"Joe," said Van Dorn, "what is to be your disposition of the prisoners we have?"

"All goes with me to Norfolk but one, - the nigger boxer; I burn him alive on Twiford's island. If the white chap is too pickle to sell, I'll throw him overboard; he ain't safe."

"Ea! sus! it is boyish to burn the old lad. I have had many a blow from a black, and stab, too. A dog will bite you if you lasso him."

"No nigger can knock me down and git off with selling."

"Then you are a bad trader. The negro's price is all the negro is; why make him your equal by hating him?"

"I am a Delaware boy," Joe Johnson said, "and it's the pride with me to give no nigger a chance. In Maryland you pets 'em, like ole Colonel Ned Lloyd over yer on the Wye; he's give his nigger coachman a gole watch an' chain because he's his son! What a nimenog! Some day he'll raise a nigger that'll be makin' politikle speeches, an' then I don't want to live no more."[5]

"Chito! Since the Delaware lawyer sent you to the post, son-in-law, you're morose. I have had to eat with negro princes, dance with their queens, and be ceremonious as if they had been angels."

"It would be the reign of Queen Dick for me! I couldn't do it, nohow."

"And, by the way, Joseph, I may see your friend, the lawyer Clayton, at Dover, to-night: he may send me to the post, too; and I fear no Delaware governor will take off the cropping of my ears, as was done for you in state patriotism."

"Beware of that imp of Tolobon!" Joe Johnson muttered. "How I wish you could kill him, Van Dorn. He's got to be a senator; some day he'll be chief-justice of Delaware: then, what'll niggers be wuth thar?"

"I fancy, Joseph, you might be a legislator in Delaware if your inclinations ran that way?"

"Easy enough, but I makes legislators. My wife, Margaretta - her first husband's sister is the wife of the chancellor."

"Hola! oh! How came that great alliance?"

"She was housekeeper; he was a close old bachelor and must break a leg. 'Well,' she says, 'you're a daddy; justice is your trade, and I must have it.' So, from bein' his peculiar, she becomes the madam; but she inwented the kid."

"I have never been in Dover; how shall I tell where Lawyer Clayton dwells?"

"It's on the green a-middle of the town, a-standin' by the state-house - a long, roughcast house in the corner, three stories high, with two doors; the door next the state-house is his office. Go past the state-house, which has a cupelo onto it, an' you see the jug an' whippin'-post. He's got 'em handy fur you."

Levin listened with all his ears. The liquor was now well out of his system, and he thanked God he had refused Patty Cannon's burning dram, else he might be this night - he thought it with remorse - the reckless mate for Owen Daw, whose own mother had predicted the gallows for him.

"And now, Van Dorn, I turn back," Joe Johnson said; "I have a job to do down the Peninsuly. McLane has become the owner of a gal thar, an' wants her sneaked. I takes black Dave with me, an' when I'm back, my boat will be ready an' my cargo packed. Then hey fur Floridey!"