The Heart

Before I entered the tavern, out burst Parson Downs, and caught hold

of me, with a great shout of welcome. Half-drunk he was, and yet

with a marvellous steadiness on his legs, and a command of his voice

which would have done him credit in the pulpit. It was said that

this great parson could drink more fiery liquor and not betray it

than any other man in the colony, and Nick Barry, who was something

of a wag, said that the parson's wrestlings with spirits of another

sort had rendered him powerful in his encounters with these also. Be

that as it may, though I doubt not Parson Downs had drunk more than

any man there, no sign of it was in his appearance, except that his

boisterousness was something enhanced, and his hand on my shoulder

fevered. "Good day, good day, Master Harry Wingfield," he shouted.

"How goes the time with ye, sir? And, I say, Master Wingfield, what

will you take for thy horse there? One I have which can beat him on

any course you will pick, with all the creeks in the country to

jump, and the devil himself to have a shy at, and even will I trade

and give thee twenty pounds of tobacco to boot. 'Tis a higher horse

than thine, Harry, and can take two strides to one of his; and mine

hath four white feet, and thine but one, which, as every one knoweth

well, is not enough. What say you, Harry?"

"Your reverence," I said, laughing, "the horse is not mine, as you

know."

"Nay, Harry," he burst forth, "that we all know, and you know that

we all know, is but a fable. Doth not Madam Cavendish treat you as a

son, and are you not a convict in name only, so far as she is

concerned? I say, Harry, you can ride my horse to the winning on

Royal Oak Day, at the races. What think you, Harry?"

"Your reverence," I said, "I pray you to give me time," for well I

knew there was no use in reasoning with the persistency to which

frequent potations had given rise.

Up to my horse he went with that oversteadiness of the man in his

cups, who moves with the stiffness of a tree walking, as if every

lift of a heavy foot was the uplifting of a root fast in the ground,

and went to stroking his head; when straightway, my horse either not

liking his touch or the smell of his liquored breath, and judging as

was his wont that the fault must by some means lie with his own

race, straightway lashed out a vicious hind leg like a hammer, and

came within an ace of the parson's own valuable horse--not the

one which he proposed trading for mine--and the wind of the lash

frighted the parson's horse, and he in his turn lashed out, and

another horse at his side sprang aside; and straightway there was

such a commotion in the tavern yard as never was, and slaves and

white servants shouting, and forcing rearing horses to their regular

standing, and I stroking my beast, and striving as best I could to

bring his pure horse wits to comprehend the strong pressure and

responsibility of humanity for the situation; and the Barry brothers

and Captain Jaynes came running forth, Captain Jaynes swearing in

such wise that it was beyond the understanding of any man unversed

in that language of the high seas; and Nick Barry, laughing wildly,

and Dick, glooming, as was the difference with the two brothers when

in liquor. And the landlord, one John Halpin, stood in his tavern

doorway with his eyebrows raised, but no other sign of consternation,

knowing well enough that all this could not affect his custom, and

being one of the most toughly leather-dried little men whom I

have ever seen, and his face so hardened into its final lines of

experience, that it had no power of changing under new ones. And

behind him stood peering, some with wide eyes of terror, and some

with ready laughs at nothing, the few other roisters in the tavern

at that hour. 'Twas not the best time of day for the meeting of

those choice spirits for the discussion of the other spirits which

be raised, willy-nilly, from the grape and the grain, for the

enhancing of the joy of life, and defiance of its miseries; but the

Barrys and Captain Jaynes and the parson were nothing particular as

to the time of day.