"An' why did I git that egg an' make you smell it, Joe Johnson? Because, by smoke! you was a stinkin' kidnapper, robbing of the pore free niggers of their liberty, knowin' that they didn't carry no arms and couldn't make no good defense! That's your trade, an' it's the meanest an' most cowardly in the world. It's doin' what the Algerynes does in fair fighting. You're a fine American citizen, ain't you? I know your gang, and a bloody one it is, but you can't look a white man in the eye, because you're a thief and a coward!"
The Hellenic nature of the bay captain had never displayed itself to the Judge with this fulness, and he felt some natural admiration as he took Phœbus by the arm.
"Well, well!" said the Judge, "let him go now, Phœbus! Mr. Johnson, don't let me see you in Princess Anne again to-day. Continue your journey and disturb us no more, or I shall put criminal process upon you, and you see we have stout constables in Somerset."
As he led Phœbus around the corner of the bank, the Judge said:
"James, my wife is so sick that I must keep house with her this morning, and I want a little note left at the church for Mr. Tilghman. Will you take it?"
"Why, with pleasure, Judge," the nonchalant villager replied. "I don't look very handsome in the 'piscopal church, but I'll do a' arrand."
As the Judge wrote the note with his gold pencil on a leaf of his memorandum book, he said:
"James, did you identify that man yesterday?"
"Yes, I knowed him as soon as he come to the tavern. This mornin', seein' of him around town, I was afear'd Samson Hat would stumble on him, and the nigger buyer would kill him for yisterday's blow. Thinks I: 'Samson is too white a nigger to be killed that way, by smoke!' but the prejudice agin a nigger hittin' a white man is sich in this state that Joe Johnson, bloody as he is, would never have stretched hemp for Samson Hat; so I picked a quarrel with the nigger buyer to take the fight out of him before Samson should come. He won't fight nobody now in this town. His hokey-pokey is done yer."
"You took a great risk, Phœbus. He is such an evil fellow in his resentments, that I let him hide and eat in my quarters for fear of some ill requital if I refused. That gang of Patty Cannon's is the curse of the Eastern Shore."