of about a mile, Broad Creek, like a tributary river,
flowed into the Nanticoke from the east, fully a quarter of a mile wide,
and half a mile up this stream an old, low, extended, weather-blackened
house faced the river, and seemed to grin out of its broken ribs and
hollow window-sockets like a traitor's skull discolored upon a gibbet.
It was falling to pieces, and along its roof-ridge a line of crows
balanced and croaked, as if they had fine stories to tell and weird
opinions to pass upon the former inhabitants of the tenement.

"There, I have hearn tell," said Jimmy, as he drew in to the bank, and
took the woman into the scow and began to tow her along the beach,
wading in the water, "_there_, I have hearn tell, lived the pirate of
Broad Creek, ole Ebenezer Johnson, who was shot soon after the war of
'12 at Twiford's house down yonder."

"For kidnapping free people?" asked the woman, without interest, the
question coming from her desolate heart.

"In them days they didn't kidnap much; it was jest a-beginnin'. The war
of '12 busted everything on the bay, burned half a dozen towns, kept the
white men layin' out an' watchin', and made loafers of half of 'em, an'
brought bad volunteers an' militia yer to trifle with the porer gals,
an' some of them strangers stuck yer after the war was done. I don't
know whar ole Ebenezer come from; some says this, an' some that. All we
know is, that he an' the Hanlen gals, one of 'em Patty Cannon, was the
head devils in an' after the war."

"It's a bad-lookin' ole house, sir. See, yonder's a coon runnin' out of
the door. Oh! I hear my child cryin' everywhere I look."

"The British begun to run the black people off in the war. The black
people wanted to go to 'em. The British filled the islands in Tangier
yer with nigger camps; they was a goin' to take this whole peninsuly,
an' collect an' drill a nigger army on it to put down Amerikey. When the
war was done, the British sailed away from Chesapeake Bay with thousands
of them colored folks, an' then the people yer begun to hate the free
niggers."

"For lovin' liberty?" the woman sighed, looking at the ball, which had
galled her ankle bloody.

"They hated free niggers as if they was all Tories an' didn't love
Amerikey. So, seein' the free niggers hadn't no friends, these Johnsons
an' Patty Cannon begun to steal 'em, by smoke! There was only a million
niggers in the whole country; Louisiana was a-roarin' for 'em; every
nigger was wu