The bay captain looked in and beheld his predecessor, Captain Twiford, who also sailed the bay, lying in his shroud—not in full clothing, as men are buried now, for clothing was too valuable in the scanty-peopled country to feed it to the worms. Twiford lay shrivelled up, shroud and flesh making but one skin, the face of a walnut color, the hair complete, the teeth sound, and severe dignity unrelaxed by the exposure he was condemned to for his evil alliance with Betty Hanley.
She also lay exposed, who had lived so shamelessly, respecting not the mould of beauty God had given her, till now men leered to look upon her nearly kiln-dried bosom glued into its winding-sheet, and the glory of her hair, that had been handled by bantering outlaws, and in a rippling wave of unbleached coal covered the grinning coquetry of her skull.
"Them that mocks God shall be mocked of him," said Jimmy Phœbus, closing the door and putting some of the scattered bricks of the vault against it. "Now, I reckon, I kin git to the cross-roads by a leetle after dark."
Chapter XXV.
PATTY CANNON'S.
Phœbus passed along the side of a large, black, cypress-shaded mill-pond, and found the boundary stone again, and took the angle from its northern face as a compass-point, and, proceeding in that direction, soon fell in with a sort of blind path hardly feasible for wheels, which ran almost on the line between the states of Maryland and Delaware, passing in sight of several of these old boundary stones. Not a dwelling was visible as he proceeded, not even a clearing, not a stream except one mere gutter in the sand, not a man, hardly an animal or a bird; the monotonous sand-pines, too low to moan, too thick to expand, too dry to give shade, yet grew and grew, like poor folks' sandy-headed children, and kept company only with some scrubby oaks that had strayed that way, till pine-cone and acorn seemed to have bred upon each other, and the wild hogs disdained the progeny.
"Maybe I'll git killed up yer in this Pangymonum," Jimmy reflected; "an' though I 'spose it don't make no difference whair you plant your bones, I don't want to grow up into ole pines. Good, big, preachin' kind of pines, that's a little above the world, an' says 'Holy, rolley, melancho-ly, mind your soul-y'—I could go into their sap and shats fust-rate. But to die yer an' never be found in these desert wastes is pore salvage for a man that's lived among the white sails of the bay, an' loved a woman elegant as Ellenory."
It was dark, and he could hardly see his way in half an hour. Sometimes a crow would caw, to hear strange sounds go past, like an old watchman's rattle moved one cog. The stars became bright, however, and the moon was new, and when Phœbus came to a large cleared opening in the pines, the lambent heavens broke forth and bathed the sandy fields with silver, and showed a large, high house at the middle of the clearing, with outside chimneys, one thicker than the other, and a porch of two stories facing the east.
Though not a large dwelling, it was large for those days and for that unfrequented region, and its roof seemed to Phœbus 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.