an at that old
Dorchester village had spoken with Johnson only half an hour before the
trader's encounter with Jimmy Phoebus in mid-stream, whereupon the
grim passenger had produced his pistol and notified Levin:

"Now, my feller prig, honor's what I expect from you, and, to remind you
of it, Levin, I'm a-goin' to pint this barking-iron at your mummer, so
that if you patter a cackle, a blue plum will go right down your
throat."

He had then tried to evade some one expected on the river, and, in a fit
of rage at the awakening and wailing of the child, had hushed it
forever, and then had shot Phoebus down.

Poor Hominy had sincerely believed that Johnson's peculiar slang was the
language of the good Quakers, followers of Elias Hicks, who sheltered
runaway slaves and spoke a "thee" and "thou" and "verily," and that
strange misapprehension in her ignorant mind the keen dealer had made
use of to decoy her into Levin's vessel and waft her into a distant
country.

"We didn't steal her, Levin," Johnson said; "she wanted to mizzle from a
good master, an' we jess sells the crooked moke an' makes it squar."

When Aunt Hominy, having under her protecting care the little children,
came on board the _Ellenora Dennis_ at Manokin Landing, Levin had been
asleep, and knew nothing of the theft till it was too late to protest,
and Johnson himself had sailed the cat-boat into broad water. Then,
bearing through Kedge's Strait, he had cruised up the open bay, out of
sight of the Somerset shore, and entered the Nanticoke towards night by
way of Harper's Strait, and run up on the night flood; but the instinct
of Jimmy Phoebus had cut him off at the forks of the Nanticoke, and
propelled another crime to Johnson's old suspected record. He had never
been indicted yet for murder, though murder was thought to be none too
formidable a crime for him.

There was a zest of adventure in this guilty errand, which, but for its
crime, would have pleased Levin moderately well, the roving drop in his
blood expanding to this wild association; and he knew but little
comparatively of the Delaware kidnappers, reading nothing, and in those
days little was printed about Patty Cannon's band except in the distant
journals like _Niles's Register_ or _Lundy's Genius of Emancipation_.
Levin had never sailed up the Nanticoke region before, and its scenery
was agreeable to his sight, while his heart was just fluttering in the
first flight of sentiment towards the i