"They're Jimmy Phoebus's daily words, dear Cyrus. He was killed on the river night before last; I saw him fall; it is my sin and misery."

"He ain't dead," Cy James whispered, very low and carefully. "I won't tell you whar he is till you make Huldy like me."

"How kin I do that, Cy?"

"She thinks I'm a coward and gits whipped by Owen Daw. Tell her I ain't no coward. Tell her I'm goin' to fry all these people on my griddle - all but Huldy. Tell her I'm only playin' coward till I gets 'em all in batter an' the griddle greased, an' then I'll be the bully of the Cross-roads!"

"Do you hate me, Cy Jeems? I ain't done nothin' to you. I'm a prisoner here till I kin git my boat back from Joe an' go to Prencess Anne."

"I won't hate you if you kin make Huldy love me," Cy James replied. "Tell her I ain't no coward; that I'm goin' to be free, an' rich too." He dropped his palms to his knees again, and whispered, "fur I know whar ole Patty buries her gole an' silver!"

"Come with those horses, you idle lads," the lisping voice of the Captain was heard to call. "Ya, ya! there, luego! the morning passes on."

"All ready," Cy James replied, and as they left the stable door he whispered once again, and looked significantly towards Johnson's Cross-roads:

"By smoke! Hokey-pokey! an' Pangymonum, too!"

The Captain, looking like a gentleman of the knightly ages misplaced in this forest lair, held the reins standing on the ground, and handed Hulda in to the seat beside his own with a grace and a blush and a lisping laugh that, Levin thought, were very fascinating.

"Now, Master Cannon, take your place in the tail of the vehicle," the Captain said, bowing to Levin, and darting one of those cold, coarse looks at him that he vouchsafed but for a moment, like a soft cat that has all the nature of the rabbit except the tiger's glare.

The vehicle was an old wagon without springs, and Levin's seat was a piece of board, while Hulda's had a back to it, and the Captain had padded it with a bear's-skin robe. He looked with the most delicate attention at Hulda, blushed when she looked at him, and, scarcely noticing the horses, yet having them under nearly automatic control, he drove out of Patty Cannon's lane and turned into the woods.

Levin cast one long, prying look at Johnson's tavern, wishing he might have the gift to see through its weather-stained planking and tall blank roof, and then he watched the road, of hard sand or piney litter, with here and there a mud-hole or long, puddly rut in it, unravel like a ribbon behind the wheels among the thick pines.

He also observed the skill with which the Captain threw his long cowhide whip, a mere strip of rawhide fastened to a stick, awkward in other hands; but Van Dorn could brush a fly from either of the short, shaggy Delaware horses with it, and hardly look where he struck or disturb the horse, and he could deliver a blow with it by mere sleight that made the animal stagger and tremble with the abrupt pain.