The tall man led the way to the heart of the grove of pines, where the seeming town was found—a deserted religious encampment of durable wooden shells, or huts, in concentric circles of horseshoe shape, and at the open end of the circle was the preaching-stand, a shed elevated above the empty benches and pegs of removed benches, and which had a wide shelf running across the whole front for the preacher's Bible, and to receive his thwacks as he walked up and down his platform.
It looked a little mysterious now, with the many evidences of a large human occupation in the recent summer, to see this naked town and hollow pulpit lying so suggestively under the long moan of the pine-trees, conferring together like dread angels in council, and expressing at every rising breeze their impatience with the sins of men.
At times the great branches paused awhile, scarcely murmuring, as if they were brooding on some question propounded in their council, or listening to human witnesses below; and then they would gravely converse, as the regular zephyrs moved in and out among them, and pause again, as if their decision was almost dreaded by themselves. At intervals, a stern spirit in the pines would rise and thunder and shake the shafts of the trees, and others would answer him, and patience would have a season again. And so, with scarcely ever a silence that remained more than a moment, this council went on all day, continued all night, was resumed as the sun arose to comfort the world again, ceased not when the rainbow hung out its perennial assurance upon the storm, and typified to trembling worshippers the great synod of the Creator, in everlasting session, ready to smite the world with fire, but suspending sentence in the evergreen pity of God.
In one of the deserted shells, or "tents," of pine, with neatly shingled roof, facing the preaching-booth, Joe Johnson and Levin Dennis found benches, and, at the tall man's example, Levin also lighted a pipe, and looked out between the escapes of smoke at Tangier Sound, deserted as this camp-ground on the Sabbath, since the worshippers had reached home from church in their canoes. He thought of his lonely mother in the town of Princess Anne, wondering where he was, and of the Sundays fast speeding by and bringing him to manhood, with no change in their condition for the better, but penury and disappointment, a vague expectation of the dead to return, and deeper intemperance of the dead man's son and widow's only hope. He would have cried out with a sense of misery contagious from the music of those pines above him, perhaps, if the brandy had not begun to creep along his veins and shine bold in his large, girlish eyes.
"Levin," said Joe Johnson, "don't you like me?"
"Yes, Mr. Johnson, I think I does, 'cept when you use them quare words I can't understan'."
"I'm dead struck with you, Levin," Joe Johnson said. "I want to fix you an' your mother comfortable. You're blood stock, an' ought to be stabled on gold oats."
He drew the canvas bag of eagles and half-eagles out of his trousers, and held its mouth open for Levin to feast his eyes.
"Thar," said he, "I told you, Levin, I was a-goin' to give you one of them purties. I've changed my mind; I'm a-goin' to give you five of 'em!"
"My Lord!" exclaimed Levin; "that's twenty-five dollars, ain't it, sir?"