requented region, and its roof seemed to Phoebus remarkably steep
and long, and yet, while enclosing so much space, had not a single
dormer window in it. The southern gable was turned towards the intruder,
and in it were two small windows at the top, crowded between the thick
chimney and the roof slope. The two main stories were well lighted,
however, and the porch was enclosed at the farther end, making a double
outside room there. No sheds, kitchens, or stables were attached to the
premises, but an old pole-well, like some catapult, reared its long pole
at half an angle between the crotch of another tree. Roads, marked by
tall worm fences, crossed at the level vista where this tall house
presided, and a quarter of a mile beyond the cross-roads, to the
northeast, was another house, much smaller, and hip-gabled, like
Twiford's, standing up a lane and surrounded by small stables, cribs,
orchard, and garden.

"I never 'spected to come yer," Jimmy Phoebus observed, "but I've
hearn tell of this place considabul. The big barn-roofed house is Joe
Johnston's tavern for the entertainment of Georgey nigger-traders that
comes to git his stolen goods. It's at the cross-roads, three miles from
Cannon's Ferry, whar the passengers from below crosses the Nanticoke fur
Easton and the north, an' the stages from Cambridge by the King's road
meets 'em yonder at the tavern. The tavern stands in Dorchester County,
with a tongue of Caroline reaching down in front of it, an' Delaware
state hardly twenty yards from the porch. Thar ain't a court-house
within twenty miles, nor a town in ten, except Crotcher's Ferry, whar
every Sunday mornin' the people goin' to church kin pick up a basketful
of ears, eyes, noses, fingers, an' hair bit off a-fightin' on Saturday
afternoon. They call the country around Crotcher's, Wire Neck, caze no
neck is left thar that kin be twisted off; the country in lower Car'line
they calls 'Puckem,' caze the crops is so puckered up. They say Joe's a
great man among his neighbors, an' kin go to the Legislater. The t'other
house out in the fields is Patty Cannon's own, whar she did all her
dev'lishness fur twenty years, till Joe got rich enough to build his
palace."

With the rapid execution of a man who only plans with his feet and
hands, the bay sailor observed that there was a grove of good high
timber--oaks and pines--only a few rods from the cross-roads and to the
right, under cover of which he could draw near the tav