tered a well-built little town on a navigable creek, with a
large mill-pond, sawmills, several vessels building on the stocks, and
an air of superior vitality to anything Judge Custis had seen in
Delaware. Here the Chancellor pointed out the late home of Senator
Clayton's father, and, after the horses had been fed, they continued
still northward, passing another small town on a creek near the marshes,
and, a little beyond it, came to a venerable brick church, a little from
the road, in a grove of oaks and forest trees.

"Here is Barrett's chapel," said the Chancellor; "celebrated for the
plotting of the campaign between Wesley's native and English preachers
for the conquest of America as soon as the crown had lost it."

They looked up over the broad-gabled, Quakerly edifice, with its broad,
low door, high roof, double stories of windows, and a higher window in
the gable, trim rows of arch-bricks over door and windows, and belt
masonry; and heard the tall trees hush it to sleep like a baby left to
them. Nearly fifty feet square, and probably fifty years old, it looked
to be good for another hundred years.

"My family in Accomac was harsh with the Methodists through a mistaken
conservatism," Judge Custis said. "They are a good people; they seem to
suit this peninsula like the peachtree."

A small funeral procession was turning into Barrett's chapel, and the
Chancellor interrogated one of the more indifferent followers as to the
dead person. Having mentioned the name, the citizen said:

"His death was mysterious. He was a Methodist and a good man, but it
seems that avarice was gnawing his principles away. A slave boy, soon to
become free by law, disappeared from his possession, and he gave it out
that the boy had run away. But suddenly our neighbor began to drink and
to display money, and they say he had the boy kidnapped. He died like
one with an attack of despair."

As they turned again northward, in the genial afternoon, Judge Custis
said:

"What a stigma on both sides, Chancellor, is this kidnapping!"

The old man meekly looked down and did not reply. Judge Custis, feeling
that there was some sensitiveness on this and kindred subjects, yet why
he could not recollect, continued, under the impulse of his feelings:

"The night before I left Princess Anne, Joe Johnson, one of your worst
kidnappers, boldly came to my house for lodging. Why I let him stay
there is a subject of wonder and contempt to myself. But ther