ambush.
Sheldrakes and goosanders, coots and gulls, whifflers and dippers, made
the best of Sunday, and bathed and wrote their winged penmanship on the
white sheet of water.

Poor Jack Wonnell returning, with something on his face between a grin
and a tear, said:

"Levin, didn't I never harm nobody?"

"Not as I ever heard about, Jack. They say you ain't got no sense, but
you never fight nobody. Everybody kin git along with you, Jack!"

"No they can't, Levin. Meshach Milburn hates the ground I tread on. If
he know'd I was in love with little Roxy he'd marry her to a nigger."

"What makes him hate you so, Jack?"

"Becaze I wears my bell-crowns, and he wears the steeple-top hat. He
thinks I'm a-mockin' of him. Levin, I ain't got no other kind of hat to
wear. Meshach Milburn needn't wear that air hat, but if I don't wear a
bell-crown I must go bareheaded. I bought that lot of hats with the only
dollar or two I ever had, as they say a fool an' his money is soon
parted. The boys said they was dirt cheap. Now there wouldn't be nothin'
to see wrong in my bell-crowns, ef all the people wasn't pintin' at ole
Milburn's Entail Hat, as they call it. Why can't he, rich as a Jew, go
buy a new hat, or buy me one? I don't want to mock him. I'm afeard of
him! He looks at me with them loaded pistols of eyes an' it mos' makes
me cry, becaze I ain't done nothin'. I'm as pore as them trash ducks,"
pointing to a brace of dippers, which were of no value in the market,
"but I ain't got no malice."

"No, Jack. That trader could give you that bag of gold to keep and it
would be safe, becaze it wasn't your own."

"I 'spect I will have to go to the pore-house some day, Levin; my ole
aunt, who takes keer of me, can't live long, an' I ain't good fur
nothin'. I can't git no jobs and I run arrands for everybody fur
nothin', but the first money I git I'm gwyn to buy a new hat with. Ever
sence I wore these bell-crowns Meshach hates me, an' I hope he's the
only man that does hate me, Levin. I don't think Meshach kin be a bad
man."

"How kin he be good, Jack?"

"Why, I have seen him in the woods when he didn't see me, calling up the
birds. Danged if they didn't come and git on him! Now birds ain't gwyn
to hop on a man that's a devil, Levin. Do you believe he deals with the
devil?"

"I do," said Levin; "I see sich quare things I believe in most anything
quare. These yer tarrapins has got sense, and they're no more like it
than a stone. One ni