United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783 -- Fiction
The cavalcade halted before a building with a leaden bust of Sir Walter
Raleigh over the main doorway, the old Raleigh Tavern, in the Apollo
Room of which Mr. Jefferson had rapturously danced with his Belinda, and
which was to become the Faneuil Hall of Virginia. Both coaches were
quickly surrounded by bowing gentlemen, young gallants, and frolicsome
students. Dave, the young Kentuckian, and Harry would be put up at the
tavern, and, for his own reasons, Hugh elected to stay with them. With
an _au revoir_ of white hands from the coaches, the rest went on to the
house of relatives and friends.
Inside the tavern Hugh was soon surrounded by fellow students and boon
companions. He pressed Dave and the boy to drink with them, but Dave
laughingly declined and took the lad up to their room. Below they could
hear Hugh’s merriment going on, and when he came up-stairs a while later
his face was flushed, he was in great spirits, and was full of
enthusiasm over a horserace and cock-fight that he had arranged for the
afternoon. With him came a youth of his own age with daredevil eyes and
a suave manner, one Dane Grey, to whom Harry gave scant greeting. One
patronizing look from the stranger toward the Kentucky boy and within
the latter a fire of antagonism was instantly kindled. With a word after
the two went out, Harry snorted his explanation:
“Tory!”
In the early afternoon coach and horsemen moved out to an “old field.”
Hugh was missing from the Dale party, and General Willoughby frowned
when he noted his son’s absence. When they arrived a most extraordinary
concert of sounds was filling the air. On a platform stood twenty
fiddlers in contest for a fiddle—each sawing away for dear life and each
playing a different tune—a custom that still survives in our own hills.
After this a “quire of ballads” was sung for. Then a crowd of boys
gathered to run one hundred and twelve yards for a hat worth twelve
shillings, and Dave nudged his young friend. A moment later Harry cried
to Barbara:
“Look there!”
There was their young Indian lining up with the runners, his face calm,
but an eager light in his eyes. At the word he started off almost
leisurely, until the whole crowd was nearly ten yards ahead of him, and
then a yell of astonishment rose from the crowd. The boy was skimming
the grounds on wings. Past one after another he flew, and laughing and
hardly out of breath he bounded over the finish, with the first of the
rest laboring with bursting lungs ten yards behind. Hugh and Dane Grey
had appeared arm in arm and were moving through the crowd with great
gayety and some boisterousness, and when the boy appeared with his hat
Grey shouted:
“Good for the little savage!” Erskine wheeled furiously but Dave caught
him by the arm and led him back to Harry and Barbara, who looked so
pleased that the lad’s ill-humor passed at once.
“Whut you reckon I c’n do with this hat?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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