n states up
thar"--Jack Wonnell indicated the North with his finger. "Ain't there no
place where a white man kin treat a bright-skinned slave like that as if
they both was a Christian?"

"No," answered Levin, "not in this world."

The hero of the bell-crowns was much affected, and Levin thought he
really was whimpering, though his vacant grin was a poor frame for
grief.

"Jack," said Levin, "if what Roxy Custis told is true, the gal is the
slave of your pertickler enemy, Meshach Milburn."

The wearer of the rival species of hat was "badly sobered," as Levin
mentally expressed it, at this dismal solution of his gentle dreams of
love. He arose and walked to the bow of the boat, and looked down into
the flying waves over which the cat-boat skipped, as if he might seek
the solution of his own disconnected yet harmless life in the bottom of
the sound, among the oyster rocks.

The water was now speckled with canoes and periaugers (pirogues), and
little sail-boats coming from Deil's Island preaching, and before them
rose out of the bay the low woody islands and capes which, with white
straits between, enclose from the long blue nave of the Chesapeake the
scalloped aisle called Tangier Sound. Like pigeons and wrens around some
cathedral, the wild-fowl flew in these involuted, almost fantastic,
architectures of archipelago and peninsula, which, lying flat to the
water, yet took ragged perspective there, as if some Gothic builder had
laid his foundations, but had not bent the tall pines together, that
grew above in palm-like groves, to make the groined roofs and arches of
his design.

Here could be seen the ospreys, sailing in graceful pairs above the
herrings' or the old wives' shoals, taking with elegance and
conscientiousness the daily animal food that even man demands, with all
his sentiments and gospels. There the canvas-back duck, in a little
flock, broke the Sabbath to dive for the wild celery that grows beneath
the sound. In yonder tree the bald eagle was starting out upon his
Algerine work of vehemence and piety, to intercept the hawk and steal
his cargo. The wild swan might be those faint, far birds flying so high
over Kedge's Straits, in the south, and the black loon, spreading his
wings like a demon, disappears close to the cat-boat, and rises no more
till memory has forgotten him.

Levin Dennis steered close to a point where he had been wont to scatter
food for the black ducks, and draw them to the gunner's