The Topeka state journal., 1897-11-17
NOSES SURRENDER.

Colonel Jones of Norfolk. He had cared
for the stable and for the little patch of
garden back of the Freemason street house
ever since he could remember. He had
there married Aunt Lizzi and it was there
young Nose followed him-undoiry pret-
ty much all he had done right and leaving
undone whatever he had neglected. Back
against the rear wall of the garden-au
the houses in Freemason street were sur
rounded by a high brick wall-used to
stand a little house behind the outdoor
kitchen.
Now it happened that a good many OF
those Norfolk matrons had sideboards and
silver closets that their later descendants,
however wealthy, would be glad to own.
And they came to Mrs Colonel Jones,
Mar James mother, and asked her what
they should Go to save the plate. So she
gathered it all together and placed it in
the keeping of old Nose, telling him he
must hide it where no Yankee inquisition
could ever bring it forth.
She did not dare ask him where the
plate was hidden, for she was Methodist
of the strictest scot, and did not want tGs
lie But old Nose dropped hints whicE
convinced them that the gold and the sill
yer and the precious stoneS-for personal
jeweIry had been massed with the plate in
the general fear of Yankee invasion
were locked good and deep in the fast
nesses of the Great Dismal swamp. He
fellow, but he described places in that
silent inferno which made Mar Jane shiv-
er-tales which walked her at night with
fright almost greater than that of advanc-
ing armies.
He told them of deep, dark aisles of the
swamp, where black waters, untroubled
by any life save that of serpents oozed at
the edges of graves where wanderers, lost
and perishing, had sunk down to an inter
ment of annually rising brakes and MOSES.
He sat in the cleaning at the back of the
house. where the women gathered in those
dreary times, and spoke of the groanine
winds in woods that never echoed note
of bird song, of awful briers that caught
at ones sleeve and of roots that tripped
one, and of mysterious lights that danced
and swayed and beckoned- 1t was very
clear to Mar Jane that old Nose had
buried the plate in the darkest deeps OF
the Great Dismal swamp.
He did not desert them when the south
ern army evacuated Norfolk. Few of the
family servants in that city did. He
worked away tearing down the little house
back there against the wall and piling the
bricks where they could be handled when
the colonel came home The east end OF
the building made part of the wall, and
the chimney which rose from the coping
was torn away to the general level and
filed up with rubbish, and old Nose and
young Nose and Aunt LizZi moved into
the upper floor of the kitchen, which stood
nearer the colonel's residence
One night some ten years after the waI
young Nose took a likely colored girl to a
ball in Roanoke Slip, and Mar James
brother Tobe, a roistering blade too young
for battle, but too old for credence, saw a
brooch on the likely cOlOred girl as she
| paraded past the National hotel on the
! arm of young Nose, and he wondered
| where it came from. Mar Jane herself
! one day in Aunt Lizzi's rooms over the
/ kitchen came across a silver fruit basket
1 that she seemed to remember in Mrs. Gen
/ eral Groner's dining room-long, long
i ago-and she told her mother about it.
! Another day Colonel Jones, pruning about
! the fig tree at the east wall, saw young
! Nose, unconscious of any auditor, admir-
! ing a seal ring on his lanky finger and
! knew it had been the property of Judge
| QUintus Dent
| So they resolved to wait till old Nose
! was recovered and then tell him his son
! had found the hiding place Of the plate.
/ But old Nose drifted out one night
/ where Elizabeth river paid her tribute to
4 the tide and Aunt Lizzi-who had beat
| en- and badgered him steadily for 40 years
| walked the neighbors with her weeping.
| old Nose was given funeral as became
| master who had never intermitted that
| relations regardless of emancipation. And
| at the funeral young Nose passed grapes
| about among the mourners, using a gold
| lined fruit basket which Aunt Lizzi could
| have sworn-had she not felt the demands
| of consistent weeping-had once adorned
the sideboard of a neighbor. When the
! funeral was all over, Tobe got great big
! gun and took young Nose into the attic
! of the big stone house-the attic from
| which Mar Jane had listened to the Mer-
| rimacs last battle.
! '.Mose, - said Tobe, "you see this gun2''
''Yes, sch, - said young Nose.
II
roared and the solid roof leaped with the
detonatiOn.
''God Almighty, Marse Tobe, wh-what
you gwyn do wi dat gunS"
! IF you don't fetch that plate up here
before count 200, I'm going to shoot a
hole through you big enough to put a
| cushion in"
! "Wh-Wha- Why, no man ain't go to
the Ora Dism' swan an come back
whilse you count
"One two, three, four, ave," began
| Tobe, ramming down a charge of powder
/ with alarming energy.
/ ''Six, seven, eight, nine, ten''-
Young Nose tumbled down the stair
way, half shrieking a mingled protest and
! promises Tobe went to the oriel window
! and watched. Young Nose, in a parOxysm
! of industry was grubbing with a matto1
! in the bricks at what had once been fire
| place before w hich the darky was Graded.
One SIrOke, b8Or bhfee, Win OeSpefAbs
\ energy, and then down in a pepper bed,
| where floor had been one day, tumbled a
| Gathering mass of gold and silver plate and
| jewelry. The old chimney was full of it,
I and it was nearly all there.
Old Nose must have looked at that
treasure and lusted after it in the war
| days. when a negros head was likely to
| be filed with dreams. He must have
| slowed it into that disused chimney and
walled it up there, and there young Nose
| must have found it. Anyway he fright
/ ened Mar Jane almost to death, tearing g
| like mad up the back stairway, his arms
! full of plumber and his eyes full of fear.
Hundred and ninety eight, hundred
/ and ninety -nine two hundred, - said Tobe,