights the dormer-windowed houses and other dwellings, more detached, caught in their panes of glass the rising sun which shone through the rifted precipices up the broad, islet-sprinkled, rock-barred rivers, making them seem aisles of silver between borders of green and russet. A canal wound along the larger river like a silver cord under the bare crags of Maryland.

Another bridge, starting from near the commencement of the larger one, passed on slender abutments to the mountain above the Shenandoah. This mountain at the cape above the mingling of the rivers fell in perpendicular ledges or chimneys almost a thousand feet to the woodlands which grew from its débris and spread toward the eye in graceful wreaths of verdurous mountain, along whose sides could be seen the eagles, vultures, and crows circling as if around nests concealed in the rocks. For several miles these Virginia precipices curled over the Potomac as if seeking courage to span it and connect with the bald, scarred wall of Maryland Mountain; but failing to do so till far below, a valley found place in Maryland to empty its creeks into the augmented Potomac between these hesitating ridges.

Thus the town of Harper's Ferry slumbered at the base of its own acclivity, between the jaws of grander mountains which threatened to fall upon it and drown it in a deluge, like that which had probably broken them asunder. There seemed wanting, to complete the subjugation of the town, some mighty castle of the feudal age to crown its dome of greenness. He who descends the Alpine torrents toward the great plain of Lombardy may see sublimer heights for the old Ghibelline castles which frown toward the Papal sees, but nowhere else could he see two such rivers meet and go forward like white-plumed cavalry to wash the old Catholic counties of the plain of Maryland.

An autumn russet lay inwoven with the green and gray scarps of the desolate mountains, like camp-fires which had gone out, in the awe of what had seized upon the usually whistling and hammering town in the vale. The crows and vultures chattered or circled in wondering gossip or augury about the steepling chimneys of Loudoun Heights, as on that morning when Romulus and Remus watched the birds of omen and spilled the first blood of brethren in cuddling Rome.

The little city hugging the heights, familiar with deluges, forg

ing arms for battle, and often sheeted over by the thunder-storms, was on this day so commonplace amid its great besetments, that it stirred no more than the water-snakes upon the surface of the river rocks, which felt their cold blood grow torpid in the cloudy October air. The insensate and the superstitious, the vulgar and the rapt, lethargy and Nemesis, went together, as on that day when, at the walls of Troy, a wooden horse arose ridiculous, but in the sky a serpent shook the stout soul of the protesting priest.

The Shenandoah, in cool, green rapids and white ripples, came around a shoulder of wooded mountain in a stately curve, and a low stone dike, partly natural, held its current back, to guide the water-power into two milling canals which formed green islands under the mutilated heights of Jefferson's Rock. These islands were inhabited by artisans and by toilers in the tall grist-mills there, and the upper island was another Government armory, with a line of workshops inclosed by a wall and entered by a bridge across the mill-sluice. Within the wall, a cupola tower in the façade inclosed a bell and upheld a flag-staff, and behind the rifle-works, next to the river, a railway ran toward the great Valley of Virginia.

The sound of the Shenandoah churning among huge rocks and moaning over the low dam never was unheard here in the busiest days, and in the still dawn it seemed to speak a legend in the voice of sobbing, like the legend of bondage by the rivers of Babylon.

Upon the summits above Jefferson's Rock lived the chief officials of Harper's Ferry, in roomy mansions, and thus the double rivergorge and rocky redan of the upper town maintained a feudal appearance, and had that military air as of some castellated pass held for a distant emperor by his various mercenary bands.

A little passenger-packet lay in the canal, with steam up, ready to make her trip to Washington city through the many locks. Looking up at the telegraph-poles, Lloyd Quantrell saw that their wires had been torn and the broken strands hung near the bridgeentrance.

"Poor Heywood!" he said, thinking of the wounded negro; "no wonder he could not apprise me of the coming train. Smith's band had severed communications. But by this time the night express is nearly at Baltimore, and all Maryland will be aroused."

Within the entrance of the Potomac bridge a form with a spear came out of the dark shadows and sternly ordered Quantrell to halt.

"Halt! Ef you don't, I'll kill you!"

The negro drove his spear close to Quantrell's throat.

'Kill me," said Quantrell. “Do! because I pitied you when your old father died. Because I was hated for taking your part. Because I fought and whipped your catchers. Come here and look at me, Ashby!"

The darkness, growing familiar, showed the negro to drop his spear and gaze at his prisoner irresolutely, He wore the old straw hat his dead father had worn, but around his nearly naked body a blanket was tied, like the other abolitionists' uniform; his feet were naked, and he limped.

"Kill the only man who can save you from a horrible death, Ashby! By noon to-day you and the men who have seduced you will be howling on your backs for water to cool your wounds."

"What kin I do?" the escaped slave exclaimed. "I come for my daddy. Dey killed him and tuk me. De Kinsas men set on to 'em and give me freedom and told me to fight for my race. I must! I know I'll die, but I must fight. Come with me, or I'll call Cap'n Watson Brown yonder!"

He raised and clinched his spear again. In the perspective of the bridge-tube, Quantrell saw the forms of two more men. He spoke with quiet decision:

"Ashby, I am going to buy you and send you North to your mother. Mr. Beall has told me your story. Your mother never meant to have you mixed up in a rebellion like this. You have done your duty to your father, and I can pardon and pity you." The kind tones brought down the negro's pike again. "Where is the man who owned you?"

"Over yer in Marylin.”

"What are you sentinel for at this point?"

"I was goin' with Cap'n Cook and his party over to git de guns at de farm, but I limped so, dey leff me yer and tole me to take everybody prisoners an' march 'em to de engine-house.”

"March me there, Ashby. Tell Captain Brown's officers and men that I was kind to you when your father died. You can help me out of danger, and I will try to save your life in return for it. Hide this piece of money to buy shelter, or food, or conveyance, if you need them. Keep me this day in your humble care and watch, and to-morrow I will not forget it."