The Brick Moon, and Other StoriesHale, Edward Everett
Science
The Brick Moon, and Other Stories
Hale, Edward Everett
Short stories; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
Lopp was sent to Sing-Sing for ten years, and has not
yet been pardoned.
Bigg and Cordon were sent to Blackwell's Island for
three years each. And so the land had peace for that
time.
That winter, as there came on one and another idle
alarm that Frida's brother might be heard from, my heart
sank with the lowest terror lest she should go away. And
in the spring I told her that if she went away I was sure
I should die. And the dear girl looked down, and looked
up, and said she thought--she thought she should, too.
And we told my mother that we had determined that Frida
should never go away while we stayed there. And she
approved.
So I wrote a note to the minister of the church which
had protected us so long, and one night we slid the
board carefully, and all three walked round, fearless of
the Dane, and Frida and I were married.
It was more than three years after, when I received
by one post three letters, which gave us great ground for
consultation. The first was from my old friend and
patron, the Spaniard. He wrote to me from Chicago, where
he, in his turn, had fallen in with a crew of savages,
who had stripped him of all he had, under the pretext of
a land-enterprise they engaged him in, and had left him
without a real, as he said. He wanted to know if I could
not find him some clerkship, or even some place as
janitor, in New York.
The second letter was from old Mr. Henry in
Philadelphia, who had always employed me after my old
master's death. He said that the fence around the lot in
Ninety-ninth Avenue might need some repairs, and he
wished I would look at it. He was growing old, he said,
and he did not care to come to New York. But the Fordyce
heirs would spend ten years in Europe.
The third letter was from Tom Grinnell.
I wrote to Mr. Henry that I thought he had better let
me knock up a little office, where a keeper might sleep,
if necessary; that there was some stuff with which I
could put up such an office, and that I had an old
friend, a Spaniard, who was an honest fellow, and if he
might have his bed in the office, would take
gratefully whatever his services to the estate proved
worth. He wrote me by the next day's mail that I might
engage the Spaniard and finish the office. So I wrote to
the Spaniard and got a letter from him, accepting the
post provided for him. Then I wrote to Tom Grinnell.
The last day we spent at our dear old home, I
occupied myself in finishing the office as Friend Henry
bade me. I made a "practicable door," which opened from
the passage on Church Alley. Then I loaded my hand-cart
with my own chest and took it myself, in my working
clothes, to the Vanderbilt Station, where I took a brass
check for it.
I could not wait for the Spaniard, but I left a
letter for him, giving him a description of the way I
managed the goats, and directions to milk and fatten
them, and to make both butter and cheese.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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