"Gentlemen," said Van Dorn, "I recommend you not to be charging bee-trees to tenants in the vicinity of Johnson's Cross-roads. It's an unusual item, and we are raising young men there who may not understand it."
"Captain," said the elder Cannon, chuckling as if still in admiration of Marius's subtlety, "I recollect now that our ferryman brought over a man from Laurel this morning with some news. A woman with a broken shackle reported there last night, and said she was the slave of Daniel Custis of Princess Anne: she came from Broad Creek."
"Where did she go?"
"A Methodist preacher put her in his buggy and started to her master's with her."
"Then she'll beat the wind," said Van Dorn; "these preachers are all horse-jockeys, and can outswap the devil. Hola! ya, ya! I must see to this."
He strode out, with a cold eye glanced at Hulda.
"Come, young people," spoke the grand head of Jacob Cannon to Levin and Hulda; "I will show you my museum."
He led the way to a warehouse overhanging the river and unlocked a door, and told them to walk carefully till they could see in the dark of the interior.
Levin kept Hulda's hand in his as they slowly saw emerge from the shadows a great variety of dissimilar things heaped together, till the house could hardly hold the vast aggregate of pots and kettles, spinning-wheels and cradles, bedsteads and beds, harrows and ploughs, chairs and gridirons, rakes and hoes, silhouettes and picture-frames, hand-made quilts of calico and pillows of home-plucked geese feathers, fishermen's nets and oars—whatever made the substance of living in an old country without minerals and manufactures, in the early part of the nineteenth century.
"Whare did you git' em, sir?" Levin asked.