to save my life!"

"Whoo-oo-p!" cried Phoebus, waving his old straw hat, itself nearly
out of season. "If this is a lie, Jack Wonnell, I'll make you eat a raw
fish. Levin"--to Levin Dennis--"you slip up by Custis's, and see if ole
Meshach hain't passed around the fence, or dropped along Church Street
and hid in the graveyard, where he sometimes goes. I'll stay yer, and
make Jack Wonnell account for sech lyin'!"

Levin Dennis, a boyish, curly-haired, graceful-going orphan, walked up
the cross street, passing Church lane and the Back alley, and slowly
turned the long front of Teackle Hall, and went out the parallel street
towards the lower bridge on the Deil's Island road, till he could turn
and see the three great-chimneyed buildings of Teackle Hall lifting
their gables and lightning-rods to his sight in their reverse, the
partly stripped trees allowing that manorial pile to stand forth in much
of its length and imposing proportions. Lest he might not be suspected
of curiosity, Levin continued on to the bridge at Manokin landing, and
counted the geese come out of a lawn on a willowy cape there, and take
to water like a fleet of white schooners. He ascended the rise beyond
the bridge, and looked over to see if Meshach might have taken a walk
down the road. Then returning, he swept the back view of Princess Anne,
from the low bluff of cedars on another inhabited cape on the right,
which bordered the Manokin marshes, to the vale of the little river at
the left, as it descended between Meshach's storehouse and the ancient
Presbyterian church of the Head of Manokin, seated among its gravestones
between its hitching-stalls and its respectable parsonage manse. Nothing
was visible of the owner of the distinguishing hat.

So Levin Dennis returned more slowly around the north wing of Teackle
Hall, looking at every window, as if Meshach might be there; but nothing
did he see except the dog, which, to Levin's eye, appeared uneasy, and
ran out of the gate to make friends with him.

"So, Turk!" Dennis muttered, patting the dog's head, "no wonder you're
scared, boy, to see old Meshach Milburn come in."

Teackle Hall, according to rumor, was built at the close of the
revolutionary war by an uncle, or grand-uncle, of Judge Custis, who came
from Virginia, somewhere between Accomac and Northampton counties, and
went into shipbuilding on the Manokin, adding some privateering and
banking, too, and once, going abroad, he brought back from