from A New Home–Who’ll Follow? or, Glimpses of Western Life (1839) — Chapter XV
from A New Home–Who’ll Follow? or, Glimpses of Western Life (1839) — Chapter XV
from A New Home–Who’ll Follow? or, Glimpses of Western Life (1839)
by Caroline Kirkland (AKA Mary Clavers)
CHAPTER XV.
Homester men have stretch’d a rope, or the law has been sadly cheated. But this unhappy business of yours? Can nothing be done? Let me see the charge.
He took the papers, and, as he read them, his countenance grew hopelessly dark and disconsolate. Antiquary.
A strange fish! Were I in England now, and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give me a piece of sliver. Tempest.
Sorrow chang’d to solace, and solace mixed with sorrow. The Passionate Pilgrim.
Several lots had already been purchased in Montacute, and some improvement marked each succeeding day. The mill had grown to its full stature, the dam was nearly completed; the tavern began to exhibit promise of its present ugliness, and all seemed prosperous as our best dreams, when certain rumors were set afloat touching the solvency of our disinterested friend Mr. Mazard. After two or three days’ whispering, a tall black-browed man who ‘happened in’ from Gullsborough, the place which had for some time been honored as the residence of the Dousterswivel of Montacute, stated boldly that Mr. Mazard had absconded; or, in Western language, ‘cleared.’ It seemed passing strange that he should run away from the large house which was going on under his auspices; the materials all on the ground and the work in full progress. Still more unaccountable did it appear to us that his workmen should go on so quietly, without so much as expressing any anxiety about their pay.
Mr. Clavers had just been telling me of these things, when the long genius above mentioned presented himself at the door of the loggery. His abord was a singular mixture of coarseness and an attempt at being civil; and he sat for some minutes looking round and asking various questions before he touched the main-spring of his visit.
At length, after some fumbling in his pocket, he produced a dingy sheet of paper, which he handed to Mr Clavers.
‘There; I want you to read that, and tell me what you think of it.’
I did not look at the paper, but at my husband’s face, which was blank enough. He walked away with the tall man, ‘and I saw no more of them at that time.’
Mr. Clavers did not return until late in the evening, and it was then I learned that Mr. Mazard had been getting large quantities of lumber and other materials on his account, and as his agent; and that the money which had been placed in the agent’s hands, for the purchase of certain lands to be flowed by the mill-pond, had gone into government coffers in payment for sundry eighty-acre lots, which were intended for his, Mr. Mazard’s, private behoof and benefit. These items present but a sample of our amiable friend’s trifling mistakes. I will not fatigue the reader by dwelling on the subject. The results of all this were most unpleasant to us. Mr. Clavers found himsel