Roxy was so much affected that she threw her apron up to her face, and Vesta and Phoebus had to smile, while Samson Hat, looking indulgently on, exclaimed,

"Dar's love all froo de woods. Doves an' crows can't help it. It's deeper down dan fedders an' claws."

"That nigger trader," continued Jack Wonnell, bell-crown in hand, "hired me an' Levin to take him a tarrapinin'. He had a bag of gold that big" - measuring with his hand in the crown of the hat"an' he give Levin some of it, an' I took it to Levin's mother las' night, an' told her Levin wouldn't be back fur a week, maybe. I thought Mr. Johnson was gwyn to give me some gold too, so I could buy Roxy, but yer's all he give me. Everybody disappints me, Jimmy!"

Jack Wonnell showed an old silver fi'penny bit, and his countenance was so lugubrious that the sailor exclaimed,

"Jack, he paid you too well for all the sense you got. Now, whar has Levin gone with the Ellenora Dennis?"

"I don't know, Jimmy. He made Levin sail her up to the landin' down yer below town, whair Levin's father, Cap'n Dennis, launched the Idy fifteen year ago. I left Levin thar, and he said, 'Jack, I'm goin' off with the nigger trader to git some of his money fur mother!'"

"Poor miserable boy!" Phoebus exclaimed; "he's led off easy as his pore daddy. The man he's gone with, Miss Vesty, is black as hell. Joe Johnson is known to every thief on the bay, every gypsy on the shore. He steals free niggers when he can't buy slave ones, outen Delaware state. He sometimes runs away Maryland slaves to oblige their hypocritical masters that can't sell 'em publicly, an' Johnson and the bereaved owner divides the price. Go in the house, yaller gal!" Jimmy Phoebus turned to Roxy, who obeyed instantly. "Jack Wonnell, you go too; I'm done with you!" (Jack slipped around the house and made his peace with Roxy before he started.) "You needn't to go, Samson; I know you're true as steel!"

"I must go an' git de breakfast, Jimmy," the negro said, going in.

"Now, Miss Vesty" - Phoebus turned to the mistress of Teackle Hall"Joe Johnson has got old Hominy and the little niggers, by smoke! That part of this hokey pokey is purty sure! Did he steal them an' decoy them, or wair they sold to him by Judge Custis or by Meshach Milburn?"

"By neither, I will risk my life. Mr. Milburn was taken to his bed Saturday evening, and on Sunday father went to Delaware on legal business for my husband."

"That is Meshach Milburn, I hear," the bay sailor remarked, with a penetrating look. "Shall I go and see him on this nigger business?"

"No," Vesta replied; "he is too sick, and it is a delicate subject to name to him. My girls, Virgie and Roxy, think old Hominy ran away from a superstitious fear she had of Mr. Milburn, who had become the master of Teackle Hall by marriage."

"Yes, by smoke! every nigger in town, big and little, is afraid of Milburn's hat."