"Wheoo!" Jack Wonnell exclaimed, with a coinciding grin; "I've hearn of him: a Yankee-faced feller, like a woman, with long braids an' curls of hair fallin' around of his breast an' back, and a ole straw hat, rain or shine."

"That was L-l-lorenzo Dow," the parson of the islands said. "He turned on K-k-king Custis and screamed, 'W-who art thou? The L-lord shall smite thee, w-whited sepulchre, and m-mock thee in thy ch-h-hildren's children, thou A-a-a-hab and thy J-j-jezebel!' It was King Custis's wife he pinted at, too, the greatest lady and heiress in V-v-virgeenia. Sh-h-e f-f-ainted in f-fear or r-rage to hear the prophecy and insult of her. Then, turning on Eb-b-benezer Johnson, Lorenzo Dow cried out, 'The dogs shall lie buried safer than his bones. Lay hold of him, brethren!' And s-something in Lorenzo Dow's t-trumpet-blast made every M-methodis' a giant. They s-swept on Ebenezer Johnson, the bully of thr-ree states, an' beat him to the ground, an' raced his band to their boats, an' then they th-hrew him into a little j-j-jail they had on the camp-ground, f-for safe keeping."

"What did King Custis do then, Pappy Thomas?" asked Levin.

"Why, brethren, what did he do but use his f-f-family influence to g-git out a warrant for the preacher and his m-managers, on the ground of f-false imprisonment and s-slander! Lorenzo Dow got over into Maryland s-safe from the warrant, but our p-presiding elder was p-put in jail till he could p-pay two thousand dollars fine. It almost beggared the poor Methodies of that day to raise so much money, but g-glory be to G-god! we can raise it now any day in the year, and in the next g-generation we can buy our p-persecutors."

"So Ebenezer Johnson, accordin' to the autum bawler's patter, got popped in the mazzard, my brother of the surplice? But he didn't climb no ladder, did he?"

The stuttering host seemed not to comprehend this sneering exclamation, and Levin Dennis said:

"King Custis wasn't killed, was he, Pappy Thomas?"

"It was his children's children his p-p-punishment was promised to," the island parson said, "and to the Lord a thousand y-years are but as d-days."

"The tide is fuller, Levin," Joe Johnson cried, "your keel is clear. Now pint her for Manokin. So bingavast, my benen cove, and may you chant all by yourself when I am gone!"

"God bless the boys!" the islander cried, "an' k-keep them from the f-fire everlasting that is burning in your jug. And s-s-stranger, remember the end of Eb-b-benezer Johnson, an' repent!"

The old man, barefooted, stoop-shouldered, stuttering, yet with a chord of natural rhetoric in his high fiddle-string of a windpipe, stood looking after them till they passed down the thoroughfare under the jib-sail, and Joe Johnson did not say a word till some marsh brush intervened between them, he being apparently under a remnant of that panic which had seized him on the camp-ground.